Music vet and New Times scribe Lee Zimmerman shares stories of memorable rock 'n' roll encounters that took place in our local environs. This week: Reflections from the road...
During the '70s and '80s, I had ample opportunity
to experience a brief snippet of life on a tour bus, both as a music
scribe and a record company rep, but I found the most entertaining
activity was watching the scenery roll by or enjoying the stash of
video tapes available for viewing on the bus' VHS player. It was the
camaraderie with the musicians that enticed me, sharing random thoughts
about the gigs, the audiences and observations about life as viewed
from the sometimes-solitary perspective that accompanies a nomadic
existence.
If you're expecting to read about the standard touring clichés in the form of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. That's mostly a myth perpetrated by those with an idealized view of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle. Yes, if you're U2 or the Rolling Stones, there's a certain level of luxury, but that has nothing to do with 99.9 percent of the bands that crisscross the country and detour through the backstreets and back alleys of small town America. These groups rarely, if ever, see the inside of an arena or even a 3,000-seat theater; rather, their venues consist of local dives, the corner club and house concerts that find their hosts hoping they can entice 40 or 50 people to attend.
The most enduring memories of
my touring experiences involved the more mundane episodes that took
place by chance. I'm reminded of a tour I took with British hard rock
band Uriah Heep, a fearsome outfit on stage but the most jovial
blokes you'd want to know once they were out of the spotlight. Much of
the time was spent hanging around in a dressing room, but guitarist
Mick Box, a burly fellow who looked like he just stepped off the set of
"Spinal Tap," was a gregarious guy who kept the crew in stitches. And
oddly enough, the scene I remember most is crawling around on a hotel
room floor, helping the group's skivvy-clad keyboard player Ken Hensley
desperately search for one of his missing white platform shoes. That's
an inside view of the music biz people rarely witness.
I was also on
a short southern sojourn with Manfred Mann's Earthband, another English
outfit whose frontman, the aforementioned Mr. Mann, founded this
prog rock outfit after first making his name as a purveyor of pop hits
in the mid '60s. (Their version of Bruce Springsteen's "Blinded By the
Light" helped maintain his presence on the charts.) The band didn't
have a bus and so we were all squeezed into a cramped sedan to travel
from gig to gig. At one show in Alabama, Manfred told me they needed me
to introduce them, alerting me to that fact only moments before they
were to take the stage. So I duly shuffled up to the microphone and
without any thought of what I would say, I started speaking. It took
several moments before I realized the mike wasn't turned on, which of
course made me feel even more awkward about standing in the spotlight
in front of several thousand rowdy fans. It took a guy in the front row
to advise me that I needed to flip a switch to power the mike on. Yet,
the incident that I recall most fondly is an evening spent sitting with
the band in their hotel room after a show engrossed in a game of
Scrabble, an activity they always enjoyed when it came to passing the
time. In walked guitarist Mick Rodgers, just out of the shower with a
towel wrapped around his head like a turban. "Ah, it's Sheik Rattle and
Roll," Manfred exclaimed, spinning a play on the golden oldie, "Shake,
Rattle and Roll." I don't know why, but I got quite a kick out of that
remark. Strangely enough, I still do!
I never traveled
with the late Waylon Jennings, one of the original country outlaws, but
I did meet him on his tour bus prior to a Fort Lauderdale date that
took place just after his well-publicized drug bust in 1977. Waylon's
wife, Jessi Colter was with him and since she was signed to Capitol
Records, the company for which I worked, we were invited to board the
bus to extend our greetings. Clearly Waylon was still shaky from his
encounter with the feds, and the entire time he glanced around
nervously as if he was expecting the narcs would reprise their raid at
any moment. In fact, it seemed he even suspected the Capitol crew of
being undercover agents. Suffice it to say, it was one tense encounter.
Waylon died after a struggle with diabetes in 2002, but happily he
conquered his cocaine habit in the early '80s, quitting cold turkey.
I
realize it seems silly and perhaps a wee bit morbid, but whenever I
find myself on an airplane with a celebrity I always feel safer. For
some reason, I believe that the plane couldn't possibly go down when a
star's aboard, because I'm simply not destined to witness that kind of
calamity first hand. It's not their time, and therefore, not mine. But
then again, I don't like to fly, so I take any comfort that I can,
never minding the fact that certain musicians who took an ill-fated
plane ride to get to Rock 'n' Roll Heaven -- Buddy Holly, Lynyrd Skynyrd,
Otis Redding, John Denver and Rick Nelson, among them -- might caution
me otherwise. Nevertheless, I came close to doubting my own absurd
logic on a flight from Montrose Colorado to Denver one summer in the
early '80s. The Montrose Music Festival had just concluded, and one of
my fellow passengers on the small prop plane was none other than the
legendary bluesman Muddy Waters, who was sitting across the aisle and a
few seats ahead of me. Airplanes, especially those of the small
two-engine, propeller-driven variety, often shake and shutter violently
when flying over high mountains. This flight was no exception and I
white-knuckled it the entire time. Yet despite the non-stop turbulence,
Muddy never flinched, maintaining his cool composure the entire time. He
died in his sleep on April 30, 1983, three weeks after his 70th
birthday. It was clearly his destiny to pass peaceably. We should all
be so fortunate.
