Could you tell us a bit about yourself - your background, how you got into the business, how the BOC gig came about...

I was born & raised in Tennessee... Nashville & Knoxville... took Radio Broadcasting courses in High School (I went to a T&I (Trade & Industrial) school... we had our own FM Radio Station..) as I thought I wanted to be a DJ... I got into the electronics end of that & switched majors before graduating in 69...

Moved to Atlanta (the "Big" City) to attend DeVry Institute of Technology and made a bit of supplemental income roadieing for bands and repairing a TV or 8 track here and there... this began the melding of my electronics knowledge & my love for music...

On graduation in spring '71 I went to work at GAE, a local Atlanta Amp & Instrument repair shop... worked there until presented with the opportunity to open my own shop in summer of 72...

This went well for a year but in summer of 73 got an offer from an up and coming Atlanta band called Hydra to go on the road with them, mixing sound & repairing stuff as needed... along with driving, tour managing, nursemaid... everything this side of pimping I guess... this leads us into the next question...

How did the "Atlanta Connection" with the band come about and do you know if it still persists?

First met the Oysters in Louisville, Kentucky in the Summer of 1973... a Hydra roadie named Moe Slotin was driving our personnel van with me in the back (sleeping) when we had a bit of crash & roll-over on the way to Louisville from Chapel Hill, North Carolina... overnite... must be at least 500 miles...

I had a bit of neck injury & after being ambulanced to Hospital & fitted with cervical collar we were informed by our management that we still had a gig in Louisville... we were still at least 200 miles away... a chartered plane (small twin) was laid on and off we went as we had all the bands' instruments & stage clothes with us... we walked into the gig just as our band was taking the stage (with BOC guitars!)

I'll always remember then breaking a toe as I went to climb onto the mix platform (I was barefoot, having lost my shoes in the wreck)...

The Headliner was Slade & I was presented with a WEM console so long you needed roller skates to run it... NO labeling on anything (looked like a prototype or something)... the engineer ran down where my inputs were (scattered all over and not labeled) and left just as Hydra began playing... I spent quite a bit of time running faders up full... just to figure out what they may be...

After the show the BOC crew all wanted to meet these guys who would scrape themselves off the side of a mountain & still make the show... Rick Downey & George Geranios were pretty much the entire crew then... also met Sandy Pearlman & the band guys...

In spring of the next year we also shared a bill with BOC at Mardis Gras in New Orleans & had a few days off spent partying & hanging with BOC crew & band...

A month or so after that Moe left Hydra & wound up working for BOC... This began the "Atlanta Connection"...

I left Hydra in Dec 74 & a few weeks later the Hydra manager tipped me that BOC was looking for a roadie (He had become good friends with Pearlman & we had parted on good terms)... I made a few phone calls & Jan.75 found me flying to NYC to be a "Big Time" Rock & Roll Roadie.. (more on this in the next question)

Moe got hurt in April and was forced to leave the road for an extended rehab (he damaged his knee and the kneecap had to be removed and refitted - OUCH!).

About the same time I got a call from Rick Reyer, who was also working for Hydra, that he would like to change positions... he was hired... followed by Larry Miller who was a friend of Reyer's...

After I left in Jan 1976 one or two other Atlantan people filled various positions... Till in 78 the Welch Bros (of Atlanta) were hired as the first contracted Pyro company the band used both Kenny and Mel toured with the band followed by Mike Singleton... I believe the "Atlanta Connection" ended when I finally left in the Winter of 1990...

Sadly Moe Slotin passed away last fall (2001) due to Liver Cancer... he had gone on to mix the B-52's, Aerosmith and many others...

Looking back to your first week or two with the band - how did that go? What was your first "role" and how big was the crew at this point?

When I flew to NYC in January 1975 I was met at Kennedy by George Geranios that nite and taken to his appartment ("flat" to you lot) where I slept on the floor and on awakening the next morning we proceeded to the appartment of Allen Lanier to fetch his Hammond organ (cut-down model) down 5 flites of stairs... while there I was introduced to Patti (Smith) & I was quite intrigued by the fact that she kept running up to Allen with little scraps of paper with letters on them, saying "play these letters in this order & let's see what they sound like" and Allen would eke them out on his piano... she was composing music by letters... similar, I guess, to how she would write poety...

Our next stop was S.I.R. (Studio Instrument Rentals) where we unloaded the equipment truck... perishing cold & I had no proper winter coat (I'm from the South)... once ensconced in the warm confines of the rehearsal studio, I was given the guided tour of Buck's guitar rig that I would be responsible for... at this point the crew consisted of myself & Moe Slotin... Rick Downey had just been promoted to Road Manager but he was still helping to load and unload trucks as well as George... At gigs Rick would come down & put Albert's kit together and Moe and I would get it onstage & miked up...

The SIR rehearsals were then followed by a stint at the old Fillmore East with full lighting rig... where there was no heat except for kerosene space heaters (only run during the day while the band were there)... at this point I was appointed night watchman & got to stay there during the night to "protect" the gear...

This also entitled me to be present during "The Dictators" rehearsals which were held at night... after a few days of this I got a reprieve & was able to spend several nights at the Downey household with Rick's Mum & Dad (both of whom were fantastic folks who treated me as a son of their own)...

At this point we added a large transparency of the 1st album cover to the giant flags that had been the backdrop for sometime & some footlights to illuminate the dry ice fog... since this radically increased the work load on Moe & myself, Eric Weinstien (E-Factor) and Carol Dodd were added to our merry little troop...

Eric roadied for numerous bands before & after BOC (Kiss, Alice Cooper, Black Oak Arkansas & is presently Personal Assistant to Mr. Mark Wahlberg of movie acting fame... you can even catch E-Factor in a film now and then... he beats up John Cusak on the street in NYC near the beginning of "Being John Malkovitch" and plays a roadie (what a stretch) In "Rock Star"...

Carol went on to be L.D. for the likes of Jan Hammer, Nugent, U-2 and is still at it as far as I know... by the way I'm the one that gave him the name E-Factor as 3 people in our organization were called E for their first names (E.Bloom, E.Crowe, and E. Weinstien) and I made the comment one day that Bob See might have the See Factor (our lighting company), but we had the E-Factor & it stuck on him as a nickname...

So that was the state of our organization as we hit the road opening for Rod Stewart on a string of shows... At this point I only had to take care of Don... but we were all pretty busy...

As the new guy, how much "stick" (UK expression) did you come in for? Did you get any mad jokes played on you, impossible tasks given, crap jobs issued. And, if so, do the band get involved much in this sort of thing?

You asked about how much of the old "Stick" I got (I'm quite familiar with the term)... the answer is next to none and that's one of the magic things about why I loved working for these guys... they were so glad and appreciative of having competent help that I don't really remember any coming my way (I even got a healthy cash bonus for my stint freezing as a nitewatchman)

One of the first really good laughs I had from the band was the first show I did for them was in Rochester in Feb 75 [11 Feb 1975: Community War Memorial: Rochester, NY]. I was tending to Buck's & Joe's needs then and the first time I walked out on stage to do a guitar swap with Buck, I was towering over him as I'm 6'2 and was wearing rather large boots... he just looked up at me and says "Lose the Boots"... I'm still laughin 26 years later...

Between the Rod dates and the next swing some additions were made to Allen's rig and I was asked if I would swap to that from Donald's as it was quite a bit more complicated now. I agreed and that was what I did for many years, adding Bloom & Albert's gear as time went on...

Were you a fan of the band BEFORE you hooked up with them or did you get into them during your time with them? I'd be interested in your first impressions...

From the moment I first heard Elliot Crowe yell "Alright you Dogs, On Your Feet Or On your Knees" (I believe he is the one who came up with that line) I was hooked... This was my kinda Heavy Metal Thunder... I immediately went out & bought all their records (Both Of Them)... I used to fantasize about doing that intro... never in my wildest dreams thinking I'd be doing it for the better part of 15 years... So I guess you could say I was a fan first & yes it was an unimaginable thrill actually getting to work with the band... made even more fantastic after finding out what really great people they were.

Still in 1975, I believe you attended the Agents of Fortune sessions at the Record Plant... any memories of that experience?

The only sessions I attended were for an Albert song called "Sally" (which finally ended up on a re-release) & recording of some basic tracks for a Lanier song called "All The Hipster's Come From Puerto Rico"... it never saw any vocals and the clavinet riff for that eventually became the basis of "Lonely Teardrops"... It was certainly an exciting time at the Record Plant with BOC on the bottom floor and Kiss & Aerosmith upstairs... with us sending them buckets of Hershey's Chocolate Kisses & them sending us buckets of oysters... once the gear was installed there was little for us to so besides fetch the odd burger(Joe) or liverwurst sandwich(Allen)...

I was fascinated with being able to watch Pearlman, Krugman & the band at work... they would work for hours to solve a problem that I could only barely detect... I wondered for years about that Sally song & was sure thrilled when it finally came out...

Tell us what you remember about the 1975 Euro tour (especially the UK dates)

The best place to start telling any story is at the beginning... so we'll back up to the last US show before leaving for Europe. There is quite a discrepancy between my memory of the weeks leading up to the UK tour & what is listed at BOC.Com in the tour history section... I guess this is why Bolle is always after me to find my ledger from this period so we can nail down that part of the BOC history... Salt Lake was definitely the last show before Europe though, preceded by about a week of Heep shows in the western US...

As best I remember we had 3 days between the show in Salt Lake City, Utah (with Uriah Heep incl. one of my favorite musicians, John Wetton... I used to continually bug him to play me some King Crimson during Heep sound checks) & our departure date for the UK. In the interest of making things better for the crew, the band agreed to hire a driver to bring the equipment back to NYC, giving us a few days to get ourselves sorted out before leaving the country.

Great idea that just didn't pan out... 24 hrs after the hired driver left SLC, Rick Downey (Road Manager at the time) got a call from a young BOC fan who now had our equipment truck, but no money & no idea where exactly to take it!! It seems that the hired driver had picked this guy up hitchhiking & gave him Rick's phone # & the keys before leaving at the next truck stop.

We had no choice at this point but to wire this kid some float & hope for the best. Around noon on the departure day we get a call from the kid & he says he's almost out of gas & out of money, almost into New Jersey. We set out to meet him on the road, communicating with the truckers with a C.B. radio until finally spotting and flagging down our truck. The kid wanted no part of NYC so we gave him a few hundred bucks & said bye to him on the side of the road... I've often wondered if he ever had any clue as to the key role he played in us making our deadlines...

