WHAT IS A PER DIEM?—CROSSING THE SIX-INCH CHASM
(Hollywood to Amsterdam)
By 1990, Jeff Dahl had left Los Angeles for a quiet little no-place called Cave Creek, Arizona, about forty minutes outside of Phoenix. He’d made a killing on his Woodland Hills home, and was living the life of Riley, running his fan club, planning tours, making records. He’d broken up the original Jeff Dahl Group when he left town, which was only logical.
During this time, Dahl became somewhat of a cult hero in certain European countries and Japan. He didn’t mean much of anything sales-wise in the U.S., but the export business on him had become rather brisk. He’d mounted a small tour of the U.K., utilizing an English band as his backing group—again the Chuck Berry method, then he pulled an ex-Angry Samoans drummer and ex-Powertrip bassist as backup players, and toured the European continent for a month as a trio. He followed this with a Japanese tour featuring a Japanese band. His international fan base increased exponentially as a result, and his career continued to blossom.
As for the original group, Del had disappeared. No one knew exactly what had happened to him. He had been growing pot out of a makeshift greenhouse in his closet, and word was he was sure the feds were onto him. He had purchased an RV and vanished from taxable society. Amy and I played together in another band called Sister Goddamn with the ex-singer of former teen punk stars The Adolescents, but eventually she sadly wandered into drug addiction and left the state for parts unknown. I played with lots of ex-members of this band and that, all of them musicians whose most successful days were probably behind them. Logically, it would seem like my own best days of big crowds and decent pay were on the fade as well, but what was I gonna do, become something respectable?
I’d also left the PR firm and started working for a small, upstart, indie label called Triple X Records who were largely known as the record company that discovered Jane’s Addiction. Just prior to my employment there, as coincidence and fate would have it, the label had become the recording home Jeff Dahl, as well.
Along with numerous other duties (when you work for an indie label you usually wear a few hats), I’d begun producing records for the label. Among the bands I flung out to an apathetic world were The Ultras, whose shtick was an unlikely combination of hard-edged glam-pop and Aleister Crowley do-what-thou-wilt Satanism—long before Marilyn Manson would think of it. I’d also secured a job at Triple X for The Ultras drummer, Jeff Zimmitti, which pretty much coincided with the band’s inevitable break up.
A prototypically suave Sicilian, Zimmitti fit in with Satanists and accountants alike. He was basically a quiet guy who could adapt to almost any situation. He was dark, with movie star good looks, but had a certain sullenness that kept people guessing on what was really going on in his head. A bit of a pretty boy, he was constantly rethinking his look, from brooding Nick Cave look-a-like, to New York Dolls androgynous clone, to forties gangster in sharp suits and spats. He was quiet, but a character nonetheless. His mature countenance obscured the fact that he was only twenty-three.
Zimmitti—Z for short—had begun a dialogue with Dahl that he kept under wraps. Eager to see the world and get the hell out of his desk job, he’d slowly convinced Dahl to take him along on the next tour. It was shaping up to be quite a lengthy expedition—nine weeks in Europe, plus a week in Japan. Since my desk was next to Z’s, my big ears caught wind of this. I rationalized that if anyone deserved to hit the road with Dahl, it was going to be me.
Dahl remained loyal to his players at the time, and John Duffy, the ex-Powertrip bassist, was still in the bull pen. Dahl told me that he wasn’t sure if Duffy could leave town for that long. If he couldn’t, I had the gig. The owners of the label were shaky about Z and I taking a two-month-plus leave of absence, but we began working on ways to make it happen, training temporary replacements, delegating authority, that sort of thing.
The tour was set to commence in late January of 1993. By the fall of 1992, it was confirmed. I would be a part of it. Jeff would return to a quartet format, adding lead guitarist Ratboy, who’d played on Jeff’s most recent LP (the one the tour would promote?). Ratboy had been a longtime member of the L.A. drunk-rock band Motorcycle Boy. Rat had recently quit the band and relocated to New York, where he formed his own band, worked in a record store on St. Mark’s Place, and was dating a girl named Lizzie who was also in a band (wasn’t everybody?). Rat was originally from Switzerland, the son of a French mom and an Italian dad. He spoke fluent French and English, a little German, and some sketchy Italian, abilities that would obviously be an asset on the road. Having moved all over Europe, he claimed to be an expert on looking like a freak but got through customs borders unscathed.
