My home in the center of Mexico, San Miguel de Allende is packed full of people reclused, at ease, coming, going, hiding from something/somebody, eluding, finding, seeking their entitlements or their conspiracies, holding on, holding steady, and "Years ago, I always felt I was a real artist, but then it all changed when I ……………." It's a mishmash listing hard to the mash side as more and more people flee the horrors of the new America on the make.
Almost every ex-pat in Mexico has a story, and I love to hear them, but at the end of some of these stories, I find myself shaking my head and saying, "Let me understand this. You did what, exactly? Explain this to me, would you please?" For me, this would be one of those stories. You might agree, and then again, you might fail to see the charm in it. As a Public Service Announcement and a Don't Waste Your Time On This Essay warning, I should say the following. If Rock and Roll wasn't a critical backdrop for your life, it might now be time to snuggle up with a copy of Finnegans Wake and call it good. You got other stuff to do.
According to Johnny Starbuck, Gimme Shelter, the first song on the 1969 Let It Bleed album is the greatest rock and roll song ever written. He lost count of how many times he played that track when he first put the LP on the turntable. Could not believe what he was hearing. He's not alone. In its rock and roll niche, Starbuck might have a fair point.
Recently, Johnny told me, "It was always manic and crazy busy the day of the concert. A lot of stuff had to be locked down, on its way somewhere, or already there. My job for the tour was to take care of the equipment for the four main guys in the band — every ounce of gear and all those guitars — on average, 65 guitars for each concert." He'd work like crazy getting the equipment hooked up, checked, and rechecked so he'd get a little ahead and could spare a moment. He knew when potential breaks might appear because he got the setlist from Jagger, and he’d done his homework.
At exactly the right "spare" moment, he would make sure the Gibson ES 355 thin-line semi-hollow body electric guitar got to Keith onstage, and then, in that instant, he'd run over to the Fender Twin Amps on stage that were wirelessly connected directly to that Gibson. The serial numbers on those amps were 00003 and 00005 from 1957 — powerful amps that were two of a kind — nothing else even close. Out of sight of the multiples of thousands of people in the audience, Johnny would take a hit off a joint, lean on his elbows over those two massive amps, close his eyes, and position his head between the two of them at the exact instant Keith Richards tore into the opening riff of Gimme Shelter. There’s no purebred headbanger on this earth who has ever claimed a more hallowed ground to strike a pose and take a stance. A searing, white-hot bolt of rock-and-roll lightning hit the center of this guy’s brain, and metaphorically, he kept his head between those amps for more than 30 years. Today, he says, "I look back at some of this stuff, and I swear it feels like it happened to somebody else; somebody I don't know; maybe somebody I heard about; certainly not me." But it did. For over 30 years, Johnny Starbuck was on the job as the professional roadie for the four guys they still call The Rolling Stones.
Johnny and Keef headed toward deep space. Photo courtesy Johnny Starbuck
Unlike many of us, Johnny Starbuck did what he dreamed of when he was a kid. If you look at him today, you see a serenely pleasant, closely cropped, white and gray elder statesman with a cane, a jaunty fedora-style straw hat with a brightly colored Mexican hat band, fresh jeans, striped socks, and a slow, measured stride earned from years of walking the walk. You know the breed – senior citizen, alert, ever so lightly starched, casually, and comfortably buttoned down, and steady as she goes. He's content, spending his quiet days with his wife, his dog, his parrots, and his obsessions with sports on tv. But when he was young, he traveled the world wearing a pair of rock and roll hiking shoes made from odd pieces of old Fender and Gibson guitars, worn out LP’s, juke joint leather, unrepentant over the top self-indulgences, and the blues.
His father wanted him to be a baseball player and forced it on him, but Johnny daydreamed about music. Like many of us, he heard Elvis sing Hound Dog on a 45 in 56. Unlike the rest of us, when he started moving to the beat, he never stopped and never looked back. He couldn't and didn't want to play. He didn't want to be the star. On the contrary, he wanted to be Jonah and swim inside the belly of the whale, which he did. When he was a young teenager, in 71, he started hanging out backstage at clubs on Sunset Strip in LA. He'd help bands load equipment for the show, and he got paid nothing but a ticket to the show and a couch to sleep on. Gradually, the gigs got better, and he made a few pennies – teenage fantasy money, but he was living the dream. He heard Jackson Browne sing when Browne was 16 years old and "running up 101". Damn!
