I got a call from an old college friend, who knew about an audition for a rock band. It wasn’t to play with the band, but to be a roadie. It paid well and I thought I’d at least check it out. I called and spoke with the tour manager, Wally. He asked me a bunch of questions about my background and my qualifications. I told him that I’d just graduated music school and that I was really smart and that I could figure out just about anything. He said to come on down and check out the band at a rehearsal. I guess they were in a big hurry to find someone.

The band was called House of Weasels and they were an 80′s, long hair, rock ‘n’ roll band. The main guy was an aging keyboard player, named Georgio. I told one of my musician friends that I was auditioning for Georgio’s band and he said that Georgio was a rock ‘n’ roll icon, that he was one of the top three all-time great rock keyboard players. He said it was a toss up between Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman, with Clay Georgio in third place.

My friend was sort of right, but not exactly. Clay was a really good keyboard player, but I don’t know about being third best of all time. That’s a pretty tall order. Personally, I would put Jon Lord of Deep Purple way up there, and of course Jan Hammer of the Jeff Beck Group was no slouch, either.

Anyway, down at the rehearsal place, I met the band and Wally, the tour manager, who was about six foot five, bald, well over 240 pounds and basically looked like the strong man from the circus. He was a big guy with a LOUD voice, probably good at yelling at roadies.

James, Clay’s scrawny little brother and the head roadie guy, told me what the deal was with the roadie gig. It was basically like any other roadie gig, where you set up the gear, pack it up, and move it from town to town, plus other stupid duties like taking leather pants to the dry cleaners and handing out back stage passes to hot chicks.

But this gig was a little bit more than that. It entailed actually playing background vocals on a keyboard, in real time, with the band, while they lip-synced their parts. You had to have really good timing and know how to play keyboards and know about the technology involved to pull it off. It was actually pretty tricky and a lot harder than it sounds.

Wally gave me the CD and some floppy disks with the background vocal samples and told me to learn all the songs and come back the next day and audition for the band. They only had a couple days to get ready to go on the road, and with those guys, everything was always last minute. Everyone was stressed out because in three days they were going to open up for Joan Jett in Chicago and begin an 80-city world tour. There was a lot of tension in the air and everyone was all high- strung. It was their debut album with a new record label.

Sean Gibbons from LIPS was the president of the label, and he produced the album. Sean was a real character, let-me- tell-you. The first time I met Sean Gibbons was backstage in Texas somewhere at some show, and the first thing he said when he walked into the room of about 20 people, including me, was, “Hey, you guys, I just fucked Jessica Hahn!” Right on, Sean, you go.

I came back the very next day to the band’s rehearsal place and auditioned for the gig. It was VERY tricky to have to learn and memorize 12 songs and then have to fly in the background vocals, right on the spot. You only get one chance to get it right, or else it totally messes up and doesn’t go with the music and everyone in the band yells at you and you get your ass kicked.

The problem is, sometimes the band plays a little faster or slower and the vocal samples are pretty long, so it isn’t hard for them to not sync up, even if you trigger them accurately, so pretty much no matter what you do, it’s a little off. But mostly, if you do it right, it sounds amazing. Of course, if the drummer used headphones and played to a click track then the timing would be exact and my job would have been easier. But, since it was a HAIR band, they wouldn’t dare mess up their hair just to sound better.

I pulled it off and kicked ass. It was too hard for the other roadies and since no one else could do it, they were stuck with me. I got the gig. I had no idea what I was in for. I just figured it would be fun to go on the road with a fairly big rock ‘n’ roll band and make a few bucks and bang a few chicks. You know how it is: It’s rock ‘n’ roll, man. I was going to travel the world, see the sights, and have an adventure. Plus, I was gonna get paid! I would’ve done it for free food and some weed!

