Road Crew - Road Crew Appearances

Road Crew Appearances

The road crew are generally uncredited, though many bands take care to thank their crew in album sleeve liner notes.

• On June 12, 1993, while performing "Bullet in the Head" in Reykjavik, Iceland, Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello and bassist Tim Commerford switched out with their guitar and bass technicians, respectively.
• The Doobie Brothers' lighting roadie, Bobby LaKind, eventually became a full member of the band. After observing LaKind goofing around on the congas after a concert, the band took notice of his talent and asked him to join as a sideman for studio sessions in 1976. He became a full member in 1979 and performed as a vocalist, songwriter, percussionist and backup drummer for live shows.
• Pink Floyd listed theirs on the rear sleeve of Ummagumma and recorded them speaking on The Dark Side of the Moon. A roadie also delivered the spoken part of the studio version of the song "Sheep", on the Animals album. They had also written a song called Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast about a roadie, appearing on their 1970 album Atom Heart Mother.
• Pantera, Motörhead and Godsmack even go so far as to feature their crew in their tour videos, and Motörhead wrote the song "(We Are) The Road Crew" about their crew.
• Exceptionally, in the former Manu Chao band Mano Negra, the roadies were included as a part of the band when they signed for Virgin.
• Todd Rundgren and Roger Powell invited roadie Jan Michael Alejandro to play piano with them, Ringo Starr and Bill Wyman on a live broadcast of the Jerry Lewis Telethon in Las Vegas. It was viewed by 33 million people. He also worked the last Led Zeppelin concert in Knebworth 1979, and he was one of the roadies that Jackson Browne wrote about on the Running On Empty Tour.
• Jackson Browne on his 1977 tour, "Running On Empty", wrote his famous song "The Load-Out" (usually heard in a live version hybrid with a cover of the Maurice Williams tune "Stay") in order to honor his roadies.
• Perry Bamonte was a long-serving guitar tech for The Cure, before filling in on keyboards during the final leg of the Disintegration tour after Roger O'Donnell's departure in 1991. He went on to play guitar and keyboards on four Cure albums, including major hit Wish.
• Coldplay's video Life in Technicolor ii features roadie puppets four times: picking up the cymbal dropped by the drummer, operating the rope that widens the stage, moving a ramp onstage and operating the sound mixer. Some, or possibly all, of these puppets are modeled on the band's real-life crew.
• Tupac Shakur joined Digital Underground as a roadie, backup singer and dancer in 1990, and appeared with the band in the film Nothing but Trouble to begin his rapping career.
• U2's "One Tree Hill" on the album The Joshua Tree is dedicated to Greg Carroll, who was a stagehand in New Zealand. He joined The Unforgettable Fire tour, and after the tour he stayed in Ireland and became Bono's personal assistant.
• Stuart Morgan, Adam Clayton's bass tech, filled in for the U2 bassist for a concert in Sydney in 1993.
• James Hetfield of Metallica has been—at least twice—temporarily replaced in his guitar duties by his roadie John Marshall during his various injuries (such as breaking his arm while skateboarding and after suffering severe burns after standing over a pyrotechnical device).
• Tenacious D wrote the song Roadie off their 2012 Rize of the Fenix album to pay homage to their road crew. A video for the song featured Danny McBride as a stereotypical, long hair, black leather wearing roadie who grew jealous of the band as he watched their success from the sidelines.