It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [144]
I spent much of the Sick tour actually sick. I even came down with pneumonia at one stage. The success of my sinus surgery was a thing of the past. This time, however, I refused to let the recurring infections hinder my training, and, if anything, continuing to work out helped subdue the aches and pains and throbbing ear infections. Another reason my renewed sinus problems didn’t bother me too much was because being on the road with Loaded was totally devoid of drama. When you toured with nine guys—band plus crew—on a bus, playing night after night, all expectations of space and privacy were left at the curb. There was literally no room for bullshit. We washed our laundry in the backstage sink at whatever venue we played that night and hung it to dry in the bus; we only booked one night per week in a hotel—and even then we all crammed into just two rooms at the cheapest place around.
The way we dealt with close quarters was with humor. Tons of it. There was the warning call we used when two of us approached each other in the narrow aisle between the onboard bunk beds: ass to ass. The call had entered our lexicon a few years back when a huge security guy got ruffled after a band member passed him crotch to ass in a space about the same width as the aisle on a budget airline. This security guy did not exactly dig the fact that his manhood might have been compromised in that fleeting instant. He dressed down the young rocker right then and there: “Man, it’s always ass to ass, dog … ass to ass!”
The incident became part of Loaded folklore and we practiced the ass-to-ass program on our bus—unless someone felt a bit frisky. In that case, you could surprise your fellow band member with a “junk drag,” a quick spin just as you met your bandmate in the aisle to create a crotch-to-ass passage. I had a college education at this point and was a responsible father and husband, but, hey, you just can’t beat juvenile fun sometimes.
A tour diet is never very wholesome. In fact, it’s often downright gross. We ate dinner after we played, and at 1 a.m. we were lucky to find pizza or schawarma. In the UK, we lapped up cheap, spicy Indian food. Nine guys, one bus, mutton vindaloo, few rest stops—it was a recipe for a lot of flatulence. One of our guitar techs, the hilarious “Evil” Dave, from Sheffield, England, suggested we start a contest: who could come up with a word that most sounded like any given burst of gas. Some sounded like, say, “teapot.” A more throaty one might become “streeeetpost.” This not only passed the time, but also broadened our vocabularies; racking our brains for a winning word was almost like playing Scrabble.
When I returned from the various tour legs—in addition to dates here and in Europe, we crisscrossed South America and hit the festival circuit—I didn’t have anyone to play Name That Fart with. My daughters ran from me when I so much as brought it up. And anyway, my diet also returned to normal.
The new words in my quiver came in handy, however, as during the same time period I kicked off a writing career with a column in the Seattle Weekly and a series of pieces on finance for Playboy. One … two … one, two, three, four: doors really were opening for me now.
A decade prior, I’d been unsure how to begin an admissions essay and now I was writing on a regular basis in a public forum. Of course, I was always looking for new hurdles, the more difficult or seemingly incongruous, the better. These latest seemingly monumental challenges didn’t elicit any physical pain (well, maybe just a little—I’m still a crap typist). But I found them taxing in a different—and equally thrilling—way. I also loved the interactivity permitted by new media. When my pieces were posted online, I was able to engage in a genuine and substantive back-and-forth with readers. It may sound like a bit of a stretch, but it struck me as very punk rock—breaking down the barrier between artist and audience;