#54 - Security in the Spotlight: Life on Tour with Rock Stars w/Ryan Atkinson

For over two decades, Ryan has safeguarded rock stars, pop icons, and music legends across 55 countries - from Pearl Jam and KISS to Hilary Duff and Drake. What began as an unexpected post-football career opportunity has evolved into a masterclass in managing the chaos that surrounds celebrity life.

The conversation takes us backstage into the complex reality of concert security, where the job extends far beyond muscling away overzealous fans. Ryan reveals the intricate logistics of venue security, the psychological cat-and-mouse games with stalkers, and the international nightmares that arise when touring developing countries. His stories range from navigating pedophiles at teen concerts to managing bomb threats, creating impromptu jail cells at festivals, and surviving plane emergencies.

Most fascinating are the intimate glimpses into how different artists behave behind closed doors. We hear about Eddie Vedder's laid-back approach, Kid Rock's intense personality, and the challenges of transitioning from Hilary Duff's eight-year tenure to other high-profile clients. Ryan dispels many myths about celebrity life while confirming others, offering remarkable perspective on fame's true nature.

Whether you're a music fan, security professional, or simply fascinated by the hidden machinery that powers the entertainment industry, this conversation reveals the extraordinary measures taken to keep the show running while protecting those in the spotlight. Join us for this rare glimpse into a world few ever see, but without which the concert experience as we know it couldn't exist. 

To follow Ryan on social click here: @FLDWRX

Transcript

Meeting Ryan: Security for the Stars

Speaker 1 0:09

well, dude ryan, thanks for joining man thank you, happy to be here.

Speaker 2 0:13

Yeah, yeah, caught me at the right time.

Speaker 1 0:15

I fly tomorrow, so yeah, you're all over the place.

Speaker 2 0:17

I'm off to la dallas baton rouge, yeah, so I started uh kid rock. Oh no shit, back with kid. Okay, so he's doing a thing called Rock the Country Tour, festival tour. It's going to be Kid Rock, nickelback, out of all bands. Last year we had Aldine, jason Aldine, and then it's going to be Hank Williams Jr and Leonard Skinner and a bunch of other bands. Yeah, that's a badass lineup. Yeah, it'll be cool.

Speaker 1 0:41

All right. So I mean I guess we'll jump into it For the people that don't know. You do personal security. You do a lot of celebrities. You've been in it 21 years I believe. You've traveled over 55 countries, so it's taken you all over the world. It's a pretty cool career, but you know it's not all glamour and saving lives and you're getting to sit on the beach while your client's sitting there.

Speaker 1 1:03

There's a lot of logistics and a lot of bullshit that come with the security world. I want to dive into all of that but before we do it, obviously you already know Christian, which is cool C-State Coffee, good guy, something that I do here on the podcast. And obviously you said you had a cigar line as well. But I give veterans, law enforcement, a chance to send us things, and completely free, and then we plug them on the episode and hopefully people hear it and support veterans. And then obviously the war machine.

Speaker 1 1:28

We talk about him a lot on this, this podcast. He was a combat marine, got out, became a cop, got shot in the line of duty and then he started his cigar line. So we'll make sure we send you home with some of those. And obviously you know the c-state coffee, oh cool, all that good stuff. So yeah, it's just kind of a little thing that we I like to give back to the veteran, law enforcement or whoever just has a small company or brand as we grow. I want to help other people kind of grow along with us and kind of our little way of giving back. But all right, dude, let's dive into it. Man, where the hell are you from?

Speaker 2 1:56

uh, born and raised in los angeles county. Okay, I lived in different cities in la county my whole life. Um, anywhere from Pomona, rancho Cucamonga was further out, I just bounced around LA. My dad had a government job, so he would just move from city to city and we would go follow along with him. So my mom was an educator, so a counselor, and I went to college in Kansas after I left LA.

Speaker 1 2:22

Got out for a little bit.

Speaker 2 2:23

Got a football scholarship and got a little bit of culture shock and Kansas didn't know what to do with me. A tattooed kid with a blonde mohawk showed up and a surfer 350-pound surfer.

Speaker 1 2:35

Yeah, you were definitely not looking like everybody else. Out in Kansas, everyone thought I was Samoan. Oh, really, yes, the tattoos did it for them.

Speaker 2 2:43

And my size really. I, oh really. Yes, the tattoos did it for him. And my size really. You know, I went to Kansas. I lived there for a few years, played ball, graduated and then off I was going with the rock star, starting with Pearl Jam.

Speaker 1 2:53

How did you? Okay, so after football, how did you roll? I mean, you're a large human being, Sure.

Speaker 3 2:59

And how tall are you? I'm 6'2". Okay, yeah, how tall are you.

Speaker 1 3:02

I'm 6'2". Okay yeah, you're a big boy, so okay. So how did that transition start? Because I've had on Elliot. He's a Boise State football player here and it was cool listening because not a lot of people get to hear the athlete transition, which I feel can be a hard time because you grow up your whole entire life. I played football all the way up until pretty much joining the military. It was either college or military, but I feel it's very similar to how veterans or law enforcement guys get out, because it's your life, it's your identity. You've done it since Pop Warner. Your senior game's done, which a lot of guys are probably already graduated in their senior year already, and then poof, I mean, they dump you right out into the street into the world, right Off to the big leagues.

Speaker 2 3:47

Yeah, you know, I was one of the 3% of the student athletes in Kansas at the time that graduated right, Because a lot of guys don't have any plan to graduate, no plans at all. No, they don't have any plans for after university. So they take BS credits throughout the university experience, like you know, bowling and whatever else they didn't skate through and then they just go out to the world and go back home and do whatever crap they were doing before they went to university. Interesting.

Speaker 2 4:10

And the college has no care in the world of what you do because you're spent up and spit out. So if you're going to the NFL, that's one thing, but once you go to the NFL, you no longer care about the university, it's all business, you know. So I was one of the 3% that was graduating. I hurt my leg on TV actually against Illinois and dislocated one of my quadriceps and retracted all the way to my hip.

Speaker 2 4:34

That was it for me and you know, at that point I had to start thinking about what I was going to do. And you know, they don't deal back in 2000,. They didn't really care about cte or the concussions or any of that stuff. I mean, I knew one guy that got black shirted in college, but he was at purdue university. Um, but they don't care what happens to you, you know, uh, they get out of having surgery, with you therapy and stuff. They do what they have to do to get you back on the field, not to get you back on your feet for life.

Speaker 2 5:01

So once I realized that the university didn't really care about me, I started making my own plans, right, so I started looking for a job. I want to be a firefighter or a cop, just like every football player, you know, coming out, uh, but I had a degree. So I wanted to find something a little bit different. You know, lapd at the time was spending more money on football or um, college graduates to roll into, uh, academy, okay, so I plan on doing that. Um, and ended up circling back to that at some point.

Speaker 2 5:29

But, um, so I met a guy named pete beetle in kansas city. He owned a company called mpb uh companies in kansas city, kansas, and he was doing security for rage against the machine christine aguilera and pearl jam at the time and a few other bands. Foo fighters were, I think, just hitting the scene and, uh he, I was 6", 350 with a college degree and I had tattoos everywhere. So I'm a tatted down guy from LA and a lot of his clients were in LA all the time, so he had to fly people from KC to LA to go work with them and I was getting old. So he was like go back to LA.

Speaker 2 5:57

I'll get you the Eagles, I'll get you all these people to work with and keep your, keep your hands to yourself. You know, big boy, and you know you make a bunch of money. You into it? I'm like, yeah, I'm into it. So you know, at that time I was 22 and he was offering me 2000 a week.

Speaker 1 6:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm like what I'm rich.

Speaker 2 6:12

You know I was making 40 bucks at the bar at the old jet lag lounge, you know, and I'm like I'm in.

Speaker 2 6:19

So he, you a laptop, pack your bag for nine days and you're off around the world. You might not ever go home. And I was like, sweet, I'm into it, no shit. So I did a couple of things with the eagles, stuff with corn and, uh, blink 182. I just get my feet wet. You know, I never work in a concert. I never even went to a concert in my life like, and here you are like a great director at a corn concert, which is probably pretty wild

Speaker 2 6:41

yeah, catching crowd surfers in a barricade, beating chart, running a barricade efficiently so people don't fall on their heads and like make sure no one gets on stage. And you know it was nothing like what I thought it would be Okay. You know, when you think of bodyguard, you don't think of that catching a hundred people in an hour, um. So I got thrown in the deep end and I swam. I didn't sing, so um, he's like pack your bag. You went out with Pearl Jam. It was my first job out of college. Was Pearl Jam, eddie Vedder and everything else. So a three-man team went out and I just learned on the fly. I didn't know what I was doing. Oh shit, I was huge and muscular.

Speaker 2 7:12

Nobody's questions you. Well, the band thought it was hilarious because they knew I'd never been on tour. Oh really.

Speaker 2 7:19

So they just went. Hey, ryan, come run around and you know I had so much energy and like he'll slow down eventually, but you know, I was wound tight. Just I haven't found the groove yet. Well, two grand a week for the first time, for 40 bucks a night, well yeah you know like I'll do whatever you want 100. So they saw that they like it was refreshing for them to have me around and stuff and I just thrive from there no kidding, well okay, so what's pearl jam like?

Speaker 1 7:41

I mean the behind the scenes they're, uh, the coolest band ever.

Speaker 2 7:45

Uh, eddie vetter is like fonzie, he's really really really you're better how you doing.

Speaker 2 7:50

Ryan, you're all right. Blue eyes you know I'm a short guy. Um, they change their set list every day. They don't play the same show twice. You know one of the only bands in the world that does that. They freestyle all night. You know three and a half hour shows, which sucked for me because I'm sitting there at the stage for three and a half hours in front of 20 to 50,000 people, but they would show up late. You know they flew a private jet everywhere. They show up around four or 5 pm. They wear skateboarding clothes or clothes like we're wearing right now. They had one road case for all their wardrobe. Really, I would unlock it every day and open it for them. T-shirt, jeans, t-shirt jeans, really. Yeah, so stage clothes to stage clothes. You know it's kind of like the same thing and uh, no shit. No hair, no makeup, no glam squad, no publicist, no nonsense they're just.

Speaker 1 8:34

They're just stepping on stage and just going for it the bass player, jeff amen.

Speaker 2 8:37

He lives in missoula. Uh his, he turned his property into a skate park. He's a skateboarder and a basketball player. He's a, he's got a basketball.

Speaker 2 8:45

You know court in his, in his house no kidding. We used to pull seats out of the arenas and steal them from like staples center or my lesson square garden and put them in his house. So he has a seat from every arena in the country. You can sit up in all the chairs. They're all labeled with plaques. You know? Oh, because you guys have access to everything, so you're able to get a carpenter up there with a drill and just drill it and take it out.

Speaker 1 9:08

So you guys were collecting stadium seats. That's pretty badass.

Speaker 2 9:11

And then a truck would go up to his house. I mean we say liberate, we don't say steal.

Speaker 1 9:15

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, he borrowed.

Speaker 2 9:17

Yeah, strategically acquiring, but you know Jeff would get out of the car and he'd just put a skateboard down and skate to the dress room and he had to wear wristbands so he wouldn't mess up his bass guitar hands.

Speaker 1 9:27

In case he fell?

Speaker 2 9:28

Yeah, he was wrist insured. You get insurance for that. Yeah, they'd all skateboard cigarette. Hey, what's up? Where's the dress room at Right there, Whatever? Hey, how? You doing Ryan. They would say good morning. It's like 4 pm they're just getting up. They didn't care, they had no cares in the world. They're such a cool band.

Speaker 1 9:45

No kidding, that's badass. That was your first experience. First experience, which really spoiled me because you know I was about to say that You're explaining no wardrobe, these guys just roll up. I don't have the experience you have, but I've been in that world for a while.

Speaker 2 10:06

It's not always like that. It could be needy. Yeah, I went straight to uh. After that, I went straight to good charlotte, which was a big band at the time, and they were number one on mtv every week.

Speaker 2 10:12

Uh, cover, cover, the rolling stone magazine. Um, you know they had mohawks and tattooed faces and you know like their fan base was like 12 to 16. Okay, so I no longer am dealing with adults or stalkers or weird people, bomb threats and stuff, it was just kids everywhere. So I had to learn how to do security with good Charlotte because you know I couldn't put my hands on anybody. Yelling at little kids isn't a thing, yep, and they're everywhere all the time. It's like a herd of locusts At the hotel, yeah, no jobs, nothing. Mom and dad give them money, they just run away from home or whatever. And now, all over the world, there's kids at the hotel, at the restaurant, just harassing you 24-7. Really, yeah, but they don't mean anything by it. Yeah, just being a kid.

