Shady Bizzness: Life as Eminem's Bodyguard in an Industry of Paper Gangsters

by Williams, Byron

  A few days passed on the tour. We did Detroit and Cincinnati. It was May 27th, and I was beginning to come to grips with how I felt about Slim, Shady Tours, and Paul Rosenberg.We arrived in Atlanta and did the most hype show we had encountered at that point. There was a sold-out mixed crowd, and the show was off the hook. That night was wild and unforgettable because it affected me mentally, physically, and spiritually. It was a downslide for me, and it showed me that I was a security guard and nothing else—which means people don’t look at you as human, don’t care about your family, and don’t look at you as an emotional being.

  On this night, the show was wild, and it was off the hook. Slim was rocking the crowd. They were amped. He would jump off the stage and slap hands with the crowd or crowd surf, and I was always right behind him whenever he did that. I noticed this one guy in particular on the balcony who would jump down from the balcony onto the stage and act a fool whenever Slim would jump into the crowd, but by the time we got back on stage he would jump back into the crowd, so we couldn’t catch him. He did this at least two more times.Then the guy decided to rush the stage while Slim and I were on it. He was a big guy, about 6’2”, 250 pounds, and he was obviously high. He jumped from the balcony to the speaker to the stage and started rushing full speed at Slim, and he didn’t look like he wanted to give him a hug, either. I positioned myself between him and Slim, and the guy sped up like he wanted to buck me like a football player, so I stepped out of his way as he charged forward and nailed him as he went past me. I mean, I knocked the shit out of this guy. He flew off the stage and hit the barricade to the stage. I knew I knocked him out, and if I didn’t, the fall should have done it. But that wasn’t the case. This guy was high on something, I don’t know what. He just sat there a few seconds and shook it off and proceeded to try to get back on stage. I tried to signal the five security guys who were on crowd control to get this guy out of there, but they were afraid of him; they didn’t want to work, they were just there to get the money. So I jumped down and grabbed the guy, but he kept trying to get away from me, and I started punching him in the back of his head over and over. Finally, his legs buckled, and before he hit the ground, I got him in a hold where he couldn’t move his arms and started to escort him out the side door where the police were. Now the five crowd control guys decided they wanted to help. They rushed over and grabbed me and the guy which caused us all to fall. In the process of trying to break my fall, I dislocated my shoulder. The pain was excruciating, but I still couldn’t let the guy go because I knew I was vulnerable at that point; these five security guys wouldn’t have my back. I managed to escort the guy out with my one good arm, and I really cursed those security guys out, probably more from the pain I was in than the fact that they wouldn’t help me, even though that pissed me off, too. By this time the show was over, and we got on the bus, and I was in so much pain that I couldn’t even trip out.

  My armpit socket was hanging down by my pecs. Slim was shitting bricks. He was running around like a chicken with his head cut off. He kept saying, “Is there anything you need? Here, take a shot!” So, I took a few shots of Bacardi light, and I damn near finished the bottle by the time the ambulance arrived. Slim was real apologetic and thankful because he didn’t know what was going on. He made a lot of promises, like taking care of my hospital bills and saying that he would get me anything I needed.

