It was Andrea's scheme from the start and in her defense, I must admit it looked good on paper. Sly Stone was making a comeback tour (yes, another one) and looking for a support band and a PA system to join him. Andrea laid a double helping of suave on somebody and landed the sound job. Little Feat picked up the support band option.
Andrea's success didn't surprise me. She was a curveless, sharp-faced brunette with a hardset jaw and a single-minded determination to crack the rock `n' roll industry. She'd run a thriving music store on Chicago's North Side for years, but her ambition went beyond any local notoriety. A little more than a year before I appeared on the scene she'd founded Continental Sound Company, a nationally operated venture in providing concert audio power. As the `60s bled into the `70s and more and more rock acts took to playing the big venues like arenas and outdoor stadiums, a clear need had arisen for custom PA setups to augment a band's personal gear. Sound companies, like lighting systems, could be hired for single dates or entire tour packages. We worked in tandem with the band's own road crew and local on-site technicians.
When my friend the Gnome first called to offer me a job with Continental I'd had visions of orgiastic parties with the stars ... wild outpourings of creative energy ... recording dates, glamour and girls. Sure thing. Mostly I'd learned to sweat.
When the Sly proposal popped up I'd only been with Continental for a few months, but with the other crews busy the Gnome and I were tapped to do the tour. Except for our size (far too small as roadies go), we made a good crew. I handled the work on stage: set up the speakers, amp stacks and the like; did the mike changes between sets; guarded the equipment and bantered backstage with the performers. The Gnome ran the system. Primarily this meant arranging the mix site and engineering the live sound. But he also acted as liaison with road managers, promoters and other bigwigs. And it was his neck on the line if something went wrong-like the promoter didn't pay, or equipment got stolen, or one of the speakers blew up.
We called him the Gnome because he looked like one. He was a little guy, barely five foot five, with a smirky grin and hair halfway down his back-and he'd taught me everything I knew. Matter of fact, it had been a Janis Joplin gig I'd worked with the Gnome some three years earlier that had counted as my sole credential for getting the Continental job. It had only been a one night stand and our presence on the crew totally fortuitous (we'd been picked up hitchhiking by Janis' roadies, who were lost), but of such are rock legends made. This tour would be the biggest break we'd had and we were eager to show our stuff. But things didn't work out quite the way we'd expected...
*
The tour opens in St. Louis and it isn't until the morning of the first show that Marko (Continental's mad genius engineer) finishes putting the final touches on his newly created onstage monitor system and turns us loose to load the truck. We roll into St. Louie in the thick afternoon heat of a Saturday in early September. The city smells brown and heavy like a Mississippi carp left too long in the sun.
Our gig is at Washington University, a white elitist school surrounded by the festering brownstones of the ebony ghetto. A fitting locale for Sly. The Gnome searches for the promoter while I lie in the truck running my mind over the new stage setup we've been given for the Family Stone.
The Gnome returns with a surprising announcement: the show will be outdoors on the university mall. Could be worse. At least we won't suffocate inside some stuffy building. However, we soon see the downside to an outdoor show. Aside from having to dodge frisbees and happy loving couples cavorting on the lawn, it turns out there's no way to move the truck in close to the stage. We aren't allowed on the grass so we have to back the truck up a narrow service entrance and park at the base of a flagstone walk which leads uphill to a staircase that gives out near the back of the stage. This means that none of the equipment can be rolled, all must be humped painfully along by back and strong right arm. We fall to, hauling front-loaders, rear-loaders, stage boxes and horns, mike stands and mixing boards out of the truck and up towards the stage.
Stage hands are promised, appear briefly and then disappear, scared off by the sight of the Gnome and I grunting uphill in the muggy heat. The Gnome again goes in search of the promoter. His assurances of assistance are profuse, but no help appears. At length we give up and, gritting our teeth, struggle on across the flagstones like a pair of human pack animals.
The Gnome has his mixing site erected in the middle of the grassy sward by the time I've figured out the onstage wiring. We run a quick mike check while the early arrivals trickle in and all of a sudden things don't look so bad. The Gnome pulls the rubber band out of his pony tail, shakes out his mane and sits back to contemplate the speaker banks staring out at us.
"No point in having all that power sit useless," I prod, and he responds, digging through his tapes and emerging behind that little gnome grin of his. (The one that says "Hoo hoo, wait for this!") He slaps in a cassette, cranks up the sound and there are the Temptations gliding through "The Way You Do the Things You Do." Sweet and silky. The arrival pattern is thickening now and the newcomers (black and definitely post-teen) find themselves sashaying to the sweet chord vocals as they slide in to their seats. "My Girl" follows and the whole crowd seems to know the words. You can feel something building, a crowd response pulling together across the lawns, people wrapping themselves up in the folds of hot evening anticipation.
We sit back and watch it build. Now they're clapping and shouting at the end of each song, wailing out snatches of the chorus, bumping and jiving on their feet in little knots. Amazing stuff! Most live bands don't get as good a reaction and this is just the pre-concert background sound. A wild night looms.
