We were doing several Phil Collins stadium shows running up from the southern tip of South through Central America with a last stop in Caracas Venezuela before heading to Puerto Rico. In the early 90’s, Venezuela had a large wealthy population from oil and Chavez had not taken over.
We did a show on April 28, 1995 in La Rinconada Baseball Stadium. The venue was okay but not great and the generator that we rented locally to power the sound system was horrible. Sound check went okay and the doors open. The front of house riser was three tier with Sound on the bottom, then lights, then spotlights on top. Rob “Cubby” Colby and I were on the sound riser checking out the crowd when suddenly there was a loud buzz in the system. Turns out the generator had more problems and we were told to hold down the fort and deal with it because it was too close to showtime to work on the genie. I called to the stage and asked for one of the Showco sound engineers, Robert Drewes, to come out and help.
Fortunately he was there because about a third of the way through the show, suddenly a fan that had climbed up on the spot tower got thrown below by the operator. The guy was obviously jacked up and after hitting the sound deck came up swinging. Robert and I grabbed him and threw him down to the hands of the police waiting below. The whole time, Cubby is mixing Phil Collins like nothing is going on and Robert and I go back to finding noisy channels to mute between songs.
Disaster was avoided and the show happened, gear was packed and transported to the Antonov freight airplane for an overnighter in San Juan on 4/29.
Now this is when the story gets interesting, more about this in part 2.
From the first time I was introduced to George Wheatly, Linda “Lunar” Johnson, and John “JR” Rea at Mother Blues by my high school friend Steve “the gopher” Miller, I knew that I had to get on the road. George was always planted at the bar, drink in hand with his back to the band, George defined the word “Cool”. Lunar was a real cute rock and roll chick who always looked stoned. JR was the greatest storyteller of the time, he could make you wish you were on the Titanic.
JR hired me at Showco in May of ’78 and altered the coarse of my life. My first Showco live sound gig was the Bee Gees in Pontiac Stadium on July 28, 1979. I was on the supplemental sound crew along with Craig Schertz, Watson Hudgins, and Steve Stepanion. It was fairly uneventful save a double 12″ speaker box falling off the top level of scaffold and splitting into four pieces. One of the carpenters ran up with a toolbox, wood glue, and an air stapler and had it back together in minutes. I left Michigan the next day with Craig “The Chief” and headed to a Chicago, Ill to meet Robin Magruder at an air freight depot to transfer gear into freight containers bound for The Who and Led Zeppelin UK dates. This was a debacle as the flight we had chartered was resold by the air carrier and we were told that we were out of luck. Robin blew a gasket and made them find another flight while Craig and I shuffled gear brought in the depot from various tours that were converging. We worked straight through the night and there was a lot of yelling and cursing. At one point Craig fell asleep on a work trunk and I thought that he was going to meet an even earlier demise at the hands of one of the freight workers. We went straight to New York to complete the shuffle and the gear left on time to our great relief.
My next day in the Showco shop I was summoned from the paint booth into BJ Schiller’s office. BJ informed me that he did not know what I had done to deserve it but I was going to be rewarded by going on the “Cakewalk of the Year” tour with Willie Nelson and Leon Russell. I was given Mike Garvey’s phone number and told to go home and pack. I called Garvey and he told me that the crew was going to meet at Willie Nelson’s Whiskey River bar on Greenville Ave and roar. My roommate dropped me off there with my suitcase and I walked inside spotting Garvey in a line of guys at the bar. The bartender was performing a ritual on the group called a Reverse Margarita whereby the patron lies his head backwards on the bar and gets the ingredients poured directly in his mouth. I was introduced to Buddy “Budrock” Prewitt who insisted that I be initiated as a rookie roadie. Fortunately, the Bartender, Kenny Hawn, was a friend of mine and stuck up for me, at that point, I was in good favor. That night I met Poodie Locke and was also introduced to the monitor mixer and my tour mentor Pete Stauber. That night, the bus was packed full of band and crew and I had to sleep on the front lounge fold down bunk. Above the bunk was line with cowboy hats and during the long bumpy road to Louisiana, one of the hats covered with metal stick pins of various shapes fell on my head. After about the third time, I threw the hat on the floor. The next morning, I heard a very nasally but stern voice say, “how did my hat get on the floor?” The owner was none other than Paul English, Willie’s ex-boxer, pistol packing drummer (sorry Paul), I mumbled something under the blanket about the bumpy ride. I got up and walked out of the bus seeing the beautiful shore of Lake Charles and for the first and last time in my career, I was asked for my autograph. I thought to myself, wow, this is going to be fun!