His nickname derives from his face, which is made up of a series of rat-like features. His smallish frame is exaggerated by an absolute lack of both muscle and fat. His head had a certain rodent shape, accented by the fact that he had virtually no chin. Rat sported a stylish rock-dandy look—vests, ruffled shirts, caps, bolo ties, and skin-tight pants. Lurking just below the age of thirty, he was vaguely ageless. It wasn’t that he was eternally youthful or anything, rather that you couldn’t estimate an age on him by virtue of his appearance. He’d lived a hard life in some respects, surviving hand-to-mouth and from scam to scam in Hollywood, New York, London, and Paris. If you looked close, you could see that in the lines around his eyes, but, for the most part, he looked young and lively.
Dahl’s recent bands had been of the dressed down T-shirt and blue jean variety, which he was comfortable with. Jeff was a glam fan raised on Alice Cooper, the Dolls, and Mott the Hoople. With this lineup, the band would definitely veer into frilly glitter territory. Dahl easily rolled with that, too. In the trendy in today/out tomorrow music business, the way a band looks can be as important as the way it sounds. A glam band traipsing through punk rock Europe could be interesting from a sociological standpoint. Or, it could be a death wish. This was starting to sound like an adventure.
Dahl had grown up in Hawaii, and was the lone rock rebel in his school. He played drums in the loudest band he could find, and won the heart of his future wife, Sylvia, by being the only kid freaky enough to come to school with Alice Cooper makeup on. He had enlisted in the army right out of high school, which he didn’t talk about much. It was obvious his need for order and respect of discipline had stayed with him from that experience. He liked to be in control, and he liked things to run smoothly. This usually meant everyone in the band doing things his way. He never raised his voice, and he hardly ever made serious demands of his players. He would demonstrate a song in its most basic form, and allow the player to put his or her spin on it. Things had always run smoothly for me while working with Jeff. Rehearsals were orderly but fun enough. Shows were usually decent with adequate pay, and any recording royalties would be split evenly amongst us musicians. To my knowledge, he wasn’t in it for the money. He truly loved rock ‘n’ roll, and felt that he could help carry on the tradition of his favorite artists: the Dolls, the Stooges, MC5, and Alice Cooper. We had always gotten along well, but it was a very low-key friendship.
Jeff is a year older than me. His real name is Jeff Dahlby, but he’d shortened it when he released his first record, a 1978 single titled Rock ‘n’ Roll Critic. He had an average build, stood about five foot eight, and had a strong German nose and chin that were buried under a huge, frizzy afro. His hair was always changing color, and whether it was black, red, blond, or a combination thereof, it never looked quite right. Still, with his fans, his mop had become sort of his trademark, and each year it seemed bigger and more preposterous.
During the early punk rock years, Jeff had been quite a wild man. He had a reputation for being able to put away more beer than just about anyone. When I’d go see his band Powertrip, beer seemed to practically seep from his pores, as he alternately guzzled it and sprayed it at the audience. He kept himself going through the endless drinking bouts with healthy doses of speed. When he dropped out of the scene in the mid-eighties, he quit drinking and using drugs, with the exception of the occasional puff of pot. He kicked his habits so suddenly that, years later, when I went to his house for an aftershow party, he offered me a beer from his fridge, claiming it had been there from the day he decided to quit. I was impressed. My willpower is not nearly as strong. He still needed something to go overboard on, though, and he replaced his drugs and drinking with running, bicycling, and swimming, all performed to the maximum. He began participating in triathlons, grueling athletic events that involved a mile swim and miles of running and biking in the same competition. He was clean, lean, and mean.
Back at the Triple X office, Dahl begins to prepare both me and Z for the road ahead. Now that I have secured the gig, I begin inquiring as to what to expect in terms of travel, comforts, and naturally, money.
“The last tour was five weeks long, and by the fourth week we were into profit,” Dahl reports. “So, we really only made money for one week. But, this tour is just over nine weeks long, not counting Japan, so we should turn a profit around halfway through.”
Seems logical. Z is handling a lot of the logistics between the label and Dahl, and one afternoon I ask Z what our per diems will be.
“I don’t know. What’s a per diem?”
“A per diem,” I explain, “is a daily allowance that’s doled out to everyone on the tour for day-to-day kind of things, such as cigarettes, food, candy, and chips at roadside markets and gas stations, and for barhopping after shows, etc. Important stuff. Usually on a small tour like this it’s around ten bucks a day.”
“Really? Yeah, we should get that. I’ll check on it.”
A few weeks pass and I still haven’t heard a firm answer to the question. In fact, as we get closer to the departure dates, the subject of money seems to get hazier. Apparently, Dahl and his European agent, a guy named Camille, who works for a Netherlands-based talent agency called Paper Clip, are still ironing out certain details. Since this is Dahl’s third time over, Camille is trying to get him better guarantees and lodging. Around Christmas of 1992, information comes in that could cancel the whole tour: we have lost all of the German dates.
