Can't Tour Europe Without One of These...

Shown above is my work-permit from the 1989 tour. (You can click on it and see an enlarged image) We all had to have one of these in order to perform on these European tours. We did three tours—in the falls of '88, and '89, and then the spring of 1990. They were roughly five, eight and four weeks long, respectively. The first one broke even, more or less, the second tour lost somewhere around $20,000, and the third actually paid us a small sum for our efforts. The permit above is for the 8-week tour where we lost all the money.

One misconception many people have about the music business is that they view record companies as benificent entities that actually care about the content they release and the artists that they hire. They don't. (We were guilty of this misconception ourselves, at least to begin with.) Record companies are essentially banks that lend money to artists with the expectation of cleaning up on their sales and airplay. Even smaller, "idealistic" record labels will ultimately conform to this model, though they may start out otherwise. But at the end of the day, it's the artists that have to cover the debts. They are also usually the last to share in any profits that may accumulate.

On this tour we worked very hard, playing constantly for eight weeks without any breaks to speak of. Most days consisted of at least six to eight hours of travel in the van, then setup at the venue, soundcheck, dinner, gig, hotel, bed. Next day, wake up, repeat. On this tour we played for a thirty-one day stretch without a single day off. For much of the time at least two members of the band were sick with the flu, yet we never cancelled a show, and no-one missed a single performance. Artistically, the band grew tremendously, and our shows were well-reviewed and (mostly) well-attended. At the end of it we all sat down at a meeting with our booking agent, record company, and manager (at the "Bugle House" address shown on the work permit). Here we learned of the enormous debt that the tour had incurred. The meeting was very tense because there had been a number of disasters, miscalculations and generally inept planning from the start. There was plenty of blame to go around and a good part of the meeting was spent arguing over who was at fault. Then everyone in the room turned to the band and basically asked, "Well, how are you going to clear this debt?" At that moment, we had absolutely no idea how to answer the question. Collectively, we felt a great anger that the people least responsible for the failure of the tour were the ones who were in charge of cleaning up the mess. It was one of the most bleak and depressing moments of my life.