By the time Little Feat hits the stage to open the show the crowd is loose and limber. The band has the good sense to stick to their most black-oriented material, leaning funkwise in their approach. Response is good, the applause sustained, but the feel is still anticipatory. Little Feat mean no more than the Tempts cassette did: an enjoyable appetizer to the meat of the evening.
I race through the set change, tearing at the mike cables, dodging arms and amps, staring and restaring at the mike chart I've been given for the Family Stone. Eleven people in the band and almost all of them sing. We use every one of our 24 mikes and I spend a good quarter hour going back over them for final adjustments with Sly's stage roadie. The drum kit needs a slightly different angle on the high hat mike, then we move and fiddle at the tom toms. Each singer's mike has its own precise height and direction to be arranged. So on and so forth. Any hint of discrepancy will mean a barrage of threats and curses later from the band.
Once upon a time I'd imagined that "professional" referred to people who were at home enough in their art to be able to handle inadequate facilities or unexpected mishaps. "The show must go on" and all that. What the word seemed to mean in the fantasy industry of rock was the power to refuse to perform unless every tiny detail was done to exact specifications. "You've got an AK57 for my vocal mike and I specifically demanded an AK58!" (Sounds of breaking glass and pathetic whimper.) "Morrie! Where's Morrie? Get my manager in here ... and where the hell is the Dom Perignon?"
But after all, it's the illusion that counts, isn't it?
*
And then, lights dim, sound ceases and figures scurry through the dark of the stage. Chickenscratch guitar starts out, bass falls in, lights go up, cheers, screams ... and then the whole band swings into "Thank You Falletinme Be Mice Elf Agin." Uproar from the crowd, slick steps from the three female vocalists. Sly's beaming-crowd already his-and he milks it with a veteran's pride, breaking into funky little dance routines on the instrumental break, wagging his finger at the frantic first row fans. Uproar, sheer uproar.
The band is hot, the crowd digging it. Sly spits out hits without relent: "Hot Fun in the Summertime," "If You Want Me to Stay," "Dance to the Music"-which the crowd does, all on their feet now, bopping in disorderly abandon as waves of arms churn through the night air, strong men howl, women scream and the band plays on.
Then the end approaches and when Sly kicks them into "I Want to Take You Higher," there's only one way left to go. The ranks break and the packed mass of the audience heads higher-up onto the stage, ladies pulling at Sly's pants, zoot-suited hustlers bumping on the lady singers, madmen dancing on the piano. Things are out of hand. I quit flinging my own feet and start rushing frantically to and fro backstage: guarding equipment, shoving drunks off our packing cases, rescuing mike stands from fencing duos, listening to the leaden rumble of feet bouncing heavy on the wooden stage, wondering what to do if it all gives way. The band is engulfed by dancers, Andy the drummer fighting them off with his sticks, Sly unwilling to quit. Higher indeed. Ain't no higher to go.
Then silence. Power cut and in the confusion Sly and entourage slip off the stage. Thankfully, the crowd follows. The night air hums with the afterburn of energy. I sit in weary sweat, glowing over the night's events.
"Whooeee, this tour is gonna be something!" Little Feat's drummer limbos over, wet from excitement, sweat still bouncing off him in time.
"No shit! I've never seen a show get so wild. Did you see that chick on the piano?"
"Man o' man, that's why they call them hot pants. Pardon me bro, but I see some even now..."
And off he goes while I turn back to work. I put the mikes away and undo the wiring by the time my feet stop tapping, but those banks of speakers start looking awfully heavy.
I go in search of the Gnome. He's sitting behind his mixing board, red-faced and fuming. The Gnome never curses but this time he sure comes close. "...samos climbing all over my back," he's saying, "hanging on the boards, almost ripped the whole blasted thing out. Did, in fact-you heard the power go off-lucky they didn't blow everything up. I can't stand this, it's out of control, I..."
I go to find the promoter. Gone. Look for the promised stage hands. Gone. Band members, audience, security: all melted away into the night. All except me and a blithering Gnome-and a huge bank of speakers that have to walk their way off the stage and down the steps, over the flagstones and onto the street, into the back of a truck. Suddenly the magic is gone and I'm just a tired roadie who wants to find a bed.
When the Gnome realizes there's no help forthcoming he goes into a full-blown rage. A quiet, internal rage as is his wont, but a rage nonetheless. After all, these sound systems are designed to be humped by muscle-bound gorillas and the Gnome and I are more along the lines of Capuchin monkeys. A weary task. Too weary to even record.
*
The next morning the Gnome picks up the phone, dials Andrea, and quits on the spot. No ifs, ands or buts, no listening to my appeals, just quits on the spot. Gathers up his stuff and walks out of the room. And that is that.
I drive the equipment truck back to Chicago where I'm met by an agitated Andrea. "Daniel," she says, "What happened in St. Louis? The Gnome's gone mad. What's it all about?"
I run down the events of the show, which helps not at all. I figure we'll be cancelling the tour, no question, but Andrea won't say die.
"We can't give up!" she says. "We've committed ourselves to this tour and we're going to carry it off."