Germany is Dahl’s biggest market. The band was going to play there for almost a fourth of the entire tour. Camille had, apparently, been squeezing the German promoters for bigger pieces of pie, and they finally decided to pull out altogether. At the eleventh hour, another promoter, Powerline, agreed to work with Camille to piece it all back together. This meant that, until the last minute, we wouldn’t have a confirmed itinerary or a completed budget. The word finally came down that there were to be no per diems, at which point, I give Dahl a call directly.
“How can we survive on the road for two months with no per diems?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he replies. “Everything will be provided for. The venues will put us up in hotels. The hotels will provide breakfast. We’ll get a rider that will provide us with snacks when we get to the gig for sound check and a meal before we play. We’ll get all the beer you can drink at the gig.”
“What about just day-to-day, you know, when we’re traveling?”
“If we stop somewhere, and you want, say, an apple, we’ll have money in the budget for that.”
My experience on the road is not anywhere near as extensive as Jeff’s, but I’m not really buying this. An apple? Why would I want an apple? I’m going to want the immediate gratification that roadside garbage and nicotine provides, usually a bit pricier than an apple. I know that over a period of two months, we’re going to need some pocket cash. I mean, we’ll be seeing the sights and chasing European women, right?
“There really won’t be that much time outside of the shows and travel,” rationalizes our leader. “On the last tour, Duffy and I were fighting over who would get the Woolite so we could wash our socks in the hotel sink. That’s what we did in our spare time!”
Now, I refused to believe that I was going to spend two months in Europe solely driving, playing bass, and hovering over a sock-filled sink. There had to be a solution.
Given that Jeff is a Triple X artist, and that The Ultras, Sister Goddamn, and Motorcycle Boy all have CDs out on the same label, I suggested that we take a load of CDs along, sell them at the shows, and split the money as per diems. Z, who deals with a lot of our sales outside of the U.S., works it out with Peter, who owns the label, and we pack up fifty copies of Dahl’s latest album, Wasted Remains of a Disturbed Childhood, and twenty-five of each of the releases by the other bands. Figuring we can sell them for the equivalent of fifteen dollars apiece, this will likely add up to some decent cash.
Like the Lemon Pipers, money fuels my music machine. I’m still uptight about the budget, so I convince Dahl to manufacture more shirts and caps than he originally planned. Merchandise can generate healthy income on the road. Since we’ll be out for two months, and since Jeff usually comes up with great looking merchandise, I assure him it’s money in the bank.
We are getting closer to the start of the tour, and rehearsals are set to commence five days before our departure. We’ve all been working on the songs off of cassettes Jeff made. These three rehearsals are just designed to tighten us up. Z and I went to Phoenix to play a warm-up gig with Jeff a month ago. No one is too worried about the musical side of things.
I take my minivan down to LAX to pick up Ratboy and Dahl. Both of their flights are late, so I keep driving back and forth across the L.A. airport hoping one of them will arrive. I eventually settle in at Tower Air, which is the airline Rat was supposed to come in on, the cheapest flight he could find. He’d gotten on in New York, while the flight had originated in Tel Aviv. Two hours late, he finally comes marching through the terminal, loaded down with an unbelievably huge folded bag and two guitar cases. Walking quickly while still trying to maintain that ever-present style, he takes a violent spill when one of his Beatle boots fails to connect properly with the floor. The nearby crowd scatters as his guitars, behemoth bag, and cap fly in opposite directions. I shake his hand, help him collect himself and his belongings, and we head out to fetch Dahlby.
“I couldn’t believe my flight,” says Rat, shaking his head. His accent is a combination of dialects from everywhere he’s lived, but the Swiss and the French stand out the strongest. “You know how there’s a double window pane for the windows at each aisle? There was no inside window on mine, so there was just a quarter inch of cheap plastic keeping me from being sucked into the abyss!”
Rehearsals start out shaky. Z has difficulty keeping an even tempo with the fast music. Dahl is visibly worried, but I keep reassuring him that I’m confident he’ll get it together. Although, the truth is, I have no idea whether he will or not. I’m just sure there isn’t enough time to get another drummer, much less secure a passport and a round-trip ticket to Amsterdam with only two days notice.
