By: HP Newquist (National Guitar Museum) – December 1995
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You are a guitarist in a successful rock band. You are planning to tour in support of your most recent record, which has sold more than a million copies. The tour will take you throughout most of the world. The following test will help you to spend on tour. Remember, your band is a platinum-selling act, and one of the most popular hard-rock bands around.
You will be traveling from town to town by:
You will be staying at the:
You will spend most of your free time:
The best part of the road is:
The road would be a lot easier if you could afford to bring along:
Touring is:
******
Well, fellow guitarists, welcome to the road show of the 1990s, where every answer is 2. At one time in the past – for a very brief period – being a professional rock guitarist might have been full of private airplanes, luxury hotel suites, all-you-could-stand quantities of controlled substances, and leather clad bimbos.
Check Out the Queensryche
That was before rock and roll was a business, when people had money coming out of their ears (or they thought they did – many of them later ended up destitute or financially ruined, but that’s a tale for another day).
This past summer, Queensryche had, arguably, the only rock arena show that wasn’t either a classic rock tour (Van Halen, Bon Jovi, etc.) or part of some traveling festival a la H.O.R.D.E. and Lollapalooza. Over the course of Queensryche’s 1995 tour, we hooked up with guitarists Chris DeGarmo and Michael Wilton in various locales around the country, including Los Angeles, Phoenix, and New York. The circumstances in each city gave rise to unique episodes and incidents, but we’ve distilled the various scenes into one representative day, presenting an up-close look at life on the road as a touring guitarist.
The band was traveling by bus, and arranging its playing dates so that Chris DeGarmo could be in Seattle on the date that his wife was due to give birth (Editor’s note: he made it). “We chose to use a bus because of simple economics,” says Chris. “Each gig was scheduled to be anywhere from an hour to six hours from the gig the night before. That makes it a relatively easy drive. Going by plane wouldn’t make much sense over that short a distance. Plus, we didn’t want to spend all our money on plane fare.”
******
6:00 a.m. After hours of cruising the interstate in the darkest hours of the morning, the Queensryche bus pulls into a far corner of the hotel parking lot. It’s certainly not Motel 6, but it’s not the Ritz-Carlton, either. Nice, but not extrvagant. DeGarmo, Wilton, and the rest of the band empty out of the bus and are given room keys by tour manager Howard Ungerleider (Ungerleider is also Rush‘s tour manager; his name shows up in some form on all of Rush’s albums). With their various duffel bags in hand, the musicians shuffle off to their rooms and go back to bed.
6-11 a.m. Sleep. Maybe.
11-Noon. Wake-up calls. On this particular morning, Chris, Michael, and bassist Eddie Jackson head down to the hotel restaurant. Singer Geoff Tate and drummer Scott Rockenfield are already gone; they had to leave early to do an interview with a local radio station. The three order breakfast, talk about the previous night’s show, and assess the hotel: Does it have a gym? Are we within walking distance of any place good? It’s hard to go anywhere far since the bus is their only form of transportation.
What they’d like more than anything else is to get outside and maybe hit a few golf balls. DeGarmo explains the need for fresh, outdoor air: “The tour becomes a cycle of claustrophobia. You go from the enclosed space of the bus to the enclosed space of the hotel room to the enclosed space of backstage to the enclosed space of restaurants. You never really get outside.” But he doesn’t say this with regret. “This is what we do, it’s part of the real work that goes into our careers. We love performing, but actually being on the road is a sacrifice that each of us and our families have come to terms with. It’s part of the trade-off that comes with being able to spend the rest of our time living at home and going into the studio when we’re ready.”
Wilton is more specific. “It’s nice when we play in or near Seattle, because we can just go to the gig, play, and then go home after the show. That’s the perfect way to do a concert. But when you’re out on tour, there’s really very little time for yourself. The cycle tends to be “you get on the bus, you go to sleep. You wake up and get out of the bus and go into your hotel room. You try to go back to sleep and then wake up around 11 or 12, have something to eat, and then take a shower. That gives you just enough time to get to the venue by 3:00. Then we do the soundcheck and some recording. Then there’s the show and all the things that go along with meeting people after the show. So by 1:30 or 2:00 we’re back on the bus, and usually it’s four or five hours until we’re at the next place.”
12-2 p.m. DeGarmo puts the breakfast on his room tab, checks his beeper (no calls from his expectant wife), and decides to take a quick nap. Wilton goes to make his own phone calls while Jackson explores the hotel and its surroundings.
2:00 p.m. Howard calls all the musicians in their rooms and tells them to be down in the lobby at 2:30. Degarmo and Wilton pack the same duffel bags that they had unpacked just a few hours before.