"And who's going to run the system?"
She points my way. "You are."
"Me?"
"Yes, you. The Gnome showed you everything, didn't he?"
"Well, yeah. Once or twice." I'm remembering vague fiddlings during a spare moment here and there. "But I've only mixed for a total of five or ten minutes. I've never even set up the mixing area by myself. I'm just barely comfortable with the stage work."
"Enough," says Andrea. "You can do it. I have every confidence in you."
So I'm a sucker for flattery. "But I can't do it alone. Who'll help? The next show's in four days."
She was already going through her contact lists. "Then that gives us four days to find someone. I'll call around town here, you call back to the Cities." She looked up. "Get somebody, anybody."
This is nuts, I figure. Impossible. We'll destroy everything. The sound will come out backwards. Sly's manager will slit my throat. But what the hell, it's a challenge. And I'll be running the system, which is a definite step up. I start calling.
*
Friday morning there are four of us huddled in Andrea's office space. Her local calls have produced Big Roog, an extremely large fellow, whose massive shoulders and arms offset his somewhat limited brain capacity. Roog has roadied with local bands and at least knows his way around a stage.
That's more than can be said for Walker. I'd called every likely prospect, but how many people can drop their lives overnight and race off to Chicago for a rock `n' roll tour? Walker is my only hope. Aside from being my best friend and a limitless repository of madcap ideas, his sole qualification for the job is an avid love of rock `n' roll. He's never worked a stage, has no electronic experience, scarcely knows which end of a speaker the sound comes out of. For that matter, neither of them has ever seen the equipment we'll be working with. Neither has ever worked a tour, or anything remotely comparable in terms of size. I'm pegged as resident expert, but on this Friday morning I feel anything but.
Andrea outlines our plans. "As you know, Daniel will handle the mixing. Roog and Walker will share the stage." Roog nods earnestly. Walker throws his arms wide and takes a mock bow. "Daniel will explain the setup to you en route this afternoon. He'll check your work, but he can't be everywhere. You got to help each other. Check each other. OK?"
Further nods of assent; a snappy salute from Walker.
"This is a hell of a way to kick things off, but here it is. Upcoming gigs: Friday 8 PM, Ann Arbor, Michigan; Saturday 8 PM, Morgantown, West Virginia; Sunday 5 PM, Birmingham, Alabama. The Alabama show is outdoors with a double system. Marko'll head directly down with another system and meet you at the park." She stops and watches our reaction. I gulp as I compute the timing necessary to make these gigs. Then suddenly I'm angry, but before I can speak, Andrea anticipates. "I didn't book these," she says. "This is Sly's tour. I know it's ridiculous routing. But this is your chance to be heroes, so be there."
It's too late to back down now.
We share a final meal and a last moment of sanity. A goodbye kiss from Andrea forestalls my frustration ... and then we're in the truck, heading east.
*
By the time we hit Ann Arbor we've run through the stage setup three times over. In between practicing how to drive the truck (as if we didn't have enough new skills to learn) I've laid out the rules of the game and delegated tasks. Roog is not all that swift but at least he's on the right track. Given time, he'll manage. With Walker I'm not so sure. He's been alternately bouncy and silent, but the only questions he's asked were about the backstage party arrangements and twice I've caught him staring in obvious bewilderment at the diagrammed instructions in his hand. He's clearly beyond his depth. I have the frightening suspicion we all are.
The show's a 5,000 seater on the University of Michigan campus. My nervousness eats at me till I'm sure it's evident to all, but I get the lads underway onstage and head out to establish a mix site. At least tonight we're not pressed for time. Carefully, deliberately, I set up the three mixing boards, checking and rechecking every connection, every lead. I study the mike chart for the fifteenth time and then head for the stage to check for problems.
Things are going slow, but better than I feared. Big Roog, at least, is methodical. Walker is gnawing on a chicken wing from the backstage buffet and still puzzling over the diagram. When I check his work the errors are rife, but he's already buzzing me with a plan to tape the show and bootleg it straight out onto the street afterwards.
The mike check brings me some much needed assurance and proud smiles from Roog and Walker. We don our facades of professional competence and use the last few minutes to organize the spare gear and empty cases. At 8:00 sharp I welcome Kinsey, Sly's road manager, and outline our new personnel arrangements. Kinsey is a dapper young dresser from Boston's Back Bay who accepts my explanations with only minimal hair pulling (after all, he has yet to see the crew in action) and mentions something about the promoter.
ZIP-my brain lights up. Promoter. Money. How could I forget? Mumbling excuses I dive backstage and collar the man in question. (When in doubt, tackle the biggest cigar.) At first he's evasive (Sensing my inexperience?) but I don't dare take no for an answer, though I do take a check. Partial relief. I run again through my mental checklist of things to do, take a last look at the stage and return to the boards just as Little Feat come striding onstage.
Be charitable. Put it down to nervousness; first time jitters. Ah, why bother. Call it anything you like-I didn't mix worth an overripe turnip. I start out with everything too high so that boosting the vocals only produces feedback. Then I back the whole system off and draw cries of "Turnitup!" I miss vocal cues, forget the reverb and lose the organ somewhere in the mix. Awful. The bassman's axe is overpowering, his voice nonexistent.