Speaker 2 10:54

Yeah, you're 25 years old, with 14-year-olds chasing you around. It's like, that's how I learned how to move people quietly and, you know, be a little bit more sneaky, a little more. Uh, you know fake names in the hotels, which is a thing for everybody, but it wasn't for them at the time, you know.

Speaker 2 11:15

So, like just, okay distractions and like all kinds of things. Different cars, you know you spend a little bit more money and that was the other thing. Pearl jam at hall of fame band with all the money in the world. You know, good, charlotte was just getting started and they're like, well, we're only gonna be famous for three years, so like we need to save every dollar we get. That was like their plan.

Speaker 2 11:31

They were very calculated dudes, um no oh yeah, they have a crazy story too. Like people don't understand this, they're like some of my favorite people in the world. I still talk to them, you know wait.

Speaker 1 11:41

So they knew going into it, they're not trying to be some global they're part of that machine.

Speaker 2 11:46

That was like. They're like. You know, they're a warp tour band.

Speaker 1 11:48

Yep, and they just they made it out and warp tours were what yeah we hit I hit every warp tour when I was in san diego when they'd go through, I god you warp tours were, yeah, a lot of marines were obscurity yeah, I've worked a couple of them volunto get voluntold For the Marine Corps ball.

Speaker 2 12:03

Yeah, I did Coachella for a long time With the voluntold guys you know like. So yeah, they have a cool story. You know I appreciate those guys. I respect them a whole lot. They actually helped me Get my life together Like to be an adult Really. Yeah, it got me In my own company. Like you don't work For any companies anymore more you work for us. And you know joel madden was dating hillary duff at the time, at the end of my time with them, and then I went to work for hillary duff for eight years so these man, you are okay, so you're embedded with these guys yeah, so you're their head security or you run in a team.

Speaker 1 12:36

What? What exactly are you doing now that you're okay, you rolled from pearl jam to good charlotte? Are you? Are you work? Is there like a, a position that you're working toward, or is it they're just hiring you to be like the director of security?

Speaker 2 12:51

then you're planning everything yeah, it really depends on who the band is. That you're working for or like their, um their budgets. You know, how much success they've had. Uh, what their threat level is, the threat matrix, you know?

Speaker 2 13:02

yeah um, you know, um, I just finished with Janet Jackson. You know, I did six months with her and she has a whole different story, her family story and everything else. But if you're a good Charlotte and you came out of, you know, waldorf, maryland, and you're 22 years old and you just came off a warp tour, you don't have the history that Janet does, you know. So the budget stays low. Security is always the last position to get filled, for sure. So lighting, we need that. Sound, we need that too. Um, you know, whatever else, it is lasers and stuff. That's the show, you know?

From Football to Rock Stars: Career Beginnings

Speaker 2 13:30

production manager bus driver, you know yeah, oh, we're getting close to our budget, you know, but then it's like catering, everything that goes, yeah exactly. It's all part of the nut, you know. It all goes in the same thing. So, um, security is a luxury out there.

Speaker 1 13:44

Really.

Speaker 2 13:45

So you have to be big.

Speaker 1 13:46

But in your world, security is everything, because they're not worried about the stalkers, they're not worried about the threats, they're just living their life and you're the low on the total pull in their world. But when you're looking at it like holy shit, we are such a soft target right now. Oh, it's a mess.

Speaker 2 14:03

Yeah, you know, I have a secret service buddy. Uh, don McGee, he's the head of live nation. Uh, tech right now which is a big job. Uh, he was secret service 30 years and uh, he, he, he shadowed me for a couple of months and he was like I don't know how you do this. It's a security nightmare.

Speaker 2 14:18

This is like a three 60 security doesn't exist. I don't know how you do this. I'm like this is terrible. I'm like, yeah, you just got to check the big boxes, you know. But when you get hired, you're either one or two things or both. It could be venue security or personal. So personal is what you think of as a bodyguard. Yep, venue security is a logistics guy that deals with drivers, hotels, operations, people in the building, promoter mainly, and you, you know, building reps, uh, people that make the show go. You can't just show up and do a show in a building. You need help. Where's the power? Where are the buses parking? Who's parking the buses? And then people are doing walk and shock. They're inside the arena, putting rigging points to the ceiling, hanging motors, lights, trusses, all the stuff. So it ends up being me walking out there like all right.

Speaker 2 15:00

bus one go here, bus two go here, shore's running generators, like if the whole thing becomes, you become buried in it.

Speaker 1 15:06

I feel that's not even security.

Speaker 2 15:08

It's not.

Speaker 1 15:09

There should be a different title. You're a logistics man, something.

Speaker 2 15:15

Here's what happens is oh, where's the artist bus going? Well, it goes over there. Why is it over there? Well, the production manager wanted it on shore power. Well, security wants it right here so that he can. There's people that can see the artist getting off the bus and yell at him. We've got problems, we have security problems, so park it next to the door. Well, why don't you get up and park the bus then you know? So it becomes your problem at some point.

Speaker 1 15:35

Yep.

Speaker 2 15:41

I don't get drivers. Well, who's going talk to the driver anyway? So why don't you just book them and give me the bill? Yeah, I can do that. So you absorb these jobs and if you're good at your job you absorb as much as you can to a point where you're busy all the time, but also you become valuable to the client. So now you can just send the client with the security guy and he's going to take care of the hotel. He already advanced the hotel. What room we on? Let me see the floor plan. Let's meet with security director. Let's find an alternate entrance to the hotel. Every hotel has got an alternate entrance. It's never the front door for me. I go underground, into a garage, into a service elevator, into the backside of the hotel, right into a suite and then really nice ritz carlton's in the four seasons. They have this already set up, you know.

Speaker 1 16:24

That's.

Speaker 2 16:25

Yeah.

Speaker 1 16:26

God, there's so much yeah.

Speaker 2 16:32

I mean a lot of the stuff, like even to Disneyland. If you go to Disneyland and you get the VIP tour which I've done I don't know a hundred times in my life it's the backside that was created for the president of the United States by the Secret Service. Really.

Speaker 2 16:40

Yeah, I mean and dignitaries and whoever, but it was for the president at the time they built it. They have their own Secret Service at Disneyland. They have their own police department on the property. Supplemented by Anaheim PD. You go back door and you get on the rides in the front row and no one sees you until the ride's about to take off.

Speaker 1 17:03

And then you take off and you get off the other way as everyone else and you go right back into the secret door. How cool is that? It's awesome. You can do disneyland in like uh, 30 minutes.

Speaker 2 17:08

Yeah, it's amazing.

Speaker 1 17:10

Yeah, I can never go back and like do the thing oh, hell, no a thousand bucks, drag your ass around for eight hours, stand in line for an hour and a half yeah then you see somebody come out of that back door. You're like who's that?

Speaker 2 17:21

you get a gold hat with gold ears and stuff. It's ridiculous oh, no shit yeah, there's different food and everything.

Speaker 1 17:27

You're on the back side of disney, yeah really wild so there's a whole other side of disney that people don't even, don't even know exists, yeah all the actors and all the parade floats and all the other stuff.

Speaker 2 17:36

It's massive. Yeah, I mean mickey mouse got deep pockets. You know no shit, I've never even thought of that. Yeah, you can't just walk around. If you're michael jackson, you know you can't just make sense. They'll get a corn dog and stay on the line.

Speaker 1 17:50

Not gonna work I mean, so is it all underground?

Speaker 2 17:54

no, it's all right, it's. It's built very specifically like the whole thing was planned out. You know, disneyland was supposed to be in toluca lake, which is north hollywood, okay I don't even know this, because I lived in Toluca Lake with Hilary Duff, you know. Okay. And the Bob's Big Boy I think it was Bob's Big Boy was across the street, the original one. I don't know if you ever heard of Bob's.

Speaker 1 18:11

Oh yeah, yeah, I named my iguana I had an iguana as a child.

Speaker 2 18:25

I named it Bob after Bob. Is that around, by the way? Yeah, are they Right there at Toluca Lake? Yeah, oh shit, yeah, anyway, there's a map on the wall and it was like the original plan for Disneyland. Okay. And the lake, Toluca Lake, just an actual lake with like 50 houses around it, like massive homes, and Hillary had the biggest house at the time. She had the Barbie jet and everything else. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2 18:39

So she was the biggest Disney pop star at the time and the Disney family still owns half the land there. But it was supposed to be there and they couldn't get permits from LA city and it was too expensive to get it done. So they went down the street to Anaheim, which wasn't fully developed at the time, you know.

Speaker 2 18:53

so they've been there forever and they thought the whole thing out very, you know, very carefully, and then a lot of input from Hollywood actors and studio producers and owners of studios of how to make this happen, Because you know all the studios were universal and there's a whole city there too, with the backside of that for filming, you know it's supposed to look cool.

Speaker 1 19:14

So I'm like trying to, I mean we're not we're not Disney people. Thank God, I've never had to be a Disney dad. But I'm like trying to rack my brain as you're talking and like, how would they dad? But I'm like trying to rack my brain as you're talking and like, how would they? Is this just how everything's laid out? You just walk from one right to another.

Speaker 2 19:28

There's no line you ever walk through disney and you start doing this and you do that, there's a reason for that? Because there's a whole another flip side of that coin. Yeah, you never walk into it. You don't walk in a perfect square at disneyland. You know it's, it's, it's made very carefully, yeah there's a set of stairs and elevators and stuff like haunted mansions. A little bit weird getting into. You know, like you, I don't know if you've ever been in the haunted mansion.

Speaker 1 19:47

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 19:47

Like an elevator opens and you go in like it's weird, an elevator is right across from the elevator which we would go into and it goes straight into that elevator, which is the ride, and then the lights are already off. Someone snuck in there last second because you've been standing in line for an hour. You recognize everyone that's been standing around you for an hour, so it's pretty sneaky that's badass that would be fun.

Speaker 1 20:14

Yeah, that would be fun, yeah, okay. So after good charlotte and then homeboys date and hillary duff. So that was your connection. So you went from more logistic security to personal security at this point I mean so with um. What you were doing prior was was were you hired for the personal at that point, or were you just taking on anything? It kind of developed into the more the logistic role?

Speaker 2 20:40

yeah, uh, pearl jam, I did venue security so I wasn't with the band okay they would fly in, and so I'd catch and release they.

Speaker 2 20:45

They'd come to the venue I'd be like all right, guys right here, pull up and I'd take them to the dressing room show them what stage is at. I've been there since 7 am. They're there at 4 pm, so I'm basically working from 7 am to like 2 am've never had a nine to five. But if you're the personal guy, you're at the four seasons with them. You advance the hotel vehicles that are transporting them alongside in tandem with me and I catch them, release so they do the show, send them straight into the car they're out of there right back to the jet next city and I stay there and I tear down production with the production office and pack cases and then roll into the truck and you know you have a hundred stagehands. You're like take this case, take this case.

Speaker 2 21:25

I'm not actually physically pushing them, but I'll have to supervise and watch backpacks and stuff, depending on where you're at. I mean bags in your property. I mean I travel with three passports. I have to leapfrog them. I move so fast, you know. So you can't get work visas like on the spot. No one's going to come to your hotel and give you a visa. You have to send it to the consulate. So I send them to different consulates so I get them back in time to go to that country, you know. So I have to have multiple passports. No kidding.

Speaker 2 21:52

Yeah. So if I have a backpack, it's got my laptop and my three passports in it, like that's my whole life. I can't get, I can't do work, I can't do anything. All my money's in there. We carry lots of cash, so I could have a room full of a hundred backpacks from roadies and that's like everyone's livelihood. You know everything. Everything they know is in those bags, you know Really. So, yeah, I'm going to sit on that room. I don't trust a guy in Brazil, in Curitiba, brazil, to watch my bag. No, he's a. Yeah.

Speaker 2 22:20

So that's why you have your own security on the venue side. So do the important stuff. Other side of it is personal security. That's what people think of as a bodyguard. Yep, right. So your close protection, dude hotels and everything else. When Good Charlotte went out, I did both. So it was tricky. When you're a young band, you do what's called gig hugging, so you take a bus right to the gig and then you take a shower in the gig. Locker rooms, theaters, whatever it is. They have showers in there. So your shower shoes up where you get, you know, foot rot from all the athletes. That's called athletes foot for a reason, and then local towels that feel like croutons, you know, and it's just not really glamorous, you're not in the force.

Speaker 1 22:57

These are for the first couple of years.

