The Worst Gig

by Jon Niccum

  • • •

  “Saturday Night Live was a disaster [in 1976]. That was a great opportunity. I should have fit right in. We had a great version of ‘Charles Whitman’ ready to roll. We’d already rehearsed with John [Belushi], Danny Aykroyd and Steve Martin—‘the sniper in the tower’—it was hilarious. And they canned it just before I went on, and that put me in a petulant snit. I got really wrongways with all the producers and stuff. They had a legal problem with the family of Charles Whitman, so they caved in right at the end. But that would have been perfect. It would have been killer. It was a major production number. But right at the last minute I was left just doing this ballad by myself—‘Dear Abbie’ about Abbie Hoffman—and that was kind of weak…But there have been a lot of worst shows, because I’m not really a musician. It’s the curse of being multitalented. No one takes you seriously. And the people who love my books and take them seriously don’t even know I write music—and vice versa. If I could have gotten those audiences together, but now it’s too late. I’m in my sixties, which is too young for Medicare and too old for women to care.”

  —Kinky Friedman

  R/D

  San Francisco’s R. D. White—who goes by the stage name R/D—represents a new generation of artists crafting original electronic dance music that weaves indie rock into the mix. Although best known for his studio remixes of other artists, R/D expertly incorporates live instruments into his dynamic DJ sets.

  • • •

  “My worst story takes place in Los Angeles at the Viper Room, which was made famous by River Phoenix dying there. We had booked the show with Andrea Parker, who was a really big female DJ back when Warped Records was predominantly electronic—they had Aphex Twin and Plaid.

  “The bouncers at the door were being unbelievable. Basically, just giving her the worst time. She’s—I don’t want to say cocky—but she can get pretty ghetto. She starts cussing them out, and I’m trying to calm her down so she doesn’t fuck things up. My girlfriend at the time was really fiery. She was like the same way, just constantly going at this bouncer. Finally, they get in.

  “[My girlfriend] starts taking pictures. Well, you can’t take pictures in the club because ‘it’s a place where famous people go.’ She keeps taking pictures.

  “The bouncer is like, ‘One more time and you’re out of here.’

  “So we have this tension all night long with the bouncer, the lead bartender—all of them hate us.

  “It’s 1 a.m. and it’s pretty thin. It wasn’t a very good turnout. I had already played. And the stage manager closes an electric curtain on Andrea Parker…while she’s playing. Here’s our headline act that we had brought from the United Kingdom. She is fucking pissed.

  “I tell my girlfriend, ‘Let’s just go break down and get the fuck out of here.’

  “Andrea has this drink—this cocktail—up on the mixer. She spills a little bit on the mixer by accident. Then she looks back and is like, ‘Fuck it!’

  “We both get in this mode of like, ‘Fuck this place.’

  “The stage manager parts the curtain and comes up onstage. He looks at his mixer and is like, ‘What the fuck is this?’

  “He starts freaking out: ‘This is my mixer. You guys did this…We got cameras back there. I’m gonna check the cameras out.’

  “We pack everything up and decide to get out of there.

  “I jump down, get all my gear and my girlfriend takes off with Andrea Parker in another car. I’m going around the corner, and this one bouncer—I don’t know why he wanted to do this—he pulls me aside and says, ‘Hey, bro, I just wanted to say how sorry I am. Things went down really whack.’

  “I’m like, ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s cool.’

  “I keep trying to get away. Finally, I break away from him and jump in my car. I have the choice to go right or left. And I make the wrong choice. I turn left. I go up to the top of the street, and the cops pull up.

  “They’re like, ‘Get out of the car,’ with their flashlights.

  “Then the stage manager tech, the lead bartender, the bartender and the door guy are all standing there like, ‘Oh, you’re fucked, bro.’

  “I don’t know what to do. [The cops] throw me in handcuffs, throw me in the back of the cop car, and they’re like, ‘We have you on video vandalizing equipment inside.’

  “The cop is like, ‘You need to pay restitution or you’re going to jail.’