I thank the Lord it's Little Feat and not Sly whose set I've just murdered. At least they'll understand, though it's quickly evident that they're less than satisfied. Crowd response is predictably poor and again I thank the One watching over me that none of Sly's people stuck around for the set.
Besides the band and equipment personnel, the Family Stone entourage includes at least four or five people with no discernible function. Some are family, such as Sly's father, an ever-present figure in powder blue pimp suit and broad brimmed hat whose sole duty is to aim a flashlight at the steps when Sly ascends the stage. At least he's a good-humored chap, which is more than can be said for the others. The payroll no doubt lists them as "bodyguards" (though the bodies involved seem always to be pubescent and female). In idle moments they are much given to tormenting the light and sound crews over imagined deficiencies in presentation. What they might have done with my garbled mix job does not bear imagining.
Kinsey, the road manager, comes out to mix for Sly and I flee the boards momentarily for the more familiar ground backstage. All seems well, though Walker is more involved in watching the female members of the Family Stone than our speaker stacks...
Then it's back to the mix site and the opening bars of "Thank You Falletinme..." with Kinsey yelling in my ear for "More echo on Sly's voice!"-"Bring up Sabrina"-"More bass on Ronny"-"Where's the high hat? Can't hear it." I'm nodding and twirling dials like a robot meth monster ... then trouble on stage, guitar mike has faded-race up and around the back, slide in low and unobtrusive up in front of the amps, adjust the mike, look out to Kinsey for the OK sign, scream instructions at Roog, run back to the boards ... "More monitor, more monitor," Sly's complaining between songs ... fiddle on the boards, Kinsey yelling again, race back to the foot of the stage, turn and adjust Sly's monitors in impotent hope (cursing Marko's gearloose inventions) ... frantic now, operating at some insane pitch of energy, willing the show along ... back to the boards, Kinsey yelling in my ear again (What's that? "Sounds good!" he says. Can it be?) ... and then it's over. None of the magic of St. Louis, but over.
We've survived the First Night.
*
To celebrate our survival we take a ten minute break backstage, rooting through the remains of salad and cold cuts at the performers' free lunch and washing it down with guzzled beers. Sly has already departed, heading off to his private Lear jet for the trip to one of his studio/homes on the coasts while the rest of the band towel off and toot up back in the dressing rooms. After the groupies parade through, selections will be made and the band whisked off by limousine to the luxury of double beds and single-minded passion.
Status levels. Rock `n' roll as music is the antithesis of such. Rock `n' roll as business abounds in them. On this tour Sly represents the pinnacle of the pyramid, sleeping at home each night and travelling by private jet. Next come his band and tour manager, using hotel rooms and commercial flights. Little Feat are a distant third, moving through the landscape in a rented Winnebago outfitted with narrow bunks. At least they can lie down and sleep at night, which is more than we, the miserable road crew, can do. How does that song go? "Cold seat was my bed last night, and window ledge my pillow."
No time to lose in idle reflections. Back to work we head, belching beer and wiping the sweat from our brows. The rock `n' roll moment has passed. Down come the radial horns, out comes the tangle of wiring. Amps unstacked, transported, restacked. Cables wound up, packed in cases, stands reduced to their most minimal space. Explain the procedure, explain it again. Keep the stage crew organized ... guard the mix site gear ... pack away the boards ... hide the tour money ... watch my personal effects ... re-check the onstage packing ... get the truck backed up...
At 1:30 AM we're whooping great shouts of half-crazed joy out the windows of the truck as it rumbles through the backstreets of Ann Arbor. Morgantown, here we come.
*
It's Interstate all the way to Pittsburgh and we trade off driving between gas fills. The bloody truck (a thirty foot U-Haul with front cab overhang) only gets five miles to the gallon so we're in gas stations every two or three hours. We're halfway through Ohio before the uprush of pulling out our first gig wears completely off. Talk dwindles from three-pronged rapid-fire to two-way question and answer to dreary monologue. Non-drivers are under instructions to sleep, but with three of us crammed into the cab there is little hope of comfort and even less of silence.
I pull graveyard shift, driving third after everybody's energy has wilted to the point of exhaustion. It's nearly 6 AM when we roll out of the Oasis station in western PA and the dawn is rising as fast as my eyelids droop. The eastern sun pierces my eyeballs, bouncing white light glints off the hood of the truck and into the back of my brain. I fight sleep.
Next to me, Walker's head arches backwards onto the seat, mouth hanging open, head bouncing in time with the springs of the truck. On his right, Big Roog has gathered his bulk as best he can, curled and twisted into acute angles of discomfort. Periodically his skull bangs off the window ledge and a grunt escapes his lips. Call it reduction of consciousness. Call it oblivion; call it trance. But don't call it sleep.
*
Morgantown is a hilly backwoods college town with a University Coliseum that sits on a treeless hill overlooking the main road. To our surprise it seats 12,000. Hard to believe there's that many people in town.