About five years into this Ph.D. program, he met and helped a black keyboard player load his gear for a show. You may know the name. Billy Preston. They worked together for maybe five more years doing shows when Preston suddenly got a call to go on a European tour with the Rolling Stones. It was 76. The Glimmer Twins were at their peak. The Black and Blue album tour with Memory Motel was on the setlist. Tickets cost $ 4.50 for a good seat. Preston asked Johnny if he wanted to go. Does a bear shit in the woods? He packed his toothbrush, walked out the door, and got on the next plane to Frankfurt, Germany. Starbuck was 27, scared to death, but much too young to be anything less than blissful, blind, enchanted, and fearless.
"I arrived in a state of shock, and the first gig was that night. I had to set up the gear right now. By some miracle, everything went well. That night, hours later, I was walking down the hotel hallway and passed a small open door. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Keith Richards sitting alone at one of those small circular hotel room tables with a large bottle of Jack Daniels, a giant chunk of hash, and a bag of cocaine. I quickly looked away and kept walking, but I suddenly heard a voice yell, ‘Hey, roadie, come on in and say hello.’ I froze, took a huge breath, turned, and walked into the room. Keith handed me the bottle ("no ice, no glass") and some dope. After a while, I said I had to pee. I went into the bathroom, took another deep breath, threw some water on my face, looked in the mirror, and said to myself, "Please, God, after all this, don't let me blow it now." They got high and talked all night. Richards would ultimately become his friend and supporter for more than 30 years.
Two years later, Preston had other commitments. Johnny was on his own in California. The phone rang. It was the famous Chuch Magee, the Crew Chief from the Stones. He said, "Johnny, we've been looking all over for you, man. We loved the way you worked on the last tour. We're going on the road for the Some Girls tour. We can't do it without you. You want a job?" "It was the single greatest phone call of my life. I pinched myself hard, and it hurt — So it was true — I was working for the Rolling Stones." There were a total of 8 guys on the entire road crew and one semi-truck for all the equipment in the entire show. That would soon change.
From that point on, the phone rang for every tour through 2007. He became friends with the iconic saxophonist Bobby Keyes, Charlie Watts, Ronnie Wood, and keyboard man Chuck Leavell. Jagger always kept a distance from the crew. He left the impression that if you weren’t royalty, he was not interested in being your friend, but Johnny had work to do, so it was all good.
Johnny was there when Lisa Fischer first let the wild bird in her throat fly free on the live versions of Gimme Shelter. He was on the beach in Rio with 1.5 million people. He was at the Halftime show at the Super Bowl and was present during the Stones' advanced adolescence and adult evolution. He knew their kids. He was invited to dinner and was asked to stay the night. He became part of the family. Between tours with the Stones, he worked on other gigs with his friend Stevie Nicks, managed a night club in Miami Beach, managed a horse ranch in Oklahoma, and managed the singer/actress Katey Sagal. It never stopped.
On tour, Johnny's "job" was the four guys in the band and their equipment. At the pinnacle, the concert took an incredible 52 huge semi-trucks worth of equipment, 12 luxury buses, and 120 guys on the staff road crew, and that was without the local stagehands needed to pull it all off. The band had one 54-foot truck and trailer just for all their equipment. Inside the band trailer were 114 road case boxes, all numbered and inventoried in a specific order of appearance, and every piece of gear in its particular spot. It was an incredible logistical ballet of put and take for generations of people who grew up with the Rolling Stones soundtrack playing forever in their heads. And he claims, right this second, when it occasionally became "socially necessary", it was possible to do every bit of that engineering marvel while mindlessly stoned. It's hard to believe, but to be fair, so is the Bible. Somehow, he survived, and he prospered. Many did not.
In July of 2002, during a Stones rehearsal backstage in Toronto, Johnny's friend, mentor, and world-famous roadie Chuch Magee, died of a heart attack. His death was mourned throughout the world of Rock and Roll and is currently noted at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Chuch handled the tunning of the guitars for Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards. Johnny could not play the guitar, but over the years, he had nurtured a great natural ear and, with Chuch as a mentor, a sense of how to properly tune a guitar. A decision had to be made immediately. The day after Chuch's death, Keith Richards decided that Johnny needed to take over the tuning of the guitars for both Keith and Ronnie. Jagger was concerned that Johnny was not a guitar player and said so. Johnny was terrified and pleaded, "Please, Keith, I'm begging ya, don't do this to me!" But Keith persisted and said, "Trust me, you'll do fine, don't let me down now, man. Let’s Rock and Roll."