2:30 p.m. Everybody files on the bus, which resembles nothing so much as an elongated Winnebago. The first section has two seating areas on either side of the aisle, and the hallway leading to the back is lined on both sides with bunks that look like submarine or sleeper-car berths stacked up on top of each other, with privacy curtains. In the back, there are bench seats that face a TV and VCR. DeGarmo and Wilton flop down, tossing their bags into their bunks.
3:00 p.m. The bus heads to the venue, which is about 20 minutes from the hotel (the usual distance, though in New York it’s an hour to the Jones Beach site). The band members retreat to various corners of the bus with books. DeGarmo, a licensed pilot, reads snippets of Backminster Fuller’s The Critical Path when not trying to figure out the manual for his plane’s Global Positioning Satellite software. Wilton, delving into philosophy, is reading the works of St. Augustine.
“The bus is for traveling and sleeping and that’s about it,” shrugs DeGarmo, kicking his legs up on the couch. “We watch videos when we leave the show, because you’re usually so wired after a performance that you can’t go right to sleep. So we have ‘Ryche Theater’ for a couple of hours after each gig.”
“We’ve been watching a lot of Dennis Hopper movies,” says Michael, “especially Blue Velvet. But you can only watch them so many times until you decide you should just read a good book. That’s difficult enough, because some of the roads we travel on are the kind that give you a headache when you read,” he laughs, “and it makes you kind of queasy.”
Still, a fully outfitted bus has caused a few outsiders to sniff at the seeming luxury. “Everybody always talks favorably about actors or solo musicians who cut these great money deals with the studios or the record companies,” counters DeGarmo. “But everyone expects rockers not to care about money. They expect you to drive around in econo-vans instead of nice buses, or stay in Day’s Inns. We’re not supposed to care about this.”
“But when you’re doing this for a living,” chimes in Wilton, “you have to care about the money. You have to pay rent and take care of your bills like everybody else. And because you’re dealing with so many different groups of people – from promoters to radio stations to record stores – you have to pay attention to your business, or you’re going to have trouble.” He leans forward to make his point. “You have to do it in order to be able to keep making music and living at this.”
3:30 p.m. The bus pulls up to the back entrance of the arena through a wire mesh gate. The crew buses are already there. Queensryche has nearly three dozen people on the tour, ranging from guitar techs to roadies to lighting crew on to bus drivers and a wardrobe woman. All of these people have to be housed, fed, transported, and paid – part of the business aspect that Wilton described. Surprisingly, some of the hardest people to hold on to are the guitar techs. According to DeGarmo, “Guitar technicians are like good executives in a company. The best ones are always getting offered more money to go work somewhere else. You find the best ones that you can, but it’s hard to keep them because they have to spend so much time on the road and there’s no visibility, and they’re expected to fix all the problems whenever anything goes wrong. There’s a lot of pressure in that.” With eight stage guitars for Chris and five for Michael, along with elaborate racks, there is little room for error. However, both DeGarmo and Wilton have horror stories of techs quitting during a show, or treating their equipment unusually. “I had one tech that I found restringing my guitars while he was naked,” says Michael. “Just sitting there all sweaty and holding my guitars with no clothes on! I was like, ‘What the hell is this?’”
The band makes its way backstage, where dressing rooms, practice rooms, and the location of food are clearly marked with printed paper signs. Invariably, these rooms have no decorations and are just painted slump block. For this tour, the musicians have a practice/tuning room that is set up as a work and recording area at each venue. Each guitarist has a work station with an Apple Macintosh computer, a keyboard, and a near-exact duplicate of their rackmounted stage gear (with the addition of ProTools, Session 8, and other sound-creation and sound-editing tools). These rooms are set up specifically so that they can work on individual ideas and new material. The hope is that the music generated on the road will be ready in digital form to present to the other members when it comes time to prepare the new record. Both DeGarmo and Wilton are also writing music for a CD-ROM that the band is releasing, which their record company refers to as sort of a cross between the Hard Day’s Night movie and game Myst.
Aside from the actual performance, this practice room is where Wilton and DeGarmo are at their most intense. The height of the gear prevents them from seeing across to each other, so they are neatly submerged in their own private, if temporary, studios – almost like they’re doing homework. “It’s not like we have to spend time here,” muses Chris. “The gear and the space is just here if we want it, and it’s a nice way for us to lay down tracks while ideas are still fresh. At some point we can take the music that we’ve made here on the road and strip it in to our next album.”