For once the arrangements are orderly: plenty of room to pull the truck up to the backstage door, a ready crew of eager college kids and a straight shot in to the stage. I turn the load-in operation over to Roog and go out to choose a mix site. The interior is cavernous-a huge stone-benched affair that seems better suited for cattle auctions. How are we supposed to fill this with sound?
We do it by trial and error. After everything is in position we put on a cassette and I walk the far corners of the building, giving semaphore signals to the stage. Aim, re-aim, up a little, now this way, hold ... back and forth till we've covered it all. I'm not sure how well we've done, but I'm getting too tired to care. The three of us close everything tight and stretch out under the stage.
I lie on my back and let my thoughts run circles behind my eyelids for two hours and then get up to start pacing again ... running the procedures step by step through my mind, certain I'm forgetting something ... mind working sluggish, heartbeat pattering ... sure something will go wrong. What if I blow the whole thing up? Even the Gnome did that once and he had a college degree in electronics. I know nothing more than what I've been shown and precious little that seems right now. And what about Walker? He still seems way over his head-grimly studying the stage diagrams and pretending he's not hustling chicks. I check all his work and Big Roog, at least, is at home with stage setting ... but Sly's setup is so complicated, what if we miss something ... what if ... maybe I should...
I welcome the sound check as a distraction. Little Feat run through theirs fast and easy and several of Sly's people don't even show up for theirs so pressure is nil. We even have time to maul the hors d'oeuvres before the bands get to them. At 7:45 I slap on the cassette of the evening and sit back to enjoy the brief stillness at the center of the whirlwind. Walker comes out to join me, grousing about the homegrown groupies. "It's all husky cowgirls or hillbilly chicks in flannel shirts."
I have to laugh. "Not enough flash for you?"
"I've seen more flash from an unplugged strobe light." He wears a pained expression. "How am I supposed to hit my stride?"
"Maybe you should just get some cowboy boots."
"Hah! Well, actually..."
"Well, actually," I interrupt, "you won't have time to enjoy them. You think last night was a bitch, tonight'll be worse. We got further to go and less time to do it in. When the show ends you guys got to double-time that equipment into the truck. Remember, tomorrow's show is 5 PM."
Walker opens his mouth, then shuts it and goes back to the stage with a glower. A minute later he's helping some girl in a bulging halter top squeeze onto his seat beside the amp stacks and flashing two fingers at the guys distributing beers. I know I should chew him out, but I haven't got the heart. It's no fun being boss-not when you're dealing with friends.
*
The show is good. Little Feat seem nervous over the size of the hall and their songs are ill-suited to a hillbilly cow palace, but they play well and the crowd (which is no doubt starved for sounds) responds with enthusiasm. My mixing improves, though I'm not about to start bragging on it.
Sly seems moody and a bit withdrawn. His set is perfunctory-nothing wrong, but not much fire. Not that it matters to the crowd. They applaud every song they recognize and Sly rewards them with an encore (a repeat of "Higher").
I'm backstage wrangling with the University's Special Events chairman over payment when the band comes off with the cheers still ringing in their ears. It's a moment of triumph, yet nobody seems excited. Sly, surrounded on the instant by a circle of flunkies, sweeps past in a flourish and disappears. Every night it's the same, whether the show is wretched or rip-this-joint. The audiences don't seem to know the difference, the flunkies don't seem to care. In that moment I feel the emptiness of it all, the sheer boredom that automatic applause must instill. The after-image of Sly encircled by backpatters and sycophants flashes on behind my eyeballs and I shudder-just for a second-at the prison of fame. Then I turn back to work.
The teardown goes smoothly, Roog hefting cabinets like a trained gorilla. At 1 AM we're all in the cab with dripping beers and I fire up the engine. Then crossing the parking lot I hit a sudden bump and a great sharp "whoosh" sounds from the rear. Inspection shows a rapidly sinking tire. Tragedy. We have double wheels, but setting out on an all-night ramble to Alabama seems foolhardy. We go to look for repairs.
Closed. Closed. Closed. What else can we expect on a Sunday morn in the Appalachian hills? Finally, five miles out of town we find a lone light burning: Uncle Ed's Gas & Garage. Fireflies flicker over two ancient pumps and the dull whirr of a fan sounds from inside tarpaper walls. Screen door slams and I'm inside. Strange blueness, grease-stained desk littered with cigarette butts and crumpled papers. Fan belts, potato chips, spare fuses and beef jerky vie for attention from their pegs on the wall. Hard eyes in a harder face stare out at me, sullen. My explanation draws a snort. Head shaking, Uncle Ed denies all ability or responsibility for tire repair, offers no alternative garage and turns back to his cigarette with an air of finality.
My repeated requests draw nothing but a glare. The air turns ugly. I withdraw. At 3 AM we're back in the parking lot of the Coliseum looking vainly for somebody-anybody-connected with the show. The lot is empty; dismally silent. At a pay phone I dial the local Holiday Inn and connect with a sleepy, disgruntled Kinsey. His response is verbose and unprintable. The essence: Don't bother me with your troubles, just be there.