Speaker 2 22:59

Yeah. Yeah. So when they gig hug, they just never leave the gig. You're there night and day and then you go to the next city on the bus. So, good Charlotte, I'm on the bus with them, I'm in with them, I take all their luggage in. It's really hard work when you have five guys in a band and you're moving everything around. Yeah, every time they want to go to the. Yeah, you could do venue or personal, it's one or the other. What'd you prefer? Now, I prefer venue, really.

Speaker 1 23:29

Yeah, why.

Speaker 2 23:31

You don't deal with personality as much. I'm really good at talking to building people, law enforcement, fire EMT, creating evacuation plans, talking to HVAC dudes about. You know, I did KISS for 10 years. We have 220 hits of pyro. We're going to set off your fire alarm? Oh no, we do shows all the time, not like this. You're dealing with Ramstein people. The Ramstein pyro guys do KISS. Yeah, it's like we're going to hit 200 foot flames today and we have to talk about adjoining buildings, elevator shafts. You know what I mean? It's a convention center. What's attached to this? What else is going on around here? You know? Is there another event? Because we're going to set off their fire alarm too.

Speaker 1 24:09

No shit, you're going that in the depth of the thing. Oh yeah, excuse me, yeah.

Speaker 2 24:19

I would have guessed that you go to. I mean, I deal with the fire chief alarm, you know. Does it go off instantly? Is there a 60 second delay so that someone can go to the panel identify that? It's this one right here and there's a pyro show going on? Get their eyes on the alarm, you know, like who's looking at it? Is there someone right there staring at it? It's going to go off 200 times.

Speaker 1 24:38

And you're learning this just from trial and error from every. Every venue is different. Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 2 24:43

I learned from my fire alarm going off.

Speaker 2 24:45

you know, I I In the middle of a concert you're like oh shit, I'm with a, I'm with the band Kiss, but I don't know. It was a long time ago and we had these giant crane arms that would go over the audience. You know they'd fly over the people and the fire alarm went off. When they're on these cranes and the big thing for was turn the lights down, turn the fire up, confetti in the air streamers, you name it. Concussion blast, boom, you know big booms, because they're 73 years old with makeup on they're not moving around a whole lot, yeah, so when it's just them, they hate it.

Speaker 2 25:14

The makeup and the hair and the costumes. It's what Kiss is. It's a show. They're not really there for the music. Yep, the songs are legendary, but they played the same songs for 40 years.

Speaker 1 25:22

It's a show. Yeah, it's like a Vegas show, exactly.

Speaker 2 25:25

Yeah, on wheels, you know. So they're up there on these things. You know, like the pinnacle of the show, the climax of the show, and the fire alarm goes off, all the house lights go up. It's like putting these in their face. You can see how ugly they are, you know, without their makeup streaming down their face, they got, you know, glitter stuck to their face and stuff and they're kind of looking around looking at me like what's going on?

Speaker 2 25:46

I'm like, oh, god damn it. You know like where's the fire chief at. They're like we don't know what's going on. We never had this happen. Oh. You know and it's like whoop, whoop, exit each other. Sure, I mean, once you think something's going on the world we live in now oh it's like wow panic is is the worst thing ever.

Speaker 2 26:12

Yeah we deal with bomb threats and stuff. I had you know I was with drake last year and there was 40 trucks and 20 buses in arenas. So just to get those vehicles close enough to the building to dump and their gear, like, there's something like five to seven, eight loading docks in any building. Yeah, slots to even yeah. So it's kind of like that's a whole.

Speaker 1 26:31

nother story is truck wrangling, which is crazy, so I don't ask me how, but I ended up at the back of a Nicki Minaj concert last this last year, like a couple months ago, for another company I work with, and they're like we're going in and I was like you guys can go, like I, I just have no desire to go see nikki minaj. Right, I'm 40 years old, what the fuck do I need to go here for? But I was sitting out there and because we have armored vehicle, armored trucks and stuff and I'm sitting there and I was looking and I took a video. I mean it was probably close to fort red cab, white trailer upstaging, yeah, just plain plain unmarked.

Speaker 1 27:05

And then there was probably 50 to 70 dudes sitting there with their hard hat. All they're waiting and for the nice to got talking to those guys and they're like the second she steps off that stage, we're tearing it out and she's gone. But yeah, I mean, but this was in vegas, so I mean they had the big lot out back, so I mean all the trucks were able to park there, but I was sitting there watching. I'm like how does she do? I don't want to say a normal size venue, but I mean how would you even get?

Speaker 2 27:30

Shuffling. Yeah, it's all logistics Like this goes there, this lives there. It means that it goes there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 27:36

This lives there. This goes there where you could backfill trucks in small places, so you take everything off and you put it back on because there's nowhere to store shit in the building and then you got to dump it again and put the regular shit on. It's like truck packs for everything. There's like maps. Oh God, it's full on and you got to teach 120 local guys called stagehands, who usually aren't the brightest people. No, if I'm being honest. Yeah, most of them look like I'm.

Speaker 1 28:06

I'm not judging. They have a look to them. They all look like they're either a previous on meth or straight out of prison, or both it's funny, the meth mouth is big in arizona and new mexico.

Speaker 2 28:13

I'm not trying to judge. But I mean you've, you've seen it up close and personal for 20 years that's why you're watching your backpack the whole night exactly yeah, I don't even let those people in my side of the venue. Yeah, you don't there's no bathrooms back here. There's no catering for you. Catering was a big thing. Um stage hands. You have to feed them. Catering it's. The show calls usually 12 to 15 guys that stay there all day.

Speaker 2 28:38

Okay, and the other 80 fuck, it's only the real experienced ones that eat in catering. But stagehands go into your catering and we call it stagehand plates. Where they have, you get a plate and they pile up this mountain of food Like they're never going to eat again and it's like come on, man, and like it's there all day. Yeah.

Speaker 2 28:54

But they only get tickets for like lunch and dinner, so they just they walk out and it's like this food falling off on the ground. Like the Mongolian grill, when you'd pack and they'd be like you just, and the roadies don't go in there with stage hands. They're like, oh God, the stage hands are in, it'll just wait. And then the chef's like, yeah, I'm not, I'm putting the crap out right now, until they leave. And then I'll put out the good stuff.

Speaker 1 29:12

Okay.

Speaker 2 29:12

Yeah, the shrimp goes underneath, you know. Yeah, yeah yeah, I'm not getting into that. Yeah, I have to put security on catering from the time we roll up, you know, for breakfast, because the eggs will be gone by the time the guitar tech wakes up. All the stations will eat them. You know it's gone. You hear the artist doesn't even. I'm scared of the door. Give me your ticket. You can't come in. Oh, come on. No no yeah, put a pass sheet on the wall and say none of these come in.

Speaker 1 29:40

You didn't know oh my god, it goes that on the egg security as well. Yeah, yeah I'm trying to figure out how the hell you you're like. Do you have a team or you you're in charge?

Speaker 2 29:51

it depends you know I did lincoln park in 2004 to 6 and we had seven guys that like, oh weird, it was weird. Uh, the tour that I did was called project revolution yeah it was the first one, yeah, so they had never done a tour that big and no one had really up to that point. It was like oz fest and stuff like that was popping around. But god did, you went you got to do yeah it was lincoln park corn snoop dogg the used and less than jake oh, that was warp, tour yeah, basically I saw all those that worked.

Speaker 1 30:18

Yeah, you got to hit. That was such a badass era. Yeah, it was cool. I feel like and correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel, when it comes to music that was we were just up here the other night for like two hours and I was, I was showing her all of that, all the old stuff, all of that shows.

Speaker 2 30:35

Yeah, they're wild.

Speaker 1 30:36

The views dude, scary kids, scaring kids. I mean all of that man. That was that. That was it. That was a good time.

Speaker 2 30:45

Lincoln was a headliner, and that's what I worked for.

Speaker 2 30:48

And we had seven guys and I was part of the three-man personal team. Four guys were venue because it was a massive, there was outdoor stages and stages in the parking lot and stuff and I was with the band Lincoln Park. So I was with Chester and Mike usually the whole time and I even did Minutes, minutes to midnight, the album with those guys in the studio. Really, ruben and stuff. That was weird, that was cool.

Speaker 2 31:08

Anyway, the, the, the, the tour, you know, has Snoop Dogg on the roster and Korn. I knew the Korn guys from my my previous like throw me the deep end stuff. That's Back. Then they were still partying a little bit but Jonathan never did. So I'm with Lincoln and the drummer, rob Borden, was sober. Yeah, he'd been sober for a few years. So there was no smoke smell, there was no alcohol allowed backstage, and then we put Snoop Dogg back there and it was like you know, he started smoking weed instantly and he was bringing girls around and stuff and the band was not into chicks backstage or any of that stuff, neither was corn. They didn't like Jonathan doing like anything around, Neither did the Lincoln guys. So we kept it very sterile. And then all of a sudden, you know Rob's like, hey, what's this no?

Speaker 2 31:51

And I'm like it smells like marijuana to me. I'm not sure, but yeah, I think so. Yeah, who's smoking? I'm like I think it's Snoop Dogg. I just got like 10 giant dudes outside with football jerseys on. They have no numbers. You know, like rat tails, the Afro rat tails, straight crips, you know. And I'm like hey guys, you need to talk to Snoop. No one talks to the dog, you know, I'm like oh well, I'm from Lincoln park and I need to talk to him.

Pearl Jam to Good Charlotte: Early Tour Experiences

Speaker 2 32:16

I was like, oh, and I said I'm from Lincoln park. They thought I meant I was in the band, so, so I walk in his dresser. It was just him and a couple of chicks. He's like rolling a blunt, you know, and he's like getting his hair done. Yeah, I'm like, hey, what's going on? Man, like I'm ryan and uh, just gotta let you know that. Uh, yeah, you can't smoke weed in the backstage. How'd that go over? He was like, uh, that's cool. He's like, well, fuck you for bringing me out here. You know, like I'm snoop dogg. He brought snoop dogg on tour and you want me to not smoking weed. That's what I do. And I'm like, look, I'm just a messenger. And he got the message that I was from the band.

Speaker 2 32:47

He didn't even know who was in the band really, and I'm like, oh okay, well, tell them to bring me $10,000 cash in a briefcase if they ever want to talk shit to me ever again, go away, no shit. And I walk out and out. I go back in the dressing room with lincoln park and I'm like how'd that go it?

Speaker 2 33:03

went, great, yeah, they just cut my head off, basically thanks for sending me over there and said give me ten thousand dollars cash. And I said, all right. Needless to say, the next day he was in a trailer outside really yeah, it was lincoln park's tour. You could leave the tour and forfeit your million dollars a day for the next couple months, or you can just stop smoking weed in the backstage.

Speaker 1 33:23

This is a. So I did. I got voluntold in the Marine Corps and we had to work this concert. It was Lincoln Park was there, but it was Snoop Dogg corn and a few others, and they, they, we had to do fire watch, which in the military, fire watch is the worst thing ever. So they, we get to this venue. This is in Cali, it was out in Chula Vista.

Speaker 1 33:50

No, it was north, it was north of. It was in the Inland Empire somewhere. Oh yeah, outdoor venue it's a big, bold Glen Helen. Yes, okay. So this is one of the wildest times I ever had in my life. The largest human being I've ever come in face with I hit him with a mag light flashlight because I was so scared. I hit this dude with everything I had right in his face and when I hit him I was on my toes and I was fully extended in that flashlight Didn't even flinch, and I turned and I ran for my life and all my buddies, but we were at that concert and we were working the grass.

Speaker 2 34:36

The lawn, yeah, the lawn.

Speaker 1 34:37

And they're like all right, marines, you guys are on fire watch tonight and we're like fire watch. Like what the fuck is fire watch? Because in our world fire watch, you're standing there staring and you're hating life. Oh, they're putting fires out. Okay, Bonfires. So corn comes out and they're opening like bee-mee-mee.

Speaker 2 34:55

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 34:56

And it's all yes, okay, okay, okay. So you know exactly, soon as the boom, the fire start erupting everywhere and they're like all right, reed, you're up, you're up, we're like, we're up for what. They're like you got to go put out the fires, so we go rushing in and this was only like literally like a minute into the first opening song, so it wasn't full chaos. So we go running down there and we put out this fire and they're like yeah, yeah, we're all like stoked by the time we work back out of the crowd and get to the top again there's another one.

Speaker 1 35:29

Well, by this point corn's like full-on raging yeah, corn, yeah and now there's a mosh pit around this giant fire and they're collecting the trash from like the, the fucking cups and funnel cakes and shit, all the tricks.

