Mobile Living
In between gigs, roadies travel together
with other tour staff on a sleeper coach
bus. This is a bus with bunk beds, a
bathroom, a kitchen, and a place to
relax. Usually up to 20 roadies will
share one bus.
Tough Break
Being a roadie is a hard job, but sometimes
it can offer a faster route into the music
business. The pay isn’t great, but you get to
work with a band and watch them perform.
If you’re an ambitious musician, you can
learn a lot from working as a roadie, at
least what it takes to make a concert tour
impressive and smoothly run.
Roadie to Rock Star
A number of rock stars worked as roadies
before going on to worldwide musical
success. Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher
worked as a roadie for early-1990s British
band Inspiral Carpets, while Nirvana
roadie Ben Shepherd ended up joining
grunge band Soundgarden.
Soundgarden’s Ben Shepherd is just one of
a string of famous musicians who started
their music careers as roadies.
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The Scoop
It’s not uncommon for roadies to fill
in on stage when a band member is
ill. Stuart Morgan, bass technician
for U2’s Adam Clayton, filled in
for his boss at a concert in Sydney
in 1993, while Metallica roadie John
Marshall has joined the band on
stage numerous times as a stand-
in for James Hetfield. In 2005,
Metallica’s management demanded
that Hetfield stop skateboarding
on tour as he’d injured himself
too many times!
