A ROADIE IN THE 1990s

Excerpted from my book Black Vinyl White Powder, to be published in the USA by Unbound on April 4th

In 1956 I was 17. Big bands were still the main draw in Britain and I’d got myself a roadie’s job with the Johnny Dankworth Orchestra. The Dankworth band was one of the top three big bands in the country and went from town to town playing in dance halls. There was Dankworth himself, two singers and 16 musicians, five of them jazz soloists. Fresh out of public school I was their posh bandboy, something of an amusement to them. I’d taken on the job because I intended eventually to earn my living as a jazz musician and wanted to be around other jazz musicians. 

Before each show I had to unload the instruments from the bus and set them up on the stage. Afterwards I had to pack them away again. I was also expected to look after the musicians and get them anything they wanted – sandwiches, cigarettes, beer, or ‘something special’ to smoke. The Dankworth band was trendier than other big bands, it was more jazz-orientated, and where there were jazz musicians there was marijuana. 

To provide the guys in the band with a smoke whenever they needed it, I kept in my pocket a chunk of hash, the hard brown resin of the female cannabis plant, much easier to carry around than a bag full of grass. The technique was to sit on the floor at the back of the bus, hack a small piece from my master chunk, wrap it in foil from a cigarette pack and heat the outside with a match. The dried hash crumbled easily onto a Rizzla cigarette paper and was mixed with tobacco to be rolled into a joint, which in those days was called a reefer. 

I was much better at making them than smoking them. I was a trumpet player, and if I was to succeed in my chosen career as a jazz musician smoking reefers was obviously essential. But the truth was, they set my throat on fire. 

After a gig I would pack the instruments in the boot of the band bus and lay the double-bass along the back seat, but not when Maureen showed up. 

In the fifties, there were no floods of groupies to follow pop stars around the country. For the Johnny Dankworth band there were just one or two girls available in each regional area and one of them was Maureen; she was plump and rather willing, and she caused me to lose my job. 

Maureen lived in Wolverhampton and would go to any gig within a reasonable range, providing she was delivered back home afterwards. During the delivery process she would offer her services on the back seat to anyone who wanted them. If he was up to it, the bandboy would come last, but I wasn’t – there was more pleasure to be had from carrying the drum kit up six flights of stairs at the Llandudno Empire, which happened to be one of the places Maureen turned up at. 

After the gig that evening, in the process of organising things for the band’s pleasure, I overlooked the double-bass and left it lying in the street outside the theatre. In the middle of the night, on the way to Dudley, the bass player discovered his instrument wasn’t on the bus and sent me hitchhiking back to collect it. When I arrived it was mid-morning on Sunday. It was summer and there were thousands of holidaymakers in the streets, but the double bass was lying on its side on the pavement just as I’d left it with everyone walking carefully around it. I carried it to the station and set off to Dudley by train. I changed at Birmingham and Leeds and arrived at nine the next morning only to be told the band had already left.

When I got to the next gig I was fired.