We now had a matter of hours to get all this gear to the freight brokers, verified against a carnet & get ourselves on a flite. I'm not sure how but we managed to accomplish all this, even though we had to use the equipment truck to get from the freight brokers to the terminal & pretty much left it on the curb & caught our plane to Heathrow.

First stop after arriving at Heathrow was the Montcalm Hotel for breakfast & a nap. This was not only my first experience with UK money (explained to me by a porter as "just like yours, but worth twice as much") but also my first experience with bangers, broiled tomatoes & real toast (with a few mushrooms on the side)... Tasty enough for a working man (what's in bangers anyway??... surely not any meat products... )

After a nap we found out that our gear had indeed made it to Heathrow & after a quick trip back to the brokers - I had to sign the friggin carnet - we settled in for a night off in London... can't speak for the rest, but mine didn't amount to much beyond a really great Italian dinner with Joe Bouchard... We spent the rest of the evening listening to old Jazz/R&B singers from the 20's & 30's on a "Stars of The Apollo" tape of mine.

The next day we had a rehearsal scheduled at the Manticore rehearsal theatre of ELP... We were met there by the folks from the production companies we had hired for lights & noise...

At this point I suppose I should try to list the folks who were on this tour... It's been a while, but here goes:

Sam Judd: Stage Right & Acting Crew Chief
Robert (Pelican) Hiltz: Drum Tech
Ricky Reyer: Stage Left
Larry Miller: Pyro & Fog Machines
Glenn (Gravy) Cotita: Grand Piano set-up and tuning (hence the nickname: Gravy Train)
John Watkins: Lighting Designer

Marshall Bissett (Vino Schmata): Truss Elf
Nick (can't come up with a last name here although it could be Mason & I even roomed with this guy... he was LD for Curved Air at the time): Master Electrician
Andy (young kid with tons of energy... no chance of a last name here): Truss Elf

Colin Waters: Chief Engineer
Geoff Newsome: Everything Else

The Lennon Brothers (Chris & I can't remember the other one)
Norman (AKA Abnorman): Driver (Can't remember the Coach Company)
 

After assembling with our Lites & Noise at the Manticore I went on a run across London with Colin Waters to a company called ILS where we picked up the Hammond Organ for the tour as we needed one that would run on 240v/50hz... this was quite an interesting trip as I was able to view quite a bit of the city (NO clue which parts..don't even know where the Manticore was) & we made a stop at some friends of Colin's who were squatting in a big old house... quite a deal...

Arriving back at the Manticore & getting the band settled in I promptly fell asleep in a foam-lined case for a Genie hoist... woke up several hours later shivering & deaf as the case was in front of the PA which was now on & quite loud... the case was now also closed & latched (bit of STICK) which led to a few exciting moments getting someone to let me out ... now the fun began as we loaded our band gear into the semi (Artic to you Euro types) followed by sound & lights, only to find we were about 15 feet short of truck space... several very laborious re-trys later another truck was summoned & we were finally done around 4AM & headed for Hammersmith.

I don't have many memories of that first gig except for all the GLC rules that almost kept us from using any special effects, but I do remember Motorhead as I was already a big Hawkwind fan & was anxious to see just what Lemmy had cooked up... as you mentioned, the crowd had no idea what to make of them except that they were too loud to enjoy...

My all time Motorhead memory is from that night though... as I was helping carry off the drum kit, the first cymbal stand I picked up slipped right through my fingers to the floor, it was then I noticed that the metal stands were all covered with a thick coating of what looked to be motor oil, upon inquiring "what the feck" I was informed that the drummer liked the smell of the oil on the metal stands as the stage lights heated them up... I remember thinking "these boys have got a bad case of Heavy Metal"... Little did I know the history that Motorhead would compile...

We always had fun working with them as they were interested in little else besides how loud, fast and high they could play... no politics involved... gotta play that Ace Of Spades from No Sleep Til Hammersmith every so often on the old home stereo... just to blow the cobwebs out of my Carver power amp... Ahhhh the memories...

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After Hammersmith, you then went to Europe for the best part of a month and came back to play 4 more dates in the UK. Any memories about any of these gigs?

When we left Denmark for Germany, our coach broke down at the ferry, along came the coach carrying Chapman & Whitney's Streetwalkers (who we had met several nights before when we went to see them open for Sabbath (who booked that?) in Copenhagen). The guys on our sound crew knew them from a previous tour. I knew their music & had been a big Rodger Chapman fan since Family... quite a treat for me as we loaded up onto their coach for a ride to Frankfurt... not much conversation from Charlie Whitney as he seemed to be VERY sleepy (can you say smack attack??) but a splendid time was had by all as the vino & cognac flowed. Also met Bob Tench on this trip as he was on second guitar...

I remember being taken to a brothel in Frankfurt for my birthday (31 Oct)... the less said about that the better... how about one word... TWINS! [I got a shirt for my birthday. Ed.]

The biggest show on the tour was to be in this huge place in Paris... [Pavillion De Paris, November 3rd 1975] All the European press was gonna be there and we were told all must be perfect... & everything was till 30 min before showtime when I discovered that all the power in this place was coming from portable generators and was not frequency regulated... therefore the Hammond Organ (1/2 of Alan's rig at the time) was useless as it would warble flat & sharp and never lock up...

So yours truly grabbed an interpreter and all of the extension cable I could find and ran down the street knocking on doors till on the next block we found a little french granny who agreed to let us plug a line through her front window & into the wall to get a regulated source!

We put at least 5 lbs of gaffer tape on it so she wouldn't be tempted to unplug it... and at the end of the nite we couldn't get her to the door so we just cut it off at the window... it's still plugged in for all I know...

That was also the show where mid-way thru the set someone walked between the backlites & the backdrop, casting a huge shadow behind the band... As I apprehended the culprit & prepared to show him the door, I discovered it was none other than Mick Jagger, who only wanted to know if they were going to play Maserati GT!!

I put in the request with the boys and Mick got to hear his favorite BOC (Yardbirds) song...

I certainly remember the day off in Amsterdam and a late nite trip to the Canal Strasse... the basement bar at the Paradiso was the first time I had ever seen Hashish (& anything else you could imagine) being openly sold & used...

Our trip to Spain was highlighted by one of our trucks being damaged near Madrid... the truck was towed to the gig & we offloaded the day before the show... the first nite in Madrid was televised LIVE to the entire country... the BOC web site doesn't show it but we played 2 nites, 2 shows a nite there & it was all sold out... the promoter told us we could have whatever we wanted for crew food as he had made a bunch of money, so we decided on steak & potatoes (Pomes Frittes?) come dinnertime we were chowing down heartily till one of the Brits inquired as to the origin of the "steak" we were eating... upon finding out that it was indeed horse, most of the crew went off in search of "proper" food while I rather enjoyed extra helpings of "Cheval"... this story is told often around my wife's group of horse enthusiasts when they accuse me of not liking horses... I assure them that I really do love them... with a bit of garlic butter on the side...

On the second day someone discovered that drugstores (Chemists in Euro) in Spain sold Mandrax (European Qualuudes) over the counter! This almost brought the tour to a screeching halt... thank goodness for a day off... when it came time to leave Madrid for Bilbao we were forced to rent a local truck as a replacement had not arrived... It was what we refer to here in the states as a stake truck... wooden fencing for sides and covered with a large tarp... we christened it the Cabbage Wagon as we had to clear several hundred lbs of rotten cabbage out of it to load our gear... Der Kabbage Vagen was sitting at the next gig waiting for us though and we finally got a replacement in Barcelona...

All I remember about Switzerland was how expensive everything was...

Brussels was the scene of the now infamous BOC/Gestapo encounter... I don't guess I'll ever live it down...

The morning after the show when checking out of the hotel (most of band & crew, including myself already on bus), some discrepancy came up & the hotel manager snatched a bunch of our baggage into lock-up and was holding it for ransom...

At this point (unbeknownst to me) some of our crew went up the stairs & trashed the first room they came to... which happened to be mine... Meanwhile I'm sitting out on the bus next to our advance man Eric Gardener (more on him later), when several carloads of the old "Stats Polezei" roll up...

After checking out their jack-boots & leather trench coats, I commented to Eric (who is Jewish) that I was really glad it wasn't 1943 & that those guys hadn't come looking for me... the trench coats came back out of the hotel a minute later, tromped up into the bus and demanded to know "Who is this Sam Judd? Is this a man or is this a PIG!!!???" I was then marched up to the trashed room (frigging great job, TV through the window into the alley below, water spewing where the sink used to be before it went to the alley, etc etc), where I was questioned as to why I did this...

I asked the group which one spoke the best English, then looked him right in the eye & told him, "I didn't do this, but you give me 60 seconds on that bus & I'll hand you whoever did.. ." Returning to the bus, I informed Gravy & Geoff that the jig was up and it was time to pay the fiddler (Never mind how I found out it was them between the hotel & the bus)...

After all the damages were settled it was off to the airport & back to the good old Montcalm in London... On arrival there we found out that Buck had become a papa while we were hassling with the Gestapo that morning... Cuban cigars & Hennessey Cognac were the order of the day...

Many years later Eric Gardener has managed Alice Cooper, Todd Rundgren, Bill Wyman, Brian Setzer & many more... he also managed Elvira, the Vampire looking vixen well known here in the states as the hostess of many a late nite spook movie on T.V...

I ran across Eric at a BOC show in L.A. in the 80's and jokingly told him how bummed I was that I hadn't gotten a Christmas card from Elvira... a few weeks later I received in the mail at home an 8x10 color glossy of Elvira in all her cleavage focused glory, signed "To Sam, Are You A Man Or A Pig?"...

Anyone want to try explaining that one to their wife??? A few years after that I found out that my father-in-law was a closet Elvira fan... had pics of her plastered all over his workshop, where his wife would never see them... not mentioning my connections to him, I arranged for an 8x10 to arrive in his mail too... signed "To Herb, Thanks For the Greatest Time Of My Life, Elvira"

Now as for the remaining UK shows...

Whilst setting up for the show a chap informed us that there was a fire smoldering in the ceiling near the stage & that we would have to leave the building.