Speaker 3 35:45

So they're bringing all the trash down and they're collecting the trash from, like the the fucking cups and funnel cakes and shit, all the tricks.

Speaker 1 35:47

So they're bringing all the trash down and they're just throwing it. So now there's this giant fire, a mosh pit around this fire. They're like go put it out, marines. And so we're literally fist fighting our way through this drunk people cyclone mosh pit, fighting ourselves through it to put out this fire.

Speaker 1 36:04

Then, once you put the fire out, now you're public enemy number one and now these just cholo ass padded bandana gangsters are now trying to fight us. So now we're fighting these people. We don't even know what the fuck is going on. So we do this throughout the night and every time we go in you're getting beat up like legit, you're gonna catch a few. Yeah, you're getting punched. So this female marine, and they put these, they gave us these little packs, these little metal containers, and you got the little spray nozzle and it's got like a brass handle and shit on it. So if you were carrying that, it was like the flamethrower storm in the beaches, like you were the number one target. So this female marine, everybody's getting beat up. Like I carried it in like six different times. Like it just comes to a point where, like bro, I'm done, like I've done yeah so this one marine drops it, and this, this female's like I'll do it.

Speaker 1 36:55

We're like, okay, like here you go, this is equality, right. So we, we go marching in and we're all stacked and we're pushing our way through this mosh pit and we open up a little hole and she goes running there and she's just like spraying this fire out and this giant dude comes running up. Just you know the crowd yeah.

Speaker 1 37:16

He comes up and he's like what the fuck? And she takes that handle and I swear to God, she screams Marine Corps and goes Marine Corps, boom and jabs his brass candle and drills his dude. This whole thing erupts with fist fighting. She gets drug into the crowd. We're trying to pull her out of the crowd. Yeah, she's gone. That was one of the craziest events nights of my life. Was working, and then Snoop Dogg comes out First thing he does is lights a giant blunt and he's got the whole crowd.

Speaker 2 37:47

Fuck the police, fuck security and we're all like no, that was a big one that show. I remember it clearly uh a sheriff came out. The sheriff's department came out and they were trying to serve them a warrant and they couldn't. And then they they had. They were following around with uh cameras like a handheld camc, you know, just to catch them doing something Like do anything.

Speaker 2 38:06

Just park it up in front of them and see what happens. We'll arrest you right now. And they had the right to be backstage, but not in the dressing room and he's just walking around like fuck you guys, fuck you, fuck the people.

Speaker 1 38:14

Oh, is that why he came out so mad? Yeah because they were following around backstage with cameras.

Speaker 2 38:18

Oh, that makes sense, I think it was a headliner, it was their tour Maybe. Okay, yeah, that was one of many times I had to deal with the police. In Snoop Dogg, I mean God.

Speaker 1 38:27

So the cops there they were like we're not going in and they have a platoon full of dumb ass Marines. Yeah, so they would just be like hey guys, and they would be on the edge of the crowd. They'd be like guys that would just wrap dudes up, beat the hell out of them, and then we're dragging, and we're dragging people out of this crowd.

Speaker 1 38:54

We just drop them and the cops they're just cuffing and throwing them and they're just like go get us more and we would just take off. We'd go in there, start a fight, we'd drag people out and that's when I ran into that, that this was, when I say, the largest human being I've ever seen in my life, this guy he reminded me off of, like the, the achilles movie, you know when he's like, like like that and I'll never forget that dude squared up, all my buddies were behind me and I had this mag light in my hand and I I didn't know what to do and I was like and I hit, he didn't even fl.

Speaker 2 39:24

You can't take a firearm in a crowd.

Speaker 1 39:26

No.

Speaker 2 39:27

That's like a big deal there's. I mean, I make a point of saying that every day, even though everyone knows and coppers don't even want to go into a crowd, you put that firearm into that environment and if you dump if you dump it somehow or someone grabs it off you. I mean even level three, whatever you got, whatever attention is on your holster, it can come out.

Speaker 2 39:47

You know what I mean. So there's a. There's a well-known story that I was told when I was young about a undercover copper coming in and a lot of jurisdictions. You could be a cop from other other areas or townships or counties and they say slap a wristband on you, on your presentation hand, that way I know who coppers are and who's not, and they put them seats, which doesn't make any sense. They're in these seats.

Speaker 2 40:06

What if they get a soda or something? You know what I mean? Like they can't drink and they're identified, so they do present. There's this giant two inch reflective neon bracelet on their arm. Oh, okay. So another copper. But oh shit, you see that gun and you're going to see the wristband.

Speaker 1 40:19

Got it or they.

Speaker 2 40:19

They have a sashes that go here and they're like a ribbon. There's like this weird ribbon you can wear on your shoulder Like you clip it on here and you can just pull it and it says police on it.

Speaker 1 40:27

Oh really, and you attach it to your belt, yeah.

Speaker 2 40:29

Oh, I've never seen that. Yeah, it's weird. Yeah, some places have that, but you know, generally speaking, like LA, new York, they don't allow non-uniform cops issues, right, um. But yeah, like cops should not have firearms in a general admission environment. No, especially carry concealed, I mean, they could pop out when you're in a mosh pit. You can't keep your phone or your wallet, another gun, you know. No. So there was a well-known story where a kid saw a cop dumped his gun on the floor. It was like a 2 000 seat venue and he went with his daughter or something. He dumped his gun on the floor and got moved around the crowd and the kid's like I've owned a gun, you know, and this kid is like 15, is holding a gun up like this, and the whole place went crazy and it was like pandemonium.

Speaker 1 41:14

Bad look for the law enforcement agency you know, so that doesn't go over very well, so that was the kibosh got put on that one that's crazy. You were working the coolest concerts. That era was, yeah wild, yeah, I was pretty young.

Speaker 2 41:26

I was a young dude still you know wild big tour.

Speaker 1 41:29

So yeah, that's okay, so shit, I don't even know where we were yeah, it was a good charlotte, and then hillary, hillary duff, okay, so hillary. So you jumped into hillary duff's personal security guard, or were you doing?

Speaker 2 41:42

her as her bodyguard? Yeah, okay, what is that? Like you doing?

Speaker 1 41:44

her bodyguard. Yeah, okay, what is that like being a personal bodyguard for a celebrity of that level?

Speaker 2 41:51

Um. She was the biggest name in Disney at the time. Okay.

Speaker 2 41:54

Um, it was the first time I worked for a female. I did Christina for a couple of days and I basically drowned. I didn't know what was going on. Uh, christina was at the top of her popularity and they put me there just to cover her at a couple of nightclubs in LA and I had never dealt with paparazzi and hair and makeup. And she came up in a Rolls Royce at some shitty club in Hollywood and all the paparazzi jumped out of the trees and stuff. And you know I had a table reserved for her. I go to get her from the front door, I get to the table. People are standing on it.

Speaker 2 42:21

It's like I did nothing, Like I didn't reserve anything and I just drown, you know? Can I go to the bathroom? Yeah, I take her to the bathroom. She's like this is not the bathroom that I use. The bathroom that I use is the owner's bathroom somewhere else. Like you didn't know that, I'm like no, I just took her to the regular bathroom.

Speaker 1 42:40

The field of girls do them. One told me this you know yeah and uh.

Speaker 2 42:43

So I learned a crash course with christina and then, uh, when I was with hillary, it was just I knew that females needed me to be next to them all the time, like I don't care where she's going, I'm going with in the bathroom she goes in. There's no one in there when she goes in there. You know, I would stand in public bathrooms and say it's being cleaned and I don't work at the restaurant. I don't work. You know, I'd wait for everyone to be out. Hey guys got to clean the bathroom. Sorry, like at a steakhouse somewhere, you know or a sushi place.

Speaker 2 43:09

Oh yeah, I'd act like I was the manager of the restaurant. Whatever you got to do, yeah, if you go up in the restaurant, hey guys, we got to get out Like 90% of people just listen to you.

Speaker 1 43:17

Yeah.

Speaker 2 43:18

So I just learned how to blag or bullshit, you know. So I had to stay close to Hillary and I did a really good job, you know. But I had to figure out who the players were. It's like we call it the king's court, right? So you've got best friend assistant, you know what I mean. We've got hair makeup, the publicist you know different assistant for this, or whatever the event is. A person from the club wants to be there. So now you have six or seven people traveling in your group. You're looking after one person, but that person's going to go. Hey, where's so-and-so? The car doesn't move until everyone's in the car. So you start to learn about this King's court or Queens court, like people that have to be around. So you're always looking after multiple people, even though she's the principal.

Speaker 2 43:58

So you're like where'd they go? And she's You're getting paid by your client. Yeah.

Speaker 1 44:08

But then you're babysitting all of your clients' guests. Yeah, but it's your responsibility to-.

Speaker 2 44:13

Yeah.

Speaker 1 44:13

Take care of all of them just as much as her.

Speaker 2 44:15

Yeah. So I started calling bullshit after I got to know her. Well, she was 16 when I met her, so Really yeah. And then she was turning 17. And Hillary didn't know how the solar system worked. You know what I mean. She didn't know the sun was turning and that the earth was turning around it. And then the earth was also spinning, because she'd been on TV for a while now. The school stuff she learned from Hollywood, so traditional school wasn't really a thing for her.

Speaker 2 44:41

I mean she's smart in a lot of ways, like wasn't really a thing for her. I mean she's smart in a lot of ways like socially, she understand people. She understood people, but like all the math and stuff was like beyond her. She was like, uh, what do you call that? Uh, arrested development. You know when you, when you stop learning at a certain age, the schoolwork. Yeah.

Speaker 2 44:56

But she was in a different world. So I, we know, you know third planet from the sun and like things like that, the Milky Way galaxy, and she thought I was like a genius or something with my you know cheated through college education, you know. So I became her security guy, I learned the ropes and then I noticed that her assistants weren't doing shit. They were just kind of like hanging around. I got to her house and I'm like where's the office Right here, where are your files and stuff Over here? The files were just like trash cans, like there was like paperwork contracts and shit is kind of dumped in there.

Speaker 2 45:30

And there were three or four assistants around and I was like, why do you have four assistants? Like I've worked for Pearl Jam and Lincoln Park. They had none. You know like what deals. And I got johnson and johnson, I got high fashion stuff going on fashion week paris. You know it's a lot, all right. Well, nothing's organized, so no one's doing anything. I went there and organized the whole office and then I realized there were a couple people that weren't doing anything.

Speaker 2 45:53

You know oh shit, it would get in her face for five, ten minutes a day. That was their five minutes of fame in the day.

Speaker 1 45:58

I gotta really say here's your thing, here's that I got this, I did it, I did this.

Speaker 2 46:01

they just go in prove their worth it worked for an hour a day, and then they just fuck off the rest of the time and get lots of money.

Speaker 1 46:07

I mean, what's an assistant for Hilary Duff making at that time?

Speaker 2 46:10

Oh gosh, they were probably making two grand a week. Really, she was probably making six grand, or she was probably paying six grand for three people a week and they weren't doing anything. So, and I'll do everything and more, and everything will be organized. She's like then fire him. I was like you're fired, you're fired, you're fired. So you know, ryan's the assistant, ryan Duff, you know security slash assistant, and I was with her all the time anyway and I knew her schedule anyway because I was booking all the cars and hotels. So I knew they didn't know anything, they weren't booking any of that stuff. I was where are we going, ryan? Where we're staying tonight? I'm like did you read the email I sent you this morning? No, okay, well, you're worthless then you're not helping me at all. Oh, the assistants are asking you that taking up car space, and I have to go wrangle cats and you're not doing anything so you can go right.

Speaker 1 46:55

She didn't even know what you do, so you?

Speaker 2 46:56

so you just trim the fat for hillary duff's team and she had 150 people that were on her payroll and then it was just me at the end when she stopped touring. Yeah so, and then it was ryan duff. You know, at one point you can google does hillary duff have a brother? Yes, ryan duff I was always with her no shit. One million paparazzi pictures have hit me and hillary you know what's crazy.

Speaker 1 47:17

I got a hillary duff story, which is random. I gotta ask my buddies. It had to have been 2005. I think I've told you about this kiddo. We were partying in Hollywood. We ended up part. Don't even ask me how, but I can. I can vouch for all of this. We end up in this club in Hollywood with Johnny Depp partying. We leave, we go to this pizza joint and Hillary Duff was in there and I don't remember seeing a giant human being. He might've been with her or not. This is 2005, yeah, but we ended up. She was in a pizza parlor that we were ended up at with this whole entire crew, with johnny depp, like it was the wild. We don't even ask me how it happened. I'll tell you how it happened. My buddy was completely wasted and there was these giant bouncers out of this bar and he just walked right in and the guy went to stop and he's like I'm a marine and that's all he said.