Boy, this is a wonderful business, isn't it? A great cultural alternative to the cutthroat, uncaring world of American capitalism. So what can we do? We'll drive till it drops.
A second night without sleep looms long and gloomy. Roog and Walker lie passed out in their pinched-neck positions when I return muttering in futile rage. No easy straight ahead freeway driving tonight. It's all backroads and mountain highways. Two lane blacktop, narrow shoulder. Alertness is mandatory.
The first half hour passes in an exhilarating sleep-deprived clarity-whooshing through the curves, wind cooling my simmering head, stars twinkling above the stands of trees that line the road-the sheer impossibility of the task at hand driving me through my anger into an attitude of devil-may-care. For thirty minutes I'm Neal Cassady at the wheel of a magic bus spinning those curves with tires squealing, onwards to Alabama.
Then body fatigue hits. I slump in my seat, eyeballs searing, clarity giving way to flat-out hallucination. I drive on automatic, yanking my eyes open, dodging front-loaders lying across the road, jerking upright as the road rises straight up in front of me like a huge wave cresting just beyond the hood-a black mass beyond the windshield, white line fever ... dodge another front-loader, spinning along the shoulder ... maintain, maintain ... dreaming awake, craving sleep, fighting the wheel ... and always the thought of that punctured tire nagging at the back of my mind, imagining cliffside blowout and a plunge to death ... snapping awake-Fear-look out, the road's straight up! ... eyes blinking, can't even tell if they're open or shut and then the gas tank is blessedly empty and while we fill up I nudge Walker awake.
I lie back and bounce my head on the seat rest, still jerking at imagined front-loaders and other road obstructions. Too afraid for sleep-just a gradual numbing of terror. Another gas halt: Roog takes the wheel, bleary and incoherent. He manages fifty miles and pulls off the road, shaking me awake and announcing he's too tired to drive.
Like I'm not? Still, better he stop than crash the truck from fatigue. I rub my eyes furiously, squint and squirm, somehow got to keep rolling. Onwards. Onwards till dawn and a glint of brightness and we can pull over for coffee and breakfast. Absolutely must pull ourselves together. Our momentary cheer at having survived the night melts under the realization that it is 9 AM and we are STILL IN WEST VIRGINIA! All night and we aren't out of the state yet! It isn't even that large a state. We'll never make Birmingham in time.
Six eyes stare red-rimmed, unseeing. We order who knows what; laughing hollow, half-coughing. There's no hope of success. A mania of the doomed takes over ... we'll all be fired-or shot on the spot ... let's just keep rolling south, sell the equipment at the border and disappear into Mexico...
Stomachs full (and a bit unsettled, what with all the urgency and bouncing of the past few days), necks stiff with pain, bodies cramped, brains befuddled, back we go to the truck. Drive, bounce, delirium; the miles pass. Five hours and three fills later we are somewhere in Georgia. There's no way we'll be in Birmingham for a five o'clock show. Lunch and dinner consist of one five minute pause for takeout at an A&W Root Beer Stand while I make a phone call I would much rather not make.
"Hello, Kinsey? This is Daniel with the sound truck ... yeah yeah, I know, we're on our way ... Georgia ... yeah, Georgia ... Look, what do you want? We been driving all night non-stop. What more can I do? We'll be there as soon as we can .. . OK, OK, I'll talk to him."
Bad news: Kinsey insists I talk to Numero Uno-Sly's personal manager Hobart, a pompous, unapproachable figure who has never deigned to communicate with me before. I state my case and reiterate our impending arrival. He screams back about the $30,000 I'm costing him and how every minute hurts and if I'm not there by...
I stop listening. I'd like nothing better than to shove the phone down his throat. He spent last night in a nice big bed and had a leisurely flight over the mountains while we bumped and rumbled the long dark miles through the night. He's the fool who booked the dates in this impossible scheme. I could have told him in the beginning that nobody could get from West Virginia to Alabama in the allotted time. Why doesn't he come drive the truck if it's so all-fired important ... But I say none of this, just sit mumbling "yesses" through his tirade till he tires and hangs up.
Back to the truck and I'm furious inside. Bloody businessmen. Don't know a barrel from a bass drum. Don't even like the music-and they have the nerve to rant and rave about the results of a situation they created themselves.
*
At five o'clock we cross the Alabama line; at seven we're getting close. As darkness falls we pull into Birmingham and rumble fast through town to our rendezvous at Legion Field. It looms to windward: a crumbling sprawl of bleachers and fences, once the home of the Birmingham Barons, now fallen even out of the minor leagues and left for posterity's inexorable hammer of doom. This triple bill outdoor show is somebody's last gasp at putting the park to use.
There is no way open to the inside. We roll the truck up to a huge locked gate and honk for admittance. The gate area is swarming with scores of black youths pounding on the locks, tearing at the chain-link fence and running wild and restless in shifting knots of energy. In the few seconds before the security guards swing open the entrance, the truck is deluged by bodies, climbing, grasping for handholds and beating on the windows. The gates swing open and we roll through, beating off the hands clasping at the windows, the bodies crouched on the running boards. In we glide, like the siege raisers at the Alamo ...
