(Inside the World of a Rock Roadie Page 5 of 6)
My first experience with a groupie was back in 1988, on the "Club MTV Tour" featuring Jodi Whatley, Tone-Loc, Paula Abdul, and Milli Vanilli. One night, at a show in Battle Creek, Michigan, I was backstage in catering where I met a woman named Bonnie. She was around 35, had crimped hair, and wore deliberately torn acid-wash jeans and white stiletto pumps. She was a local legend and a permanent backstage fixture; the guys on the crew referred to her as "The Battle Creek Freak." She sauntered up to my table, and looked me up and down. She leaned in close enough that I could smell the menthol lights on her fetid breath, and whispered, "Do you want to go out to my van?" I was barely 20, with all the worldliness of a nine-year old girl, so I said, "Sure."
She led me outside to a metallic green van with a giant screaming eagle painted on the side. She swung open the door, and I saw a mattress in the back, covered with a single dirty sheet. We climbed inside and she pulled the door closed. There was no small talk--she immediately kissed me, then removed her shirt and turned around so I could unhook her bra. I quickly noticed two things: A jagged eight inch scar behind one of her kidneys - probably the remnants of a drunken knife fight - and a large grinning tattoo of Burt Reynolds just above her right shoulder blade. When she twisted her torso, the loose skin around Burt's eye folded in such a way that he appeared to be winking.
The "Battle Creek Freak" proceeded to violate me in ways that are still illegal in several southeastern states. Although I eventually lost consciousness, I do recall the sting of a Malaysian flogging cane and the hum of a large vibrating egg. When I came to, in the back of a green van during my twentieth summer, I was no longer a boy. I was a man.
The very nature of the roadie's job--the brutal schedule and constant travel--dictates that most roadies are single. And if they aren't single, they soon will be. On every tour, at least one marriage or long-term relationship comes to a difficult yet inevitable end. Absence, it turns out, does not make the heart grow fonder. Instead, absence smokes all your weed, forgets to water your plants, and leaves a nasty note on your mirror.
On a muggy Massachusetts morning near the end of the Elvis Costello tour, Flavor Flav Dave's wife called and said she was leaving him after 15 years. Since there is no privacy on a tour bus, everyone overheard his sad, yet painfully familiar conversation. Dave was devastated. The next night, our entire crew took him to a seedy strip club on the Jersey shore for the best therapy money can buy: enormous quantities of grain alcohol and three hours of lapdances from a Puerto Rican beauty named Dazzle. We had a good time, and for a few hours, Dave did not have to think about the unpleasant realities that awaited him back home. As I looked at the well-traveled faces around our table in that smoky club, I realized that I was proud to be among these wandering souls. I was proud to be a roadie.