Speaker 1 48:07

And these guys, let us just stroll right in, and it was this elite yeah night after party, I guess I don't know. We ended up in there, but yeah, and that was in hollywood. I say it was probably 2005, but we ended up at a pizza joint and hillary duff was in there. It was a big deal. Then this huge crowd rolled in. Once everybody found out she was there. Then she got shuttled out of there along with everybody else, and then they kind of figured out that we weren't with the night party at that point.

Speaker 2 48:29

So yeah, it was interesting. There's people you meet in hollywood that actually you know. Hillary was able to go to nightclubs at a young age with the lohan christina.

Speaker 2 48:37

They were in nightclubs along before they you know even the male actors and stuff. You know the caprioCaprio and Notorious for being in clubs and stuff. But they get in with certain people. You know they don't go in the front door, they go in the back door and there's someone you know there's like these people that run their promoters or whatever, and they're like yeah, you just call me, I'll get you in and the owners won't say no, you know, and you just get into DJ booths, you know, and I was like, just so no one could get a picture of her in the club.

Speaker 1 49:04

I'm sorry, I made a huge mistake. It was Avril Lavigne.

Speaker 2 49:07

Yeah, avril. Yeah, she was around the same time yeah.

Speaker 1 49:09

It was Avril Lavigne, not.

Speaker 2 49:10

Hillary yeah, avril was. They had like beef. Hillary and Avril had beef back then.

Speaker 1 49:15

Okay, that's hilarious, have to confirm and let you know, but it was one or the other, but we ended up in that pizza joint. It was a fucking wild night, yeah. So what's it going from male performing you're I mean, you're touring with some of the largest names in the industry to switching gears to doing a female disney fanatic fan? I mean, celebrity is there. Is it scarier doing that? I mean, I feel I feel there's way creepier people that would try to get near hillary than gene simmons or some no one cares about gene.

Speaker 2 49:55

That's good. No people care, but he doesn't have any stalkers.

Speaker 1 49:57

Yeah, it's like what are you gonna do to me 70 year old man at that point? Are you going to change my diaper?

Speaker 2 50:01

Yeah, you know Hillary has stalkers from when I first showed up and then she has really serious ones after I'd been around for a while. That I dedicated a lot of my life to Really. Oh yeah, it's on the internet.

Speaker 1 50:13

What categorizes them Like? When do you list somebody as a stalker?

Speaker 2 50:18

There's a weird threat matrix that you go through about, like the ability to carry it out. Are they specific with the threat and do they have the means to carry out that threat? Okay, so if I'm, you know, on a space station, I'm like, oh, I'm going to kill you. You're like, well, you're way out in outer space.

Speaker 1 50:38

It's not going to happen.

Speaker 2 50:39

But if you're a person in of LA and you have pictures on the internet of you and guns and you say I'm taking this gun to that concert, I'm going to smoke you, you know like. Then you're like, you have an active threat. You know what I mean. Now you get police involved and I was in Los Angeles City, you know so. Threat Management Unit, mental Evaluation Unit. They're connected to each other and they're connected to the DEA right, so they can get warrants and special holds on people that other law enforcement can't do.

Speaker 1 51:15

Really.

Speaker 2 51:15

It's not 24, 48, 72-hour holds. Okay, I can just hold you, because you're 51-50 when they put you on cuffs. Oh, okay. So like you're 51-50 when they put you on cuffs, oh okay. So like you're insane, like I just put you with this mental unit and stuff and we're going to figure out what the threat level is.

Speaker 1 51:28

You know, that's how they're able to just snatch somebody like that. They snatch them up, yeah.

Speaker 2 51:30

So I started working with threat management unit at Detective Bureau and they're just fast and good. I mean, it's all a PR thing for lapd, because you can't have celebrities in la getting stalked everywhere. Every time somebody goes crazy, because it happens all the time. So they're the only law enforcement agency that created their own bureau to talk about yeah to counter stalkers.

Speaker 1 51:51

It's that bad. Yeah, oh yeah, I guess with such a hub of all the celebrities I mean it was there draws every, every swinging dick.

Speaker 2 51:58

Yeah, that's some weirdo star maps right here, all the houses you want to see. You know what I mean. And the kid that I had I mean the big, the big one that's all over the internet was a russian kid that came to new york with his mom and dad. His dad dies, leaves him his life insurance policy, collects on that life insurance policy. He's like 19 at the time or something, and he's completely insane. I mean it's the mental illness that has nothing to do with the artist, because you don't even know the artist right. So you just make up some fantasy in your head and you focus on that one person.

Speaker 2 52:25

He started making threats in these weird chat rooms and like online you know hillaryduffonlinebizwhatever like fan sites. He would go in like I'm Hillary Duff Stalker and I'm going to do this, and people started like sending it to the webmaster. At the time this guy named Chris and Chris would send them to me. Hey, you got a live one. You know, you got this guy. He's popping up on this site. He's popping up on this site. I can see him moving around the country. His IP address says this you know what I mean. We're tracking him.

Speaker 2 52:53

And then you know if it's digital threats, you get the FBI involved because it's over interstate and everything else.

Speaker 1 53:04

So they get involved and you know they. They do their own matrix. You know so they. So when you report a stalker to your client about your client, the police are usually like the departments that you're working with are pretty on it or is this like okay, it's got to escalate and they got to make con? Is that how it make a report?

Speaker 2 53:14

you know, like you know, how law enforcement goes you have to.

Speaker 1 53:16

Okay, what do you have?

Speaker 2 53:18

you know, like show me what you have, and then it's kind of like we got an, an email. Yeah, You're like great.

Speaker 2 53:21

You know, like what else? You know, is there a viable threat here? But is there any weapons? Is there any specific threats? Like I'm going to be here on this date? Show me something. Like I can't just go to New York and arrest this kid. I'm an LA cop, you know, like the world. So, uh, that's why it helped to be in la with this unit. You know, um, and I would. I knew when to pull, press that trigger. You know what I mean. I knew when to tell them okay, we have a real one, and they go all right. Right then they knew me from previous people. You know people of interest, pois, right, um, so I just knew when it was time. And you know the thing with the stalkers you just let them talk and they'll bury themselves.

Speaker 1 54:02

Oh, because they're. So. Just what do you mean?

Speaker 2 54:04

by that, tell me more.

Speaker 1 54:07

What would you do?

Speaker 2 54:08

And it's like they just give you whatever that goes through their head at the time. They're emotional or whatever. They're having a bad episode with whatever disease they have.

Speaker 1 54:15

Are you dealing with these stalkers? Are you dealing with people that are more obsessed or hate, or is it a combo?

Speaker 2 54:23

uh what?

Speaker 1 54:24

what's causing these people to stalk your clients?

Speaker 2 54:27

uh, I have no idea. There's different reasons. Uh, some sort of displaced energy mixed with mental illness? Uh, um, you know, lack of friends and no social circle, um, and they become focused on one person. It could be be a sexual fantasy. I've had older people that are just like perverts.

Speaker 1 54:45

Really.

Speaker 2 54:45

Because Hillary was like she was a cup of tea for pedophiles and stuff. Oh yeah, 16-year-old dancing around on stage with a glitter dress on, with a squeaky little voice, and it's like pedophile's dream. Underage girl. And.

Speaker 2 55:00

I learned that when I first started that I had to get law enforcement actively involved at our shows, because guess who goes to a hillary duff show? Pedophiles, pedophiles. There's a little bunch of little girls there, there's a bunch of little kids with their parents and then, you know, the parents go, go run over there and then there's like three or four girls and the pedophiles are predatory, right.

Speaker 2 55:19

So they find never, even, yeah, I didn't think about it before I started either. And then there was a mayor of a town called wilkes-barre, pennsylvania I don't know if you ever wilkes-barre like the like. The mayor of the town got arrested at one of our shows for that, touching his own daughter in the front row. So like he, you know, had his hands in areas he shouldn't put his hands in her pants and stuff and was grabbing her and writing shit on the chest and stuff the mayor of the town of the city that you haven't got caught yeah touching his own daughter at a concert.

Speaker 2 55:48

Yeah, so see that's what?

Speaker 1 55:51

okay, as a parent, I mean, would you ever just turn your kid loose at a concert? No, oh, it's wild to me. I just know what goes on there, you know well, that's exactly.

Speaker 2 55:59

It's dark and you lose people really quick and if you don't know the venue it's just confusing.

Speaker 1 56:05

There's a beer stand every 10 feet and they all look the same, you know so damn, I never even considered that a concert for like hillary duff or these little teeny boppers just draws in so many pedophiles yeah, it's pretty weird, that's like a. That's a. I'd say it's a pedophile's freaking dream in a way to get to be around that many of their age kids.

Speaker 2 56:26

And most, most artists do a thing called meet, a meet and greet, right when they meet people. And the meet and greets usually reserved for family and friends of the artist crew. You know, if I have my kids show up to the show, like every artist can meet my kids. That's Ryan's kids. Yeah, come on, bring them in for a picture. And they know my kids have the talk. This isn't like a free-for-all. You're going to say thank you for having us. You take a picture and you leave.

Speaker 2 56:47

They're not fans. So the artist usually goes all right, I'll meet your kids, that'll be fun. I know they're not my biggest fan, but they're like yeah, give me a thousand bucks, take a picture with me and guess what they line up every day. So for Hillary she's oh yeah, she's doing these paid for meet and greets to make, because if you have a hundred people at a thousand dollars a piece, that's every day a hundred G's in your pocket outside of the for the show. Yeah, I'm taking a hundred G's for 30 minutes. I'm sort of sitting in my dressing room anyway.

Speaker 2 57:25

So I would, I would work the line before I put her in front of a camera and stuff with the lights and everything, and I'd work the line like, hey, how many of you in your group? And I'm like, oh, it's me and my daughter. Great, how many in your group? Oh, it's just me. That's weird, cause you're 35. That's weird because you're 55. It's just you. You don't have a daughter here, you don't have any kids. I would try to fuck with them a little bit. And then I had this little metal detector that I would have in my hand. It was small, it was like a little Garrett wand, and I'd go hey, you mind taking your jacket off, and I would have it in my hand. I'd be searching their jacket, it would buzz my hand when there was metal. I'm like what's in there, you know, I'd be like, hey, man, good to see you again. Give him a fake hug and kind of rub that thing around their waist, you know, in their pockets. Can you empty your pockets for me?

Speaker 1 58:07

So you'd have just grown ass, man standing in line by himself waiting to meet.

Speaker 2 58:11

And that specific instructions. I'd bring them closer to her and say all right, everything out of your pants. You know what I mean. Like you don't. I want to see your hands and they go all right. And then I go go ahead, take a picture and I would stand like right here, and they'd be right there, I'd be with an arm's length when they take the picture almost out in the picture. Yeah, and just staring at them and they'd be all nervous that I'm shaking them up things. You watch out this guy's weird no way.

Speaker 1 58:41

Yeah, that has got to be nerve-wracking. How do you have a full head of hair?

Speaker 2 58:46

genetics.

Speaker 1 58:46

I think hey, right I mean because you just you're, you're wired yeah you are just on it. Yeah, 24, 7, it's like an anxiety attack all day long, yeah.

Speaker 2 58:57

So it's like what's weird? You know I go to dinner with people and stuff. I'm just kind of like you know where's the primary entrance? There's secondary with the tertiary.

Speaker 1 59:03

You know'm just going like where's the primary entrance, where's the secondary, where's the tertiary?

Speaker 2 59:04

But it's like normal stuff, but it's like I can't stop Movie theaters. How did the trench go at all? And it's just a lot of guys think that way, but I just never turn it off Once you live in that world for so long it becomes the norm.

Speaker 1 59:24

Same thing with us as vets or any cops or yeah. But to me it's not a paranoia thing, it's like okay, I got my kids with me and that's like last night her and I we went out and had a date night and I'm like she goes to sit my I'm like nope, like yeah, I want to see who's coming. It is it's not a paranoia thing. I just I need to know, I just want to know, and so I think it.

Hilary Duff Years: Personal Security Challenges

Speaker 2 59:37

But that's where you're more vigilant and aware, and that's where guys in our world are like okay, shit goes down, we're out, before people even know there's something unfolding yeah, you know, what's weird is when I, when I have clients, usually you want to stay away from the kitchen and you stay away from the bathroom, right, and I find, you know, a lot of times a nice restaurant has a separate room for a party, a private party, but a lot of celebrities don't want to be in that room because I always eat in my hotel room and bring you guys with me. I want to be in a restaurant, but I learned with females that the artist always faced the wall, because if you face the restaurant, you got to see all these people's faces that are like looking at you while you put food in your mouth and maybe take their cell phone out. You can't go into Nobu and tell everyone put your cell phones away, fuck you Nobu. And tell everyone put your cell phones away, fuck you, like you're in public, you know. So they face the wall and then I'm facing the crowd, so I could see people walking up to her as they do it.