I put all my stuff in storage and two days later, I was on the road. We were gone, just like that. Our first gig was on New Year’s Eve in Chicago, opening for Joan Jett for the next three weeks. Joan was a really cool chick. Right before she went on stage she’d be wearing a baby-blue, oversized bathrobe and blue fuzzy slippers, like the outfit Carol Burnett used to wear on TV when she was playing some goofy old lady. About two seconds before she went on, Joan would jump out of her bathrobe and walk out on stage in black leather pants and boots and be all rock ‘n’ roll. It was pretty funny to see her in her Carol Burnett bathrobe outfit minutes before she was transformed into black leather lady.

Joan’s bass player was one of my heroes, Kasim Sultan. He was the bass player for Todd Rundgren’s Utopia and a really great musician. He also could sing super well and he was an all-around good guy. He had one of those thick New York accents and was a true blue, working musician. Always had a gig.

I got to speak with him a little bit here and there, and I told him that Utopia was my favorite band in the mid-80′s, and that it really meant a lot to me, and that I thought he was just a great musician. He was pretty cool about it and kept a low profile. I don’t normally just walk up to famous musicians and spill my guts, like a lot of people do. That would be tacky. I’m never tacky. Or, at least, I try to never be tacky. And if I ever become tacky accidentally, I want someone to mention it as soon as possible so I can jump out of that character and be back in to my normal, calm, cool, collected self. Or at least attempt to be calm, cool and collected. Nobody likes a spazz.

The thing about being on the road with a rock ‘n’ roll band is that the new guy always gets blamed for everything that goes wrong. I got in trouble, literally, on a daily basis for just about everything you could think of. If something went wrong, everyone would turn to me, and either yell at me, look at me meanly, or throw things, or give me the finger, or somethin’. It was always somethin’.

To make matters worse, I was the most educated, skilled, trained, and talented person out of the whole bunch. I made it clear to everyone that I was, and that just gave them more fuel to go after me with. We’d be at a sound check or something, and someone in the band would call me an asshole for something, and then I’d ask them to spell a symmetrical diminished half-whole scale in C flat and they’d just sneer at me.

One time, Jann, the lead singer, came up to me and said, “Hey, man, where are my leather pants?”

I said, “That’s a good question. I don’t know. Where are your leather pants?”

He yelled at me and said that I was responsible for them because I supposedly took them to the cleaners and I supposedly lost them.

“Sorry, Jann,” I said. “That is simply not the case. I didn’t lose your leather pants, man. The Creature Sisters probably stole ‘em.”

The Creature Sisters were these two girls from somewhere like South Bend, Indiana and they were about 18 or 19 and super skinny and small. They weren’t that pretty, but they were good-enough looking to want to fuck, and that’s what they had to offer.

For a while, that is.

They probably worked in a McDonald’s and saved up all their money over a whole summer and loaded up their little crappy car and headed towards the first cool rock show they could find. It didn’t matter who the rock band was or what the music was like, as long as they were a rock band that was on tour and on the radio and had some moniker of success; then the girls were gonna find ‘em, and try to fuck ‘em and hang around backstage as much as possible. They just wanted something to do, so when they finally got kicked out, they could go back to their little, pathetic boring lives and tell everyone about their amazing adventures following a has-been rock ‘n’ roll band full of phonies that barely broke even, if that.

The Creature Sisters were very determined to accomplish their goals, and boy, did they ever. They fucked the roadies, truck drivers, lighting guys, security, and the t- shirt guys, working their way straight up to the band. Once the band got ‘em, they lasted about 24 more hours and then got kicked out of the scene. They were lucky they made it that far.

Every night, it was the same old scene. After the gig, a bunch of slutty, dumb girls would do whatever they had to do to find the band and follow them back to the hotel. There usually was a little line of about four or five girls in front of the lead singer’s hotel room. They would wait patiently until he was done and then the girl he would kick out of his room would run out crying and then the next one would run in thinking that she was going to be different, and then ten minutes later, she would slam the door and run out crying, too.

