Page 10 University Daily Kansan, November 30, 1981
Inside
The sound manager for the musical group Molly Hatchet sets the sound levels before the show and mixes special effects from the audience during the performance.
Behind lights and glamour, roadies toil
Leaning back against a wall, the man props his feet on a numbered crate. His face is drawn and his eyelids droop as the vibrations of heavy rock music and 15,500 fans bounce off the backstage walls
After helping unload more than 20 tons of amplifiers, speakers and other musical equipment, he nods off to sleep. The crowd waves the show, before the next load out.
He works and lives with rock stars, but his job is not as glamorous as his counterparts on the stage. Without him and an estimated 20,000 other roadies, however, there would be no stages and no concerts.
THE CREWS FOR rock and rock bands Journey and Molly Hatchet, which are currently on tour, are seasoned roadies and though their hours are long and life and work hard, they are also known for the same way of life that is in their blood.
Journey's roadie-turned road manager, Pat Morrow, is now 33 years old and has been traveling down highway stretches for 11 years, longer than most can live from motel room to motel room. For six of those 11 years, Morrow has been Journey's road manager.
"Most managers would be in a nut house or a drug unit or selling shoes in a hall by now," the burly Murrow said in appearance in Oklahoma City. Nov. 3.
Sending orders and people flying as he strode around the set, Morrow said the way he got into the roadie business was fate.
Morrow had set up his production office in a backstage room at the Myriad Convention Center that doubled as a men's restroom. So much for the glamour of traveling with a successful rock group.
'My old lady left me and I couldn't stand being in one place,' he said.
Morrow no longer has to worry about being in one place. The concert in Oklahoma City had sold out three hours are long, and life and work hard, most roadies say its becomes a way of at the Convention Center. Sellouts have been typical occurrences for Journey's American Tour.
Journey toured the United States last
year with the same road crew which, according to Morrow, is fairly unusual.
"We're the Dallas Cowboys of rock 'n' roll," he said. "We'll blow my body away, sight seeen. I'll put my men against anybody."
THAT CONFIDENCE in his 24-member crew is not idle dragging, a is the necessity. The professionalism that is required of a roadie is necessary and anything less than that is not tolerated, he said.
Rock concerts are a multi-million dollar business, not only in ticket sales but also in equipment and production. Journey's road crew is responsible for 27 tons of equipment, worth an average of $15 million of a million dollars. Morrow said.
The band and road crew not only have to be professional in their jobs, they also have to be compatible. For four to eight years they worked together and practically breathe together.
One member of the crew that "puts a little bit of the Lord among the heather" according to Morrow, as well as the next big, is Charlie Franklin.
Franklin is the group's 51-year-old bus driver.
"I've driven for different groups for four and a half years," he said. "I love my job. These people treat me like a king."
Franklin said he was leased out by his company, Senator's Rentals in Tennessee, and drove the entire route of a room's tour.
"Everthing's focused around one thing, that the show is perfect," Franklin said.
NICKAMED "Rev" by the group,
Franklin said when the tour went
through Tennessee, the whole group,
crew and band, stoped at his house in
Collierville, where his wife had made
and 10 chompers of homemade ice cream.
"These professional individuals felt as comfortable in my little home in Tennessee as in their big houses in California," he said.
Franklin, who alternates between driving the hand bus "Dream Boat" and the crew bus. Forrester, said the boat was able to reach 100 miles or more. Otherwise, the was 300 miles or less.
band goes by plane. The crew, however always traveled by bus.
The crew bus Franklin drives has several TV games, two color television sets, a video tape machine, a large sound system and louder areas and nine sleepy bunks.
"We're a family." he said.
youngsters. Traveling in such close quarters has resulted in ties that are more than just a bunch of people working together,
As the bus rolls into the loading dock, the stage is unloaded and built, while equipment is set up and tested in a soundcheck. The band members must be ready for the sound check. During a sound check, which is usually held about 4 p.m. for an 8 p.m. show, the band members check out their instruments while the lighting and sound are adjusted.
Tom "Hamirine" Foster is Journey's 22-year-old protégé. Foster, who is from Huntsville, Ala., is in charge of the effects, which include low explosives.
Foster, who has been working in pyrtechnics for only about a year and a half professionally, said he'd been dang it non-professionally for about six years.
1. nave to have a license to make low explosives and the fire marshal for each town comes and has to check out what I'm doing and OK it," he said.
white, Pike River and Oyster Bay.
He flipped through a book that contained multi-colored licenses and pictures of his fireworks on stage.
"I was the first person to have 15-foot flames at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas," he said. "It was in July and I was with Paul Anka."
THE ONLY CREW member that works on special effects, Foster said he had $6. million worth of insurance on his equipment and everybody around him.
Foster, who has done effects for REO Speedwagon and Kansas, said he got paid about $600 weekly, plus expenses, by his home office in Alabama.