One of our lads named Larry Miller (A fellow Atlantan... there was even one more for a total of three at this point... more about Larry later) had once served as a fireman and went squirming into the attic and began frantically calling for us to pass any and all extinguishers up to him as there was now a healthy blaze going...

He managed to hold it at bay till the Local Fire Department showed up and began praising him as a hero for his quick work... The Headline in the paper next morning was "Rock Hero Saves City Hall" and a big photo of Larry's smiling facade... the local paper may actually have it on archive...

[The newspaper would undoubtedly be the Newcastle Journal or Evening Chronicle both produced by Thompson's newspapers. Any Geordies living nearby fancy a delve into their archives for November 21st 1975?   Let me know... Ed]

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My day went fine, found a great record shop round behind the gig & a fine steakburger, chips & beans (don't be stingy with that H.P. now... ) Until, during the loadout, I rolled my ankle over a fat power cable & took a header off several steps of the choir section behind the stage...

I went to stand and the ankle said NO! in definite terms... ambulance ride to hospital revealed no break only a bad sprain... as I'm leaving... an ambulance arrives with Larry who has had a load shift onto him in the truck and obviously breaking his arm...

Someone on the tour took a picture of Larry and I in the Hotel lobby next morning, me in a wheelchair, Larry's arm in a sling & we're holding up the paper with Larry's pic... I finished the rest of the tour & flite home on crutches & we got extra locals to load the trucks... big fun...

Larry is at this moment in time battling inoperable cancer and has only JUST retired from the road and gone fishing... he actually lives only a few miles from me these days & I think of him often with a smile...

I have NO memory of the Manchester Free Trade Hall gig... I think I was briefly at the gig during set-up and then spent the day & night on pain killers at the hotel...

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I went down and supervised the set-up of my gear and don't think I returned there either... I do remember it was in fact cold and rainy... [ Tell me about it... Ed. ]

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I remember very little about his show other than the band played really well & the café across from the Hammie Odeon had the best cake & hot custard I've ever eaten... I had 2 or 3 and they cut me off to save some for their regular customers...

Sorry I don't have more UK memories here but once my ankle was damaged I was in a fog & hobbling around on a cane...

What do you think of that 1975 Cult compared with what came later - and even today?

By this time in their careers BOC had complete mastery of the songs on their set list... the downside to that was that they (& their audience to a minor extent) had become quite weary of the ones that had been around the longest. I've recently had the pleasure to acquire nice CD copies of "BOC Live In The West" which is a compilation of live sound board recordings from a Northwest Tour July 3-8 of 75, originally distributed to band & crew on cassette in 75 by George Geranios...

Hopefully most of this stuff will eventually see the light of day (2 tracks already have, 7 Screaming Diz Busters & O.D'd are on the Tyranny & Mutation Re-Release... mistakenly dated 1974 instead of 1975) because even though most of these songs are on other live albums, these performances are amazing... Just go get that re-release & listen to Bucks guitar work on Diz & then believe me when I tell you it is ALL that good.

The band certainly got better technically as the years went on (& continues even today), but for me that 75 lineup & set will always be the BOC for me... As for a comparison with the band today I'm at a disadvantage as it's been over 3 years since I've seen them (4/24/99 Cadillac Ranch)... but the last show I saw them play was a STUNNING set... I don't think I heard a single misplaced note in the whole set (& I'm just the guy to spot one) and the boys seemed to actually be having a good time.

You left in 1976 and came back in August'78 after BOC's sellout Euro tour. First of all, why did you leave, what did you do in that period and what were the circumstances which led to you rejoining.

By the end of 1975 I had been more or less continuously touring since summer of 73. Following the death of my Grandmother at Christmas & having to fly all around the country in order to attend her funeral, I became fairly despondent & depressed at not being able to connect with family & friends.

At the Kiss show in Nassau County Coliseum on New Years Eve the BOC road crew were being used as pawns in a game of leverage being waged by our management & the Kiss management with the promoter in the middle... basically each time Kiss informed us of an effect (flash pots, glitter cannons, etc) that they were going to prevent us from using, our management would tell us to pack the gear in the truck... the 3rd time I closed the door on that truck I informed all concerned that I was done for the evening & would be seeking employment elsewhere in the future.

I returned to TN initially then went on down to Atlanta towards the spring. The job market was fairly tight & I had very little initiative at the time & plenty of friends willing to put me up indefinitely (especially if I cooked for them) so it wasn't till fall that I went back to work.

I found work in the fall with an Audio/Visual rental company (Greyhound Audio/Visual) that was wallowing for need of technical help... I went from a delivery driver to Warehouse Manager in about 6 weeks.

In Feb 77 I managed to mix business with pleasure when I went along as a co-driver on a trip to return some stage sets to a studio in NYC... I had perceived that the Amazing Blue Oyster Cult was in fact playing a show @ the same Nassau County Coliseum on the Fri before we had to drop the gear off on Mon.

It's really easy to get backstage for a show when you turn up in a fully loaded 24 ft truck, so imagine the surprise on the faces of Rick Downey & crew as I strolled onstage & asked when the crew dinner was going to be ready as it had been a long drive from Atlanta !!!

After the show that night R.D. said that the guys really wanted me back & made a nice offer that I had to turn down as I now had responsibilities that I couldn't just walk away from... as things turned out, I probably should have taken his offer... however...

In March 77 I married a lady I had actually known for many years but she was in those days the girlfriend of a good friend of mine. By the time I returned to Atlanta In 76 she had been married & divorced & he already had a significant other as well. So Margot & I began our relationship in the summer of 76 & it continues to this day.

All went well for a while. I went into the A/V production division, designing, doing the photo shoots & layout work & programming computerized (I laugh now at what we called a computer then) Multi-media shows utilizing dozens of slide & film projectors & the like, until spring of 78 when the Greyhound Corp had anti-trust legislation filed against them as they now owned part of an airline, a car rental line, an Exposition service, and an A/V company... pretty well tying up the convention business in several ways... they then agreed to dissolve the A/V division & I was out of work again...

I drew a little unemployment that summer till some friends & I decided to turn up unannounced at a BOC gig in Nashville TN...

Upon arriving in Nashville I had a message to call home & my wife informed me that Rick Downey (He was the Road Manager & L.D. then) had called & wanted me to call him. She had kept my secret so imagine the look on his face when he opened the door of his hotel room & I was standing there saying that I had heard he wanted to talk to me! What he wanted to tell me was that the band really wanted me to come back out with them & could afford to back up the request...

After getting approval from Margot I found myself back on the road in Sept.78 @ the big Day On The Green concert in Oakland...

When you did return, did you get to hear (2nd hand but what the hell) of any tales from the European tour?

For second hand memories of the 78 Euro tour, I think the one story that everyone had to relate was about this hilarious-appearing joker in glitter & sequined tights that had opened somewhere in France... everyone had their own version of the woman's voice slurring (in their worst French accent) "Heeere he eeez, JJJJJonnny Cooogere"... yep, Mr. Mellencamp himself in his short lived "Glitter" incarnation... also endless stories about the GLC vs. the lasers (it was a miracle they were able to use them at all)... everyone was blown away at the frightful way that the punters "rode" the balcony @ the Glasgow Apollo... Lord knows how it never actually fell (if it did I didn't hear about it)...

But above all else there was a general sense that European touring was getting a bit easier now... what with caterers traveling with the crew & cooking 3 squares a day (there were now getting to be McDonalds in most cities... you could always use that as plan "B")... incidentally I was almost put on this tour... when I saw the guys in Atlanta in April, R.D. informed me that their current Keys guy (Tom Lindenseltzer, AKA "Sugar Bear") seemed to be having troubles acquiring a passport & if he didn't get one would I answer the call ? I told him yes & later that month packed a bag & waited by the phone but alas his "papers" were in order & I was still "in reserve)

What changes did you notice in the size of the stage crew when you rejoined and how well did you adapt to the new laser technology?

No comparison in the size of the stage crew as there were now more people just working on Lasers than had ever been on the crew in 75... it was an era of specialization as I now didn't even have to set up Bloom & Allen's guitar rigs, although I still did their hand offs & support for the show (Ricky Reyer eventually lobbied for this to change around 1981)

As for the Lasers, we should back up to the mid summer of 75... I was summoned back from the road to NYC and informed that Sandy Pearlman had decided to equip the band with lasers after seeing the Led Zeppelin tour... I was sent to a small place that was called I believe "Laser & Holography Workshop & NY Museum of Holography" run by a chap named Steve Cohen... he briefed me over a period of 2 days on the basic principals involved & then unveiled what he & his associates had built for us to take on the road...

I was greeted with the sight of a plywood box, roughly the size of a VW Bug and weighing almost as much... it was sitting on caster wheels about the size and quality you might put under a small TV stand... my first thought was... "This thing won't last 1 day in our truck.."... they then informed me that this thing could never be vibrated or God forbid, receive a sharp blow in any way... the laser they had in this thing was a an air cooled 750 Mw (1/3 Watt) argon gas laser... I didn't know it then but this thing had about 25 to 30 times LESS power than we would need (The 3 (sometimes 4) systems we used in 78 were 12-15 WATTS EACH & required at least 5 gallons of water per minute EACH to cool)...

The scanning system was even funnier as it consisted of condoms (I'm not joking) stretched over small 3 inch speakers with very thin front surface mirrors glued onto them... you fed sine wives to these 2 speakers & got your vertical deflection from the first & horizontal from the other... the majority of my training consisted of me learning to replace the condoms as they broke hourly...

Next day this thing was loaded into an SIR truck to haul it 50 blocks downtown to the Kimlon labs (Kimlon was a magician who developed and deployed all of Kiss's original effects) as it was actually a large enough space to see a viable demo of what we could expect at a show...

After finding dollies to move the VW (the casters that were not crushed were driven up THROUGH the plywood bottom), we smoked up the place & turned it on... the scene that followed was later re-enacted with minor changes in the movie "Spinal Tap" as Pearlman & company were astonished at the LAMENESS of what their money had bought!!!...

That thing was sent back uptown (I never saw it again) and after finding out what it would REALLY cost to put lasers on the road (Zep just rented theirs) the entire project went away... so I guess - technically - I was the FIRST BOC laser tech...