It was pretty much like clockwork — every ten minutes, as long as you were within earshot of the lead singer’s hotel room, you could hear the door slam and a girl running and crying.

He was a road dog and he didn’t care what you looked like as long as you were skinny and had an okay body, you were good enough for him – for ten minutes, that is. Unless you were super hot, then you’d get treated like a queen and maybe hang on for the whole time the band was in town. That happened once in a while, but mostly it was just trailer-trash — skinny white girls wearing lots of makeup and all the hairspray stuff and little miniskirts from K-Mart.

The lead singer was the biggest phony of the bunch. He was nothing more than a below-average looking, middle-aged, lame, out-of-work top-40 singer who could only sing good enough to get in this band, for a while.

He was phony on every imaginable level. He had hair extensions, fake, dyed, jet black hair, fake, blue contacts, a nose job, a chin job, a facelift, a neck job, a tummy tuck; you name it. Whatever existed that was fake, he had it.

He didn’t even use his real name. His real name probably was Heckter Schmoltz, but he used Jann Hindu to sound all regal and together. He fooled most of the girls most of the time, for about 15 minutes. That’s why he’d kick them out after ten minutes, before they realized what a loser he was! He wanted to make sure he kicked them out before they realized how lame he was as a human being and split. He probably had a fake dick too…

Terry was the head road dog. He’d been a roadie for close to 20 years and had seen and done it all. He wasn’t too bright, or very good-looking, but he had long hair and looked and acted the part.

And he had balls of steel. For example, he’d walk up to about 30 young girls and blurt out, “Anyone here wanna give me a blow job right now in the back of the tour bus?”

Ninety eight percent of the girls would be grossed out, but there was usually one or two that didn’t say anything, or would simply let him take their hand and quickly escort them on to the back of the bus.

Terry had no shame. He got laid more than the rock stars. It was really a matter of technique and the fact that he really didn’t care what the girls thought or felt. He was just after numbers, and that’s exactly what he got.

I secretly wished I could do what he did. Unfortunately, I had too much of a conscience, but if my sense of morality wasn’t there to bother me, I would have been just like him.

Everyone had to wear a backstage I.D., called a laminate. Wally told us that if we ever lost it, our heads would roll.

“No matter what,” he said, “do NOT lose your laminate, or else.”

All the older, more experienced road dogs told me that if I lost my laminate I could pretty much kiss my job goodbye. I was very frightened about losing it and went to great lengths not to do that.

Inevitably, I spaced for two seconds and accidentally left it in a bathroom. I realized it after about a minute and ran back to get it and it was gone! Someone had stolen my laminate, and now I was fucked! I didn’t know who to turn to or what to tell anyone because I was so scared that I was going to ruin my new short-lived career. I was sweating bullets and couldn’t believe I was in that terrible predicament where you know you’re busted and you just have to wait until you get your ass yelled at in front of everyone.

Right about then, all the roadies came up to me and said, “Where’s your laminate, dude?”

I was busted. I was like, “You guys, you’re never going to believe this, but someone stole it from the bathroom; I just left it there for two seconds, and now it’s gone.”

They were like, “Man, you’re totally fucked and you just got here, too.”

They all shook their heads like it was nice knowin’ ya and looked pretty grim. I felt horrible and got that feeling you get in your stomach when you know you’re busted and in a jam you can’t get out of and that feeling is just permeating throughout your entire being. The feeling lasted for what seemed like an eternity and then the head roadie, James, pulled out my laminate and said, “It’s a good thing I found your laminate, man, or your ass would have been grass!” They were all just fucking with me, like usual, but I learned a valuable lesson: don’t trust anyone on the road, no matter who they are, especially all my fellow roadies!

The next leg of the tour after Joan Jett was opening up for Cheap Trick. Those guys were rock legends and they all totally kicked ass. I grew up listening to bands like Cheap Trick and even played a few of their songs in high school cover bands. It was a trip to actually meet them and work for their opening act and tour with them.

