Tales from the Trails of a Rock ’n’ Roll Bus Driver
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“No ma’am,” I said. “Your tour manager made that call.” I didn’t notice Kaufman standing to my left. He gave me a look. Then took off to the back of the bus with Emmylou. I sat down in the driver’s seat feeling like shit and started to get ready for the drive to North Carolina.
After a few minutes, he exited the bus and came back with this Wolfhound type dog soaking wet and smelling like … well a wet dog. As they went by, he turned to me.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Tomorrow the dog will move to the truck.”
The dog ended up riding in the bus, the carpet got cleaned, and after a few days, Emmylou smiled at me. The dog, Bonaparte, and I became friends. And I got to enjoy some great music.
Sorry, Charlie
Everything in a bus is self-contained for any situation. You have to be careful what you throw away. You don’t know its value to someone. It could have girls’ phone numbers on it, so you have to look out for that kind of stuff. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
Charlie Wright, a good driver and friend of mine who passed away a few years ago, and I were on a tour together. Jerry H., another good friend and driver, and I were driving the crew buses while Charlie transported the band. The first night Charlie’s passengers became upset with him and it didn’t look like they would get over it. Crybaby rock stars are like that.
It was June of 1989, and the first show for the Howard Jones Tour. Howard Jones was an ’80’s rocker pop star from Great Britain. He had some American success with “No One is to Blame” and “Things Can Only Get Better.” Both songs made it to the top five U.S. singles in ’88 and ’89. Another song, “Everlasting Love,” made it to number 12. “Everlasting Love” had a video on MTV where two mummies went places together symbolizing their everlasting love. Several times when my wife visited me while out on the tour, the wardrobe people dressed us in the mummy outfits and we danced on the stage while Howard sang that song. It was fun, but our marriage wasn’t everlasting.
On the first night, Charlie and I came back from the hotel a little early to prep for the short ride, see a little of the show and just be close in case someone needed something. When Charlie entered the bus, there were six bowls of wilting lettuce on his counter. He tidied up the bus and ended up tossing out the salads. When his artist came on board after the show, he was upset Charlie had thrown them out. I wouldn’t have eaten the brown lettuce in those bowls myself, I thought.
To try and make good of the situation, a local guy told Charlie of a Denny’s restaurant a few blocks away. Charlie checked and the angry tour manager assured him we were going to not be leaving for a while. Charlie headed out in the direction the local guy gave him, and I went to watch a movie in my coach, do some paperwork and wait for the load out to end. I offered to go with Charlie, but he turned me down.
Twenty minutes later, my door opened and the tour manager said in his British accent, “Where’s Charlie?”
I told him where Charlie went. “Bloody great!” he explained, change of plans, “We want to go now.”
We had no cell phones. How did we get along without those things? So we waited and waited and we were all starting to think something had happened to him when he appeared in a cab with a sack full of lettuce. The bowls he threw away were just Styrofoam bowls with plain lettuce in them. He returned with these really nice wooden bowls and also carrying a grocery bag with several heads of lettuce.
Poor Charlie. He arrived back thinking he was a hero with fresh lettuce. It turned out the lettuce wasn’t organic so Charlie was in deeper shit than when he left. Wrong lettuce, and they had wanted to leave for almost an hour. Lesson learned: Be careful with what you throw away.
Chapter 3 A Taste of Meat and a Future Life
Before getting into the bus business, there was nothing more that I wanted than to get back into driving in the entertainment industry. I was driving trucks transporting general freight, which wasn’t what I wanted to be doing. Show hauls were far apart, and the goal was to get back to something a little more exciting. An English band with a French name, Depeche Mode, played a big part in reaching my goal.
A trucking company representative called me one day and told me that his company had an entertainment division that was expanding. Paramount Transportation was a household moving company, and at one time, the busiest mover of military households. Jeff asked me to lease my truck to their company. He knew of my reputation with the Barbara Mandrell Tour. He explained his company was the main equipment transporter for country singer George Strait. He told me of all the work they were getting in the entertainment business and explained that I could be right in the middle of their growth plans if I would join their team.
Thinking this could be right where I needed to be, I leased my truck to his company. My first assignment, after handshakes, was to pick up equipment for the 1985 “Some Great Reward” Depeche Mode Tour. I had never heard of Depeche Mode and couldn’t find out much about them at the time. But a band was a band, and I was grateful.
I met their crew at a shipping dock outside New York City where containers with the show gear had been sent. We spent the day unloading two 40-foot containers onto the ground and putting everything into my 48’ drop-deck electronic van. It took several frustrating tries, but the crew came up with a suitable pack. I traveled that night to Washington, D.C. to the Warner Theater for a couple of days of rehearsals. The bus driver and I were the only Americans on the tour, and I met him when I arrived at the Warner. The crew went out after the first day’s work and everyone was invited. I stayed close to the only other American as the crew attacked an Indian restaurant. Put an Englishman in any city and he will find an Indian restaurant. That’s all there is to it.
