• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 188 0

singer was this veteran of half-assed alternative rock bands who had finally hit pay dirt, sinking hit after hit. Casual conversation with him usually involved radio-industry-ese, phrases like “It got great phones,” and words like spins and adds. There was almost always an ultra-hot girl waiting for him by the side of the stage. I figured out his racket; for their encore, the roadies would troll the crowd, taking girls by the hand to the stage and then lifting them up on it, along with a few token boys. The crowd laughed and jumped around to the song, and then, as they were filing off the stage, the singer would grab his selected girl by the wrist, just as she walked behind the speakers and out of the audience’s view.

I thoroughly player-hated the guy. Plus, what good is trumpeting your pious sobriety if you’re just going to be addicted to something else?

The other act on the bill was the rapper Redman. I met him when I opened the door to the back lounge of the concourse kids’ bus and happened upon his ass as he was fucking a plump girl who still had her shirt on. Rock bands were required to maintain a dour decorum-of-authenticity, but Redman’s bus was wrapped with a gigantic ad for his album. His record company hired street-teamers ; as he played, they stood out in the crowd with placards, waving them up and down.

He had two hype men, twins whom they called “the twins”—they interjected “yeah” and “uh-huh” into microphones while Redman rapped the verses—a DJ, and a white guy who was selling mushrooms. The entire party tripped for most of the tour. Mushroom-fed Redman felt indestructible—he took a fake swing at a security guard at a show in Idaho; his fist swooshed inches from the guy’s face. Then Redman just wandered away.

At a show in Montana, Redman was busted for weed; one of the tour managers talked the constables out of taking him in. On a tour with fifty, maybe sixty techs and musicians and decadent energy-drink purveyors, most of whom carried some kind of contraband, the one guy who gets busted is the black guy.

Redman liked a song of ours, and one night just showed up onstage with a mic, singing the chorus. The next night he came on and did the chorus and the little chant section after the chorus. The next night, he added a freestyle. By the time he left the tour, he would come on and do two freestyle verses, two choruses, and a throw-your-hands-in-the-air chant; we’d end the song with the simulated death of Redman in a hail of sonic gunfire.

He left because he got a better offer. Rock agents would’ve scrupulously turned down the money because they’d committed to the lower-paying tour, but hip-hop agents were more cutthroat. He was replaced by the Black Eyed Peas—then unknowns—who were supergeeky and wanted every member of every other band they could round up to join them for a big jam at the end of their set. I’d say, “Sure,” and then would find someplace else to be when the time rolled around. These guys are going nowhere, I thought.

The buses traveled as a caravan. One night, at 3 AM, all the buses stopped for an hour. We found out that the concourse bus had seen a car flip over, tumbling into a ditch. One of the concourse kids was trained as an EMT, and he ran out onto the median and held the head of the driver up, keeping his broken neck aligned.

Apparently he cracked corny jokes for twenty minutes until the ambulance arrived, to keep the guy from going into shock. “He’ll probably never walk again,” said the kid, “but it was a good night.”

I was supereffusive with the EMT kid, called him a superhero. The next night, and every night for the remainder of the tour, he would come into our dressing room—uninvited—drink our beer, grin cheesy grins, and make schmoozy, repetitive small talk about the night he saved a life.

We played New York on the tour’s last night. I met a cute blonde girl from the hedge-fund belt of Connecticut and brought her back to my apartment. I crushed Ecstasy pills, cut the powder into lines, and we sniffed them up.

I put Marvin Gaye on. “Why are we listening to this old