  “[I tell him,] ‘My girlfriend took all the door money. I don’t have any cash. I will give you all the cash for whatever that mixer is worth. Just don’t put me in jail.’

  “So he pulls out my phone, scrolls down and dials my ex-girlfriend’s number. ‘Hello, is this so-and-so?’

  “She’s like, ‘Who is this?’—she’s still all fiery.

  “‘This is the Los Angeles Police Department. I have your boyfriend in the back of my police car, unless you pay X amount of dollars for this mixer that you ruined…’

  “She just starts freaking out.

  “‘Put him on the phone. This is bullshit!’

  “[The cop] looks at me with this weird look, and he holds the phone up because I’m still cuffed.

  “I’m like, ‘Babe?’

  “‘I can’t fuckin’ believe you got caught. Why didn’t you just get the fuck out of there?’

  “She was blaming me for not running fast enough, and I was like, ‘I’m in the back of a police car, about to go to jail. Maybe you want to come?’

  “‘Fuck that. I’m not blah, blah, blah.’

  “The guy pulls the phone away, and I’m like, ‘She hung up.’

  “He’s like, ‘Are you sure that she’s your girlfriend?’

  “I have the brilliant idea as I’m sitting there: ‘I will go to an ATM machine that’s close by. You can escort me there, and we’ll get the total amount.’

  “So he uncuffs me, marches me into this liquor store, and I get the maximum amount…He’s gonna hold the money and the mixer, then he wants me to go to Guitar Center. It was a whole three-day thing.

  “The cherry on top is that is the last straw for me and my girlfriend. I was with her for seven years. We lived together and everything.”

  —R/D

  Steve Lukather

  Credit: Rob Shanahan

  One of the all-time great session guitarists, Steve Lukather is also a founding member of the band Toto, best known for top-five hits such as “Africa,” “Hold the Line” and “Rosanna.” In addition to winning five Grammy Awards and selling thirty-five million albums with Toto, Lukather’s blistering guitar work appears on more than 1,500 records, including staple hits such as Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry” and Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical”—which was the number-one single of the 1980s.

  • • •

  “I started doing A-level sessions when I was about nineteen years old. Toto was starting, and I had just come out of Boz Scaggs’ band. I began to get all these calls for really cool records. For years I was doing twenty-five sessions a week, plus the band. I worked my way up to the top of the food chain as a session guitar player.

  “I would get these calls, ‘We need you for a week at Capitol Studios, twelve to six.’

  “You didn’t ask too many questions. You often didn’t know who the artist was. It could be Aretha Franklin or Barbra Streisand or whomever. It was just fun to do. Am I going to sit around the house and not work? When people give me a call, I’m going to go play. For years I took everything that came my way and didn’t ask too many questions. I didn’t care because I loved the challenge of doing different kinds of music.

  “Well, there was one day I realized, ‘This is the end of me taking every call and not asking who it is.’

  “I get a call from a guy who says, ‘I need you at Sunset Sound from twelve to six, Monday through Friday.’

  �
��I show up and there are three rooms going on. I walk into the main studio and I realize the ‘artist’ is Richard Simmons, the health guru.

  “First off, what the fuck is a Richard Simmons record?

  “Apparently, it is a ‘dancercise’ record. And the music is fucking awful.

  “I have a guitar tech with me at the time who’d just had a bunch of teeth pulled out. He has a fistful of Vicodins and is lying on the couch. I’m looking around, thinking, ‘This is awful. But I’ve got to be professional here.’

  “I’m running through the music, and they’re these horrible disco-era tunes. Music for rotund people to lose weight to. Richard Simmons is there in his little striped shorts. It’s like we’re doing a cheap TV show or something. I’m mortified by all this.

  “At the studio, there’s this courtyard in the middle where everybody meets to play basketball and stuff—you can hang out with the other musicians and producers. Everyone is like, ‘Who are you working with today?’

  “I’m like, ‘It’s Richard (mumble, mumble).’

  “They start laughing at me. This is not the reputation I have or need. So I figure I got to get out of this shit somehow.