We had fun getting to know each other, and the partying lasted into the late hours that first night. The Depeche crew had been touring around the world and had already established their inside jokes. The bus driver and I were readily accepted into their fold. We headed out through America having a great time doing shows and partying on the off days. I was pretty impressed with the way the band grew as we traveled. It was nothing short of amazing.
Their popularity exploded right before our eyes in the middle of the tour. Each show was a sellout with crowds exceeding the capacities of the venues they were playing. Their album, “Some Great Reward,” was selling everywhere we went. We worked the East Coast, went into Canada for a couple of shows and then through the Midwest down to Texas, then west to California. Time flew, we were having so much fun. The friendships made on that tour have lasted ever since.
When the tour was over, the trucking company told me they didn’t have any more shows at the time to transport. They offered me a load of furniture to deliver to Texas from California where I had ended the tour. Furniture? I refused that and explained I was in the entertainment division, find me some band gear to transport, I demanded. I wasn’t going to get sucked back into hauling freight or furniture. Well, that didn’t sit well with them, and after several arguments, I had to cave in order to pay for the fuel on my cross-country trip back to their office. Once I got to Dallas, I was cornered by a company manager. “You leased your truck to our company,” he said in my face. “That means you haul what we tell you to haul. It’s not your choice. You don’t call the shots. You got that?”
I guess I could have fought back, but I noticed a shotgun leaning on the wall next to his chair. Who knew what this guy was capable of? During our “conversation” he had even touched it a few times. All I wanted was to get out of that office. Once I got home with an empty truck, he gave me a call. He had another freight load. I figured a few hundred miles was well out of shooting range.
“Go fuck yourself,” I said and hung up the phone.
Depeche Mode made it back to the States for another short tour in bigger venues. They were getting bigger by the minute, and I jumped back on tour with them. Once again, they sold out shows everywhere we went with the band playing a packed-out gig at Madison Square Garden at the end of the leg.
“That is a beautiful truck,” he bellowed. I had the hood open, and he could see how clean the motor area was. The door was open with my stereo turned up. The inside was clean, and everything about the truck was sparkling.
“Damn, I wish I could get my drivers to take care of my equipment like this,” he continued.
I smiled because I knew I always put extra effort into keeping my truck or anything I drove looking like it was brand new. He introduced himself — “Mario Martinez” — as we shook hands. He explained that he ran a fleet of buses for a company called Gristmill Coach from Pensacola, Florida. We yapped for a few minutes with him telling me he had a fleet, and a few of them were the buses that the crews and bands were riding in on this tour. I listened to him for a few minutes as I continued to dry my truck. Finally, he gave me his business card.
“If you ever want to drive a bus, just call me and I will put you in one in a heartbeat,” he said.
“Trucking is my forte, and I enjoy it,” I responded. He laughed as he walked away. I tossed his card into my truck and lost it somewhere. We finished our series of shows, and within a few days I was back to hauling freight to various destinations.
M.P. had another series of shows with several other different R&B acts several months later. While in Albany, Georgia, at the Municipal Auditorium doing a show, I had unloaded and started taking care of my truck when, over my shoulder, I heard Mario’s unforgettable voice approaching.
“God damn! You’re still polishing on that truck!”
He had a bus driver with him and started pointing to the various places I had cleaned my truck and making comments to him as he followed me around the truck. I think the driver wasn’t that impressed and rolled his eyes a couple of times. Once again Mario made a comment about me driving one of his buses, and once again I explained I was doing what I thought was best for me. He gave me another business card.
“If you change your mind just call me.” Yada, yada, I put his card in my briefcase and went on with my business. I finished that series of shows and hooked back up to a refrigerated trailer and took off hauling food and freight.
Times in the trucking business were tough, and freight rates were weak. Fuel prices had risen above a dollar a gallon. The interest rate was over 20 percent on loans. It seemed the harder I trucked, the worse it got for me. In less than two years I had trucked more than 200,000 miles and was worn out. After missing a payment on my truck, I started thinking trucking wasn’t as fun as it used to be. Taking more speed to try and catch up only worsened the problem, and before long I missed a second payment. My investor called one day to ask what the problem was and gave me an ultimatum of keeping the payments up or losing the truck. After a few more weeks of struggling along, I started looking for a way to bow out of my deal with the investor.
I made contact with a company in Elk Grove Village that specialized in entertainment transportation. Upstaging is the largest trucking company in the world specializing in entertainment transportation. Upstaging had grown out of a lighting company that was based in the Chicago area. Robin, a young lady who was managing the company at the time, took my call and gave me the details of what it would take to be a driver for Upstaging. She was familiar with my name and what I had been doing and explained that I could fit in with the Upstaging team. My investor took control of the truck and within a few days I was on a plane to Chicago to start a new angle on this entertainment transportation thing.