The situation upon rejoining the band was such that the actual Laser Tech, Bruce Friedman (click here to see his site) was not fond of ANYONE having much to do with the scanning systems (all proprietary technology developed by David Enfante) as they were considered "secret"... he usually had at least 2 helpers I believe... the scanners were a fairly straightforward set of servo controlled mirrors & collimators used to "route" the beams down fiber optic paths to laser bracelets for Bloom or remote scanners (on top of the P.A. stacks) or out into the crowd, sky... whatever you want... once the BRH (Bureau of Radiological Health) saw one of our shows they realized that if there wasn't a law prohibiting what we were doing (there wasn't) that there should be (there soon was)... once the band was so severely limited as to what they could do, it no longer made sense to shoulder that huge burden any longer...

When we went back out in 79, Michael "Moon" Mullins was the new laser tech & he graciously accepted any & all assistance I could give him so I began helping him out when I got my other gig done... I believe May 13 '79 was the end of that era... a fantastic outdoor show in Hawaii... the lasers drew patterns on the clouds over Wakiki beach... (after Moon Mullins & I spent part of a day with the FAA, explaining how they needed to issue an advisory to pilots climbing out of Honolulu airport to not look directly down the beams if they saw strange lights in the cockpit... (it would have "dazzled" their eyes & they wouldn't have been able to see their instruments for a bit as their eyes adjusted to the low light of the cockpit)... needless to say the FAA were very thrilled to allow this(but they did)... as I watched those planes continuously flying thru those beams, I've wondered til this day just how cool did that look for those passengers who saw it...

With the advent of the laser techs, did a defined hierarchy develop backstage?

So far as a hierarchy, I suppose there was in the minds of some, and certainly as a "Band" roadie, I & the others with that designation had the daily "Ear" of the band... but I always looked on touring like a very civil (and MOSTLY bloodless) form of warfare... we were all in the trenches together to fight the war (The Road & it's constant surprises) one battle (Gig) at a time...

First of all, how long after you rejoined did the lasers last as a going concern? What was the last gig BOC did with them, can you recall? Were the band worried that they were going to get caught in a situation where they HAD to have the lasers at gigs or people would be disappointed.

As I believe the Hawaii shows were the last for the Lasers then it really wasn't long after I rejoined that they went away... only a few shows really, spread out over a large period of time due to the time off thru the winter of 79... It seems to me that the band did indeed not want to get into a situation where the lasers were THE SHOW & the music became secondary... there was also the crushing expense... Columbia was never footing the bill for any of this & after touring with the lasers for a few years, the band members apparently realized they would have made a LOT more money without them... the actual plan as I was briefed was that the lasers would be brought back for "selected" shows during 79... I was told I would be receiving further training & BRH license preparation in anticipation of the Superbowl of Rock shows in Dallas & New Orleans that summer...

As it turned out the promoters were expecting to see the lasers at these shows and were quite disappointed that there were none (we were even given the coveted closing position on these shows as apparently no one wanted to follow the lasers & it was felt it would take too long to tear them down)... why did the lasers go away? I really couldn't say definitively... several factors were involved though, the expense involved (owning them may not have been the way to go), & the fact that the BRH had made illegal most of the effects the band had become famous for... there was also the notion that they were getting more applause than the songs most nights...

Funniest part of this to me was the fact that for the next 2 years or so, reviewers would write of being astounded at the fantastic laser effects they had witnessed at the BOC shows!! I remember @ the Superbowl of rock show in Dallas hearing the radio announcer that morning describing in great detail all the work & equipment being set up before his eyes as the BOC crew were installing the laser show to be used that night... we were sitting in the bus wondering if we had been replaced by a new crew or something!!

Early 79 must have been great with dates in Japan and Hawaii. What did you make of Japan and what did Japan make of BOC? I'm guessing the admiration was mutual.

In spring of 79 the BOC tour re-convened in the Beacon Theatre in NYC for rehearsals to prepare for more touring... we had the lasers set up as well as Moon Mullins was still sorting out all the mods he had done to the scanning systems... this lasted a week or so & then we hauled our gear (that which was going to Japan) over to the exporters... It went by ship which took about a month & in the meantime I went home to Atl for a bit... a few weeks later we went back to NYC & loaded our semi with the gear that would meet us in Sioux City, Iowa to begin the U.S. Leg of the tour... then we got on a plane for Japan...

Now flying from NYC to Japan you follow the sun, so it doesn't get dark the whole time even though you're on the plane for 20 hrs or so... not good... I also remember being taken aback looking out the window & seeing those big red meatballs on the wings of that plane (Japan Air Lines)... we stopped briefly in Anchorage for fuel as the planes couldn't fly non-stop for that far in 79... they can now... don't know if that's good or bad... when we left the plane in Anchorage we were given a voucher for a meal & let out into a holding area that we could NOT leave (Customs & Immigration)... turned out the voucher was good for either an American (2 hot dogs, fries & Coke) meal, or a Japanese (Soba noodles with chicken & Tempura veggies) meal... I opted for the Jap fare & discovered it was superior in all respects...

When we finally arrived @ Narita it was late afternoon there & it mercifully got dark on the way to Tokyo. After checking into the FINE Tokyo Prince Hotel (located right next to Tokyo Tower, the one Raymond Burr watches Godzilla attack Tokyo from in the movie) & a meal, everyone got some sleep in anticipation of our day off the next day (I believe it was the only one)

Next day found us headed down to the Shinjuku shopping district in search of bargains & we were not disappointed, almost everyone on the tour bought the latest edition of small Sanyo boombox (Walkmans hadn't appeared yet) & I got a deal on an Olympus 35 mm camera system, also very popular were calculator/lighter combos & pens withdigital clocks... It was while shopping for silk clothing for Mom & Missus that the jet lag caught up with me with a vengeance... I felt as if I was getting the flu & dying over a period of about 15 minutes... very strange... the sales help were Johnny-On-The-Spot with hot tea & fruit juices & in a little while I was much better...

A word here about Japanese service... they know the true meaning of the word... they are more than ready to answer questions, show you anything in the store... even run around the corner to another store in order to show you something they may not have in stock... I had to laugh though when the sales girls were modeling kimonos for me & asked which one of them looked most like my wife... Margot is 6'2 " with bright RED hair... NOT EVEN CLOSE to the sub 5' all black haired sales staff, but you have to admit they were trying..

Next day we met up with our gear at the Yamaha rehearsal studios... here we sorted out the rented equipment we would be interfacing with our gear & found out just how cool our Liaison guys were when they went over to CBS & picked up a big box of Cassettes for us... I still have the "Some Enchanted Evening" one that I ended up with... we were told by our translators that the literal translation of the title as it appeared on the cover was "Crazy Dinner On Moonlit Night"... the lyric sheet from it produced fits of laughter as Bloom & I discovered it had apparently been copied phonetically from the songs in English, translated into Japanese, then back to English... making 1/2 or more phonetically correct but VERY wrong... Sample: the line from "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" that goes "In this dirty old part of the city" became "It was 24 miles from the city"... what a hoot... I remember Eric laughing so hard he had to stop & clean the tears from his glasses...

Next morning we were at the Sun Plaza to meet the crew that would be traveling with us (that's when the accompanying pic was taken)... we instructed them as to exactly how our gear set up & they took copious notes, measurements & drew diagrams & it was set up just that way each day when we arrived... they even photographed the settings on synths, mixers & stuff to make sure it was all consistent... nice touch...

The crowds took a little getting used too as they were so orderly & quiet it was almost spooky... I was helping Mullins on the lasers for an hour or so one afternoon & looked around to discover the house was FULL!! They hadn't made a sound coming in being seated & were waiting silently for the show to begin... a little different from... say the Glasgow Apollo eh??

It also took a while to get used to the afternoon shows as the last trains ran quite early on weekends & as that's how they ALL got there, the shows had to be over early enough to get them all home... they stayed that reserved even during the show until the lasers lit up, then it was like somebody threw a switch & they all went nuts, cheering, tossing hats &such... on one of the Sun Plaza shows an actor from the TOHO studios came down with a monster costume (not Godzilla) & made a guest appearance on-stage... very big hit with the kids...

Every where we went as we traveled by train around the country and by subway around Tokyo, little children would absolutely FLOCK around Moon Mullins & Myself... we eventually found out thru our liaison folks that they assumed we were professional wrestlers as the only Americans they ever saw that were as big as us always were wrestlers... Mullins was somehow offended at this but I was amused & tried to at least be kind to them...

The food was good... our hosts went out of their way to make sure we found something acceptable... At times there were devilish details though, as I had to quickly figure out just how to eat a large beef patty with a fried egg on top, sitting on a bed of rice with CHOPSTICKS!!

One interesting side story here, after the show in Nagoya the promoter took everyone out to eat at a Korean Bar-B-Que establishment across town... R. Downey & I managed to miss the group as they had already left when we got to the lobby... one of the liaison folks though was kind enough to put us in a cab & give the driver directions to the restaurant... Rick & I began to realize that this was the first time we were without any translators at all as the cab ride droned on forever, eventually becoming apparent we were lost as the driver began to stop & knock on doors (it was getting late) to ask for directions... eventually he disappeared up an alleyway & came back to usher us up the alley (trusting souls weren't we?) to at last be greeted at the restaurant by an old lady who also spoke no English but had a note from the promoter (in English) for us (the rest of our lot were long gone by now) stating that he had prepaid for our meal & the taxi would wait.

For those who may not be familiar with Korean BBQ, it involves marinated strips of meat (usually beef) and veggies that you cook yourself on a red hot metal dome (like a Roman warriors helmet) mounted in the center of the table... you then eat that stuff over sticky rice... quite tasty witha bit of spicy Kim Chee cabbage on the side...

After the lady brought out the BOC pic that the band had signed & insisted we sign too, we began trying to converse in what broken English she had available... at this point Rick began asking her if she had any meat that might be more tender as he had a loose tooth... just bring us some more TENDER meat he insisted... imagine our shock & surprise when she re-appeared with a BABY in her arms!!! ... as it dawned on us that she was just showing off her newest grandchild, shock gave way to fits of laughter that I'm sure she still doesn't understand... the Road always has surprise turns it seems...

The Japan tour ended all too soon and was capped off by the last day we were there spent partying down in honor of Rick Downey's birthday... to the point that several of us almost missed the plane due to being in the bar instead of @ the gate... we mostly slept on the plane ride to Hawaii & on our arrival there we were pleased to discover that we had crossed the International Dateline & it was Rick's birthday again, thereby requiring a resumption of festivities... for more on those Hawaiian shows see the question above...

