Articles > Rock and Roll Hotels

Touring with a rock and roll band these days - at least at the top level - is done in the grand style. The days of battered transit vans and dodgy digs are long gone, and are now replaced by state-of-the-art tour buses making a smooth progress between five star hotels. And not just any old five star hotels, but places of character, where the service is impeccable and discreet, and the chambermaids are not going to blunder into a guitarist's bedroom in a doomed attempt to make the bed before lunch.

The hotels are happy welcoming the rock star of the moment brings tangible benefits. Quite apart from the custom of the entourage, which varies in size from 20 to over 50, there are the fans. In the case of Robbie Williams, with whom I toured Europe earlier this year, we're not just talking about a few Cokes and Fantas in the Antelope Bar on the Ground Floor. His young followers book themselves into the rooms in groups, to stake out the lobby and public areas for a glimpse of Him. Others arrive in droves. If the hotels have a problem when Robbie is in residence it's keeping people away.

To put the most desperate off the scent, RW himself travels under a pseudonym, as do members of the band. His I cannot repeat, but the band's change from tour to tour, based on the complex private jokes that build-up over weeks of pre- and post- gig proximity. So on this tour bandleader Guy Chambers was Jacques Orff. Czech-born guitarist Fil Eisler was Fil Thee - ('on account of his filthy habits'). Drummer Chris Sharrock was Arthur Beatlate (think about it). While for reasons best not gone into, gorgeous black bass player Yolanda Charles was Anita Bush. Much merriment ensues from all this, bemused Continental hoteliers asking straight- faced for a Mr. Thee or a Mr. Orff.

So where, specifically, do I remember and recommend from our meanderings around Northern Europe? We started at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, a late 19th century edifice that lives up to its name, right on the harbour at the very centre of the city. It was a shame none of the band were up for breakfast, for that was a memorable feast of silver dishes, served in a sunny dining room with conservatory-style glass windows overlooking the bridge to the old town.

The Kong Frederik, in Copenhagen's Vester Voldgade, was just as central, a one-minute walk from the crowded open space of Radhuspladsen. This was a cosier venue, a warren of narrow corridors leading to atmospherically wood-panelled rooms, but it had the right feel for a stay in that quaint, provincial-style capital: intimate and personal.

At the Atlantic Kempinski in Hamburg we were back to grandeur. Every chair in the huge, red-carpeted lobby was occupied by a dolled-up Robbie fan. Down in the basement, the long pool was filled with muscular, old men whose histories could only be guessed at.

On to Berlin, and the spanking new Four Seasons in Charlottenstrasse, on the East side of the city. This gives you access to the wide 'tank streets' and unspoilt monuments of the old communist sector. And the Four Seasons chain have a famously guest-centric philosophy of service, which is worth experiencing at least once, even if you are sniffy, as so many are, about what FS stands for. The man who came to check my minibar backed out virtually on his knees. Too much of it would be clearly unhealthy. But...Dusseldorf ... Stuttgart ... The next memorable hotel was in Paris - Le Parc in Ave Raymond-Poincar. Way out beyond the Tour Eiffel this was not near the parts of Paris I generally meander in, but charming nonetheless, with an airy dining room looking out over a private garden area of open tables under pollarded trees. Before dinner a waitress dispenses champagne in the plush little lobby area.

After a short break for the Brits Awards - where Robbie picked up three - we returned to the fray. I don't intend to wave any flags for the hotels we stayed at in Nuremberg or Frankfurt. But the Conrad International in Brussels was stylishly grand, despite a dining room full of wealthy and demanding guests. This is the problem with luxury; it's impossible to get away from them for long.

We didn't stop for the night in industrial Bielefeld. In the words of our no-nonsense tour manager, known to us as the Prince of Darkness, there was 'nowhere worth a shit to stay'. Instead, it was straight out to the tour buses after the gig and on to the Westin in Rotterdam, an efficient if impersonal modern place where the view late the next morning was of grey office towers against a grey sky. The lilac tree in the lobby was an imaginative touch, but the management seemed rather keener on their own house-rules than the comfort of their guests.

But Amsterdam brought another gem - the Hotel de L'Europe, my favourite of the whole tour. Was it the high-ceilinged lobby in crimson and gold; the little blue velveteen bench in the lift; the dining room whose tables are right over the canal; the quirky old-world charm of the rooms; or just the unforced friendliness of the staff? It's hard to deconstruct such charm, but this, I'd say, is the place to stay in that laid-back city. And no one seemed to mind the band members having a quiet puff of the local home-grown at the canal end of the lobby.

And then, suddenly, we were waking up in Zurich, to look out from first floor windows at the mountains on the far shore of the gently rippling lake. The white, neo-classical, Paris Opera style edifice of the Hotel Eden Du Lac was another place I'd have gladly holed up in for an indefinite stay. Mornings spent working on your novel or symphony, obviously -and perhaps a short break for elevenses in the elegant ground-floor drawing room; then, after lunch on the lakeside terrace of the Salon Restaurant, a short walk along the edge of the water, over the rushing, bubbling river to central Zurich, where the winding cobbled streets are about as metropolitan as Cambridge or Bath - the only difference being the prices in the shops.

Back in London, it was tough winding down, reaching out for the phone by the bed and dialling nine only to remember that room service was not something (generally) available at home.

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