Inside, all is darkness. Then gradually our eyes adjust. Random flares of light burst from the infield grass, dark towers loom in the outfield ... another figure jumps on the running board: a white face, familiar. Marko? Yes, it's Marko down from Chicago...
"Right Marko, how're you?" I say, but there's no time for chat. The man's panicky. (Marko's an introverted Pole whose old Chicago neighborhood has been entirely overrun by Mexicans. Marko and his mother are now the only people left from the old country and it's turned him into a paranoid recluse of the racist persuasion, who wakes up only to fiddle with electronic gear and goes to sleep only at the dog end of a bottle of Scotch.) He's babbling in my ear. Says the show's all but out of hand. It's a mostly-black crowd, which heightens Marko's nervousness, but truth be told, these deep Southerners of either race are not too cool about Yankees. Marko, on his own, has constructed a huge tower of equipment and is now rattling confused instructions in my ear as to the building of a second tower. I haven't even stopped the truck yet.
Screams ring from the far darkness; muddled activity covers the stage. Marko babbling on: "Am I glad to see you where you been oh my god you should have seen what ..." but I'm not registering his words, just piloting the truck through squirming knots of rowdies cavorting throughout the field.
Backstage at last, still in a fog (adrenalin takeover time). Marko has commandeered Walker and Roog to help build the second tower. He aims me out toward the mix site.
I stumble through the field to the mix site and find ... another tower. A rickety contraption twenty feet in the air. Now how in the hell? Tentatively, I start climbing. A face peers over the edge and challenges me. I explain my mission and am allowed access to the top.
It's no better up there. The platform sways beneath my feet and the stage is a long, long way away. No time to contemplate failure. The platform guard is pressed into service as equipment courier. He and a friend are to transport all gear from the truck backstage to the base of the site.
Hoisting the gear (the mixing boards in particular) up from the ground proves risky but successful. We take it in stages: one man on the ground, one part way up, and me on top. Thankful for every last ounce of muscle my roadie-humping days have given me, I just manage to wrangle the gear onto the platform, not daring to imagine the consequences of letting go. Feverish now with activity ... mind racing, trying to plan ahead ... crowd chanting below ... occasional shakes on the platform support ... another board to be hoisted, grunting ... fireworks, flares and bottle rockets exploding here, there, anywhere ... bottles hurled, smashed ... angry voices, screams ... more gear, leaning over the edge, holding desperately to a single handle, hoisting painfully upward ... strange fingers gripping the platform edge, backing them down ... maintaining, preparing...
At last the gear is aloft and the guard and I set to arranging it. In the light of the flares I see the right side tower of speakers rising ever higher. On stage a barely heard MC is announcing Sly's imminent appearance. The crowd responds by aiming bottles and rockets at his head. He flees as quickly as dignity will allow.
The guard backgrounds me on the night's events. The first two acts have already played, utilizing a local band's tiny personal PA. The sound was awful, but it was that or a riot. Even so, the crowd is still ugly. Sly, as ever, draws a mixed audience and in Birmingham that doesn't happen too often. The problems are compounded by the poor lighting and open access throughout the ball field. Rival gangs move at will, plundering the weak and tangling sporadically with each other. As the incidents mount, individual grudges give way to that simplest of designations: US vs. THEM. BLACK vs. WHITE. Hence the screams, the yells, the repeated flares. I work faster to avoid thinking about the implications.
Beneath us a phalanx approaches. Roog, sheltered by blockers, unrolls the snake cable out from the stage. Midway the group flounders and halts. I imagine disaster, perhaps an attacking horde in ambush, but after a fumbling pause the phalanx continues and at last reaches the base of the tower. At ground level Roog is puffing and wild-eyed in the flashes of light. "Hey Daniel (pant), snake here coming up (pant, pant)!"
"How's the stage coming, Roog?" I call down over the edge.
"This is the last. We're (pant) ready when you are."
"Right. Mike check then. Get somebody up there right away."
*
Thankfully, amazingly, everything works. Erected in haste, half-lit under the distant lights, in the midst of near audience attack, the mix site and the never-before-used double system onstage are all operable-in record time. A gift from above.
From below, a voice (and light shaking of the platform struts): "Daniel, you up there? Hey, Daniel!"
I peer down. It's Kinsey, attired as usual in slick Bostonian evening wear, standing now in soggy dirt, warily watching the surrounding eddies of audience turmoil.
"Up here, Kinsey, come on!"
"You mean I got to climb this thing?"
"Right first time. Come on up."
So he does, swearing with elegance over the damage to his color coordinates, his hair abnormally mussed, his eyes fiery. I let him rant on against the platform, the stage, the crowd, the promoter, the band, the night and the hours ahead. But when he starts in on me I direct him to the console and we get down to business.
The MC is back onstage, heaping jive upon jive as he gives us some kind of backwoods-hip intro. "The Doctor of Dance," he's saying, "the Sultan of Soul, the uptight outasight groovingonout sound of Sly ... and the Family Stone y'all!"