In late 79, the Cult embarked on a 14 date UK tour to promote Mirrors. First of all, what did you make of that LP, and next, do you remember anything of any of the dates. It seems a strange set of dates really - 4 nights at Hammersmith Odeon seems a bit excessive, no Liverpool date (something I'd come to get used to) and 2 nights at the Southampton Gaumont!!

Mirrors in my opinion was an experiment to explore the "Pop" side of BOC.I think it was a success insomuch as the sound they were looking for was achieved, but it seems their audience was not ready for such a change in direction... you should have seen the faces of the punters in the front rows when the band first broke out acoustic guitars & played "In Thee" live... boy were they confused!!!... not to say that it's not a GREAT song... could have been a HUGE hit if covered by the right artist (still could I guess)...

Side Note: During her senior year in High School, my daughter Rosie worked up a killer version of "In Thee" with 2 friends accompanying her vocal on acoustic guitars for the school talent show...

Certainly Dr.Music holds up as a "Classic" BOC song although it rocks much harder live than on the disc..

Sun Jester was entertaining live while it was in the set...

The title cut was probably my favorite, although I could have done without the backing vocals...

"The Vigil" never really did much for me, although it seems to have it's fans...

Could "You're Not The One" sound any more like a Cars song??

"Lonely Teardrops" seemed to be yet another variation of "All The Hipsters Come From Puerto Rico"... like "Searchin' For Celine"... while not too prolific, Allen sure comes up with some jewels once in a while doesn't he???

As for the tour...

That was a very cold & wet experience from the get-go...

I remember the bus ride down to Brighton very well as it was quite scenic & I have quite a few pics taken out the window... Brighton is a quite desolate place that time of year, but it was cool to actually be there as I had seen it many times in English movies. The gig was a typical first gig in a foreign country, this one even more fun since we had no rehearsal time to try out all the rented gear... I had a unique little set of problems relating to receiving a FULL-SIZE (12ft!) "Grand" piano instead of the 6 1/2 foot "Baby Grand" that I had ordered... someone got a little confused over @ the hire company... I seem to remember wondering where the crowd was as it was a very sparse house that night... I don't remember any of the other gigs looking so empty...

That was one very long & cold bus ride that night (few busses in the UK @ the time had bunks & this one barely had heat) I remember we got a morning hotel room (in Stoke ?) & I walked across the street to the train station at dawn for a bacon sandwich & a "cuppa" for the nap...

Bingley Hall was quite cold & had a very high stage... that fact, coupled with the fact that no one had reckoned on such a huge piano, meant that there was no way to get the monster on stage... eventually the problem was solved when it was determined that a farmer down the road had a tractor with a fork lift unit on the back, after a price was reached & met, he put it on-stage for me... damned if I can remember how we got it down...

Leeds was a trip because the audience was so entirely male (not that there were ever very many women @ BOC shows in Europe)... the roar after the first song reminded me immediately of the Who's "Live At Leeds" album because there was not a single female voice to be heard...

Those shows @ the Gaumont went well... we stayed in The Dolphin Hotel which has been there since the middle ages... they claimed to have a guest book w/Christopher Columbus's signature in it... the hallways were very narrow winding up & down & around... the doors to the room were only a little over 5 ft tall, rounded @ the top with the knob in the center... fascinating...

I remember loading out of the Gaumont over an elevated (20 ft or so off the pavement) ramp of plywood that had a nice coating of ice on it... very scary stuff.

The trip to Wales was highlighted by our bus driver hitting a fox on the road & when we inquired as to why he went back to get it & threw it in the boot, he informed us that he could sell it for at least 5 quid at any butcher shop... Hopefully for the fur???

I'm pretty sure that the last show played on this tour in Manchester was the one where our rigger George Guido had a bit of an argument w/a chap in the pub that's right out the stage door of the place that afternoon & it got quite huffy...

Later that evening the guy showed up backstage & demanded satisfaction & Guido agreed to accommodate him (quite the martial arts type, George was going to enjoy this) but as he stepped thru the door someone who was waiting for him cracked him across the face with a length of pipe, breaking his nose & knocking him cold...

After returning from hospital (he looked worse than he actually was), it was determined that the local bills had a long history with both people involved (they had been positively identified by numerous witnesses) & since both were on a parole from prison, the mere act of George swearing out the charges would put them right back... so I don't think they got away with it... could have been worse... [Hmmm... that sort of thing wouldn't have happened in Liverpool (although I can't guarantee your bus would still be where you left it... ) Ed.]

Do you recall Magnum, who supported you on at least some of these dates? Any run-ins or trouble?

I definitely remember "Magnum". Although I'm buggered to remember his name today, I made friends with one of their roadies who was still having to deal with Mini-Moogs...

I suppose a word as to the evolution of electronic keyboards is in order here...

Mini-Moogs were very early (1970 saw the first examples) portable musical instruments, named for Robert A. Moog, who invented the concept of voltage control, enabling the connecting of a keyboard to play definable notes with electronic tone generators...

Up until the time of the Mini-Moog all synthesizers (except for the Putney VCS-3 & the Synthi-100... very expensive & still hard to program) were HUGE things the size of your kitchen cabinets with dozens of patch cords running every which way connecting the keyboard & all the various separate modules, tone generators & filters, etc. in order to make various sounds...

Each time you wanted a different sound, cords had to me added & subtracted & settings fine tuned in order to do the next song...

The mini-Moogs were the "Great Leap Forward" inasmuch as they were very affordable, mostly hardwired, with a few switches to make your most likely patching changes & your average kbd player could use one after spending only a few hours learning to use it...

They remained quite the industry standard until the early 80's when the next leap was made out in California by Sequential Circuits when they released their "Prophet 5" which was the equivalent of having 5 Mini-Moogs controlled by a small digital processor, not only enabling you to play 5 keys/notes at a time (the Moogs were capable of only playing one key/note at a time), but you could push a button & change to a pre-set program (one of 64) & change the complete sound of the instrument.

BOC had availed themselves of a Prophet 5 back in 79 after Allen tried one out in Japan... I was still carrying 3 Mini-Moogs as spares when we ran across these Magnum boys... My Mini-Moogs had been updated by me in early 79 (@ the Beacon Theatre Rehearsals) with the very latest (&last) updated circuit boards & power supply mods & one night their Roadie came to me & asked if they could use one of my spares as all his were naff... I gave him his pick of Moe, Larry or Curley as ours were affectionately known & the next night he asked if ALL my Moogs were like that one & could he borrow another??... so the rest of the tour he used these things & at the end of the tour they wanted to buy them & I approved the sale, but unfortunately because of the Import/Export laws, we had to leave the U.K. with all the equipment we had arrived with so it was no sale...

Their music was quite different to our usual opening acts & we had great fun on the bus, seeing who could do the best impersonation of their lead singer introducing... wait for it... "THE GRRRREAT AD--VEN--TURE!!!!!!" (he was really into it... ) No problems that I know of, but many times I have found out later that opening bands have felt they were really getting shafted & I wouldn't even know what it was about... I was one who didn't necessarily need to get to know or hang out with the openers, as I found the familiar confines of the bus a much more pleasant place to spend time than a cold, noisy backstage area... there were exceptions however, Cheap Trick & Rush were two I can think of that I watched every set of theirs that I had access to...

Whilst we're on the topic of support bands: Do you think BOC had a reputation for being a bit hard on support bands (I'm thinking AC/DC, perhaps Aerosmith etc)? Do you think BOC crews could have been a bit more flexible when a support band wanted to use some pyrotechnic FX etc? I'm thinking if I was in a crew and I saw a support band with some sort of whiz-bang item, I'm not going to want that to happen simply because it would detract from my own FX later on... was there any of this sort of thing going on? (I know in theory the main band is supposed to want the support to do well to warm up the crowd but I know when I go to a gig to see someone, all I want is for the support to bugger off as quick as possible... )

First thing that one needs to understand here is that the crew doesn't make these sort of decisions... these things come from the band's management... with the band having the final say, although they are many times never even aware that schism has occurred... most bands that are just starting out have their share of horror stories about opening for other bands and by and large most of them accept the fact that they are at the bottom of the great R&R food chain and get over it...

On most of the shows early on, BOC was usually not allowed to use any Pyro or fog and you just go out there and play your best show and move on... some bands (AC/DC) seemed to take this very personally... but they were the BOTTOM act under BOC AND Thin Lizzy when we wouldn't let them use their pyro... no one in the states knew them at all, but they were already thinking like headliners...

Aerosmith seemed to have a problem with BOC very early on that eventually worked itself out...

Incidentally, were you with BOC when they played with Kiss? I'm wondering who won the battle of the pyrotechnics then - mind you, it probably wasn't so much of an issue with BOC back then... )

The first Kiss show I worked was Dec 31 1975 & the politics involved caused me to quit & not return for 2 yrs... (covered earlier in this narrative)... I believe however that on earlier shows with Kiss (I believe the 1st Kiss shows were opening for BOC) that Kiss was allowed to use all their effects... when it came to us opening for them, it was a different story...

Back to the UK 79 tour: One date at the end of the tour caused some consternation to not only the Scottish fans, but others who travelled up to see it, was the Ingliston Royal Highland Exhibition Hall gig in Edinburgh - cancelled fairly late on due to "Poor Ticket Sales" reportedly. Any info/memories of this sad event?

We went there anyway as our flights home were scheduled out of Glasgow... we had a very cold day off & even tried to visit the castle but were driven back by bitter winds... how the hell does a kilt protect you from that wind???

The next day's drive over to Glasgow was a nice bit of sight-seeing, with our coach driver pointing out points of interest, (like the home of Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond) and I took lots of pictures of sheep with symbols and numbers spray painted on them (can anyone explain this??)

1979 wound up with a series of shows out west, capped off by a HUGE show at the Cow Palace. This is remembered by me as one of the coolest shows ever... it was traditional for Bill Graham to pull out all the stops for a big bash on NYE every year and this one was no exception. I think the doors opened around noon and movies were shown (Godzilla movies of course)

Jack Casady's band SVT opened and were shortly booed off the stage. Montrose's band Gamma seemed to go over much better...