  The Kansas State trio that wanted to sleep with Slim They turned out to be empty promises, but they sounded good at the time. I thought I would be at the hospital alone, but, much to my surprise, DT, of all people, came with me. I wonder what his real motivation was in coming with me, whether he enjoyed seeing me in pain, or why it took me being in pain for him to be nice to me. Anyway, I wasn’t worried while at the emergency room, thinking that since I was Slim Shady’s bodyguard they would take care of me. The doctor, a young guy about thirty-three years of age, told me that from the X-rays I was lucky that I hadn’t broken my collar bone, and if I had any less muscle mass I probably would have. He told me that they were going to give me a shot of morphine and then pop my shoulder back into place. It took some time for the doctor to convince me that I wouldn’t feel any pain, and even after he gave me the shot, I still tried to protest, but I was out of it before I could even finish my sentence. From what I was told, it took three doctors to pop my shoulder back into its socket, and DT also told me that when it popped back in, it made this resounding popping sound, and I came out of it, sat up, screamed my head off, and then fell back into unconsciousness. They gave me some smelling salts and another shot to bring me back to, and the first thing I said was, “Y’all got anything to eat around here?” Everybody got a kick out of that. I was in pain for about a month and had to wear my arm in a sling and take Vicodin. Slim got a big kick out of me taking Vicodin because that was one of his favorite drugs. Besides, he figured with me being on Vicodin, he could get a few free pills here and there. That time off was a period of transition for me. I learned a lot about myself and realized what I was putting at risk. I was jeopardizing my life and my health for a man whom I really knew nothing about. I got into this security thing just to get in a better position to get my own label off the ground. I quickly realized that I needed to be getting something more out of it. I wasn’t even making that much money. It wasn’t worth the risk.

  I looked at the situation more deeply because I didn’t expect to get hurt on the job; it just wasn’t an aspect I had considered. So I began to feel depressed, used, and neglected because no one really had much to say to me about it except periodically asking me if it hurt or not, but I could tell no one really cared for the most part.The biggest topic was, “How long is it going to take for you to heal?” and I was like, “Damn, it just happened. It’s going take a couple of months, ” and that it did.This happened during the first part of the Slim Shady tour, and at home I was getting a lot of stares and people were like, “Damn, how are you going to protect Slim while you’re hurt?” I was like, “Well, right now I can’t. ” I had to get some other people to cover me. I felt thrown away and unappreciated. I saw where I stood with Shady Tours. At this point in time, I didn’t have a contract with Shady Tours. The contract was getting paid. I still believed the empty promise that my doctor bills would be taken care of. I couldn’t go back to work at GM with my shoulder in a sling because it would cause too many questions to be asked about my injury. I was on leave for something else. Besides, I was working for Shady Tours when I got hurt. They should have been taking care of me while I was on leave. However, Shady Tours’ response to that was, “Well, we’re going to give you $350 a week workman’s comp. ”That couldn’t pay the bills! And it took them two months to give me that. That was some bullshit! I was thinking about my wife and family. I had some money put aside, but I wasn’t planning on spending that. I was counting on them to take care of me until we went back on the road. I see. I’m good enough to go out there and work and get hurt, but I am not good enough for you to look out for while I am hurt. At that point I realized that I would have to get a contract or something a little more concrete if I was going to continue working for Slim. My wife was a little upset because she had to change her lifestyle, and I couldn’t really pick up our baby boy because of my shoulder. I started weighing out the odds, with me getting hurt and not receiving adequate compensation while I was off, so I asked them to at least give me an advance toward the next tour. They agreed to do that, but that meant the next tour I was basically working for free. You would think that they would have at least considered the fact that I took a leave of absence from my job to work for them, but that meant nothing to them. They didn’t give a fuck as long

  Byron and Dean (Slim’s A&R man) outside the shoot for “Guilty Conscience” as they bene fited from it. This was a turning point where the business relationship turned bitter, because I got wiser and I began to see where we were headed together, and it wasn’t in a positive direction.

  2

  WARPED TOURS Well, it was the
Fourth of July, and we headed out on the Warped Tour with my shoulder operating at about 70 percent of its normal performance. The Warped Tour was supposed to be an easy tour, and it was for the most part. I was going through therapy for my shoulder, and the tour was only scheduled for five weeks, anyway. The purpose of my going was that I had taken out an advance on my pay. I basically worked the first two weeks for free because I was paying back the money that I borrowed since I had no income while I was off for my injury. By this time, Slim’s promises to take care of me that he made while I was in the ambulance had proven to be false. He left all the financial decisions up to his manager, Paul, who he knew wasn’t taking care of me, but he did nothing about it. The only thing they did was call me once a week to see if I would be ready to go on the road for the next tour. I told them I was going through therapy and had a pretty bad tear in my muscle tissue, and all I could do was heal one day at a time. Their main concern wasn’t if I needed anything or any money, it was whether or not I would be ready to go on tour. I can say that this was a learning process for me, and I learned from my mistakes.