"I like working by myself," he said. "I'm the only one responsible for things. If anything goes wrong, it's my butt in trouble, nobody else's."
wrong, though Foster said, "you jus. don't think about it till it does."
And things do occasionally go
"I had a goof up in Long Island," he said. "One of the canvas bags holding explosive powder that was hanging from the ceiling above the hand caught fire. We put it as fast as we could and luckily nobody got hurt."
Laughing, he said the band rewored one of their songs in remembrance of that goop up.
"You know the song that goes 'Wheel in the sky keep on turning?' Well, the band sometimes sings it now 'bag in the sky keep on burning.' "
*oster said he started messing around in pyrotechnics in high school and owned his own stage crew for two years. After going to college, he started a minor semester, he decided to hit the road and work on a stage for a living, leaving home behind.
"Yeah, I have a family," he said. "A momma and daddy and two sisters. It also have a three bedroom house on a mountain back home. But these people are my family for the next few months."
Foster said the crew was hand-picked, and although everyone joked around and partied, when it came time in work, everyone got serious.
EXCEPT FOR photographs, Foster said he had never seen his own work. That is until this tour when a two-man video crew from eastern Kansas joined
Rob Hessmeyer, Prairie Village senior, was one of the two video crew members involved in filming a documentary for the band on life on the
"The band and the crew relaxes just like many KU students do," he said. "It's tailored completely to the individual. When people are working on the stage, it's not a party. Their sweat is real."
The image of the typical druggie band just doesn't fit Journey or its crew, Heschmeyer said.
One of the crew members that probably sweats the most is David Dorr, one of Journey's riggers.
"A rigger does crazy things" Dorr said. "We get off the catwalks and onto the beams to hang cables You can't be afraid of heights."
The 25-year rigger comes from Warwick, R. I., and has been doing this dangerous job for five years.
"I said I'd quit after five years and I'm still with it. I'll probably still be with it five years from now," he said.
Dorr said he had canceled marriage plans a couple of times since being on the road.
After three and a half years of majoring in wildlife biology in college, Dorr said he realized it was money down the drain. He learned about rigging from a buddy and the motivating factor of making a lot of money fast, he has been working as a rigger since.
"A rigger is one of the highest paid crew members. I don't make anywhere under $1,000 a week." Dorr said.
“It’s hard work,” he said. “You get to a point of stress where you’ve got to have relief, so you fight, drink, and behave after a while it all gets very boring.”
morning. Quiet and reserved, Dorr said the enjoyment part of being on the road leaves fast.
even though Derr said the road wasn't what you'd want to be on for the rest of your life, he also said the crew working for Journey got along and was with Derr already. He worked with Derr also has been scored for Red Stewart and Ted Nugent.
DORR SAID HE planned to go back to a career in wildlife biology some day.
"Older roadies go into management," he said. "If no one considers you good enough and management's out, there nothing left to do. It takes toll on guys over 35. They get worn down."
Not all riggers would agree with that, though.
Johnny Addleton, a rigger for the group Molly Hatchet, is still hanging cables and balancing on beams after 25 years. Various members of Journey's road crew mentioned different tricks that Molly Hatchet's riggers did.
"Yeah, we come down the catwalks headfirst, sideways," Addeton said. "It 'fum.'
However, it's not all fun and games, he said. About two and a half weeks before their Nov. 13 performance in
Lawrence, one of the group's riggers fell to his death.
However, Addenon said he would keep on working as a rigger as long as he was healthy. Now, however, he teaches and works more than doing the actual work himself.
Another member of Molly Hatchet's road crew is Mike Cavinness who is a 'guitar maggot', a name given to someone who tunes the band's twelve
"I did do it for free, now I get paid for it," he said.
Caviness tossed his waist dark, long hair as he relaxed in the crew bus in front of a table Space Invaders video game with other members of the team.
Life on the road is demanding and Steve Clark, the production manager, said it took him about a week to get used to the accelerated and pace of being on the road. However, once everybody got accustomed to working together, he said, they stuck together.
"It's like a Turkish Prison," he said. "You mess with one of us and you mess with all twelve of us."
As the equipment is unloaded,
numbered crates are directed into
position, cables and speakers are
strung out and frames are unfolded
and put together. Everything has its place
and finds it—fast.
CLARK SAID it它它它it usedly took the four cews to set up and two hours to break down. Clark's crew consists of six members: sound crew and the six-member band.
The work is hard and the pace demanding in the fast lane, but Heschmeyer said he'd do it again, if given the opportunity.
They work long before the lights go up and they are still working long after the stare lights go out.
"The whole thing has a cyclical feeling," he said. "Everything goes in circles but you're always going somewhere. It always has direction."
The stage is torn down and packed into the trucks. The auditorium is empty and the hour is late.
It's time to move on to another town, another gig. another load-out.
Photos by Bob Greenspan
Story by Pam Alloway
After the stage is set, the auditorium seats become a convenient place to take a nap before the show.
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