(Inside the World of a Rock Roadie Page 4 of 6)
Most roadies are on tour 300 days a year, leapfrogging from the end of one tour to the beginning of another. At times, the extreme juxtaposition of tours is so bizarre that it requires mass quantities of mind-altering substances to maintain a grip on one's sanity. Last summer, I left the easy-listening Dan Fogelberg tour and went directly to the grotesque circus of GWAR, which is the kind of head-trip that can only be duplicated by mainlining Crystal Meth and Liquid Drano directly into your cerebellum.
My mother was a big Dan Fogelberg fan in the 1970's. In fact, Fogelberg's core audience is, essentially, my mother: 55-year-old women in Ann Taylor slacks, sipping glasses of merlot. His crew had a no-smoking and no-drug policy on the bus, which was a refreshing change of pace. Instead of getting high and watching Spongebob Squarepants , we would watch Antiques Roadshow and swap amusing stories about our cats. On a particularly raucous evening, we might bust open a case of Zima and play Boggle.
The day the Fogelberg tour ended, I was on a plane to join GWAR for a handful of shows. GWAR, for the uninitiated, is a band that dresses in enormous rubber monster costumes and performs theatrical decapitations, mutilations, and bloodlettings onstage. Their songs include "Sex Cow," "Slaughterama," and "America Must Be Destroyed." For me, the only way to cope with the surreal disparity of these bands was to cloud my mind with psychedelic drugs. With a head full of mescaline and a belly full of 'ludes, the enormous gap between Fogelberg and GWAR narrows considerably.
To the roadie, pot-smoking exists in the pantheon of daily rituals, and bong hits have taken their place alongside morning coffee, checking e-mail, and flossing. The 1994 They Might Be Giants' crew were cannabis connoisseurs. On one particular morning, Dingo, the Giants' grizzled Australian drum tech, brewed a pot of coffee using stagnant bongwater just to see if it would get us high. It didn't. As we discovered, the toxic combination of bongwater and espresso beans rapidly induces violent diarrhea. The beverage, appropriately dubbed "crappucino," earned a place on the long list of failed roadie drug experiments, narrowly edging out the Percodan smoothie top honors.
Another fundamental aspect of the roadie experience is groupies. People invariably want to know: What are groupies like? Will they really do anything to get backstage? Groupies do exist, but sadly, most do not look like Kate Hudson in Almost Famous . And the ones who do don't go for roadies. A roadie is more likely to be propositioned by a "ramp rat": A leathery woman who will trade sexual favors for a backstage pass. Aside from the momentary thrill associated with a blowjob behind a garbage dumpster, the result of this brief union usually involves a degree of shame and a stubborn case of pubic mites.