Backstage 101...part 3

My life in Toronto was all about music, helping manage my old band members from Moncton in their new band Exotic Gypsy, and finding my own band to sing with again. And of course, hanging out backstage at concerts was all part of the fun.  However, I soon tired of playing the slutty groupie over the phone and wanted a new challenge. Since I was working closely with bands, I wondered if a road manager or someone who had a position of power with a large act would consider talking to me and getting me into the show in a professional sense rather than under a sleazy pretense. It would be far less work and research for me, plus maybe I could even learn something.

I first tried this tactic with the band Slaughter. Their road manager was listed often in any band details that came up so I felt he was closely tied to them and would definitely be on tour with them. I tracked down their hotel in my usual way and soon found myself on the phone with Scott Cadwallader.

“Hi! I really hope I haven’t disturbed you…my name is Gill and I am an aspiring tour manager with a local Toronto band. I looked you up in Slaughter’s liner notes and hoped maybe you would talk to me and offer me some tips and hints on how to get into the industry in your capacity.”

He was really nice and responsive to me.

“Hey there! Absolutely! I am happy to help…I’m not sure how much time I will have at the show but why don’t you come on down to the hotel and we will have a chat before we head out?”

This was better than I could have hoped for! Did I hear right? Did he actually invite me to the hotel room? Wow! I eagerly accepted, dressed in my best rock chick business attire and made my way over to the hotel. I brought along one of my male band friends for support too.

When we got there he was incredibly nice and answered all sorts of my prepared questions. It was a whole new insight into the working world of music and I loved this new perspective. I loved being able to be me too. To make the occasion even more exciting, a towel-clad Slaughter member ran into the room to hide from his latest groupie guest. I got to see him beg Scott for help in getting rid of the well-used girl and I was ever so glad not to be one of those…even if I did play that role sometimes over the phone! That was as close as I wanted to be to being a groupie!

Before we left the hotel meeting, he made sure to give me enough tickets and passes for myself and all the guys in Exotic Gypsy and some of our friends too. The backstage that night was a better experience than I’d ever had! Scott sought me out after the show and showed me around, made sure I had lots to eat and drink and overall treated me more like a colleague than a mere fan. It felt great.

Depending on the concert, I now had these two methods to choose from when trying to get tickets and passes. I could play the professional or I could pretend to be the pussy platter. The hard part was getting the role to correctly line up with the band. I was not always successful at this and did fail at times.

Megadeth seemed to me like a more serious band than the Poison-esque party type, so when I reached their tour manager backstage at Canada’s Wonderland in the summer of 1992, I readied myself to be the consummate professional.

“Hi, I realize you are busy right now but I was wondering if you could spare me a few moments of your time…my name is Gill and I am an aspiring tour manager, I work with a local Toronto band, and I wondered if you would be able to meet with me and share some tips and insights into what you do.”

There was a silence and then with a sneer in his voice, Megadeth’s road manager said to me, “So Gill, Miss Aspiring Crew…you a nice girl or a naughty girl?”

I was a bit taken aback by this question. Why was he asking me a groupie related question when I had clearly approached him as a professional?

I fumbled. “Um…a nice girl?”

“Mehhp!” he made a rude noise. “Wrong answer babe! This band only likes naughty girls!”

Click. The phone went dead. Damn! I had not been expecting that! I let that one go and when I tried again to gain entry to a Megadeth show in Vancouver in 1993 I was wiser and played the sexier role, but getting access to Megadeth was just not meant to be for me. I was locked out of that one for being too sexy and told by a road crew personnel at that time, the band were not into groupies and trying to focus on bettering themselves. Bad timing between me and Megadeth!

Thankfully, most rock shows I attended were far easier to work my magic on and I made it in the door and backstage at almost any concert I tried for. Sometimes I even changed my voice if one method didn’t work; I would simply call back later and try the other! Sometimes I had male friends call and play up the fan angle if nothing else was working.

My inside scoop with Metallica never failed me though. The contact I had made with Zach, the bass tech, allowed me to go to many great Metallica shows and be able to share these great times with whatever friends I had at the time.