Speaker 2 1:00:26

Yeah, but I started to learn about the kitchen door. That was my door, you know kitchen door is my door. My car is outside the kitchen, you know what I mean. So, and also there's knives, a push bar inside of a kitchen. You're never locked in the kitchen. You can always get out. There's no key that locks the chef in. There's an open flame in there and by code, you have to have a push bar.

Speaker 1 1:00:48

Okay, that makes sense yeah.

Speaker 2 1:00:49

So we don't use the front door or the secondary door, we use the tertiary option as the kitchen, you know. So we're never going to be stuck in here. So I always with the servers, you could just go right in, right in. Yeah, so it was just like no one ever really thought about that, until you're put in that position where you're like, well, sure, just paparazzi out that door and that door too. Yeah, so I'd park cars up there and I'd bring the real car in the back. It becomes this giant game.

Speaker 1 1:01:13

Just a cat and mouse game. Yeah, I mean, and they'd all run over their bodyguards here and I'd tell her to go out the kitchen with her assistant and then I'd be like she's gone. You're sitting there like any minute now. Boys and the paparazzi's all I would just fuck with them all day. I feel like that's probably the fun part of the job is just messing with paparazzi. Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 1:01:34

She used to go in. She had a Mercedes G-Wagon back in the day and she used to just get in the back seat and hide. I mean, she was. You have to have a client that's willing to do this. You know, I always did like lincoln park, we'd push them in road cases, past the audience, you know really, at a giant wardrobe case, get in there like hide and go right past thousands of people and they just open the case and that's hilarious, starbucks or something.

Speaker 2 1:01:56

And uh, you know, hillary would duck in the back of her seat or the back of the truck or whatever and she just hide on the way to the doctor's office or lunch with her friends. She didn't want people following her and I would drive just a block. I'd be like, hey, guys roll the front windows down, but long shift today. And uh, I drive past in one block and then we'd switch and I'd get, I'd walk back to the house and she'd just get in the driver's seat and go, no shit. And they're like she left, didn't she? I'm like, yeah, she's gone as you come walking back.

Speaker 1 1:02:21

She was in the car, wasn't she? I'm like yeah, she's gone Bye.

Speaker 2 1:02:24

Have a good day.

Speaker 1 1:02:25

No kidding.

Speaker 2 1:02:26

Yeah, In Toluca Lake they sit right outside your house. There's no law saying they couldn't sit there and then you had to worry about I'd get pictures of them out of my own telescopic lens so I would keep track of them. And then every time there's a new guy I'd be like you're a new guy, huh, Like, who are you working for? And they couldn't tell me X 17, TMZ, whatever gossip cop, all the bullshit outlets that are out there. Then I'm independent. Okay, well, I'd go to the other paparazzi who's that guy? I don't know, I don't trust him, I don't like him. And I'd be like, yeah, no one likes you here, I wonder why. And then I found out that a lot of the big paparazzi companies or rag mag type places or people they work in tandem. So there's two that keep them honest. Okay.

Speaker 2 1:03:14

Right. So they're being paid hourly, but then they also get a rate for the photo, and the photo that they're going for is head-to-toe shot of that celebrity with nothing in the way bodyguard, you know, with a bag, a Starbucks or whatever. So that OK Magazine comes out. Hillary does visit Starbucks in Toluca Lake wearing Herve Leger dress and some you know Christian Louboutin heels, and it's like a fashion show. But you know they go bodyguard get out of the shot.

Speaker 1 1:03:39

Bodyguard, get out.

Speaker 2 1:03:39

You're just putting your hand in front of her face oh god, the first time I went on a red carpet with hillary I got yelled at like like I was.

Speaker 2 1:03:45

I felt like a buffoon because I was like blocking the shot you're on a red carpet, asshole get out of the shot and like the flashes, I mean, if you've ever been on red carpet like it's crazy, all the cameras that shutter speed and there's like a hundred of them, man and everyone's yelling and screaming. And then I learned from a guy who was an acting coach actually how to work a red carpet with a female. So I go hey guys, how we doing.

Speaker 3 1:04:13

I'm the loudest guy on the carpet. Yeah, right here we're going. Right here I'm talking to Hillary.

Speaker 2 1:04:18

We're going right here. Right here, guys, right here. Thank you All. Right, we're going right here, guys. So she listens to me, not them, because everyone's going. Hillary, hillary over the shoulder oh yeah. Oh, over the shoulder, I would coach her, she would listen to me because I'm timing it. She was like just tell me what to do Right here, right here, boom, okay, you're done, go over. Give them the over the shoulder. Look, give them that. Give him a smile, wild man.

Speaker 2 1:04:40

I learned from an acting coach. You know, because he knew what they wanted. And if you ever see pictures of Hillary when she was young, big black guy with her His name is Troy Rowland. He wasn't security, Everyone thought he was the bodyguard. And when I showed up he goes look, you're the security guy, I'm the acting coach. I act like the bodyguard, but if something happens, I'm going to fucking go away.

Speaker 1 1:05:01

Oh, no, kidding.

Speaker 2 1:05:01

Yeah, I'm a pussy, I'm not doing this, you do stuff. So he used to like snarl at kids, like get out of here, you know. But if it was like a grown man, he'd be like oh God, ryan, you're up, I'll be over here, you know. He looked mean too, and he was acting mean. It's like any percent of the time it's all just the show of force.

Speaker 1 1:05:31

Yeah, yeah, no, kidding man, that's hilarious. I was with her for 12 years and then you really got to know her oh yeah, eight years is a long time to hillary all the time. Yeah, she's the only person that I talked to in the celebrity world like as a friend okay, how would you, I mean, scale one to ten, how would you rate her as just an overall person?

Speaker 2 1:05:45

oh, she's hillary, hillary's like, uh, yeah, she's dialed in, um, she's as normal as they come, really. Yeah, she grew up, uh, with a tough mom, susan duff, who was on top of her texas family. Okay, her dad's texas oil guy. I mean, they're no nonsense, you do this, you do that. I remember I was working for a band and I was like, yeah, hillary leaves them like a hundred dollar tip at hotels, like she'll make her bed before she leaves the Four Seasons and put a hundred dollars on the pillow for the housekeeper. And I remember this guitar player for a famous band will say it is, it was like for real. He goes, I wipe my ass with the towels before I walk out, like if I'm having a hot day, I just wipe my ass with the towel on the floor and she leaves a hundred bucks and makes her bed.

Speaker 1 1:06:26

What a girl you know, that's the difference.

Speaker 2 1:06:29

So she's dialed man. I mean, she's so respectful and she. You know people act crazy around celebrities.

Speaker 1 1:06:35

For sure.

Speaker 2 1:06:36

And she's as sweet as they come man, come man, and the older she got, the better she got at it and, uh, you know, she learned a lot from me and other people that were around and she's like I think I got this. You know I can go out in the world on my own. I don't need my bodyguard to be stuck to me anymore, you know. So there's a. There's a well-known picture of her walking out of a gun store with a glock she bought.

Speaker 2 1:06:53

I don't know if you seen that picture no and she's got her finger like like on the outside of the case yeah, she's carrying like this they're like oh, she's the hottest girl ever.

Speaker 1 1:07:01

Look how she's carrying that case you know index finger out, you know, teach her how to shoot. Oh sure, yeah, really yeah, she's had guns.

Speaker 2 1:07:07

She's had guns everywhere since I met her. Her dad would put guns in all the rooms and stuff. Yeah, texas guy okay, that makes sense so I mean there's rifles hanging around and stuff, all kinds of guns.

Speaker 1 1:07:17

Yeah, she wasn't ever scared of it was it weird, like departing when that time came, because I mean eight years is with somebody, I mean that's a long time. That's a long time I felt it coming.

Speaker 2 1:07:29

You know it was, she was. She was uh married she married a canadian billionaire who was also a professional hockey player, and she was, uh, she had a baby, her first kid, luca, and you know I was there for all that, was there for the wedding and the baby and everything else. And then, you know, husband's- kind of like hey man, like you know, I think it's time for the family to be here and not ryan you know, like I'm the man of the house now I get it.

Speaker 2 1:07:51

You know you don't need a guy with guns hanging around the house when your kid grows up and it's not your dad, you know it'd be a little bit weird to grow up and like I understand. So you know I already made an exit plan and I was kind of like all right, well, if I leave, I need to make sure that Hillary's on her feet before I go, because I took care of so much that she needs to understand how to be full adult, you know, without mom or anyone else or business manager. She needs to understand this shit. So I spent like the last year I was there teaching her her own life no kidding, yeah. So I made a Bible for her with all her codes and passwords and all this stuff.

Speaker 1 1:08:21

Because everything in her world is taken care of.

Speaker 2 1:08:24

Yeah, but she was looking for autonomy, so you know going into a marriage, where now you're going to listen to your husband, I'm like you're going to lose everything. You need to know who you are first. So you know, I put everything easily to digest. You know format and I just presented everything to her and she was appreciative of that and uh, she actually paid me for a whole year when I left. But you know, the day I left, the house was like she came up with two coronas. I'll never forget. She came up, two coronas and she was crying and I was like, oh, don't do that, don't do that. I'm like that's fine, I know what's, I know what you're gonna say. Don't even say it and she's like but it was you know, it's a natural part.

Speaker 2 1:09:00

It's a season for every relationship.

Speaker 1 1:09:01

Yeah, absolutely, and as a bodyguard, I feel that's probably the end goal is to like you're passing a client on to go and merge bridge wings especially you know her as a child. And you've gone through all those chapters of her life. It's a pretty big deal, yeah.

Speaker 2 1:09:17

Drawing on a napkin the sun and the earth to like the baby coming out. You know what I mean. It's a lot in between Sneaking in the nightclubs with no paparazzi. To, like you know, buying houses and designing homes and like I worked with all the home designers, the designers and the contractors, like I was the point person for all that Jeez, so keeping track of the building, because you know, whoa, whoa, how much did that table cost?

Speaker 2 1:09:42

You know you don't need this table for $100,000. That's not worth it. In that room, Designers are looking at me like thank you, ryan.

Speaker 1 1:09:48

I appreciate your help. Yeah, I'm sure you were not their friend.

Speaker 2 1:09:51

No, Contractor hey, what's this guy doing? How come your billable hours are here and this guy's over there and everybody like shit, someone's watching I got you on camera too, you know, yeah, so she kept me around for good reasons for a long time. But so when I left, uh, she paid me for a whole year, which was awesome, and her husband gave me a bunch of dough and bought a car and a house and everything else and I got hired by the red hot chili peppers immediately and went straight to england went from london to moscow with them like did a whole.

Speaker 2 1:10:19

I am with you tour.

Speaker 1 1:10:20

What was the culture shock going from Hillary Duff to the Red Hot Chili Peppers? It was terrible.

Speaker 2 1:10:26

I could only imagine I had my deep sea Rolex on. That was a gift from Hillary for being around, for I think she gave it to me for like five years or something like that, and it was his biggest Rolex he could buy at the time. You know, I never even wore a watch, really. Yeah. And I was driving a Honda Civic or something, so I put my deep seat on top of my Honda wheel on the way to work Dumb. So you know, I show up with a Rolex. My carry-on was Louis Vuitton. Yep.

Speaker 2 1:10:53

But I didn't buy it. It was given to me by her billionaire husband. You know he's like here, I'm like I used it one time, he's it. So I was walking around, it worked out. You know, I'm with hillary, I'm wearing the rolex and you know I'd pretend it was worth it for the paparazzi pictures. You know, I had an amex black card when I was with her, you know, and it was just a funny joke. It's like my assistant has a black card. You know, it was just a joke. Yeah, yeah, it's a ten thousand dollar a year joke.

Speaker 2 1:11:15

But yeah for sure um, so I was just pretending, you know, faking it was. It was a good time, because we weren't those people, yeah, you know. So I show up with a Rolex and Louis Vuitton luggage and everyone's like who the fuck is this guy?

Speaker 1 1:11:28

To the Red Hot Chili Peppers oh my God.