  “I go back in, and Richard Simmons comes out to where my tech is asleep on the couch, all drugged up from the pain. Richard Simmons starts kissing him. This is a guy who looks like he’s a hardened criminal; we’re not talking about a pretty boy. He wakes up and is like, ‘What the fuck, man?’

  “I figure, ‘I got to get out of here!’

  “So I say, ‘Excuse me, I need to use the phone.’ This is pre–cell phone in the early 1980s. But instead of using the phone, I go out to my car and leave. I never call back. I never go back in. This is the first time I have ever walked on a session. As a professional musician, my reputation is to be a pro, show up on time, have my shit together. I’d done a couple cheesy sessions, but this is beyond cheese. This is putting my ass through the glory hole.

  “I thought, ‘That’s it. I’m done. I’m never doing a session again unless I know who it is and I like the music.’

  “So I get a call a few days later for another session at Sunset Sound. I show up, and they’re all still there: the producer and Richard Simmons. But I don’t know this. I’m working on a session with [Toto drummer] Jeff Porcaro in another room. [Simmons’s] producer finds out I’m in the building, and he comes over and wants to fight me.

  “He is chewing me out. ‘Motherfucker, how dare you…’

  “I’m like, ‘The music was shit. Sorry. What do you want me to do?’

  “This guy starts coming at me.

  “Lenny Castro, the famous percussionist and one of my oldest pals, is also there. He’s from New York—a Puerto Rican badass. He has a knife belt; the actual buckle of his belt is a knife. This guy comes at me, and Lenny pushes me aside and takes his belt off and suddenly has a knife in his hand. He’s like, ‘Are you ready? Are you really gonna come at my boy?’

  “There is a whole scuffle with people all over the place. It’s a big, ugly scene. Nobody draws any blood. But it’s a little heated for a moment.

  “After that, I swore I would never ever again whore myself out being a musician.”

  —Steve Lukather

  Dan Wilson is responsible for penning major hits on two contemporary classics that took Album of the Year honors at the Grammy Awards: Adele’s “21” in 2012 and Dixie Chicks’ “Taking the Long Way” in 2007. But it was with his own band, Semisonic, that Wilson created one of the 1990s most durable tunes. His “Closing Time” is an alt-rock smash still seemingly omnipresent in TV shows, movies and sporting event PAs. The songwriter decided to approach a worst gig saga through the help of a conference call with his fellow Minneapolis bandmates.

  Semisonic’s worst shows ever:

  A conference call

  By Dan Wilson

  Credit: Emerlee Sherman

  When I was first asked to write about my “worst gig ever,” I knew I might have a little trouble doing it. First of all, I’ve played upward of 2,000 gigs in my life, between college bands, Trip Shakespeare, Semisonic, my solo shows and guesting on other people’s concerts. There are a lot of shows to choose from.

  Secondly, one thing about my memory of gigs is that everything about them sticks out in my mind—except for the shows themselves. The dressing rooms, the parking areas, the fans hanging out near the bus—I can remember those atmospheric details. But there are only a few performances that I can actually picture in my mind.

  Third, I have a rose-colored-glasses issue. I’m sure I’ve endured a lot of bad experiences, but somehow they magically fade into the mists of time, and I’m left remembering the good stuff.

  So I decided to get my Semisonic bandmates, bassist John Munson and drummer Jacob Slichter, on the phone. Jacob (we call him Jake) is the author of a widely read memoir of his days in Semisonic, So You Wanna Be a Rock and Roll Star? It’s a really funny book, and at times it reads like a greatest-hits collection of worst-ever gigs. And John, like Jake, has a better memory than I do, as well as an easily stirred sense of outrage, which I knew would be helpful when describing horrible gigs.

  Falling Off the Stage

  Dan: Wasn’t there a time or two that I fell off the stage?

  Jake: You fell off the stage once in Cleveland, I think.

  Dan: And once in Madison, Wisconsin?

  John: Was it in Cleveland? I think it might have also happened in Kansas City, maybe at that bar in Westport…

  Dan and Jake: The Hurricane?

