By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
May 25, 1997
The most coveted item at rock shows isn’t a pair of decent earplugs. It’s the backstage pass.
We want those round (or square, or triangular) stick-on adhesive passes that are our entree into rock ‘n’ roll nirvana for the same reason we want Porsches, 15-carat diamond engagement rings and brainy significant others who are dead ringers for supermodels. We covet what we can’t have.
But most fans will never get their hands on those elusive passes, or their even more exclusive cousins – the all-access laminate passes that hang around your neck . . . which means they won’t be able to banter with the lead guitarist about the merits of the band’s previous album over its current one. Or trade jaunty gossip with the singer about their opening act’s penchant for cross dressing. Or sip champagne as waiters politely pass around foie gras.
But the worst part of not being there is not being able to tell everyone else who wasn’t there what fun you had with all the famous people who could’ve been your very best friends if they had just cooperated.
How cool it’d be to tell your friends, “Then I said to him, `Mick, you’ve really got to try this Snapple.’ ”
Not that any of this actually goes on backstage. But the mysterious perception of what really happens back there is enough to make even normally sane adults covet these passes as if they were coupons for cellulite-reducing ice cream.
Let’s face it: Everyone likes feeling important, and being the owner of one of these stick-ons or laminates will make you the envy of dozens (if not hundreds) of fans who’ll eye your thigh or neck and wonder who you are and how you got that pass.
“I’ve had fans offer me a couple of hundred dollars for backstage passes,” said Leah Horwitz, an independent publicist who has worked with Tool, Matthew Sweet and Keanu Reeves’ trio Dogstar. “I had someone peel one off of me once at a show. It was so crowded there was no way I could’ve known who took it.”
Chances are that when the fiend got backstage with the stolen pass, he didn’t find what he was looking for: total access to the band. The sad truth is, the backstage pass will get you backstage, but the only other people back there could be folks just like you.
Don’t believe me? Check it out. After Live’s recent show at the Riviera Theatre, radio contest winners patiently waited backstage for the band to show up. The only one who surfaced was whats’isface – a.k.a. the bassist. The others were missing in action.
The backstage experience often rates less than four stars. And the bigger a band is, the less access that precious pass provides. You rarely get more than the chance to obsequiously say, “Hey, nice show,” to your idols. And even the promise of free food and drink usually boils down to a sorry-looking deli tray of gray meat.
Still, the allure of being backstage is a tantalizing prospect for fans, since it’s one of the few ways of getting anywhere near the musicians.
“Some fans will do anything for a backstage pass if they think that will get them to meet the band,” said Heavy Duty, a tour bus driver who has worked for Michael Jackson and Dishwalla. “One girl said she wouldn’t go away until she got a backstage pass. I sarcastically asked her if she would take her clothes off, and when I looked back up, she was standing there naked! Who’d do that? I asked her to leave.”
Similar stunts have gotten many women backstage. But what to do if you don’t feel like degrading yourself? If you’re pretty, you just stand there – preferably within the first few rows. Everyone from Pearl Jam to Van Halen to Oasis has showered passes on beautiful young women they spotted in the audience. (If you’re smart, you’ll cling to your attractive pal – most groups won’t be mean enough to exclude “the friend” from the after-show meet-and-greet.) Jackson Browne even found his one-time girlfriend Daryl Hannah that way.
OK, now what about those fans in the nosebleed seats. How do they get passes? With much difficulty, because it’s literally in the hands of the record companies and the artists’ management.
“Every show is a different situation,” according to Steve Karas, senior national publicity director at A & M Records, whose artist roster includes Blues Traveler, Suzanne Vega, Barry White and Jonny Lang. “Laminates for the most part are issued to label representatives working with the band, special friends and technical support for the production. They get them to more areas backstage. Sticky passes most frequently are utilized by radio contest winners, retail and radio dignitaries and key press in the market.
“But fans should realize that access to a band’s dressing room is rarely authorized for any individuals excluding band members, management and senior record company officers and very close friends.”
Fans should also realize that backstage passes rarely provide pre-concert access to musicians.
“They want to concentrate on the music and don’t want to be distracted,” Horwitz said. “They’d rather deal with all that after the show is over and their job is done.”
As a band gets more popular, it may choose to halt the nonstop traffic backstage. After his last Chicago show at the Riviera, the Wallflowers’ Jakob Dylan said his band is keeping its backstage lists to a minimum now.
“It was getting out of control,” Dylan said. “There were so many people coming back to say hi and it was just too chaotic. We love meeting our fans, but a lot of the people coming back didn’t even know who we were. They were friends of friends or something.”
This is good news for the fans because almost always, the artists would rather meet you than some freebie-mongering industry weasel (me). They’ll be happier talking to you than, say, a reporter who’ll write down that the band members were passing around joints or didn’t wash their hands when they came out of the bathroom.
You’re not necessarily out of luck if you have no connection to the music industry or can’t win any contests to meet your favorite group. It just means you have to be wily. For instance, if you hang around the backstage area after a performance, one of the musicians may see you and come over to you. Horwitz said Tool and Matthew Sweet do this all the time, especially when the meet-and-greets backstage get boring.
Also, you might want to befriend that favorite indie group now before they become the U2 of 2005. Most baby bands are eager to talk to fans before, during and after shows and will add you to their mailing lists. At that stage, most don’t even require backstage passes because they want to talk to anyone who knows who they are.
But when they come back to town and are just famous enough to warrant issuing passes, you have a better chance of getting one if you’ve supported them since Day One. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Group X is going to give a squat about you when they start raking in millions and dating Naomi Campbell, but it’s worth a shot.
If nothing else, you’ll have stories to tell about knowing so-and-so way back when.
And that pretty much serves the same purpose as the backstage pass.