Across the room, a local amp technician has arrived and is showing Wilton a Fender Bassman that he has hot-rodded. The tech is interested in having Wilton buy the amp, and is persistent to the point of being annoying. Michael, however, smiles and lets the guy go through his sales pitch. DeGarmo says, “We’ve seen some cool stuff on this tour. The TransPerformance in particular was cool. The Roland V Workstation is supposed to be waiting for us at our next stop. We’re always getting shown new gear, whether we like it or not. “While Wilton cranks the Fender amp up higher and higher in the small space of the work room, DeGarmo does some cutting and pasting on his Macintosh sequencer. When not writing or recording music, DeGarmo uses his Mac to run a flight simulator and an automated flight planner, which lets him “fly” his plane to any destination he wishes while he’s on the road.
4:55 p.m. “Five minutes to soundcheck,” yells the stage manager. Wilton uses the opportunity to dispatch the amp guy, and picks up a GMP guitar on his way to the stage. Tate, Jackson, and Rockenfield are already there. They’re all set, but DeGarmo is still not around. After a few queries of “Where’s Chris?” Tate walks back into the practice room where DeGarmo is still immersed in his Macintosh. “Hey!” yells Tate, “You’ve got a whole crew out here waiting, and it’s costing money. Are you planning on coming out here today?” There is a trace of irritation in his voice. DeGarmo, with a quick mouse click, saves his work and picks up his guitar. “Geoff,” he grins, bounding to the door, “I’m all yours.”
5:00 p.m. The soundcheck resembles nothing so much as a garage-band rehearsal, albeit an extremely tight rehearsal. Like any band, the guys in Queensryche go around and around about what tunes to play. “What do you want to play?” “I don’t know, what do you want to play?” “How about something hard?” “No, I feel like something a little slower. How about ‘Delia Brown’?”
Watching Queensryche’s soundcheck is a bit eerie. The band doesn’t use stage monitors. Instead, they have custom-fitted ear pieces that give each player his own mix of the show from amps that are miked offstage (including crowd noise, which is miked in from the front of the stage). Built by Sensaphonics, the ear monitors allow them to play at full volume even when the house PA is off. Thus, they can be rocking away at full volume, but all the crew or soundcheck listeners hear is the drum kit and Geoff Tate’s voice.
But right now, the PA is at full, cranium-crushing volume. A dozen people sit in the fourth row of the venue, winners of a local radio contest who will also go backstage later for what is known as “meet-and-greet.” They applaud enthusiastically between songs. Tate banters with the small group, while roadies and technicians tweak equipment settings onstage, casually adjusting floor pedals or handing off guitars as if this were just a leisurely practice. It is not. The soundcheck offers up letter-perfect performances. Lyrics to songs are routinely changed, however – “Jet City Woman” becomes “Jet Skiing Woman,” for instance.
The band roars through the soundcheck with nary a break. At a few minutes before 6:00, they move, almost as if by silent code, off the stage. Simultaneously, the members of opening act Type O Negative start emerging from their dressing room as their road crew storms the stage. Everyone nods to each other as they pass. Hanging back in the area of Type O’s dressing room, which is at the end of the hall, are some truly scary groupies that were standing around earlier outside the fence. When it is pointed out that Type O seems to encourage groupies to come backstage while Queensryche does not, Michael laughs and says, “That’s because they’re new.” DeGarmo laughs as well, explaining, “Yeah, they definitely have a different vibe. But they’re kind of up-and-comers, and we thought that they would be a good band to expose our audience to, and we would also introduce ourselves to their audience.”
6:00 p.m. DeGarmo and Wilton head back to their tuning room and sit down in front of their workstations, picking up where they left off. Momentarily.
6:15 p.m. Howard pops his head in. Someone has to do a phone interview with a radio station that is sponsoring the next night’s show. DeGarmo volunteers to go, but Wilton is not off the hook. Another station has set up a “cyber tent” outside the venue that is hosting computer events (including a session with Hollywood Online), and they need a band member to come out and participate. Wilton goes out and plays Doom with several radio-contest winners, while Scott Rockenfield talks to an on-air DJ. After half an hour, they return to their tuning rooms. Finishing his phone interview, DeGarmo grabs a sandwich in the lounge and peruses USA Today before going back to the practice/tuning room.
6:50 p.m. The stage manager sticks his head in the door and shouts “Ten minutes ’til meet-and-greet.” Neither Wilton nor DeGarmo look up; they just wave in acknowledgment from behind their rigs.