  John: At the Hurricane also…

  Dan: But I decided that doesn’t really count as worst gig ever, these isolated moments of tumbling off a stage.

  John: No, but definitely it’s gotta be among the…it’s embarrassing. I was embarrassed!

  Jake: I have several nominees. There was the “Semisonic Must Suck” show in Kansas City, which is a certain kind of worst gig ever, intentionally so.

  Semisonic Must Suck

  Elektra, our record label at the time of the “Semisonic Must Suck” show, was considering whether to keep us on their roster, and we wanted off, partly because Elektra had been sitting on our recently finished album. Rival label MCA had indicated they would sign us to a new deal if Elektra dropped us. So Elektra sent an A&R guy to a show in Kansas City to see if we were worth keeping, and our mission was to bore him into dropping us from the label. It worked, the A&R guy was bored, Elektra dropped us and we got picked up by MCA shortly afterwards. A sordid tale all around.

  Jake: The worst part was trying to wrap our heads around how we could go up on stage and actually…

  Dan: …try to be bad…

  Jake: …since, you know, we were being asked to override the hardwired mission of every musician in the name of getting free of our record contract. So there was that gig. And then there was the “giant beer bottle” show.

  The Giant Beer Bottle Show

  At a show at Irving Plaza in New York City, we learned that our label, MCA, and the sponsor, Guinness, had arranged for us to dance with a man in a giant beer bottle costume during the song “Closing Time.” When we were told about this just minutes before our set, I said, “No way! I’m not going to dance with no giant beer bottle.” This led to a very tense and escalating sequence of bargaining and threats, somehow culminating with the radio station WPLJ in New York telling us that if we didn’t dance with the beer bottle, the station wouldn’t play our singles. And MCA told us that if WPLJ stopped playing our singles, other stations would follow, and we would never have a hit again. I replied that if they sent the guy in the beer bottle outfit onto our stage, we would roll him back off into the wings. We did the gig, without the beer bottle guy, and I believe WPLJ did in fact stop playing our songs.

  Dan: The message was that if you don’t do what you’re told, you’re not gonna get played on the radio anymore and it’s the be
ginning of the end or something. There were a lot of threats floating around before the beginning of that show.

  John: God, it’s like you had to not give a rip about anything, but at the same time you had to give a rip…ugh, it was horrible.

  Dan: The interesting thing is that even though it qualifies as the worst backstage moment of any show ever, I don’t remember anything about the show itself, but I imagine we played pretty well.

  Jake: The show was a good one!

  Dan: But it was the worst politics surrounding any show ever.

  Jake: Right.

  John: OK, for me, Fuji Rock was also epically, horribly bad…

  The Fuji Rock Festival

  John: The Mt. Fuji Rock Festival in Japan…that was fucking brutal. Oh my God, that was horrid. That was a fucking nightmare.

  Dan: OK, I remember.…I had lost my voice and couldn’t sing a note above a D, so you guys had to sing all the choruses for me.

  Jake: Yeah, we had to sing the choruses, and I just hated it.

  Dan: It was too bad I couldn’t sing.

  John: That was bad.

  Jake: And then we had to go and watch Oasis hold the crowd spellbound afterward. That was torture.

  Dan: But it might not have been so bad from the audience’s perspective.

  Jake: Or from a storytelling perspective—I mean, it would probably get my vote for worst gig, but it’s maybe not the best story of a worst gig because basically the story is that Dan had blown out his voice and we had to do the singing.

  John: It was that, yeah, but the lead up to it is somewhat interesting. It seems to me a lot of these supposed worst gigs happened very late in the game, when the stakes were something different than what we were gunning for earlier in our career. In the beginning we were trying to heroically win for ourselves. But then later, all of a sudden we were trying to win for other people. That’s when things got weird for me. I don’t mind failing if the stakes are, “I failed you guys and I failed myself.” But it starts to get really uncomfortable and weird when it’s, “I’m failing our manager” or “I’m failing the record company, and…”