Robin explained that I was going to go on tour with The Smiths, a British group whose lead singer named Morrissey. The tour was called “The Queen is Dead.” I was driven over to Ryder Truck Rentals to pick up a tractor and head for Toronto, Canada, where the North American leg of the tour was starting. The truck was ugly to me after driving my beautiful Kenworth that I had tried to own. We argued about it for a few, and I felt stuck with it. I needed the work, so I loaded my gear into the truck and took off for Canada.
The Smiths’ previous album had been titled “Meat is Murder.” The band members and many of the European crew were vegetarians, so it was announced to the American crew members that there would be no meat served in catering. All the Americans on the tour were meat eaters and were not too happy. Eugene Holmes, one of the bus drivers, was a unique individual and said he had a plan for the carnivores. The crew bus driver on the Barbara Mandrell tour had been Jimmy Holmes, Eugene’s younger brother. I had met Eugene a couple times. He was a large man with a beard who always wore overalls. He looked like something from a hillbilly farm. He was a great guy and had a good heart, always making jokes and playing innocent tricks on people.
Eugene went out and bought a grill, and every day someone would hit a store and buy steaks and burgers to go along with the great vegetables that were being served in catering. Of course, this pissed off the band when their bus would pull up and Eugene would be out cooking large slabs of meat on the grill. Eugene would tell them to “piss off,” a British term he used whenever someone would complain to him. Meat was an issue throughout the tour.
We rolled through the Canadian leg hitting Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal before heading back into the states to Boston, NYC and other places, but the meat issue continued until we got to Cleveland.
The Public Hall in Cleveland is an older building that has a full theatrical style stage that splits the entire room. On the south end of the building is a theater where music or theatrical events can be performed. On the north side of the building is an arena-style room. The stage splits the room with only a sound-proof curtain separating the two venues under one roof. It’s unique in its construction, and The Smiths were performing on the theater side of the venue. On the day of our show, a convention was going on in the arena side featuring... wait for it... outdoor grills. All the modern grills of the day were being displayed in the arena, and every vendor was cooking meat at their displays. Beef, pork and chicken were being cooked and with more than 50 or 60 vendors in the room the smell of grilled meat was overbearing, even to the meat eaters on the tour. There was a lot of complaining about the situation, but there was nothing the band or Belkin Productions, the promoters of the show, could do about it. When the band arrived, there was such a fuss that I thought the show would be canceled, but it went on as scheduled. The meat eaters on the tour laughed our asses off for that one.
Each night Morrissey took to the stage and would start encouraging people to come up on the stage with him about halfway through the show. The crews and local security would try to keep the crowds off the stage, but some nights it was impossible. This caused an incredible amount of drama with everyone, because as soon as someone would get on the stage, hundreds more would start heading for the stage just to get a touch of Morrissey and dance around like idiots. The band gear would get damaged, and some things would come up missing. As the tour moved west, the problem seemed to get worse as Morrissey seemed to make it a game. There were a few nights when the show had to be stopped all together, and there were a few more where the band never made it back to the stage because of the damage that might have happened that night. At the Irvine Meadows show in Laguna Hills, California, so many fans attacked the stage that the promoter and local authorities wouldn’t let the show continue. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. The seats were empty and the stage was full of fans.
One of the problems with the truck I was driving was that Ryder didn’t have too many GMC Generals for rent or lease in their fleet. When we had started the tour, the air conditioning in my truck broke. It was July and August, so the temps met the typical summer standard. The Ryder shops in A
merica didn’t have parts to fix it, and the international truck dealers around the nation needed a couple of days to fix the problem. Trucking management told me to just ride on with it. They were working from an air-conditioned office in Chicago. It became an issue for me, especially as we took the tour west toward Southern California and Arizona where the temps were topping 100 degrees every day.
After reaching the West Coast, the tour headed east again toward Florida with shows along the way in Phoenix, Denver, Houston, Dallas, and New Orleans. There were rumors among the crew that the band was partying a lot and they weren’t getting along. In September, The Smiths had a show scheduled in the Bayfront Arena in St. Petersburg, Florida. Just before the show, word started spreading among the crew that a band member was missing and couldn’t be found. When it was time for the band to take the stage, they didn’t have a full band, and the show was canned. The crew reloaded everything, and we headed to Miami where the next show was scheduled. The band member was still missing, and rumors of what had happened to him were rampant. With all the issues before the band, the tour was canceled.
On the day the show was supposed to be in Miami, many crew members had met in the hotel bar. Few other customers were around and part of the crew was drinking their weight in booze. The bar was downstairs in the hotel, and behind the bar was a gigantic window that looked into the swimming pool outside. We could see all the bodies swimming in the pool as we sat there drinking. One of our crew guys, who everyone referred to as “Rooster,” because of his red hair, left the bar. Not too long after, a woman sitting in the bar screamed. She was the first to notice Rooster in the pool sliding down in front of the window naked with his shlong pressed against the window. Everyone on the crew went nuts with laughter and hoots and hollers. Rooster was immediately arrested and taken away, and we were all asked to leave the bar. What a way to end a tour.