By the final rehearsal, it’s still rough, but it’s beginning to resemble music. It’ll be fine, I think. Surely, it’ll come together once we start performing every night. Dahl announces that, on top of the CD sales, there will be a hundred dollar a month payment that will serve as our per diem. This works out to roughly three bucks and a chump of change per day. Ever the optimist, I’m unwilling to look at the dark side as we all prepare to launch the longest tour of our lives. I am sure we’ll make money on the road and at the gigs. Everything’s gonna be just fine.
The night of our last rehearsal, a Sunday, Jeff and I go back to my apartment. My live-in girlfriend, Gina, whom I’m ridiculously in love with, is cooking up a Cajun feast, and has invited a few of our friends over for a bon voyage. Gina will miss me, but she has all of the added responsibilities of managing our empire during my absence. Involved in the music business herself, she finally has a job she really likes, working at a big management firm that handles heavy-duty rock stars like Faith No More, Rage Against the Machine, and L7. In spite of it all, she hasn’t complained or made any fusses. She always encourages me to do what I want and to take my music as far as it will go.
Gina dishes out the vittles and we all sit down at the dining table, but Dahl declines to join us. He sits across the room, eating only a salad. He seems uncomfortable socializing with anyone, and he’s shyer than I’ve ever seen him. I figure he’s probably just nervous and anxious.
When January 19th finally comes around, we all board KLM airlines and head to Amsterdam, the city where the tour will begin and end. Since it’s an international flight, the smokers—myself and Z—will be allowed to partake in the joys of tobacco at will. It’s a back-of-the-bus scenario, but we don’t mind the ghettoization. It’s a long flight. Better being in the leper colony of nico-heads than getting nerves because we can’t smoke on this ten-hour rocket ride.
Once in Amsterdam, we breeze through customs with relative ease, considering we have six guitars, three large crates stuffed with hats and shirts we intend to sell, and five bags of luggage between us. We are all pretty groggy upon arrival and stumble sort of haplessly toward the exit. A spry young man with wavy red hair approaches us.
“You must be the Jeff Dahl band. I’m your tour manager, Simon Easton,” he introduces himself. He looks at me and asks if I’m Jeff, and I point out Dahlby. His famous frizz is tucked in a ponytail, which makes him somewhat incognito. We run through the remainder of the introductions and head for the van.
It’s cold and rainy out, but the van is nearby. It’s a new Renault rarin’ to go. I naïvely expected the kind of van one tours the States in: a big cargo-style Econoline with a backseat and plenty of room to stretch out in the back with the equipment. It hadn’t occurred to me that the antiquated back roads of Europe would never accommodate a big American road hog, and indeed, the European-style van was a much different design. It’s tall rather than wide with plenty of room in back for whatever we needed to store. The front has the driver’s seat and a wide passenger seat, big enough for two. The back comfortably sits three across, but there’s no place to stretch out and get any real rest.
Another thing I didn’t consider was the fact that this type of van could be a stick shift, which was a problem because I never learned how to drive anything but an automatic. This characteristic would provide us all with significant moments of tension, as I had agreed in advance to take up the slack driving—and had even obtained an international driver’s license, as had Dahl. Z didn’t even bring a license, and Rat didn’t want to drive. This was sure to get interesting.
We stashed our luggage and instruments and put them in with the rented backline equipment—amps and drums. I hop in front with Simon. The rest of the guys pile in the back. As Simon pops a Doors compilation into the deck, we head off. The backseat starts to nod off one by one as Morrison sings us lullabies.
“Cancel my prescription to the resurrection…”
Simon is mercurial, enthused—a veritable bubbling spark plug of positive energy. He’s English but has been living in Holland for some time, working as a club DJ in-between road stints. Though only twenty-two years old, constant roadwork and party favors have aged him beyond his youth. We chat about what is ahead and Simon’s past experience while we begin rolling north—considerably north—to our first destination, Groningen.
“I’ve been a tech before,” he relates. “I tuned guitars and was a keyboard tech. Mostly, I’ve worked with this Dutch band called The Soft Machine.” (Not to be confused with the English prog/psyche/jazz group of the same name.) “This is my first gig as a road manager, and I’m really into it. I’m going to make things run really smooth for you guys, no problem.”
“When I was back there in seminary school...” The tape rambles on. It all seems to be tying together somehow.
“I’d like to get into management.” Simon leans toward me when he talks and manages to not disturb the band members sleeping behind us. “I’m keen on having a go at it. I’m good with people, and I think I’ve got what it takes to bring people together and get people to rally behind a band. I’d be good at that.”
Very English. I decide I like him.
I start to feel my own head bob up and down—getting sleepy...sleepy...
“Carry me caravan take me away. Take me to Portugal, take me to Spain…”