  The Warped Tour was more alternative than anything else, so I didn’t have to deal with a lot of the crazed groupies like before. With my job being pretty much laid back at this point, it allowed me a lot of time to do some soul searching, as I had done while I was off injured. It wasn’t easy for me to do, but I detached myself from Slim Shady and his manager on a personal level. It was hard because we worked together day and night, but it had to be done. I passed my time talking to Proof and DJ Head and calling home to my wife, which resulted in a high phone bill. On this tour, I was able to learn that I was definitely underpaid. We had a chance to mix and mingle with the crews from the other headlining acts, and we were all kicking around some figures on what we were getting paid and found out that we were all making less than our counterparts who worked for other acts who were, ironically, less successful than Slim Shady was. We felt like fools in the eyes of our peers because they were like, “Damn, we haven’t sold a third as many records as you guys have, and we make more than you do!” I always felt that I should have been getting more than $1200 a week, but it all happened so fast in the beginning, I didn’t get a chance to ever renegotiate my pay. Every time I would bring it to the attention of Paul Rosenberg, he would always promise that we would talk about it at another time. Some of us felt that Slim had nothing to do with it, but we came to find out he was the one who gave the final approval of everyone’s pay. Slim would always try to act like he didn’t know and blamed it on Paul and his accountants, but realistically they didn’t make a move without his approval. They would try to be a friend in your face but fuck you financially. The “friend” tactic worked with some of these guys on the tour because they had grown up with Slim and Paul, and Slim played on that when it came time to paying them insubstantially, but that didn’t work for me.

  Slim made more money than every act on that tour, so there was no excuse. There were people who left their jobs or took leaves from their jobs to work for Slim. DJ Head gave a fine performance every time he spun those records to keep the crowd hype. Proof put together Slim’s show as far as the ideas and the order of the songs, but did he get paid what he was worth? No, he didn’t. I didn’t. DJ Head didn’t. I hate to say this, but none of the brothers made equal pay. Slim is always talking about how he hates racism, but he and Paul Rosenberg were the main ones keeping us financially unequal. The soundman, Billy, made damn good money, and he only worked like an hour a day. He made at least $1, 500 a week. Gus Brandt, whom I consider to be a good friend of mine because he gave me a lot of advice and information regarding the business, knew he was making less than he should be, but he accepted it because he figured that he could help Slim and Paul have a more successful tour with him being a part of it. We were all upset over our pay scale. It wasn’t like the money wasn’t there, because I knew for a fact that it was there. I knew what went down, when, and why it went down. I never deliberately looked for this information; it usually fell into my lap, with Slim being by my side most of the time. Even when he wasn’t by my side, financial information fell into my lap.

  Paul trying to scheme on getting Byron fired. On this particular tour, Slim was making $15, 000 a day, which was like $75, 000 a week. Over a five-week period, that was a nice bit of change. That’s not even including his merchandising, which he never followed up on because he left that up to Paul. So, the money was definitely there. It hurt to find out that out of these other crews who worked for groups who hadn’t even sold 200, 000 records, their lowest-paid member made more money then we did, and they had bands so they definitely had more heads to pay. Slim continued to pretend like he didn’t know what was going on, and Paul was content as long as he was making more than everyone else. It was sad. I determined that I made about $5 an hour working around the clock seven days a week for $1, 200 a week. This only added to my frustration. I decided to draw up a proposal and present it to Paul because some changes definitely had to be made. I took some time and conferred with Gus, the tour manager, during this process, and he told me I was getting fucked with no Vaseline. He said that I should be making at least $1, 500 but that most security guys were making two grand a week. He said that since I was a 24-hour man and that I did a lot of things that I shouldn’t have to do, I should be making more than $1, 200. He made that coming out of high school. He said “Byron, they’re fucking you bad. ” Gus was making a lot of sense to me, and he had more experience in this business than everyone combined. He’s worked with everybody from the Foo Fighters to the Stones, so he knows what he’s talking about. Gus was not a greedy man. He was fair, and he wanted to see people treated fairly. He didn’t start to open up until he realized that he was getting screwed out of his money. He took a pay cut in an effort to work with Paul and Slim and teach them about touring, but they took Gus’ kindness for weakness, and Gus is not a weak man; he’s very smart, very intelligent. Paul and Slim didn’t realize that at any time Gus could have stolen all of Slim’s money and ran, but he didn’t—he stayed and did his job to the T. But did he ever get a “Thank you” or a “Good job, Gus”? Did he get a proper bonus, or even the proper pay? No, he didn’t.

