On a cool morning in the spring of 2002, I stepped off a bus and hobbled into the bustling lobby of Cleveland’s Ritz-Carlton hotel. As I waded through a sea of Armani-clad business travelers sipping lattes and perusing The Wall Street Journal, disapproving eyes knifed into me from all directions--a reminder that, by all appearances, I did not belong in their well-pressed, nine-to-five world. I was wearing my standard work uniform: faded Slayer T-shirt, stained knee-length shorts, and a tattered baseball cap that barely disguised my greasy, matted hair. I joined the registration line behind a sophisticated woman in a gray pantsuit who was clutching an Italian-leather briefcase in her manicured fingers. She checked her watch, then stole a glance at the lumbering, disheveled figure behind her. Our eyes met for a second, and she quickly looked away. She sniffed loudly several times, and I saw the corners of her mouth twist into a disgusted grimace. I hadn’t showered in three days, and although I had tried to conceal my stench with a hefty dose of Speedstick, it was a battle I was clearly losing.

 

I stepped up to the counter, and the middle-aged clerk greeted me with a hesitant "Can I help you, sir?" His tone was the kind generally reserved for placating the severely retarded or completely insane. I told him that I had a reservation, and he just looked at me, one eyebrow forming a skeptical arch. Then I uttered the five most surreal words ever to escape my lips.

"I'm with the Doobie Brothers," I said quietly. "I'm with the Doobie Brothers."

My strange journey as a rock'n'roll roadie began in the summer of 1988, when Ronald Reagan was president, cell phones were the size of toaster ovens, and Def Leppard dominated the Billboard charts. Over the next 15 years, I would drift in and out of the roadie world, doing brief stints in 1994, 1998, and, most recently, the fall of 2002, when I left behind the predictable comforts of the corporate world in search of a writing career. My transition from Web-coding desk jockey to full-fledged "road dog" was remarkably smooth, considering I hardly fit the roadie profile. I had two liberal-arts degrees from a prestigious West Coast university. I bathed regularly. I wore khaki pants. And the only debauchery in my life involved freeze-framing the naked Katie Holmes scene on The Gift DVD. Now, two years later, I'm humping band gear with guys named Opie, Bongo, and "Taliban" Dan.

I'd just flown home to Los Angeles after three months with the Doobies and was sorting through an enormous pile of unopened mail, when I noticed three things: All the plants in my apartment were dead, my cat no longer recognized me, and my live-in girlfriend--a temperamental fireball named Candy--was nowhere to be found. There was, however, a note scrawled on the bathroom mirror in her favorite shade of lipstick that simply read "Fuck this--I'm gone." I hadn't even unpacked my bags when I got a call offering me a job on Elvis Costello's When I Was Cruel tour.

"Great," I heard myself say. "I'll be there on Thursday."

When I arrived in Seattle for the first show of the tour, the production manager, a gargantuan New Yorker called Wookie, handed me an all-access laminate, a copy of the tour itinerary, and a key to the bus. He introduced me to the rest of the crew--Itchy, Squinty, "Flavor Flav" Dave, and the others--then rattled off the crew-bus rules in a monotonous drone, much like a flight attendant giving an in-flight safety presentation. "No smoking and no drugs in the front lounge," he said. It was standard first-day rhetoric. But then he added, "And never--ever--fall asleep in the back lounge." I wasn't sure what he meant, so I just nodded and smiled.

The first day of a rock tour is a lot like the first day of school. The crew members, generally ten to 12 guys, meet on the bus, swap handshakes, quietly scrutinize one another, and try to discern three things: who the lazy guy is, who the asshole is (anyone who refers to himself as a "technician" is immediately suspect), and who can score the drugs. Some of the guys may know one another from previous gigs ("Hey, man, weren't you the L.D. [lighting director] on Slipknot?"), but generally each new tour is a gathering of strangers. I use the same tactic I used as a child when moving to a new neighborhood: I try to impress them with my toys. As I've grown older, my Hungry Hungry Hippos, Slip 'N Slide, and life-size Chewbacca punching bag have given way to a dizzying collection of DVDs, Xbox games, and German dungeon porn.

There is a definite and immutable hierarchy among roadies, which goes like this: production manager, front-of-house mixer, monitor tech, instrument techs, lighting director, rigger, bus and truck drivers, and--at the very bottom--me. I'm the tour merchandiser, in charge of band swag: T-shirts, sweatshirts, ball caps, and other overpriced souvenirs. The merchandiser goes by many nicknames, including "Swaggy," "the Swag Man," "Cotton Boy," and "Merch Guy." On a typical day, while the other roadies are pushing cases, flying speakers, laying cable, and rigging lights--all potentially dangerous activities--I am busy folding T-shirts and arranging them by size into neat little piles. It's like working at the Gap, with the added incentives of illegal narcotics and genital herpes.

Although rock merchandising does not involve the physical risks associated with other crew jobs, it is not without challenges. One of the more frustrating aspects is trudging through the bureaucratic quagmire of international customs--specifically, bringing merchandise from the United States into Canada to sell at Canadian concert dates. In 1998, I landed a job on the Celine Dion tour at the peak of her Titanic success. Our most popular souvenir was a small stuffed frog wearing a tiny "Celine" T-shirt. Celine Dion loves frogs. People send her toy frogs from all over the world, and before each concert, she has them playfully arranged in her dressing room. Fortunately, kids love them, too, and the frogs were a huge seller. As a result, I found myself declaring a payload of 9,000 toy frogs to a humorless Canadian customs official, who informed me that the frogs themselves could enter Canada, but the tiny T-shirts they were wearing could not--something about trade sanctions with the country that manufactured them. So there, at the Canadian border, in the middle of a blinding, testicle-retracting snowstorm, I carefully undressed 9,000 frogs.