Those guys partied hard, and I mean HARD. It was amazing to me to find out that they could do blow all night long, drink and fuck young girls, for 25 years in a row, 300 shows a year, and still show up for sound check at 5 p.m., day in and day out. They were like sharks that could swim in their sleep. They were like Zombies that would not die. They were like rock ‘n’ roll creatures from the black lagoon that could not be killed. They just kept on coming back for more, like sex-starved maniacs on drugs. If there was a nuclear war and everyone died of radiation, Cheap Trick would find a way to survive.

That pretty much sums up the personality type for the majority of rock ‘n’ roll musicians on the road. If you can think of all the stories you’ve ever heard about rock ‘n’ roll musicians on the road, just magnify the story times ten and that’s pretty much what it’s like.

Drugs, drinking, mayhem, lying, cheating, sexing, criminal behavior, anti-social pathology, paranoia, mental illness, narcissism — you name it — it’s all inclusive with rock ‘n’ roll on the road. It was NEVER about the music. The music was sort of an excuse to be on stage. It was the carrot in front of the horse, the bait for the fish, the spider web for the young girls…

Cheap Trick had this tour manager that was really mean to me. He was always gacked out (that’s the rock n roll term for coked out) and always on edge and nervous and angry. He just didn’t like me and was rude and mean to me for no reason. Maybe he had a reason, but it looked like he was just an unhappy drug addict and taking it out on me, the new guy.

His mean behavior went on and on for several weeks until one day he came up to me all fake nice and smiling. He said that he was having a problem with one of the keyboard music systems and that no one could figure out how to fix the problem, and he asked me if I would be willing to figure it out for him.

He knew that I was a Berklee graduate and that I was smarter than everyone else on tour and maybe that’s why he didn’t like me in the first place. His life was never going to go anywhere and all he lived for was drugs, new young girls, and an empty, vacuous lifestyle. We both knew that I had a bright future in front of me and for that, he resented my very existence. Anyway, I always liked a good challenge and even though he was a total dick to me I told him I’d help him out.

The machine they were using played all the string parts for their big hit “The Flame,” and they needed it that night in about two hours or else they wouldn’t be able to do the song. So, there was a little bit of pressure added to the task. He gave me the device and a pile of technical manuals and I sat down right there and read through it all and figured out the whole problem and made it all work in about 20 minutes. Ever since then, he treated me with a new sense of respect and he quit picking on me. I saved his ass and I guess when you’re on the road, if you do something like that, you get a break once in a while.

I was, by far, the smartest guy in the whole bunch. But then again, rock ‘n’ roll isn’t about smarts; it’s about being able to survive. It’s like being a foot soldier in World War I and slithering through the muddy trenches and not getting killed. It’s like being a Russian dude on the Russian front in the middle of winter and almost freezing to death, but somehow surviving and living to tell the tale. It’s like that little creature I read about in National Geographic that could live for 100 years without air, water, or food in subzero temperatures, and still be alive.

I remember hearing about the infamous Polaroid photo album that Cheap Trick had on their tour bus. The rumor was that they had thousands of photos of them with young, naked girls in all sorts of combinations with legs in the air and drumsticks sticking out, and you name it, they were into it. I never saw the photos, but Terry, the road dog, got invited one night onto their bus and got to see them. When Terry came back to our bus, he told me that the pictures were unbelievable and that it was a true honor to be invited onto their bus and see all their personal, private photos from all the years of debauchery, orgies, and mayhem.

Terry also told me some stories about those guys, because Terry had been around forever and knew everything there was to know about just about every band out on the road. He said that one time, Slash, the guitar player for Guns ‘n Roses, and the lead guitar player from Cheap Trick were slap boxing and that Slash was all drunk and got a little carried away and tried to smack the older, smaller guitarist.