Speaker 2 1:11:30

They're like are you kidding me? Like everyone's wearing like black faded clothes with holes in them and stuff. There the third security guy on the tour, you know, and I'm not even really doing anything, I'm just learning to replace the guy. So it was just we. I just butted heads with everybody in a weirdest way possible, really, yeah, like I, I admit, like the douchiest way possible on my part, I was asking questions that were none of my business, you, I was asking questions that were none of my business.

Speaker 2 1:12:00

You know what I mean. Okay, hey, manager guy, you're a security. Now Shut the fuck up. You know it's like going back to private after a long career. You know what.

Speaker 1 1:12:07

I mean You're like right back to one striper. So was that pretty humbling, Just kind of okay, I'm not that guy anymore.

Speaker 2 1:12:13

Yeah, so it was like you. I've never really been let go yeah you know, it's kind of like. You know I finished the whole thing, but like you're not coming back and that was the one that got away. So that that's chili peppers is a tour that I would definitely do again and all the people that were there that let go of me. They're not there anymore. They just got fired like last year.

Speaker 2 1:12:41

Okay, this is 2012, so they were there forever? No shit, yeah, and now they have a new production company, so why do you say it's the one that got away?

Speaker 1 1:12:49

what was so cool about that?

Speaker 2 1:12:50

well, I'm from LA right and you know, under the bridge, like it's just like blood sugar, that on repeat for years and that was, like you know, everything Sublime. Chili Peppers you know that was one of the bands and you know I love working for the band. The band was awesome. Okay, I mean they were rad dudes. I mean they didn't care about security. Really it was more about like Anthony's kid being cool, like taken care of. They didn't walk around with bodyguards, they didn't walk around with shirts half the time. You know, like Flea, he's an interesting character.

Speaker 2 1:13:23

He had a bike everywhere. He'd come to the hotel and he'd ride his bike out of the hotel lobby right past the fans and just boom gone. He can't catch me now. No shirt.

Speaker 2 1:13:34

You know Lithuania, Kiwanis, Lithuania, no teeth. You know he didn't really care. You know they were hilarious. He was a brilliant musician too. Oh yeah, Unbelievable here and play piano and stuff backstage like gnarly Really, and they're just such nice guys, you know, and they're from my town I'm like the biggest band from LA pretty much, you know, and I just always wanted to work for the Chili Peppers and I finally did and I was like, yeah, we don't the band, it was the production team. I didn't fit in.

Speaker 1 1:14:02

Just too much, or what You're just used from doing everything, and they felt like you were coming in trying to take over everything.

Speaker 2 1:14:07

Well, I just was out of place. I mean, it's like you're doing a different job again. I just forgot how to do security. Only, I was a manager, so it's hard to go back to mop and floor, sort of sure, you know. Um, so, just personality wise, it didn't fit and I had to kind of like humble myself and get back to brass tacks, you know. And, uh, shit, I went off to a band, uh drag a guy named morrissey. I don't know if you heard of steven patrick morrissey, but he's one half of the sniffs. Uh, it's him and johnny marr. He's got a cult following. That's massive, okay. Um, when I was with morrissey, aka maz, he, uh, he sold out the staple center faster than beyonce inner prime really without a manager, without a website, without just an agent, a booking agent, that's it.

Speaker 2 1:14:51

He didn't have a, he didn't have anything. No social media, nothing, you know. He would announce dates through a fan, on the fan site. It was the most bizarre. He had 12 people on his crew really a corded, miced mic, no instruments. He had a band behind him but he just like whipped the cord around and he sings a crooner. He's a British crooner.

Speaker 2 1:15:08

Just old school Massive act in certain markets LA is one of them. So I traveled the world with him and he's big in the UK, massive in England, ireland, scotland, so I did Moz he was a vegetarian a vegetarian tour. If you got caught eating meat you're fired. Um really, if you could smell in and out burger. For instance, in Hollywood we played Hollywood high school for a DVD and in and out was right next to it there's krillin burgers and he's like gets out of a car and he's like it smells like rotting flesh. Gets back in the car and leaves. You know, at Coachella it smells like shit. In here it smells like burning bodies. He'd just leave the stage. Notorious for not showing up. Canceling shows everywhere. I got paid always, so I didn't really care. I thought it was hilarious.

Speaker 1 1:15:49

You were probably hoping he would cancel, because your night's easy I get paid.

Speaker 2 1:15:52

yeah, the only time I ever got pissed off was when he flew me to Peru for a South American tour. We had like a month in South America. I landed in Peru. We're doing pre-production, building a stage and rehearsals for the band. Then he was going to fly in. He decided not to come.

Speaker 1 1:16:06

Tours canceled.

Speaker 2 1:16:07

You did the whole tour Tours canceled and I was literally looking at Peruvian dudes like paint poles. The scaffolding was silver and he wanted it black, so these guys are literally painting with their hand. They had gloves on and they're putting their hands in like black paint and painting with their hands and they're like climbing these poles and painting them and it's like a hundred dudes painting poles with their hands and like I was like we're getting out of here.

Speaker 1 1:16:28

And they had no idea.

Speaker 2 1:16:29

Yeah, I didn't have the heart to tell anyone You're not supposed to talk, it's an insurance thing when you cancel a show, so you have to hush.

Speaker 2 1:16:39

Like when you cancel young, you're like hey, we're not canceling, like it's like a big deal, there's no show tonight, you know the band's not coming. And then the word just spreads yeah, if you tell one person, you must tell everybody. Yeah, I learned how to keep my mouth shut at a young age with crews because roadies are, like you know, telephone telegram. Tell a roadie, the word spreads fast oh yeah it's like a virus.

Speaker 2 1:16:59

Oh, super fast. Yeah, people, you're on 16 radios. You know what I mean. Like maybe over here, like right away, people know text and everything else.

Speaker 1 1:17:07

Yeah, what was I mean? So you just chilled in Peru, or did you fly right back? We flew out, we flew out. Yeah, what's the worst country you've been to? Or city.

Speaker 2 1:17:23

Okay, let's start with city. What's the worst city that you would never go back to? Oh God, well, it's, there's. There's cities that suck for different reasons. I do shows, right, so I worry about people dying at shows, yeah, right. So I've been to Manila a couple of times.

Speaker 1 1:17:34

Where.

Speaker 2 1:17:34

Manila, philippines Okay, and Bangkok, thailand, and on their own the countries are cool and you can have a cool experience with a little bit of money goes a long way type thing, and they roll out their big carpet for you. But when you go to the show, like they don't do shows. So, like the person went to the Philippines, they hired like the biggest guys in the city, like bodybuilders, to hold like a fence in front of the stage and put their feet against the stage and just hold it and there's like 5,000 kids.

Speaker 1 1:18:03

you know that was the barrier, yeah.

Speaker 2 1:18:05

And then I'm like you're going to hold it for two hours, Like I don't know if you know about weightlifting, but no one does a static bench press for two hours. Okay, Like your muscles fail. I don't care who you are, Lou Ferrigno is not holding shit either, you know. And they, they had weight belts on and shit and I'm like that's not going to work. So they went and filled 55-gallon barrels of water and they put them all in the barricade with the power lifters. And I was just like you guys didn't get the right barricade. I ordered this weeks ago and you insured me through the promoter that you had this and it's on a contract. And I'm like, whoa, We'll just drive stakes into the concrete and drilling the stakes into the concrete and breaking the floor up and the concrete just falls apart.

Speaker 1 1:18:43

Yeah, it just crumbles, yeah.

Speaker 2 1:18:44

And then you know I got that 55 gallon drum and just push it over. I'm like see that One guy, there's 5,000 here. You know, like it's not working, it's on polished concrete with plastic. It's going to slide. Oh yeah, and it was just like I did a show in Panama. God, where was it? It must have been Caracas, venezuela. Okay.

Speaker 2 1:19:08

And it was at a non-functioning, non-working airport hangar like a decommissioned right. Okay, yeah, yeah yeah, so like the dressing was in the like at a gate, like an airport, they just put pipe and drape around like the their seats everywhere and like the gate where they check your tickets before you get on the plane.

Speaker 2 1:19:25

The jetways are still there, like there's like airport shit everywhere, and we're in this airport and the the venue was the landing strip, like it was. And then I'm like, where are the walls at? Like how the fuck do we keep people out of here? Oh, it'll come tomorrow. I'm like, well, it shows, like this is insane. And they build, they bring these like metal walls, like panels, and they build this thing overnight Like this, like square in the middle of a In the middle of a runway, yeah.

Speaker 2 1:19:52

It was like 12 feet tall or something. That was the concert Black yeah and the airstrip was the concert, and they build the stage overnight. I'm like this is terrible. We had it. I had my rigors go up there to check the integrity of it, cause I'm like we built it in a day so and they're like all the shackles are all fucked. You know, we have to change everything, so like we almost had to cancel it, but our guys who was it.

Speaker 1 1:20:17

Can you say who it was?

Stalkers and Threats: The Dark Side of Celebrity

Speaker 2 1:20:17

Yeah, and it's all money you know. So they don't have a barricade in front of the stage. I have a photo I can share with you. Yeah, they don't have a barricade and they're going to put 10,000 people in there that don't really know how to act because they don't go to shows. You know what 10,000 people do? They don't do them. They go out crazy. They fucking act like morons. Yeah, like don't worry about it, we'll take care of it.

Speaker 2 1:20:46

I'm like, okay, you got an hour. And then they're like hey, ryan, come out and take a look. I'm thinking the barricades there. Now this is before doors open, so there's no one in there and there's 150 guys arm like with their arms interlaced, standing in front of the stage. And I'm like you you gotta be fucking kidding me like you're gonna stand there facing the crowd listening and let the people come face to face with you. 10,000, you're going to hold. Yeah.

Speaker 2 1:21:02

And it's not going to work. And they're like what is it? More guys, no metal. The pictures I sent you, the diagrams, the specs, you know, blow through gates and the kick plate Four feet tall. Oh yeah, we're making that. It's on the way. We're making it.

Speaker 2 1:21:23

Time we'll have the guys and like you can't you can't build a barricade in front of 10 000 people. Once they're already here, yeah, all right. And they're like, oh, oh well, panic, it's coming, it's coming, and now we're like an hour before doors. The whole outside that, uh, this wall, is packed full of 10 000 people. They're all there getting drunk and they're like shaking the walls and stuff before they're even let in let us in, you know, and we, we pass doors and they start.

Speaker 2 1:21:41

It's like a riot situation out there. All of a sudden, this guy, with every metal that you could possibly imagine, like making up, you know, like the stolen valor looking guy Stolen those okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, boom, boom, he's got a sword. You know, and I've never seen this guy. I was dealing with law enforcement, all day.

Speaker 2 1:21:58

I'm like who's this fucking guy? And they're like that's the boss man, you know, he's the guy in charge. And he comes into the office in front of the production manager and the manager and everything. Who's the head of security for KISS? I was like that's me, sir. How can I help you? You're going to jail. You know. I was like nope, he's like look, this is not on me. If people die here, I said everything. This guy with the swords is going to throw me in jail and I'm not going to a Venezuelan jail right now.

Speaker 1 1:22:26

Wait, you're in Venezuela. They don't have any of the security precautions. Let's call them the general. Yeah, whatever. Whatever had all the metal, comes in and threatens to arrest you if you didn't open up the gates, causing a riot outside when the doors were specified.

Speaker 2 1:22:41

this time, I don't care about what the production needs are, what you think you know about this country, because you're just a visitor here.

Speaker 1 1:22:47

Venezuela is sketch as fuck as it is.

Speaker 2 1:22:50

Back then I mean shit, the roads. I mean they didn't pave the road, the potholes lived there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 1:22:56

So driving will make you nauseous. Anywhere you drive for an hour you had hits the ceiling of the van you're in. You know it's terrible. So I was like I'm not staying here more than a day. So those 150 guys held back the crowd until the barricade can get in and they actually metal fab, they like welded it in place like all the concerts going on, no before, but like the crowd was in and I held the band off stage but I had to open the doors for the crowd to get in.

Speaker 1 1:23:20

So so I held the show. What a shit show.

Speaker 2 1:23:23

Yeah, let's get the fuck out of here. Man, tear that shit down, let's go. It's a throw and go.

Speaker 1 1:23:27

Yeah, yeah, you're not even letting things cool off, you're just packing and getting out of there and guess what no one does shows there anymore.

Speaker 2 1:23:34

The whole economy's gone. Oh yeah, I was in Greece when the banks shut down. Really, when I was in Manila, the president was getting ousted out of the country. It was a female, president Arroyo or something, I forget her name, and you know they're like don't talk to the press or the media because you're American, you're a visitor, the people will decide Bye, you know. In the Philippines, you know, when the ban landed, the promoter told us that the news is going to be there at the airport and there people are going to hand you flowers and say welcome to the Phillip. It's going to be a big dog and pony show yeah.

