Tour Guide
Is life in a rock band really all sex, drugs, and rock and roll? Sometimes.
-By Sarah Walker
Bill Kelliher, guitarist for the Atlanta-based progmetal outfit Mastodon, had an interesting 2008, what with touring with Slayer, recording the band’s fourth album, Crack the Skye, and suffering from a nasty case of pancreatitis that landed him in a London hospital for two and a half weeks. He shares a few sordid stories of life on the road.
GROUPIES OR STALKERS?
“When we played smaller clubs in Europe, I was a little naive…. I didn’t think we were big enough to have groupies. But these two women from Belgium used to come to all our shows. One looked about 50, and her English was pretty good, but the other, who was way younger and pretty cute, didn’t speak any English. They’d follow us around and hang out backstage. One time we went out to our tour bus, which is where we sleep, and they’d parked their little Yugo right behind it. They told us they sleep in the car, then wake up and follow the bus.”
BACKSTAGE BLOWJOBS
“A few years ago we were in San Francisco, on tour with Slayer. This old guy in a cowboy hat came up to me and said, ‘How you doing, son? I’m Max Hardcore, and I’d like to give you one of my movies.’ Later we went to our dressing room, and there were all these girls in lingerie and high heels, going in and out like they owned the joint. Max Hardcore was there with one of them. A guy in our band starts smoking a joint with her, and Max looks at our guy and says, ‘Son, how’d you like a blowjob?’ Then Max looks at her and says, ‘Honey, why don’t you suck this young man’s dick?’ So our guy starts to take his shit out, and she’s going for it. Then Max whips his dick out, too, and our guy is like, ‘Whoa, what’s going on?’ Max says, ‘If my girlfriend is gonna suck your dick, she might as well suck my dick, too.’ Our guy wasn’t into sword fighting, though, so it didn’t happen.”
OFF THE CUFF
“We played Ozzfest in 2005. At one show [guitarist] Brent [Hinds] (far left) is in the front row during Iron Maiden. He throws a Mastodon baseball hat to Steve Harris, their bass player—and that’s a big no-no, throwing things at the headlining act. Security puts these plastic handcuffs on him and takes him away. The rest of us are in the parking lot, partying at our bus with the other bands, and we see Brent go flying by on the back of a golf cart with two security guards. Somehow he manages to jump off, and—with his hands still cuffed behind his back—hops onto the bus of Killswitch Engage, runs to the back lounge where they’re all hanging out, and hides under their table. The security guys never found him.”
SHIT STORM
“Anyone who’s been on a tour bus knows, legally, you can’t shit in the toilet. We’re in Milan on our bus, and I’d met this young lady who lives there, so I call her and ask if I can come use her bathroom. I get there and it’s this tiny, Fisher Price–like toilet in her bedroom. I do my thing, and it’s the biggest turd I’ve ever seen, like Nessie sticking its head out of the water. I push this tiny little button and it’s like [whisper soft] fluussshhh and the turd barely moves. We’re three stories up, and I’m contemplating wrapping it up in toilet paper and throwing it out the window to the courtyard below. Instead, I ask this girl for a plunger, but she doesn’t understand, so she brings in her mom and sister. Meanwhile, the turd’s just sitting there, stinking up the place. They can’t find a plunger, so I hold down the button until finally the tail of the turd catches and it goes down into the cave. You could still see it, but by this point I just had to get out of there, so I left.”