What happened then was, Rick Neilson, the lead guitarist for Cheap Trick, the guy who looked like the Bowery Boy with the bicycle hat that’s upside down, basically just decided to quit playing with Slash and threw just one punch and Slash hit the deck, and he was out cold. You would think that Slash would be all tough and rugged and all, but that’s just not the case. The older, skinnier, more drugged-out and wimpier-looking Rick turned out to be the much quicker and much tougher and resourceful fighter, by far. It just goes to show that you can’t always tell a rugged slap box fighter by the cover of the album.

Terry, the old road dog, also taught me some of the ropes of the road. He taught me the secret origins of “Have you seen Bill?” That was top secret for: “Do you have any coke?”

The way it goes is like this: “Have you seen Bill?” Bill means William. William Holding. Holding means: “Are you holding any drugs?”

I thought that was pretty clever. In AA, the question: “Are you a friend of Bill?” means are you a friend of Bill Wilson, which means, “Are you a sober member of AA?” I guess it just all depends which Bill you’re friends with, or looking for; it can make a pretty big difference, though.

I was a pretty cocky guy at times. The leader of the band, Clay, was pretty cocky, too. We clashed heads, periodically. In a rock ‘n’ roll outfit, a lot of egos are running around, unchecked. Basically, everyone in the band and everyone in the organization, including me, had runaway egos. It was just one big ego fest.

After the initial buzz had worn off about how cool it was to be working for a rock ‘n’ roll band and being on tour, etc., and opening up for famous bands etc., it got pretty old, pretty fast. The facade of playing it cool to get on the good side of everyone faded away and we all were left with who we really were: a lot of misfits stuck on a tour bus.

The thing about me was, they couldn’t fire me because it was too much trouble to train someone quick enough to replace me.

But all the other roadies were replaceable. By the time the 80-city world tour was done, all the roadies were replaced three times over, except for me; they just were stuck with me. They wanted to get rid of me many times, but to train someone else would’ve been more trouble than to just live with my bad attitude. So, after a while, I wouldn’t let them push me around. Except for Wally, he was just physically too darn big to even consider messing with.

Wally told me he used to be the personal security guard for Freddie Mercury from Queen. He told us that he worked for Freddie for three years in the mid-80′s when Queen was selling out arenas and it was basically pandemonium at all times. Wally’s job was to protect Freddie from crazy fans and to keep him out of trouble as best as humanly possible.

Wally told us that Freddie used to rent out entire floors of hotels with like 100 rooms, just for him and his “friends” to frolic around in after the show. Imagine 1,000 naked gay guys running around from room to room, doing literally EVERYTHING you could imagine, night after night for three years, and having to be Wally (who was straight by the way) who had to sit there and keep Freddie from getting in too much trouble while protecting him from his crazy fans and self-destructive lifestyle. Imagine the Emperor Caligula from way back in Roman times running around in a hotel room on a rock ‘n’ roll tour…that’s what it was like, only without the togas and the grapes. Or maybe not.

Wally had pretty much seen it all and there wasn’t anything I could say or do to get over on him. Wally caught me 100% of the time because even if he didn’t find any evidence of whatever I was up to, he could tell when I was lying just by looking at me.

I’m a terrible liar.

He had an innate sense of knowing that I was up to mischief, because usually I was and he knew it, and I knew that he knew it. I don’t know how I lasted on that tour for nine months, but somehow I finagled my way to stay on that job.

Clay had it in for me, too. He knew that I was a professional musician and a college graduate and that I was going to go somewhere in life. He also knew that I was smart and also a smart ass, just like he was. Clay had a one-liner for everything and even had gags for things that weren’t funny.

I would say, “Hey, have you guys seen my bags?” and Clay would say, “What’s her name?” Ha ha, very funny, Clay. It was like that every day, at all times. We had a little posturing going on. He was my boss and, technically, the guy who paid me, but to me, he was just an aging, tall, skinny rocker who was pretty smart and reasonably talented, but mostly just a mean spirited dickhead.