Upon arriving at the arena in Calgary, one of Celine's assistants strode up to me with a deadly serious expression on her face. She was holding a small, shirtless frog.

"These frogs are naked!" she said tersely. "What happened to their shirts?"

I told her about the customs incident.

She studied the toy for a moment, examining it from all angles, then looked me in the eye: "Maybe you can find them some tiny pants. Because we can't sell naked frogs. Celine won't have it."

Trying to find a decent margarita in Calgary is difficult. Trying to find 9,000 pairs of tiny frog pants on a snowy Sunday evening is enough to burst a vein in your head.

On a typical rock tour, there are four to six shows a week. When a roadie does get a day off, it's rarely in a desirable city like New York or Miami. Instead, a break usually comes in a place like Rapid City, South Dakota, or Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Every production crew has its day-off ritual. Some of the Cowboy Junkies' crew, for example, liked to do drugs and visit the zoo. We watched the penguins in San Francisco on acid, the monkeys in the Bronx on Valium, and the hyenas in Denver after smoking something called "Boulder Salad"--a colorful blend of Northern California sinsemilla, Indian hashish, and a mild Southwestern peyote. Some of They Might Be Giants' crew liked to get stoned and race go-carts at Malibu Grand Prix parks across the country. This was fun until, after smoking some wicked Thai stick, I drove my car off the track, across a miniature golf course, and nearly plowed into a children's birthday party.

Halfway through the Elvis Costello tour, we had a much-deserved day off in Knoxville, which is located in the Great Smoky Mountains in eastern Tennessee. It's a place where, just outside the city limits, hillbillies roam free like jackals on the Serengeti. Squinty, our wild-eyed lighting director, invited me on an expedition to purchase some authentic homemade moonshine. We rented a car and drove into the backwoods, past several abandoned fireworks stands and a burned-out Shoney's, to a small clearing with a dilapidated house at the center. A friendly man in cutoff overalls greeted us, then told his wife, Luanne, to "fetch us the hooch." Luanne returned with a large ceramic jug, for which we paid $35. Two nights later, the crew broke out the moonshine and had a party on the bus. The liquor burned my throat, and at first I wondered if the hillbillies hadn't sold us low-octane gasoline or industrial-strength paint thinner. The pain subsided after six or seven shots, and that's when things got foggy. I woke up the next morning in the back lounge--apparently after passing out--with my shirt caked in what I hoped was my own vomit. As I staggered out to the front lounge, the entire crew pointed and laughed. Turning to look in the mirror, I saw the words "I choose cock" written on my forehead in black permanent marker.

I was mortified and, for a moment, considered catching the next plane home. Then, to my surprise, their laughter turned into applause, congratulatory hoots, and high fives. My reckless inebriation and projectile vomiting had somehow earned me the crew's respect, and this juvenile prank was their way of saying "Welcome to the club." That was the moment I became one of them.

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. Two summers ago, 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 1970s. 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-drugs 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 dress in enormous rubber monster costumes and perform 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 two tours 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 assumed their place alongside morning coffee, checking email, and flossing. Most of the 1994 They Might Be Giants crew were cannabis connoisseurs. On one particular morning, Dingo, the Giants' grizzled Australian guitar tech, brewed a pot of coffee using stagnant bong water just to see if it would get us high. It didn't. As we discovered, the toxic combination of bong water 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 for 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 Dumpster, the result of this brief union usually involves a degree of shame and a fiery, oozing sore.

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. 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 20th 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 remain 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, several members of the 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 lap dances 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.

The last night of the tour, I walked out front to watch Elvis Costello play. He delivered a blistering, inspired performance--a rare blend of artistry, passion, and craftsmanship that reminded me of why I had fallen in love with music so many years earlier. After load-out, I said my good-byes to the crew: Itchy, Squinty, Flavor Flav Dave, and Taliban Dan. I felt a bit like Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz. "I'll miss you the most, Wookie," I heard myself say. And within hours, I was back in my empty Santa Monica apartment.

A few months later, a magazine purchased one of my stories. It appeared that my writing career was finally taking flight. In my heart, I knew it was time to leave the roadie world behind, and after 15 years, my long, strange journey was winding down. I don't know exactly what the future holds, but if Foghat should call my name five years down the line, I can't promise that I won't come running.

Rockin' The Boner Lounge
A glossary of roadie terms

B.J. Tag: Backstage pass acquired after performing a sex act on a roadie
Boner lounge: Rear bunk in a tour bus, used for "entertaining" female guests
Bunk sock: Gym sock used for discreetly masturbating on a tour bus
Cable monkey: Semi-pejorative term for lighting or sound-crew member
Cattle: The audience
Feeding the fish: Ritual tossing of guitar picks, drumsticks, or set lists into the crowd at the end of a concert
Gig butt: Painful chafing of the buttocks or groin caused by sweaty labor, the inability to shower, and infrequently changed underwear
Junk bunk: Empty bunk on a tour bus used to stow extra luggage
Per diem (P.D.): Cash allowance paid to the band and crew every day while on tour, often spent on lap dances and prescription-drug refills
Spark fairy: The tour lighting director; a.k.a. Squint or Blinkie
White gloves: Roadie who never gets dirty or sweaty and rarely appears to be working