7:00 p.m. The stage manager walks back into the room, putting a Sharpie marker in front of each guitarist. “It’s showtime,” he quips, and waits while they save their computer files. The entire band, markers in hand, strolls out to a reception area that has been set up backstage for meet-and-greet. They are met by 40 or 50 fans who are each hoping to spend a few moments with the Ryche. Surprisingly, there is not a mad dash to rush the band. Instead, the fans tentatively swell around each musician with shy requests for an autograph or photo. Wilton and DeGarmo are more than happy to pose for the dozens of photos, draping their arms around fans or mugging for a Kodak moment.
Interestingly, the fans’ questions are always the same from city to city, and they address topics you normally wouldn’t broach with complete strangers – religious preferences, marital status – but of course, these fans don’t consider Wilton and DeGarmo to be complete strangers. Rather, they feel they know them intimately. DeGarmo sees it as a reasonable trade-off. “I think it’s important to get feedback from the people who are actually paying money to buy the records or come to the shows. But there are also plenty of people that only know ‘Silent Lucidity,’ so it’s nice to hear what they think of the other material.” Wilton laughs in agreement, saying, “We do talk to people who wish we would play two hours of ‘Queen of the Reich’ or ‘The Lady Wore Black.’ Some of the Mindcrime purists don’t think the new stuff is heavy enough. But we always tell them – nicely – that there is a difference between heavy and headbanging.”
7:45 p.m. The crew starts shuffling the band members back towards the dressing room. But Wilton and DeGarmo stay so long that the crew has to drag them, bodily, out of the reception area. As a record-company rep moves the fans back into the arena, Type O emerges from their dressing room and proceeds to the stage. DeGarmo and Wilton wish them a good show as they pass in the hall, the house lights go down.
8:00 p.m. For the next 45 minutes, the individual members change clothes, do some calisthenics, run through some guitar warm-ups, sign promotional items, and comment about the acoustics of the venue and the weather. They each have a wardrobe closet (tended to by an ever-present woman named Bean, who also takes care of getting clothes cleaned and repairing ripped stage attire; in essence, she is their “road mom”). Wilton is ready quickly, as his stage garb is similar to what he wears in his daily life. DeGarmo’s transformation is more radical: he goes from jeans and t-shirts to black clothes, a beret, and sunglasses.
8:55 p.m. Type O’s set is over, and Tate wanders over to the stage wings, checking on the crowd through the curtains as Type O’s roadies hurry to get everything off the stage (Type O purposely has their road crew breaking down during their last song, making it look as if they are cutting their show short due to local restrictions or time constraints). Queensryche’s stage manager runs into each dressing room, prodding everyone to get moving. Wilton works his way behind the rigging to stage right, while DeGarmo ambles out to the left side. When someone comments on his clothes, which are all black, he shows his socks, which are also black. “None more black,” he laughs, and walks into the darkness of his stage-side setup.
9:05 p.m. The show begins. For Wilton and DeGarmo, the next 2 hours and 15 minutes are the best part of being on the road. The reason they are on the road.
11:15 p.m. After an encore, the band goes to the backstage lounge section, which is now set up for dinner. At this point, the band is off limits to everyone except the stage and tour managers. They have a meal, usually catered by a local restaurant, and compare notes on the performance and lighting, recommending any changes or corrections for the next show.
Midnight. The band dinner breaks up, and each guy puts on his “evening clothes.” There is yet another meet-and-greet, but this one is with local promoters, and any local dignitaries. For the next hour, the band goes through much of what they did at the 7:00 meet, but at a somewhat more professional and less fan-oriented level.
1:00 a.m. An hour later the band is again dragged, one by one, out of the greeting area. They disappear slowly, each one surreptitiously led out the back door and over to the bus. As they file on to their home away from home, there are still people hanging out in small groups across the parking lot. It is too late to call anyone back home.
For the Ryche, the cycle will start again in the morning. Wilton and DeGarmo will head to the next town, that much closer in time to their real homes, yet in miles that much further away. The road, like an endless tape loop, really does go on forever.
******
About HP Newquist: HP Newquist is the founder of The National Guitar Museum, the first museum dedicated to the evolution and cultural impact of the guitar. He has authored books that have explored a wide range of subjects and include: Legends of Rock Guitar (with Peter Prown); The Way They Play series (including Blues Masters, Hard Rock Masters, Metal Masters, Acoustic Masters), with Rich Maloof and the award winning The Great Brain Book: An Inside Look At The Inside Of Your Head. Newquist is the past Editor-in-Chief of Guitar Magazine. He wrote Going Home, a Disney Channel documentary featuring Robbie Robertson, as well as directed the film documentary, John Denver – A Portrait.
Note: This interview is reprinted from an article by HP Newquist, originally published in GUITAR Magazine (December 1995). It appears here courtesy of Newquist and The National GUITAR Museum.
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MisteryX_891 (13 years ago)
i love it!