One time on the bus, we were sitting around and Clay was saying how great he was at chess. I told him and everyone around that I was an amazing chess player and that I could kick Clay’s ass. Clay, of course, did his usual double-take look of amazement that I would have the balls to say shit like that to him, a famous rock star (yeah, right). But I didn’t care if he fired me. Good luck replacing ME, dude.

I wasn’t totally cocky like that all the time; in fact, I was mostly pretty subordinate and followed the rules and mostly put up with all the rock stars’ crap. But every once in a while, I would stand up and say, “Oh yeah? Well, watch me kick YOUR ass at something.” This time, it was chess. So, bring it on, brother, it was time to play chess with the leader of the band.

He built himself up pretty good and I actually played it pretty cool, because I knew that I could beat him, and so I pretended that I was just sort of okay. We set up the pieces and had a little audience of a few other band members and roadies and the sound guy.

I moved my pawn to King 4. He moved his pawn to King 4.

I moved my Queen to Bishop 4. He did some stupid irrelevant move.

I moved my Bishop up to aim at the kill square right next to his King.

He did another stupid move, and then I put him in checkmate!

I beat him in four moves!

It’s called fool’s mate and I hadn’t done that since 8th grade. I couldn’t believe he fell for such an old trick. He instantly knocked the game on the floor and said that I had cheated. Sorry, dude, I beat you fair and square, and you’re just an old retard for falling for the oldest chess trick in the book.

Another time, it was me and Clay at it again, playing cards in the bus and we were playing a really stupid game called Acey Duecy. It’s also called High Low, and basically you put down two cards and if the third card is in between the two cards, then you win whatever you bet. If you bet the pot and win, you get the whole pot; if you bet the pot and lose, then the pot grows. This game can last for hours and you just keep on going until, once in a while, the pot grows exponentially and it gets out of control super fast.

It happened one night on the tour bus when about seven of us were playing and a few hundred dollars was in the pot, and then it started to grow out of control. $400 — then $800 — then $1,600 — then $2,000. People were throwing in paycheck IOU’s for $500 here and $500 there.

I had about a grand in the pot and Clay had about a grand in and it was getting late and everyone else had quit except me and Clay.  We had a lot of money in the pot and one of us was going to win the whole thing and, you bet your ass, I was going to make sure it was ME!

I’m sure that’s what Clay was thinking, too, but here’s what happened: it finally came down to my turn and Clay was dealing. He put down a three and t hen a king. Everyone knew I was going to bet the pot because the odds of the next card being between a four and a queen were very good. I, of course, bet the whole entire pot, which took a lot of balls I might add, and before Clay dealt me my card, I said, “Keep it fair, dude; take it off the TOP of the deck.”

He looked at me with evil eyes like he couldn’t believe that a lowly, fresh out of college, young roadie like me would make such a rogue statement, accusing him of potentially cheating. The air was so thick with trepidation that it was electrifying. Clay just glared at me with his beady, little ratfink eyes and slowly peeled off the next card and, YES, I had finally won the whole thing!!

There was a big sigh of relief from the rest of the guys on the bus that World War III had finally ended.

“Not so fast,” yelled Clay, as he slammed his hand on the pile of loot. “I’m pulling out a hundred dollar bill for you accusing me that I was going to cheat. If this was the Wild West, man, I would have shot you under the table.”

“Whatever, Clay, I don’t care. Keep the $100. I won fair and square and YOU are a sore loser.”

I only really won about 800 bucks because two-thirds of it was mine, including paycheck IOU’s that I had written out, but if I had lost that game it would have been a BIG drag. Of course, me winning like that against the big cheese, old road dog just made matters worse in the long run, but for the moment, I was the cool guy, once again.

Clay, as he always did, would find many ways to get me back, like insulting me in front of hot chicks and ordering me around like I was a peon. But for that moment, I was the MAN, the king dog, the baddest dude on that rock ‘n’ roll tour bus.