  We were getting mistreated! So, I put together a proposal for Paul and Slim, asking them for life insurance in case of my death so my family would be taken care of. I knew that if they barely did anything for me while I was alive, they damn sure wouldn’t do anything for my family in the event of my death. I asked to be paid $2, 000 a week during workweeks and for a retainer of $1, 200 a week when we weren’t on tour. I asked for sick days. I am a businessman, and I like things to be done in writing. Contracts keep guidelines. I presented this proposal to Paul and Slim, and they were intimidated that I had my own personal CPA draw up this proposal. They didn’t really know how to deal with it, or didn’t want to deal with it. They went back and forth about it and procrastinated for about a month.

  In New York, Paul and Slim called me into a meeting with them to resolve this issue. They told me they liked working with me and that they didn’t want to lose me. At this time, I was up for a promotion at my job at GM to become shop chairman, where I could have made $100, 000 a year easily, without the inconsistency. I was willing to stay on with Paul and Slim because I had my own label that I was trying to get off the ground. I was in a position to make a lot of connections in the music business, plus possibly draw the attention of Paul and Slim to my own groups.

  Paul basically told me that what I was asking for was ridiculous. Was it ridiculous for me to ask for some sound security working for this man for whom I had left my job, my wife and kids, my home for, whom I was jeopardizing my health and my life for? I was being told that it was ridiculous for me to ask for some security. He shut down on the idea of a written contract—he didn’t want a contract. I asked him why it was OK for him to have a written contract with Slim Shady, but I couldn’t have a written contract ensuring that they wouldn’t move me out at the last m
inute when I jeopardized a stable, good-paying job to work for them. Was it ridiculous for me to ask for a stable environment, for life insurance, for ample pay for me to meet my financial goals? I sacrificed a lot. I couldn’t convince him to see that, or maybe he was threatened by the fact that I had knowledge of self and the industry and I was close to Slim, so therefore in his eyes I posed a possible threat to his job. He knew that I knew how he operated, as well. I tried to convey the message to him that I was there to do security, not to try to steal Slim Shady, but he didn’t understand that.

  The thing that drove me the most crazy was the way that Slim played possum, acting like he didn’t know what was going on when the whole time behind the scenes he called all the shots. An issue would be brought to Paul, he would take it to Slim, and Slim would tell him how he wanted it to be handled, and Paul would handle it. Afterward, Slim would play dumb. For a long time, I honestly believed that Slim was in the dark about these issues because he was always drunk or high or dealing with his marital and family problems. Over time, I realized from the way things progressed that Slim was very much aware and responsible for the way things were handled. I don’t entirely blame Paul for the way things were, but he definitely had a way of getting into Slim’s head and influencing his decisions. Paul was the evil, conniving one in the picture, but Slim couldn’t see that because he couldn’t think for himself. Everyone around him thought for Slim Shady because he couldn’t think for himself. That’s what we were paid to do. Proof thought of the show format; DJ Head thought of the beats; I thought of ways to keep him safe and thought up lies for him. We all did things we didn’t have to do for him, and none of us were getting compensated adequately for our efforts.