We came on very late at night, so as to be ready to do Godzilla immediately after the big ceremony at midnight where Father Time (Bill Graham) would hand off the new year to a guy dressed as a baby representing the New Year... they had built us this huge Zilla sitting behind the stage and it was revealed when the band went into the song and that place went nuts... this might have been the one and only time that the big boy actually blew FIRE out of his mouth ... faaar out man!!

All this was well and good till we were almost done loading our band gear truck, looking forward to what was left of the night to party down... we were then informed that Graham's production company (FM productions) had GIVEN us this Godzilla... all we had to do was put it on the truck and take it to NYC... yeah right... there wasn't enough extra room in our truck to pass gas, much less put the Zilla in there... we spent the next 3 or 4 hrs, endlessly loading and unloading and loading again till it was finally determined that it just wasn't going to happen... so the decision was finally made to leave the Quads (xtra P.A. gear that we carried with us to add to the back corners of venues in order to do quadraphonic sound on big shows... it hadn't been actually used in ages) with FM shipping them to NYC for us via a commercial carrier...

By now the sun was coming up and my buddy Fred Bieser and I just had time to run to the airport to catch our flight home.. I remember that flight too... VERY POSH as it was the maiden flight of an Airbus 300 for Eastern Airlines (anybody remember them?)... the plane had left ATL and come to SFO and was now returning... almost NO paying passengers on board (Dawn patrol on NYE).. only a bunch of tired Eastern Execs who had partied all the way out to SFO and were passed out in the darkened rear of the plane... the flight attendants insisted we move up to 1st class and try to drink up the rest of the champagne (they told us it was $100 a bottle stuff) and eat up some of these crab legs and hors d'ouerves..

We did our best, arriving in ATL snot flying drunk and with our carry-ons STUFFED full of champagne and crab legs... welcome to the new decade...

1980 touring began in Feb with a swing of shows up north... basically a continuation of the 79 tour with the same personnel, sound and lights.

I remember when we played Nassau County I got a good look at the Twisted Sister lineup and could only wonder "WTF is that about??"... great bunch of guys though, especially since I already knew Mark from his days as one of the Dictators.

The 2 main memories of this swing both involve our Pyro Tech Mike Singleton.

On the 13th we had our - and I quote - "Big Day Off". The Band sprang for a crew party at Mexican Gardens (Lanier's fave mex food in Greenwich Village) and proceeded to Allentown...

I remember this party VERY well as we had pitchers of Margaritas that I swear had Mescaline or Acid in them... the most Hallucinogenic drunk I've ever been... I spent the entire evening trying to prevent Bieser (I had him working for See Factor at the time) from grabbing Mrs. Dory Lanier's ample breasts... he would get this gleam in his eye and just make a lunge... as far as I remember I stopped them all...

I mean he never ACTUALLY got hold of one I don't think... (not that she'd of noticed anyway)... that was the HIGHEST I ever got on alcohol... never once got sick, but was absolutely hallucinating and NAILED TO THE CHAIR... if I'd had to drain a lizard, I'd have just had a soggy bum that night... poor Singleton making a wrong turn on his way to the men's room and ending up in the alley in all those trash cans...

Jeeze Louise... I believe Allen and Dory still frequent that place... there should be a Historical Marker... "At the rear door of this establishment, in the Year Of Our Lord 19 whatever, one Michael Singleton etc etc...

We then proceeded to Allentown for a rather unremarkable show in a big cold barn of a place...

The 2nd big memory of this swing was the next day in NYC, while we were pulling all our gear out of our storage space at Full Tilt Rehearsal Studios to move it to a new place downtown (the old See Factor space on Thomas St.), Mike Singleton stepped around the corner of our truck and right into the path of a speeding N.Y. taxi! He turned a full flip in the air and landed on his feet like Bruce Lee and was totally unhurt!! One of the damndest things I've ever witnessed with my own eyes... and so ended the 79 tour which had actually begun so long ago and far away in Japan...

There now followed a period of rehearsing and recording material for Cultosaurus Erectus, as well as playing a few small shows in New York to prepare for the upcoming tour with Black Sabbath- do you have any particular memories of this time?

Upon arriving in NYC for rehearsals it was my first time hearing the new songs and I was BLOWN away by most of it, especially Black Blade, Hungry Boys and Divine Wind... I really liked those songs right away... Lips In The Hills and Unknown Tongues had great potential immediately as well... didn't care as much for the "single" which was The Marshall Plan...

We played some clubs around NYC and set out for the "real" tour after a day of absolute madness out in NJ...

The night before I had ridden out to Rick Downey's house in NJ after we went to see Billy Joel at the Garden... on the way we had a flat and put on a really nervous looking spare, so the next morning we ran it over to a shop that could repair his tire (his little sports car had some special type of wheels that most places couldn't deal with)... when we went to pick it up, whilst I was following him in a rental T-bird at near 100 mph down a freeway, a trooper pulled me over... I figured I was about to get a major ticket, but instead he informed me that my car was smoking badly and I might want to have it checked... I got underway again (RD had pressed on) and sure enough it was not only smoking, but the dash had lit up like a Xmas tree with warnings...

I made it off to a service station and phone, (remember this was pre cell phones) spent quite a bit of time trying to get in touch with the rental folks, who informed me that there was a replacement car waiting at their facility across the street at the only other gas station at this exit !! Problems ensued though when it was discovered that my name was not on the rental agreement.. RD's was...

I then had to spend more time getting in touch with RD who had to drive BACK down there, sign for the replacement car, then we had to FLY out to his house and drop his car and then FLY to Newark airport, grab our luggage out of the rental car and HIKE to the terminal as their shuttle bus was nowhere to be found... checked our bags and ran to the plane just as the doors were closing... exciting start to a tour for sure...

I need to interject here a quick story about waiting for Rick to show up at MSG that night... there were numerous drug dealers wandering the streets thru the bustling crowds chanting out the various goods available.. "hey I got yer grass"... "hey purple blotter acid here", etc... eventually one of these guys walked past me and announced "Hey I Got The Shit That Made Ray Charles Go Blind"!!...

I had to ask just what he had... turned out to be some wild smelling Indica pot... I'm still laughing...

We made it out to Billings Montana, where we rented the big arena there and set up the full production for rehearsals for 3 days... believe me when I tell you there's not a lot to do evenings in Billings but go to the Windmill Club restaurant for amazing steaks...

After doing the show in Billings we then did a swing of dates in the N.W. and down thru CA.

This is the show where a Tasco basket fell on Jack Fisk, our truck driver...

A Tasco basket is about a ton of PA gear... at this stage in R&R touring, most P.A. systems were modular in construction, meaning numbers of identical cabinets each containing bass, mid range and hi frequency (treble if you will) components...

It made for MUCH quicker load ins and outs, but prevented more knowledgeable sound men (like our very own GpG and all the fine tech staff of TASCO) from doing a bit of a "custom installation" for the varied shaped and sized venues... where with the fully modular systems your only choices each night would be "more" or "less" of everything, bt with our TASCO component type system, the choices were "more bass here" "more treble there"... this needs a long throw type device to reach it, this needs a shorter throw and so on... it was infinitely more variable in composition and focus as to where it was pointed ...

The biggest problem presented by such a system logistically is How Do You Fly It ??... in other words, in the large venues, some of it had to hang from the rafters or "fly" to get to the upper reaches... this was accomplished by making a large cubic basket, or box with a framework of square aluminum tubing with a plywood floor...

On this you stacked the individual Bass bins (speaker cabinets with woofers in them) Mid bins with smaller speakers, hi frequency horns, etc... these were then strapped into place with very wide cargo type webbed belts and fastened down with ratchet straps... just like you see loads secured to truck beds (lorries to you lot).. these things were made the correct width and height to just fit easily into the back of a Hi-Cube semi...

On Black and Blue, we had one truck that was just full of those for our flying gear... the advantage here is that these things could be unloaded very quickly and rolled right into the gig, where the rigging was already hanging in the ceiling to put them in the air (we pioneered the concept of having 2 complete sets of rigging and leapfrogging the riggers...

Altogether, that's at least 6 truck loads of sound and lights.. then 1 semi each for us and Sabbs back line and a cack truck that was full of odds and ends, fog machines... giant prehistoric monsters... silver spinning schwantzes and the revolutionary counter rotating giant beveled schwantze of Kunagonda... and 2 trucks leap frogging full of rigging... I wonder if anybody made any money??...

I made almost as much off charging the promoter for tuning the clavinet and my piece of the piano and organ kickback as I did from BOC some weeks... Remind me to explain how that little scam worked sometime...

Every night we played a show, there were riggers already at the next gig working thru the night to have that mush already done when we got there the next morning (it took a LOOONG time to rig some of the bigger ones... 8-10 hard hours)...

So now that we know the what and why of a TASCO flying basket, we're looking at an aluminum framed box approx 12-14 ft wide... and a little taller than that, maybe 15 ft... and about 6 ft deep I'll try to get the actual figures from my buddy Fred Bieser... he was a rigger and it would have about 1000 lbs of P.A. stacked on it and strapped down...

So one night as they are loading one of these things into the back of the truck, the lift operator didn't quite get it down enough before he backed out his forks, bringing it backwards a foot or 2 and leaving this thing tottering at the back of the truck with 1/2 wheels on and 1/2 wheels off...

Now there's at least 4 people inside the truck holding on, around 8 or 10 at the back of the truck... it quickly becomes obvious the men in the truck can't hold it, but our truck driver Jack Fisk, a man of about 60 yrs in age is standing right at the base of it, making sure it cleared the truck on the way in.

Luckily enough hands got under this thing to take the weight enough to slow it's fall to enable Jack to ALMOST squirm out from under it before it finally came down the last foot or so trapping his legs... the fork lift was quickly brought back into position and raised it up... the damage had been done, but not nearly so bad as it could have been...

We got him an ambulance (he was in some serious pain and we figured both legs broken)... these trucks have to roll so the loadout then finished up and a TASCO worker with a proper license was laid on for Jack's truck... since band gear is the last thing to load in the next day, our bus stayed behind along with R. Downey to see about Jack... lo and behold he was X-rayed from top to bottom and that old man hobbled up into that bus a few hours later on a pair of crutches... no broken bones!!..

We insisted he take the large fold-out bed in the rear lounge for the evening and until he felt like moving back into his truck... I helped him get dressed that next morning (I was the only one already up and could hear from his grunts groans that he was having a bit of a test) and his legs were the color of a ripe eggplant and just about as swollen... but he got up into his own truck that evening and didn't miss a lick... he wasn't helping load the truck for a few days, but he was driving it...

