Photo courtesy of Pixabay License.

When I first began working in the mailroom of a record distributor back in the early ’70s, one of the perks of the job was going backstage either before or after a concert. Documented in films such as Spinal Tap and One Trick Pony, the infamous music business “meet and greet” is a staple at virtually every concert. Usually, it’s simply a casual opportunity to say hi to the musicians, tell them how much you like their latest album and then finish it off by posing for a photo. I did hundreds of these over the decades and while often it was a blast, eventually I grew weary of this ritualistic and orchestrated event..

I can recall my baptismal “behind the curtain” invitation in September 1973 to a Grateful Dead show at Philadelphia’s Spectrum, a large hockey arena and a major concert venue of the day. My wife and I had spent all week hanging out with their advance man, legendary promoter Augie Bloom. We helped him contact local members of their fan club which predated and morphed into Deadhead culture, drovehim to radio stations, and smoked the best weed we’d ever tasted. On the night of the show he led us through the hallways deep inside the venue and then left us in a room overflowing with food and drink, not without warning us not to sip anything liquid unless it came from a bottle we’d opened ourselves.

That particular evening we never got a chance to chat with the band as they were busy with a crowd that could have easily come out of Hollywood central casting. Groupies, bikers, DJs, wives, girlfriends, a few kids, smarmy record label execs, retailers, wholesalers, hipsters, artists, local scene makers, and bored beefy security men who ignored the smells and snorting going on all around them. I suppose it sounds as if it was a great party, but on this particular night I witnessed an incident that has always stuck with me.

One member of the band was absolutely strung out, with his eyes rolling back into his head. He was being held up on his feet by his wife, who gingerly attempted to get him to walk back and forth in preparation for soon going out onstage. When he became loud and rude, roughly shoving her away from him, some of the roadies stepped in to drag him away and we left to find our own way out. Whatever thoughts of rock and roll idolatry I’d had quickly dissipated. Loved the music, hated the scene.

The lights came down just as we got to our seats. With the smoke around us rising up to form one giant mushroom cloud, the band took the stage. The dude who was barely able to stand up just a few minutes earlier played his ass off for the next several hours. Looking back, I suppose it was my first introduction to the principle of “the show must go on” and so it did, likely with pharmaceutical assistance.

I have a box in my closet stuffed with pictures of me taken backstage while standing next to lots of different musicians, almost all of them having no clue who I was or why I was there. A fast intro, a shake of the hand, maybe a quick chat, and then turn, pose, smile, snap, and move on. One of my favorites is of me and a few people from my office posing with The Rolling Stones. They preferred to do group shots rather than with individuals, and I recall that our brief intro came right after a group of Pepsi executives and was followed by employees of the local Budweiser brewery. As they say, it’s only rock and roll.

Easy Ed (far right) with The Rolling Stones at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Oct. 15, 1994.

This was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website. 

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com.