When it came to the nuts and bolts of the band, Mick Jagger is the frontman, Ronnie Wood, the rhythm, Charlie Watts the foundation, but Keith Richards is the engine room, so from 2002 till he left the Stones in 2007, Starbuck, who could not even play the fricking guitar, tuned the guitars for Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards. He'd let about four songs go by before he'd change the strings on a guitar. At his station backstage, on an average night, he'd change the strings on 15 to 20 guitars. Honest to God, Richards and Wood often never even checked to see if the guitars were in tune before they played in front of thousands of people. Can you imagine? On one song after another, they just let it rip on some of the greatest tunes in the history of Rock and Roll. Within 20 seconds from the start of a song, Johnny knew the guitars were in tune, and every single time they were. And so it went, year after year.
Johnny tuning Ronnie Wood's guitar backstage during a concert. Photo courtesy Johnny Starbuck.
Listening to Johnny talk about the work now, the highlights of his experiences were not what you might imagine. "I was so busy working; I didn't have time to sit back and experience it like the people in the audience. But there were stunning moments that appeared suddenly, and honestly, not very often." Johnny would be working furiously on some project during the concert, and suddenly, he'd hear something; he'd stop and listen. He'd run up to where he could see the stage and watch Ronnie, Keith, and Mick gather in front of Charlie Watt's drum set, and they would be joyously punishing their instruments, laughing, and singing. Johnny would look up to see if anyone else noticed; sometimes, other sound crew members had also stopped to listen. All the other members of the band were smiling. The audience didn’t know the difference. The Rolling Stones were locked in, and they were departing the galaxy. In those moments, Rock and roll never sounded so good. Johnny remembers saying to himself, "This is why I'm here. Up close, I get to witness this moment. To be a witness. This is why I'm here." Recently, he said this is one of those moments in Amsterdam in 1995. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIUwqStnbT4 with Lisa Fisher tearing it up.
Tour after tour, the work was intense, physical, and nonstop. After 34 years in the business, his body had slowed down, and it became apparent he could not continue to take the pounding. The current tour (Bigger Bang) had finished, and he didn't know if the Stones were ever going to work again. They had gone around the world twice on that tour alone. He had recently moved to Santa Fe, where Stevie Nicks introduced him to Joannie, his future wife. For Johnny, the last Stones concert was in London in August 2007. Life had simply slowed down and moved on. He had to think about and take care of himself. Then he and Joannie moved to San Miguel de Allende, here in the high desert center of Mexico.
From a personal viewpoint, I can't imagine being consumed in the chaos of the Rolling Stones for that long, and then suddenly, you're just another regular guy. What? How? In one instant, you're riding in one of the world's more professionally sophisticated and highest-performance super-charged clown cars, and in the next, you move to San Miguel to sit in the sun and reflect? It had to be a massive culture shock. How do you do that? I don't know if you can or can't do that. I guess you do it because there is no option. Having no options always helps when making life-altering decisions.
Recently, I asked if Johnny had any regrets from all the years on the road. His chin lifted sharply, and his head pushed back against the force of the thought. He put his hand to his chin and looked off somewhere else. He took a breath you could hear and held fast to it for a moment. There was maybe a small smile of peaceful melancholy and a resigned acceptance of the cards that have been dealt. He said, "Honestly, occasionally I wonder, and I ask myself if maybe I threw my whole life away on nothing more than a kid's daydream and a rock and roll riff. But you know…. If I'm gonna be honest with myself…. If I'm gonna be really honest…. If time suddenly and graciously bent back onto itself like some kind of Salvador Dali pocket watch, and I were 27 again…… If Keith called me and said, 'Johnny, we're going on tour, and we can't do it without you,' I'd pack my toothbrush in my pocket, walk out the back door, and be gone. I would not look back, not even for a second. Walter, knowing the true nature of teenage daydreams, how on this earth could I not walk out that door?" At the beginning of it all, and now, so much closer to the end of it all, everything considered, I think we’d all have to agree that's a fair question.
"I know, it's only rock and roll, but I like it." Keith Richards, Mick Jagger 1973.
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