We then proceeded east to Houston TX for the start of the Legendary Black and Blue Tour with us and Black Sabbath...

But that's a whole 'nother story...

There could be an entire book written about this tour and it still wouldn't all be told...

Just as an example of the "unknown" nature of this time period, there is even GREAT discrepancy among R&R historians as to when it actually started... many different versions exist as to just when the Houston show was actually performed, but as I was actually THERE and keeping a daily journal, I can categorically state that the Houston show was on Sunday July 13. BOC had a show scheduled for Amarillo TX on the 10th, but when we arrived on the evening of the 8th, it was learned that the show was cancelled (I didn't note the reason why), so we enjoyed the 9th and 10th as days off and proceeded to Houston on the evening of the 10th.

We arrived in Houston around 4 AM on the 11th and loaded in our gear and did a sound check around dusk on the 12th. This move was because we were combining 2 very large productions and ample time was allowed to work out the logistical details of stacking that much PA gear and hanging that many lights...

BOC even came down and did one of their VERY rare soundchecks... without Allen Lanier as he had some turmoil going on in his personal life at that point... more on the effects of that later. Another reason for this early load in was that the temps were well over 100 degrees and the more work that could be accomplished in the evenings the better.

I even remember a joyous night off back at the hotel and distinctly remember watching Saturday Night Live that night. (You Look MAHVELOUS... )

The actual gig on the 13th was fairly uneventful but just ungodly hot... I have noted in my journal that the temp reached 106 F that day...

Thus began the B&B tour and folks I'm here to tell you that this was DEFINITELY not the "Summer Of Love"...

Well maybe with the possible exception of the next gig which was San Antonio...

Ahhh San Antonio... world famous in the R"R community as a serious hotbed of the Bimbonic Plague... lots and lots of little underage (usually 14-17... by the time they were 18 they were in a "serious" relationship/first marriage) hispanic girls...

So many dressed all alike that George Geranios and I termed them "Spandexicans"... there's probably a whole book to be written on that one damned venue...

I saw on TV the footage of it being destroyed a few years back... they built a newer place mid 90's I believe and the former "groupie hotbed" became a gigantic CHURCH !!... one of those black/hispanic mega-things... but instead of building a new "battleship Jesus" they just took over a facility that had probably seen drunken orgies that would embarrass perverted Romans flare up in every nook and cranny... never mind the "team showers"... once the girls figured out that after the show these spaces filled up with horny hardworking men getting naked and soapy... it drew them like flies...

The scene during the day was the minor functions these young ladies had to perform just to secure the aftershow pass that would be their ticket to the showers later... most would NOT get naked early in the day... (is that a catholic thing?) but would perform any oral services imaginable... they didn't know that the pass was a certain color that was only good AFTER the show... sometimes if the weather was bad, a thinking production manager would actually let them in a room (usually supplied with snacks and drinks... no alcohol... remember these girls were under age... wouldn't want to break any laws)...

Some of the other bands were aware of this enterprise as well, many roadies would even "pick something out" for their employers... I never did... had to draw the line somewhere didn't I...

Even though by this time I was a little long in the tooth for these little girls and even more married, it was quite an entertaining bit of drama to try and guess which ones would actually ever actually even SEE a band member (although again sometimes an effort WAS made to arrange a space where these samaritans COULD watch the show, but still did not actually have backstage access until after the show...

We then took a quick jaunt up to Vancouver B.C. (how many miles is that?) for a show without the Sabbs... I should mention here that during this whole period, both BOC and Sabbs would venture forth and do numerous shows of their own between actual combined B&B dates... the show in Vancouver was one of those..

Probably the best show on the B&B tour was the big show in Seattle on the 19th... I remember everything going very smoothly all day, there was a huge crowd, the band played great and it was one of the loudest things ever heard by mankind... possibly more PA power than had ever been amassed in one place before as it was a combination of all of ours AND the Sabbs gear...

I should note here that normally onstage the sound levels are nowhere near what they are out in the crowd, especially outside.. this Seattle show was an exception as it was unbelievably loud at my normal position BEHIND the stage right PA stack...

The first taste of the aggro to come was the next day at the show in Salem OR... We were slated to close the show and when it came time for Sabbs to play... no dice... they were refusing to come out of their dressing room as they felt they should close the show... never mind that this had been worked out weeks earlier AND that they were at this point being managed by Sandy Pearlman, who also managed BOC..

So the war of wills played out with them FINALLY taking the stage an hour late and then trying to not allow any BOC crew members access to the stage during their set (there are a number of things as you may well imagine that have to be "final checked" and tweaked in order to be ready to do the show in the allotted time between bands) this didn't work out too well for them when one of their crew tried to prevent one of the TASCO sound crew from getting onstage and was decked for his trouble... So the real fun began...

The next show was a few days later at a dirt speedway near Ventura CA. My journal entry reads:

Another dirty nasty show... Serious Brain Damage with Rude Fans, False Prophets and Dirt...

"False Prophets" refers to the fact that my Prophet 5 synth was ill and kept having to fly back and forth to S.F. for repairs... no one but the factory could fix them at the time...

I was renting them and some of them had the capability for me to load my programs in via a data port/cassette interface... some did not... That meant I had to sit down and frantically program about 20 sounds worth of presets in there...

The one in Ventura was to be one with an interface and it not only was NOT one of those, it belonged to a CHURCH and came with a woman whose orders from God were that it was not to be let out of her sight, nor were ANY of the presets to be changed in any way... I grabbed it and ran for the bus and locked the door and got on the walkie talkie to the Stage manager and got him to deal with her whilst I reprogrammed it and she didn't see it again till I was done with it that night... AND I put all her sounds back in as that bank was all very basic diagnostic stuff from the factory anyway...

Highlight of the day for me was hanging out with Martin Birch and Glenn Hughes all day in the back of the bus while I programmed that synth... Glenn remembered me from the Hydra days (we did a load of shows with Trapeze and Martin had been a hero of mine since In Rock and Fireball)...

They had actually come down to see Davy Kirkwood who had been on the tour, but had left so they just hung out in our bus as my guests waiting for the show (I had a pocket full of Peruvian Marching Powders which I'm sure added to my Charm that day... )

By the way - Davy Kirkwood was a Scottish sound tech who worked for Tasco and was out as Sabbath's Front-Of House assistant (set up all the FOH gear for Gordon "Gungi" Patterson... Sabbs soundman... ) for a while... Sabbs had a set of consoles and FOH effects and we had our own... they just moved the multicore from one set to the other during the changeover...

We then did a very odd show in Phoenix AZ, where after being over 100 degrees all day long, a big storm came up with a VERY rare monsoon rain there in the desert and as the power distribution area was quickly under several feet of water the BOC portion of the show was cancelled... we came so very close to playing as the band were on the way to the stage from the dressing room when the rain started...

Next our merry band moved on back to TX for a string of shows without the Sabbs...

The first of these was in El Paso and the night we arrived there was quite a scene in the hotel bar... One of our lighting guys named Jonathan Wyman would frequently get very drunk and act out scenes from 50's and 60's TV shows... that particular nights selection was "Combat" a B&W 30 min WWII deal that followed a small squad thru their travails... None of them ever got seriously hurt and they never missed anything they shot at...

I can still see Jon body rolling himself over tables and booths all the while flinging "grenades" of empty soda and beer cans and screaming in his best Vic Morrow baritone... "Kirby!!, Get that B.A.R. set up and send for the medic!!!"

Here's a pic of Jon testing some See Factor S.O.B.'s (Small Orange Boxes) for seaworthiness outside the 1981 gig at Hampton Roads VA. (Photo by John Hougdahl)

The next day was thankfully an off day, but was quite a ball breaker as we had several semis full of soaking wet gear that had to all be unloaded and unpacked and set out in the sun to dry... many of the cases actually had water standing in them from the downpour in Phoenix... the foam lining in all the road cases was soaked as well, but a day in 100+ degrees in an asphalt parking lot got most stuff dried nicely...

But the damage was not just from the water... that desert rain in Phoenix was more like mud than rain... it left behind a pink powdery residue that had to be cleaned AFTER the water had dried... when I sent my Prophet 5 synth back to the factory for repair (again), they accused me of spilling a milkshake into it!!

The actual show in El Paso was eventful only because I think this was the only time BOC ever played the song Monsters...

Although I think they might have played it twice, I can only remember goin thru all the hassle to play Monsters once... I had to move one of the mini-moogs so Bloom could cover the horn parts on it and it was in El Paso Texas..

These next few gigs document the ONLY times I am aware of that Steve Schenck filled in on keys... it is reported several places that he did this on the "Albert's Back Tour" in Feb 1985 but I was there and can assure you that it did NOT occur...

Allen's personal woes continued as he at this point had to leave the tour to travel to the west coast where his wife was apparently having some problems that required his presence. Oddly enough, at the Austin show, Allen was there right up until show time... he came down in the afternoon and showed SS some of the stuff and I handled all the synths for him so far as getting them on the right settings...

Steve is a decent player and stood right next to me over there most nights, so he knew all too well where all the parts went... It worked a lot better when Ross started doing the guitar parts as Schenk tried those and it was weak...

He gave the guitar bits his best shot, but it was pathetic... unlike his keys which were more than adequate... he even joked to me that his Hebrew side was thinking about how much money could be saved by him moving to that gig permanently... just a joke... he even began to dress for the part at the Band's request... jeans-T-shirt and leather vest... sure wish I had a pic...

I also wish I still had the T-shirt I had made that said "I Roadied For Nasty Nick and All I Got Was This T-Shirt"...

People were never told squat as to Lanier's absence... not the stagehands... nobody - not even the promoters... some of them figured it out and showed up over on my side during the show, fucking with SS and trying to crack him up...

By the way: Nasty Nick Shannos was the "wrestling" name that Pearlman/Dictators put on him...

Murray Krugman gave me mine... "Schoolboy Sam"...

The naming was totally random... like "Handsome Dick Manitoba"... Krugman wanted to pair me with Handsome Dick as a tag team... his plan included me wearing a cap and gown into the ring and bringing an apple for the referee... OY!!

After this string of dates, we rejoined the Sabbs at the Lebanon Valley Raceway near Albany...

