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How to Tour Like a Rock Star

By Robert Welborn

Face it.  You are eventually going to have to pick up those instruments that you pawned your parents’ stuff away to buy, and play them.  Why not do it somewhere far away from home, somewhere that you won’t be embarrassed that all of your music is the same three chords with stolen base lines and Buddy Rich style drum solos.  Somewhere that ex-girlfriends won’t be in the crowd whispering to potential groupies about your little “early arrival” issues.  Somewhere that people have less discriminating taste in music.  Somewhere we like to call, The Road.  That is why I’ve compiled:

The Rules of the Road

Rule 1:  Cancel the tour.  Cancel it multiple times if you can, all the while releasing press releases regarding band member “creative differences”, drug problems and sacred monkey sacrifices.  This creates the aura of being a real band (see also the occasional British band Oasis).

Rule 2:  Pay the rent.  It’s easier to kick you out of your apartment when you are not there.  They sell your stuff too.  Now, do you really want to have to go steal back all that stuff that you found in abandoned fields and stole from former roommates?  If you live with your parents, accept that you will not by the time you get back from the tour.  Say good-bye now, and alleviate the uncomfortable patricidal desires that will accompany your return.

Rule 3:  Kill off a band member.  The drummer is the likely choice.  It’s not that you don’t need the drummer.  It’s just that statistically drummers get killed on tour more frequently than any other traditional role (bassoonists and oboe players do get killed a higher rate on tour, but are rarely present in the kind of formulaic music that you play).  You do, of course, “Go on with the tour” and say, “He would have wanted it this way.”  It will also give you a nice spot to feign emotion when you get interviewed for VH1’s Behind the Music.  If you can’t seem to kill one, try to drive the most honor bound member of the group to commit ritualistic seppuku by convincing him that he’s dishonored his family.

Rule 4:  Leave your hotel rooms neat and tidy.  Since the previous words obviously will make no sense to you whatsoever, let the games begin.  Leaving severed limbs of autograph seekers and the carcasses of marine life that could prosecute you for sexual assault in the room has not been done before, so try these first.  Remember the theme of art “originality is key.”  If you wish to resort to the traditional destruction, avoid leaving behind things that might be regarded as “DNA evidence”.  Oh, and the “Do Not Disturb” tags don’t really hamper police, so consider double bolting the door if you are serious.

Rule 5:  Take groupies in moderation.  There are really only two rules of thumb that you should take into account when considering the time you will spend with the young ladies trying to disprove deep seeded Hindu views from the Karma Sutra about the flexibility of the human body.  The groupies you meet at the free clinic = bad.  The groupies with 5 acre estates in the Hollywood Hills trying to make their parents angry = very good.  Despite the fact that rock stars are often immune from criminal prosecution, they are not immune from most of the diseases that cause their sexual organs to ooze puss, crust up and fall off.  Consider this when decide whether or not you’ll be storming the beaches commando or under cover of a naval bombardment (and, yes, I’m out of original euphemisms for condoms so you’ll have to settle for strained military allusions).

Rule 6:  Film everything.  At some point, you’ll want to do a documentary.  Some of your band members will not want to “sell out” in that way.  Use the footage from your first tour as an extortion tool, but don’t include it in the documentary.   (Because we, the viewing public, don’t want to see your raggedy ass, Felini-esque camera work artsy boy!)

Rule 7:  Give only the “We’re on tour” interview.  This could be an article on it’s own.  To actually speak with someone from the press, you must abandon your use of traditional speech entirely.  When describing your music, you need to take 45 minutes to form a run on sentence that mixes the prefixes “neo”, “cyber”,  “afro”, and “punk” with references to heavy European cheeses (havarti always works), Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, the gestalt of the Guatemalan zeitgeist, and southern gospel.  You need speak in short, unquotable sentences that don’t actually answer any of the questions asked, until you hear a question you really like, and even then you should only re-phrase lines from your songs to create the “bitter irony” that reporters just love.

Rule 8:  Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.  Creating pagan idols on the road is a bad idea.  Creating any religion on the fly is almost always a bad idea.  It leads to mass suicides, bad haircuts, and the state of Utah.

Rule 9:  Remember the Motley Crue <insert umlaut here> Rule.  “Don’t drink anything that you can shoot in your veins.”  Occasionally people confuse this with the Vince Neal rule which states “Women consider old, plump, unshaven, washouts rather pathetic.”  Some also mistake this rule for the Nikki Six rule reading “Floating out of body during an overdose is an indication of your impending death so kill the hooker and take a drive on the Freeway.”  Tommy Lee would round out the mistaken trifecta with “No matter how many men uncontrollably masturbate at the thought of your wife, you can do better.”

Rule 10:  Don’t use the bathroom on the bus because ewww.

The road is where bands are proved.  Actually, I don’t even believe that.  The road is where bands get very stoned, have WAY too much sex, and likely play their worst music.  Some bands tour because they have a message to get out to the world, we call these bands crusaders (and they sacked Constantinople in 1203 AD and they are wanted for the murder of Pope Innocent III).  Don’t be a crusader and ruin rock and roll (or Constantinople) for the rest of us.

Disclaimer:  All references made to actions that would be deemed as illegal, mentioned in the above article, are likely not illegal in California.  The good men and “women” of law enforcement appreciate your considering their feelings during your drug induced gun battles from the lobby of your hotel.  Make it quick, Law and Order comes on earlier these days and they have to get home.  Killing people is a crime, but then so are bikinis in some really backward, zealot controlled parts of the world.  Take these two bits of wisdom with as many grains of salt as you wish. 

Disclaimer to the Disclaimer:  Seppuku is no laughing matter.  The thing that makes us ridicule an artist’s work, is most often the artist.  For some reason, this message never seems to crack the thin cookie crust surrounding the mind of many artists.  We still glorify this life, despite all the people/marine mammals that get hurt in the process.  Oh, and Constatinople should now be referred to as “The Ottoman capital formerly known as Constantinople” or Istanbul.