I am a bit of a grumpy bugger at times, to be fair I have plenty to be grumpy about, but today I thought I’d share some positive things about music touring and the career I’ve had in the industry.
Music Tours
I’ve been around the planet many times on many tours, from Japan in the far east, to Santiago in Chile, Vancouver to Sydney, pretty much all over including a two-week stint in the Seychelles working on Miss World. Often a tour finishes in some far-flung place, and I like to stay on and explore. I finished a Meat Loaf tour in Christchurch NZ and stayed for a week, flew to see a mate In Wellington, then rented a car and explored the North Island, climbing Mt. Ruapehu, doing a 47m bungy jump over a river, and a 10,000-foot freefall.
Primal Scream took us all over and we finished in Chile, I stayed on for two weeks, ended up exploring Peru, and playing chess with a Bolivian cafe owner in Machu Pichu village, having the freshest fish lunch on an island in the middle of Lake Tittikaka & sand boarding at Ica.
The People
Having worked with bands from all over the place the crews tend to be very multinational, you can spend weeks & sometimes months with this small travelling ‘family’ I say small, the Chemical Brothers crew was 11 people, Lady Gaga’s crew was 149. You get to know a lot of like-minded people, so my friends are littered across the planet, which is nice when you visit a city and catch up with an old pal. The camaraderie and the scrapes we get into are amazing and hilariously funny, the technical knowledge and problem-solving skills are the best. You must have ability to think outside the box, you are often under extremely tight deadlines, you can have an audience of up 50,000 people waiting for a show to start, and you suddenly get a problem.
One time at a Japanese stadium, we were just about to start a show with Lady Gaga, she was standing about 2m to the right off me with the production team about to go on when the UPS in my rack literally caught fire, the PM looked over laughed and said do you need a moment, it took us 5 mins to change it out and she went on without any of the audience being the wiser. Another time the truck carrying all the gear for an open-air gig in Italy, for the Chems, got stuck at the border and was late, we had to build the entire show in front of the audience, who cheered as each & everything was set up.
The Music
I’ve worked with many genres and styles, K-pop and boy bands, dance music, progressive rock, divas, all good in their own way. The buzz you get from being involved in a live show, especially if you have a part to play in the visual elements is intoxicating.
For me and I’d say the majority of crews, our goal is to put on the best show for the audience as possible, after all they have paid a lot of money to come and see their favourite artists, so it’s only right that we put in the best effort.
The Renumeration
Most of us are freelance, so when we’re offered a tour, we negotiate our rates. We charge a day rate from the day we leave home to the day we get back, including days off, we get a daily Per Diem allowance on top to cover food etc on off days, all travel, flights, hotels, expenses are paid for by the artist, so we are fairly well treated. On Show days we usually have catering, so you get three good meals a day, plus snacks etc. if we’re on a tour bus, they give the bus a ‘Rider’, where we can specify what food beer and wine we want for the journey. All in all, I’d say we are treated well, sometimes staying in the best hotels, sometimes travelling on privately chartered jets.
But we do work long hours, some days can be 18 hours and some tours you can be doing six dates back-to-back in a row, which is tiring, and it is quite physical work. I’m 58 and I still wear a harness and climb LED screens and trusses depending on the tour.
The Artists
They vary, some are very friendly and always come and chat, some are a bit standoffish, Meat Loaf was just a great funny guy, I was camera director on his tour, every show he’d come and find me and we’d sit and make graphics about the band so when he introduced them during the show, I’d put up the predefined graphic, which he inevitably had forgotten. He gave me a bear hug after the last show, literally squeezing the life out of me. Such a sad loss.
Peter Gabriel used to like to record an intro for the support acts in the host country language, so we’d have a translator come in and I’d record the intro he read off a whiteboard, it was hilarious, we’d all be in tears, somewhere I still have a reel of the bloopers!
The moments
The effect a show can have on an audience is stunning, standing on the side of stage when you reveal the big screen six songs into the set and watching the reaction of 70,000 kids a fujirock festival as the bass drops at the same time, is something to behold.
The proudest moment was walking into Brixton Academy and seeing my son rigging PA for the first time, he hadn’t told me he was going to be there. He’s an Audio system tech, probably tours more than I do now and he’s at the start of his journey through the circus of music touring.
Of course, it helps to have a wife who never once has stopped me jetting off whilst bringing up the kids on her own. She once had to move home whilst I was away, the conveyance had been delayed and a tour had started. Was weird coming home to a new house!
So, if you’ve got this far, you can probably tell why I feel so passionate about the music touring industry, the travel, the friends, the music, the moments. You can see why I campaign so much to solve the post Brexit touring crisis, and you can probably tell why I hate the Tories so much, but I’m not going to go into that now.
Cheers.
Timmo.