Regarding that Sabbath sites have described this gig as being "marred by violence": I don't remember any violence, other than my having to threaten to whip the piano tuner's ass if he didn't tune my fucking piano... (he was demanding 10 passes or he wouldn't tune it)... after 4 or 5 roadies surrounded his car (with his girlfriend in it), he changed his mind and did a really good job... the wanker...

It was around this point in the tour that it was decided that the Sabbs would close every show... this ended the constant childish stunts by them trying to delay shows by not coming out of their dressing room when they had to play before BOC... BOC were secure enough in their ability to put on just as good a show BEFORE the Sabbs played and didn't have the necessity to stroke their egos by "appearing" to be the headliners by playing last, since it was common knowledge the tour was a co-headline tour anyway... the money was the same for both bands...

Things rolled along till we got to Denver and discovered that the Sabbs had fired their drummer and were not going to appear that night.. very kewl BOC show as the band played an extra long set and used all of Sabbs lights and effects along with ours since it was all already set up anyway...

The tour moved on to a momentous show in Hawaii... we shipped all our gear out there as well as the PA... it was the biggest sound system that had ever been used in Hawaii as it was frightfully expensive to air freight everything out there and other bands just used what was already available there.

Then came another string of shows without the Sabbs.

The last outdoor show of that summer for us saw BOC with AC/DC at the fairgrounds in San Bernadino CA... the bad blood between AC/DC and BOC went back to their initial shows with us back in 78 and their antics at this show was the basis of us believing for along time that THEY were behind the disaster that was to come for BOC a year later at Castle Donnington...

Now understand that this was meant to be a DAYTIME show and NO stage lighting was erected... AC/DC delayed as long as they could ever taking the stage and then proceeded to not only play overtime, but take every step they could to delay getting their gear off the stage so that we could begin... so the BOC ended up taking the stage as it was getting DARK... we were able to scare up a mere handful of lights from the local stagehands at the Swing Auditorium nearby.. probably the lamest lights that BOC ever had for an audience that large...

This string included 2 shows in one night at The Old Waldorf nightclub in San Francisco... Although it's the common thing nowadays, a club date was VERY unusual for BOC and these shows were actually done as a favor to Bill Graham. They were usually a lot of fun as the band would play songs that hadn't been played by them in years and us crew folk enjoyed them as much as the fans.

A short break followed, with the tour picking up again on the east coast with some Sabb dates and some without them, including one of the oddest shows BOC ever played, at a military school in Westwood Mass. It was basically an all boys school and the stagehands for the loadout consisted of about 100 young boys, none older than around 12 or 13...

We used them en masse to move the gear into the truck, but they were all so short that they were pretty useless in the truck for stacking stuff... I'll never forget lifting cases with the Dressing Room/Security guy Joe Lauro and him turning to one of these kids and asking him in his best Peter Graves in "Airplane" voice "Son do you like gladiator movies"?.. still brings a smile to my face...

We soldiered on and things were pretty normal... I nearly took out my right eye on a case latch setting up in Poughkeepsie... luckily I missed the actual eyeball and had to settle for 12 stitches over my eye and up the side of my face.. this got even more interesting as while they were stitching me up at a local clinic a geezer was brought in that had been found unconscious out on the freeway... the initial diagnosis on him was viral spinal meningitis and I was informed that I would have to be quarantined since I had been in the building and this stuff was just that contagious... eventually they decided that wasn't the correct diagnosis and I was allowed to leave.. never a dull moment out there on the road eh??

Then came a BOC only show in Wilkes Barre PA in a Nat. Guard Armory... apparently the promoter had sold twice as many tickets as the place would hold. When the crowd built up outside, they were incorrectly told that BOC had agreed to play 2 shows!... when this did not occur, they rioted and somehow the promoter convinced the local cops that our road manager Steve Schenck was the one responsible and he was summarily hauled off to jail...

Luckily we had the next day off and the whole mess was eventually straightened out...

Days off were now to become a really rare item as we did 24 shows in the next 27 days, with 20 of them in a row... an amazing feat considering the size of the production we were dealing with... sure there are bigger shows on the road today, but look at their schedules... usually at least 2 days off between shows and many times 2 nights in each city... as the Monty Python boys would say "Extreme Luxury... WE had it TOUGH"...

I guess the highlight (or lowlight) of this run was the show in Milwaukee...

This was one of the strangest shows I ever did in my many years of touring... it is really hard to describe the actual cause of my unease, but thru the entire BOC set I was VERY uneasy and on edge... the sound was too loud, the lights were too bright, there was an absolutely an EVIL vibe coming off that crowd not unlike a bad acid trip or something... nothing particularly WRONG.. just nothing seemed RIGHT... every movement would make me jerk and I'm usually not that jumpy... I was really relieved when our set ended..

I had gotten really sick the night before and wasn't able to get a shower, so as soon as our gear was in the truck, I headed for the showers... by this time Sabbs had taken the stage and I found a very clean and sparkly (rare in these older halls) team shower on the level beneath the stage that was totally unoccupied and got 3 nice hot jets of water going... about that time I began to hear some strange noises and realized that the Sabbs didn't seem to be playing... then all hell seemed to break loose.. I had no idea what the hell was going on up there, but decided to just lock the door and finish my long awaited shower.

When I was done and went back upstairs, the sight that met my eyes was absolutely surreal... the entire backstage/loadin area was FULL of cop cars, fire trucks and ambulances... all with their lights flashing, some with the sirens still blaring. The crowd area was very "Hiroshima" like as the fans had rioted and not only torn the place to bits, but had made piles of the wooden seats and actually set fire to them !!

Seems during Sabbs 3rd song some punter in the crowd had let fly with a Heineken bottle that hit their bass player Geezer Butler right in the head, so they walked off... matters weren't helped any when their stage manager took the stage and told the crowd they were all a bunch of stupid American idiots (I think he actually used "cunts") and Sabbs would NOT be back on... brilliant...

Oddly enough BOC were banned from playing in that place for many years after, even though none of the violence had anything to do with us... guilt by association I suppose...

The tour plodded on like a big dinosaur thru the Midwest and up the N.E. seaboard.. dinosaur is very appropriate as during this period we began using the big Godzilla that FM had given us back in S.F. on new years eve 79...

That thing was a royal pain logistically, but it was a big hit with the fans... we even hired a roadie just to deal with the thing and named him "Zilla Dave"...

He actually sat in that things head to operate the co2 extinguishers for the breath and turn the lights on for the eyes and make the mouth open and close.. looked like quite a ride when they would raise that thing up with the fork lift and move it forward to the stage.. I wouldn't have done it on a bet..

Here's a photo by Sandy Roeser of Zilla in broad daylight... with Buck Dharma's kids Zeke and Dani checking him out...

The Black and Blue tour reached it's crescendo with the NYC shows... the first of these was actually out on Long Island at the Nassau County Col... This was a big show for BOC (and Sabbs I suppose) as it was to be filmed for a movie..

It was very long day of massive technical problems, not the least of which was the revelation by the video crew (yes for some reason the show was shot on VIDEO for a FILM theatrical release, meaning it had to be converted to film from the video tape with a serious loss of quality) that there was not NEARLY enough light onstage and that the ENTIRE lighting system would have to be changed to lighter colored gel medium (that's the colored stuff put in front of the individual lights to make them colored).

This was met with complete opposition as it would have been impossible to secure that much gel in the time available, much less get it all cut and in place and the entire system refocused in time (we're talking near about 1000 lights here folks).. so the B&B movie was dark... REALLY dark... the only usable footage was the songs that featured a lot of white lights and sections of those had to be electronically altered to lighten them up (with even more drop in quality)..

The next nights show was at Madison Square Garden in NYC and with the pressure of the movie off our backs, that show was a lot of fun... I even had time in the afternoon to make my way up to the very top of the arena and take a few pictures as it was a very impressive sight (still is to the people that were putting it together every day).

We now finally enjoyed a few days off (our first in 20 days) at the Statler Hilton across the street from the Garden (the phone # was still PA6-5000 as in the Glenn Miller song "Pennsylvania 6 Five Thousand").. those days are a little hazy but I do remember going with my bud on the lighting crew Jonathan Wyman (see El Paso above) downtown to a meet and greet with the pornstar Marilyn Chambers (Behind The Green Door)

I didn't pony up the 50 bucks to actually get in the line and meet her and get the autograph, but John did and I took his pic with her... he had to be very careful as she explained that under NYC law, if she touched him, they would both be arrested... not sure if that's true, or if that's something she came up with to get out of the endless hugs and kisses requests, but it made things more interesting for sure...

B&B finally came to an end in Cincinnati at the Riverfront Coliseum... sort of a non event as I remember, as we still had one more show to do at a college in Bloomington Indiana...

That was the Night Of The Ping-Pong Balls I believe...

At some point on the tour somebody had the idea that it would be cool to get a bunch of ping-pong balls and rig them up to fall on the audience at some point in the show... the original idea would have had BOC logos on the balls, but we ended up carrying around several dozen giant boxes of ping-pong balls for months... on this last night, the riggers had managed to find the ping-pong balls that we had left outside by the truck and unbeknownst to any of us had even gotten them all stashed away in the ceiling... during the show at some dramatic point, here came several thousand ping-pong balls... not onto the audience, but onto the BAND !!.. Totally caught the boys by surprise...

We all went home for a couple of months, during which time, my first daughter Rosie was born...

I'll always remember Dec 8, 1980 as I was on the phone spreading the word of the birth of my 1st daughter when I heard the news... the band was off at the time but when we went back out for the week between Xmas and New Years they closed each night with a KILLER version of "She's So Heavy" dedicated to John...

We finished up 1980 with that final week of shows, including one for the books in Huntsville/Muscle Shoals AL.

The band came out and opened with Dr. Music as usual but the part of Eric Bloom was played by Joe Bouchard (complete with mirror shades); Bloom was on drums, and I belive Allen played guitar and Albert was on keys... Did Buck play Bass?...

I remember Joe (as part of his Bloom act) announcing to the crowd "Hey we came down here to Alabama for just one reason... THE MONEY and to get DOWN with some rock'n'roll"...

The next night was New Years Eve and we played a VERY late show in Memphis (after a really kewl air guitar contest) and everybody went home for a nice long rest and during the first part of 81 the band went into the studio to record what would be the Fire Of Unknown Origin album...

[ to be continued ]