In Toronto, in late 1991, Metallica came through town in support of their huge Black album. They were riding the wave of their success and I was the star amongst my circle of friends to be able to claim I had met them before and had an inside connection for getting us all free tickets and passes. Many of my newer friends were sceptical and thought I just fabricated a lot of stories. People often thought this of me, until they saw the proof and I made it happen. It was yet another reason why I worked so hard to score tickets and passes…I always wanted to prove it to people, to show off what I could do. And I basked in the attention and loved being able to talk the talk and walk the walk.

Metallica played two shows in Toronto back to back that winter. I found Zach easily enough at one of the better hotels on my list and he hooked me up for both shows very graciously. Generously, he granted me a total of 4 tickets and passes for both nights, enough for myself and 3 friends. But Metallica always seemed to make me greedy. Maybe it was because I had such an easy inside track with Zach and I needed more of a challenge. Maybe I was feeling extra cocky and confident about what I could do. But most definitely there was a certain guy I wanted to impress, the bass player in my current band…and I made that happen but it almost came at a very high cost.

After the first night’s performance I had bought a tour booklet, filled with all the Metallica glossy pictures and information. My bass player Chris had a lot of friends who wanted to get in to the following nights show and I was eager to jump through any hoops he put up if it meant getting closer to him. So, looking through the tour book, I selected several other road crew names to call at the hotel to try and wheedle more tickets and passes out of. I would play the groupie this time but because I was already on the list under my own name, I decided to just use my bassist Chris’ name, since the name “Chris” could be considered either male or female. I could score the goods pretending to be Chris the female but when we got up to the will-call window, Chris the male would present his I.D. to get the envelope, and the box office staff would be none the wiser. It was a perfect plan, or so I assumed.

The roadie I reached in his hotel room sounded drunk or stoned, or maybe both, and extremely horny for what I was offering through the sound of my voice alone.

He granted four passes and tickets to one very sexy Chris Sonier, the female groupie. He would have no idea that Chris was not the woman of his dreams and that he would not be having a bevy of eager girls on top of him later, but he had unknowingly made my group of guy friends extremely happy!

Backstage that night, we were all having a great time, laughing and taking photos with Metallica. I was thrilled at how many of my friends were enjoying this with me and loved basking in the adulation of everyone’s amazement at what I had been able to do. Then without warning, a large, burly, tattooed, biker-esque-looking roadie entered the room and snarled, “Hey! Listen up! Where is Chris Sonier? Where is she? Answer me now, someone!” He was pissed! He searched all over the room with his angry stare as Chris kept his back turned, his head down and his face had gone white. There was an uncomfortable silence until Lars Ulrich, Metallica’s drummer shouted to him, “Why don’t you check the bus, she’s probably already on there and waiting for you to go give her some!” Everyone laughed and the stormy faced roadie stomped out, slamming the door and swearing. All of my friends exchanged raised eyebrows and smiles, but no one said anything that might give us away. Chris looked terrified, as could be expected. It was funny to laugh about later but no one ever let me forget that backstage moment! Especially Chris!

Over the years, I made many friends through the whole backstage game. Girls that I would see time and again, became the regulars like me. Although I was the only one who used my head to get there and not my body. But just because these girls were your stereotypical “groupies”, and spent time on the bus with the bands, stayed in their hotel rooms or even travelled with them in their entourages, a lot of them were really fantastic, fun people. They laughed at my methods and praised me for how I got what I wanted, but they honestly enjoyed the way they did things so much that none of them were really interested in pursuing the researched time and effort agenda that I stuck with.

I was not a complete stranger to a tour bus though. Through groupie friends I had spent some intimate time with the band Dangerous Toys and their management, but that had more or less fallen into my lap. I had not aimed for that scenario and it just came about due to the groupie girls I was in the company of. I even had a roommate for awhile who was an extremely slutty groupie which put me off the entire concept. Even if I was attracted to a certain member of a band, I honestly would feel quite uncomfortable entering into a sexual romping situation with essentially strangers. I am ruled by my head so much and tend to overanalyse even the most comfortable encounters, especially with members of the opposite sex, that groupie-type sex with rock stars was just not my thing. I was more into the music and wanted to meet the bands that created the music I loved and loved to perform myself.

So I was totally unprepared for what happened to me at an Iron Maiden concert in Toronto, late in the summer of 1992.

…end of part 3