The original tour dates. I have no idea why I wrote ‘Tony’s incredibly large drunken orgy’ next to the Gothenburg date.

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Managers have to make tough decisions that affect other people’s lives and the priority basis of those decisions should always be ‘Is it beneficial to my artist?’ No doubt, in our case, Sharon thought it would be more beneficial to bring roadies from the US but the way our dismissal was handled was wrong: we were given no reason and no compensation. A simple explanation, apology and a small fee for our services and the incident would be forgotten but as it stands, I still often turn the TV off whenever she makes an appearance – sad, but such was my hurt at the time. With the benefit of time though, I have accepted that she probably had a hundred other things on her desk that morning and that the names of the three roadies who were going to do the tour were not that important to her because it is a well-known fact in the music business that most managers and roadies only tolerate each other because they have to.

This long-standing tradition of mutual disrespect came about because the jobs are completely opposite. A manager handles the business end of the band. It is the manager’s job to negotiate with labels and agents, balance budgets, organise and promote the artist and constantly look for ways to get them in the newspapers and on the radio and TV. Schedules have to be made, visas applied for, artwork approved, ‘Thank you’ gifts have to be sent to appropriate people at the right time, merchandise has to be designed, manufactured and shipped and all this is to be done from their desk in rainy London while the band are touring the world with their crew: managers are jealous of roadies. What the manager doesn’t see though is what a roadie actually does and what his life style is - a never-ending diary of planes, buses and venues. Even on a small tour of 1,000-seater venues, the average crew will be loading the equipment in at 9am, setting up all day, sound checking at 5pm, dinner (in the venue) at 6pm, show at 7:30pm, pack-down and load out by 11:30pm after which they will have a few hours’ drive to the next show. Managers also don’t see  - and honestly don’t care about - the problems roadies have when they arrive at the venue, discovering that the stage is too small for all the equipment, the local crew that promoter is supposed to supply has not arrived, no breakfast catering, etc. As glamorous as it sounds being on tour with a band, its hard physical work and the roadie’s credo is ‘The show comes first’. Managers can afford to not go to the office when they have a bad cold; I’ve done a show when I’ve had glandular fever.

So, the roadie thinks the manger is a just a guy sitting in an office who starts at 10am, has a long lunch and goes home at 5pm; the manager thinks roadies are supping beer in exotic locations around the world and chasing all the good-looking women. To be fair, sometimes these things do happen but it’s rare and on that other rare occasion when a manager does actually come to a gig, he and the roadies usually, quite rightly, avoid each other as the roadies are working and the manager seems to be only interested in flaunting his own success by telling everyone backstage who he is. Managers often have an ego; roadies rarely do. In fairness, both jobs are needed in the rock world today and neither is more important than the other. A good manager will supply his artist with everything he needs to sell his music and a good roadie will make sure the musician is 100% comfortable when he walks out on stage in front of 10,000 fans. Inevitably, things do sometimes go wrong at gigs but the roadie will be there to take care of it just as the manager will be there to take care of the musician’s paperwork when needed. In essence we are a team and both managers and roadies agree on one thing: their jobs would be a lot easier if they didn’t have to deal with some ‘particular’ musicians every day.