At last. Into "Thank You Falletinme ..." Sly flinging feet with the girls, bassman booming low, in comes the speckled beat of Andy's drums and the show is underway. The crowd surges forward, black and white masses mingled, hopping and bopping in a sweaty cluster beneath the stage. At last a focus for energy...
I'm still in semi-shock. My adrenalin rush is past and I'm riding the thin edge towards utter fatigue. I move in a daze, responding to Kinsey's ear shouts with my brain on automatic. I snap out of it at one point and find myself at the foot of the stage fiddling with Sly's monitor as he glares down at me. I have no idea what it is I'm supposed to be doing, so I fiddle no more and retreat to the side of the stage and mental oblivion. The rest of the show passes beyond my half-lit candle of consciousness.
Then the band races off and we race on, eager for the end of the show, but the crowd is not yet satisfied and when their cries of "MORE!" fail to produce results they turn combative. It's chants and rebel yells at first, then cherry bombs and bottle rockets, bottles and bricks. They bombard the stage, deluging us beneath a hail of insults and instruments of war. The roadies retreat, crouching behind amps and speakers, crawling flat across the stage-some to safety, others to the rescue of vulnerable microphones, guitars and organ. The barrage continues. We're in a state of siege and suddenly I'm glad I'm not up on the mix site platform.
Ten minutes pass. Fifteen. At last the stream of bottles abates; the bursting flares cease. Their ammunition exhausted, the insurgents withdraw to fight another day. We count our wounded: two head lumps and a slashed arm; one mike stolen and a speaker stove in. Light casualties, considering.
I head for the mix site. All is well with our gear, but Kinsey is livid, beyond speechless. Briefcase in hand, he descends in silence and stalks off into the night.
Then comes teardown time: an hour and a half of my life which I'd rather not remember. At 3 AM our four man road crew is alternating between howls of half-mad laughter and the no-sleep shakes. Marko is waving his bottle of Scotch and I'm hugging Walker in delirium, repeating over and over, "We did it! We did it!"
Sixty-seven hours in the hot seat-no sleep, almost no pause, three shows and three thousand miles with a novice crew. And we did it. We pulled off every show-with decent sound yet.
*
Lying flat on my back in bed, my eyes shut: front-loaders and freeways, control knobs, a hail of bottles, all-night wrangling under pressure, pressure, pressure behind my brain that won't let me sleep, won't let me stop; my body, pushed beyond its limits, is out of control. I lie shaking, in turmoil, seeking unconsciousness. Towards dawn it finally comes.
*
We rise late, and gather slowly at the hotel buffet. The morning after. Bodies still out of sync, minds in mid-adjustment, we exchange smiles over a job well done. Leisure awaits.
After breakfast we revel in the pleasure of an after-meal sit. Marko asks idly, "Did they dock you anything for being late?"
"What's that?"
"Did the promoters pay you the full $1,500?"
"Pay me? Nobody paid me anything. I thought you took care of that while you were waiting for us."
"What?" says Marko. "That's not my job. You're running the system."
"Yeah, but there was no time. I never saw any of the promoter's people the whole night." Suddenly there's a cold knot in the pit of my stomach. "You mean we haven't been paid for that fiasco?"
Reflection shows we haven't. Further reflection shows we had better settle the issue without delay. The phone book gives us an address for Black Star United Productions and we troop over to their office in a group. The receptionist is curt and doubtful about the possibility of seeing anybody in charge. "But suh, they ah all in a meeting this afta-noon."
"Good time to get everything settled then." I give her my tight, fixed smile.
"But suh ..." We go back and forth till she finally figures our collective presence in the waiting room is more damaging than dealing with us, and allows me to be ushered in to a small, dark-panelled room almost filled by a long oak table. Around it are a dozen chairs, each chair occupied by a flashy-suited, afro-headed member of the Black Star Board of Directors. It's like being interrogated by a jury. I state my case, they state theirs. I rebutt. They scoff. Who can blame them? They've lost their butts on the show (or so they say) and if I was black from Birmingham I'd welcome the infrequent chance to lean heavy on the white element.
I am stubborn but subdued. I'm also packed tight against the wall under the stare of twenty-four angry eyes. Am I the criminal? Are they judge, or jury? Just as the lads outside are on the verge of bursting through the door to my rescue I emerge, bearing a check for $1,300. They had intended to dock us $300 pay for being late, but the treasurer bungled his subtraction.
Triumphantly we depart, Marko and one system back to Chicago, and the three of us with the other system for Georgia and two blessed days of rest before the tour continues.
*
But all is not so simple.
The $1,300 check bounces.
And two days later in Athens, Georgia, Sly shows up three hours late with a head full of snow. The following night he doesn't show at all. The next thing we know, the whole tour is indefinitely postponed. Blame it on all that Lear jetting. Sly's caught in a snowstorm and he's gonna ski till it melts.
The truck ride home is long. Real long.
© 2005 by Daniel Gabriel.