Best Seat in the House by Tom Stephen

Author:Tom Stephen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2018-11-05T16:00:00+00:00

For a while, touring was great. Maybe they should have let us go home once in a while, but even now I wouldn’t change it. Of course, the band members got on each other’s nerves. We spent more time together than we’d probably ever spent with our parents or girlfriends. But 99 percent of the time we were laughing. We had our first album and the movie, and we had momentum.

Roadies are a very select community. Generally, these guys function on little or no sleep; they’re hardcore partiers, and some of the most creative working people you’ll meet. When you’re a rock ’n’ roll band, the roadies are the ones who pull the party together, introducing the girls. But don’t worry — those guys are pretty good at looking after themselves, too. I’ve walked onto the tour bus a few times and seen some interesting sights.

A lot of the roadies who I knew ended up becoming road managers for major groups. The guys who are solely in it to chase the girls and get hammered don’t last. Others become legends — guys musicians sit around and tell stories about. One time in Japan, a roadie — a fellow Maritimer named Mongo — was angry because the hotel was slow responding to his complaint about one thing or another. So he took apart the entire air-conditioning system.

As we traveled, we found ourselves in the company of models — fashion models, runway models, Playboy and Penthouse models. After we got over the novelty, I realized that some of the stereotypes about these girls were true. Not all of them were the sharpest. Some had been modeling since they were 13 or 14, and lived in a world so insular, they hadn’t been exposed to the normal things that teenagers experience. Few of them took advantage of the cultural opportunities available when you travel to places like Paris and Rome and Amsterdam. By the time they were 19 or 20, they were veterans not only of wild sexual behavior but of heavy drinking, cocaine use and, well, partying with rock stars.

One well-known model whose name I won’t mention was crazy about Jeff but had a bigger thing for coke and alcohol. She’d get blasted, then try to show up backstage before we’d go on. One thing about our band was that we had a rule: the music came first. No partying until after the show. However, this girl was so beautiful and famous that very few people said no to her. She took our decree as a personal insult.

One day, we gave strict instructions that this young lady was not to be allowed in the dressing room. Nevertheless, she managed to find her way backstage. She started bolting up the stairs and got to the top, where she ran directly into one of our larger security guards. The last thing we saw was him carrying her over his shoulder as she clawed at his back and slurred, “You can’t do this to me!

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