Speaker 2 1:24:06

Yeah, and I was like cool, how many tickets did we sell? None, zero tickets are sold and the band's like what the fuck are we doing?

Speaker 2 1:24:12

Let's get back on the plane. You know the promoter takes the tickets and leaves the country. You know you saw 20, 30 000 tickets and the guy's gone. I got this offshore account. Boom, boogie, yeah. So like no one buys tickets until the bands in the country, so they have to film you coming off the plane. Like look at, this is the manila airport. They're coming off planes with flowers and then boom, sold out. Show five minutes sold out. Yeah, yeah, sold out. That is insane. That Sold out instantly.

Speaker 1 1:24:41

That is insane. That's how it works, yeah.

Speaker 2 1:24:44

No one trusts anybody, you know. We have no idea how comfortable we are here. It's ridiculous yeah.

Speaker 1 1:24:49

See, I mean I've been fortunate to travel, so I mean people. That's when I hear people bitching about like just normal things, I'm like you have no idea what the rest of the funerary, that goes on yeah, the absolute fuckery of just to try to get something done you go to bogota, shit.

Speaker 2 1:25:04

I went to bogota with, uh, hillary, um, we had a non-profit um charity. It was international, obviously it was called blessings in a backpack, okay, for kids that were on free and reduced meal programs. For, you know, the united states, canada, we did it. And then bogota, we had a school opened for hillary and outside of bogota and the kids, you know, I'm used to kids that are underprivileged in america and destitute in america. But when you see the kids destitute in bogota, different story half the country's unstable, the farc. The farc runs half of it right and that's where cocaine comes from. Yep, you know america's cup of tea.

Speaker 2 1:25:40

Um, so these are kids that have been in combat and are missing limbs, you know, and they're under the age of 15, you know so when, I went to this home for these kids like I, I dressed down, we had a suit on the whole time.

Speaker 2 1:25:52

So I was with the mayor and the president of the country having lunch with like helicopters, like top cover snipers everywhere. It was insane. I mean like so many military guys in the downtown area that you can't even wrap your head around it. Really, oh God, you know armored guys, like guys wearing the close protection, guys wear fishing vests. You know, like you know the fishing vests, the khaki ones, everyone's wearing those. I'm like, oh God. And then the whole family's having a nice lunch and I'm in trouble, yeah, and we go to this thing and I take my suit off and I put like a cut off, like a tank top on so all my tattoos are showing and Hillary's mom's going, oh, they'll probably be like impressed and scared by you and stuff. Look at me, dead in my eye, didn't even care, little kid. Like who the fuck is this guy?

Speaker 1 1:26:39

yeah, you got some 12 year old kid that's already murdered about. Yeah, yeah and part of the war was gone.

Speaker 2 1:26:43

Yeah, uh, so it was an interesting experience. There's levels of poverty, you know, like down there they're sniffing glue, you know. I mean like just glue canisters and people are getting fucked up on their faces. They're all burned, you know, and it's like we realize even. You know, in america you can go up to any house at a host, pick and get fresh water, drinkable, clean water. There's no water, you know. So a little bit different perspective, you know.

Speaker 1 1:27:05

Yeah, it opens your eyes, man, and it's hard. It's like that. I see what's going. You know, take politics out of it or whatever, but you know, you've, you've seen it, and that's where it just blows my mind when these people are, just they're protesting some of this shit and I'm like god, you, yeah you know what's going on in this world?

Speaker 1 1:27:21

yeah you know like that's, that's what we're, that's what we're bitching about. Yeah, I've always had such a hard time with that and I explained it to them like you have no idea what, true, you've never felt hunger yeah, I'm hungry, no you're not.

Speaker 2 1:27:33

Yeah, you think you're hungry so it's good for bands to go to places like that. You know that you get on your high horse. You're on the cover of Rolling Stone. These people never heard of Rolling Stone.

Speaker 1 1:27:41

No, you know what I mean, yeah.

Speaker 2 1:27:42

Like I would, you know, put everything in perspective. The first time I went to Italy, I did something. Well, it wasn't the first time, but I went with Hilary Duff and we went to some weird fashion thing and there's a red carpet. We went on and like people were kind of like oh.

Speaker 2 1:27:54

Hilary, how's it going? You know, and, but I had no idea who the fuck they were. Yeah, they were Italian soap opera stars, mm-hmm, it's like fame is relative, you know, yeah, but it's weird for American celebrities, because American celebrities are typically famous everywhere. You break America, you break the world, yep, and Europe is Germany's like the main market. You break Germany, you break all of Europe, you know. So it's kind of bizarre when you start looking at fame and stuff. It's kind of bizarre when you start looking at fame and stuff and there's different levels to that too.

Speaker 1 1:28:22

Well, in some of these countries it's so weird. I have a buddy, he was on, he's a big fitness guy and he's I'm talking like world superstar in India. Yeah, he can't go anywhere there. Yeah, yeah, bollywood. He comes here and he's just going to the gym. No problem, he goes over there. He's got full-blown securities Security armored cars. Yeah, yeah, it's just insane of when you get some Like you take, what's the Baywatch guy, hasselhoff, I mean he.

Speaker 2 1:28:49

Yeah, big in Germany Drunk guy over here, oh yeah.

Speaker 1 1:28:53

Nobody gives a shit about him here you go to Germany. He's a god. I mean they worship him over there.

Speaker 3 1:29:09

He's like six, eight, two. It's unreal. Oh really, I didn't know he was that tall.

Speaker 1 1:29:09

Yeah, yeah, it's just weird how different countries and cultures, what they just glue to. You know, and you're like weird. You're like this, you know, like that guy's that famous over there, like holy shit, okay, it makes sense. Now you're like I don't know how you're so big, but I don't know either what's the worst fans, worst fans you've had to deal with. Oh God, is there ever a?

Speaker 2 1:29:26

venue where, like, we got to get out of here. Oh, I know, singaporean, singapore, I've been to Singapore a few times.

Speaker 2 1:29:35

So it's weird when you first go, because you're like you hear Singapore, you think third world country, you think you know poor. No, it's a bank. You know it's a giant bank. It's in Switzerland or the Southeast Asia, right, and the main language there is English, which was shocking to me too. The first time I went to Singapore I advanced it the same way I did.

Speaker 2 1:29:52

So I went to Japan. Japan's perfect, you have no problems. Security, vacation time over there. Really, oh God, no one's fucking around in Japan. You don't even see police there. No one's fucking around. You don't even see police there. You never, even you don't need it. You know they don't need police and armed guards.

Speaker 2 1:30:07

Like down, like in, and even in tokyo they have like sticks, like yeah, bo staffs, yeah, you know like what, and like everyone just does what they're supposed to do. Like one of my buddies got a ticket for smoking on the wrong street and they gave him a little foil bag and you put the cigarette in there and they give you a ticket and they give your butt back and you're like what? You know, there's no trash anywhere, there's no homeless. It's like japan is like the most peaceful, cool place you can go to. You know everyone respects the rules. I did a show at the tokyo dome with kiss recently 20 000 people. The front of stage was twine wrapped pvc pipe. Don't touch. This is don't touch in japanese and no one touches it. Stand back, okay. You know it's like you don't touch this.

Speaker 1 1:30:41

It says don't touch in Japanese, and no one touches it Stand back.

Speaker 2 1:30:42

Okay, you know, it's like you don't have to do anything Um but, Singapore.

Speaker 2 1:30:47

So then I'm thinking like, oh, china. And then you go over to the Philippines Philippines, the mess. You know how to get armored vehicles, armed guys. They got to show motorcycles with shotguns riding like this, with the shotgun hanging off. I'm like, oh God, thailand. Same thing. You know you're driving this elephant on the side of the street. Yeah, and Pad Pong, you know the shitty district. I'm like, oh God. So I'm going to Singapore. Like I want armed guys at the airport. You know, clear out the terminal. Cars parked right there and they were like they were insulted. You know the promoter was insulted, you should write an apology to me and I was like fuck you.

Speaker 2 1:31:24

You're like I'm not giving an apology to anything. You say what I do, we're not coming. And the manager's like look, dude, chill out Everybody in Singapore. Like no, he's like it ain't like the other ones, man. Like you just got to go with the flow, all right, everyone's in a line. All these fans, these kids, and they don't do anything. Why walk Good Charlotte right past them? No one jumped at them, no one did anything. No one followed us to the hotel. Because when you're at the airport and you get to a car, you go to the hotel. Everyone just follows you. Yeah.

Speaker 2 1:31:51

Now you have a fan base at the hotel, you know exactly right Now. You can't leave.

Speaker 2 1:31:54

They'll follow you everywhere you go News cameras. So I get there, no one follows us and I realized, like this, these people are like really like kind of brain drain, like the. The culture is weird, it's not really identifiable. You know, like Thailand, you have the temples and stuff. Japan, singapore is kind of a mix. Everyone kind of looks different.

Speaker 2 1:32:13

Yeah and uh, we did the show massive. It was like a flat piece of concrete with barricade stage, all proper, and the fans come in for a good Charlotte show, the band comes on, they're playing Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous right off the bat, and then the whole crowd just falls over. Everyone is like a huge dump. We had to stop the show and I put security in there to pick people up and pull out injured people and take them to medics and it was like total chaos From what. They just didn't know what to do. It was like a bunch of kids that had never been in a crowd and like it was like the worst thing ever, like the entire crowd got injured, like they just kept falling over Like hundreds of people would just fall over in the band hey Ryan get up and then like the band's just watching me, like in the barricade, pulling like dead bodies over.

Speaker 2 1:32:56

I'm like I don't know what the fuck's going on. Everyone's hurting the Like we had medical triage where overflowing with bodies and people overheating, you know. People are just laying all over the sides of the stage.

Speaker 1 1:33:06

Really.

Speaker 2 1:33:07

Yeah, the band's just kind of over there looking at these people that are just like stacks of bodies, like just overheating and wearing flip-flops. Their foot is crushed.

Speaker 1 1:33:16

Oh, my foot, you know.

Speaker 2 1:33:18

My neck. There was like I don't know 500 medical patients seen or something. Out of 10,000 people Usually have one or two, or maybe like 12, 15. You know, a heavy show. It's not even a heavy show, it's good, charlotte. There's a big floor and they were only like right here in the middle they just fell over.

Speaker 1 1:33:33

So when they started telling, I mean which is crazy, because people will probably listen and they're like, how does that happen? But I mean, if you're there's a tight packed crowd and you shove from behind, it's a ripple effect.

Speaker 2 1:33:45

Five guys can knock over a crowd if you're not paying attention, if you don't have any muscles in your lower body.

Speaker 1 1:33:49

A hundred percent, and then these people probably have no idea what a concert even is, so they're just going with it Falling over and once they fall you have all the weight of it. Dominoes were legit. Getting like stuff like suffocating, getting crushed, it was crazy yeah, I mean, I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 2 1:34:02

It was unbelievable because everything was going good, you're sitting back like what the fuck is going on yeah, I was like I don't know the band, like I don't know, like I I've never seen anything in my life worst crowd hands down I've ever seen really yeah just inexperienced and like just that's weird no muscles, it's like and they're kids and I felt terrible so I was help. And then I I remember my back was so messed up after that show from like lifting humans. Oh, I bet my knees, Like if you ever get on a barricade and pull people out. They have like grates in your knees.

Speaker 1 1:34:28

Yeah.

Speaker 2 1:34:29

I'd like wear knee pads after that under my jeans, you know, because my knees were so fucked after that show. You know it crowd ever and that was it. Huh, then we left last time going back there, yeah and then the band was super scared because you know singapore's got a weird reputation for uh, punishment that's swift and exact. Yeah, if you get charged with a crime today, you get sentenced tomorrow, and sometimes on tv oh yeah, so remember the kid that got caned when clinton was president.

Speaker 2 1:34:58

Like they whip your ass literally whoop your ass.

Speaker 1 1:35:00

Very clean, yeah, yeah, very clean over there, but no one fucks around, do they?

Speaker 2 1:35:04

Nope and bubble gum was illegal back then too, so they were like forget it, we're not even going outside. I don't want to get arrested for something I don't know about. Yeah. Yeah, a couple of guys smoked weed and he gets in, does a show and gets right back on the plane. Private plane in, private plane out and right when, I lift off.

Speaker 1 1:35:33

I'm not doing it there, oh God, no, not in the Middle.

Speaker 2 1:35:35

East. It's a big desert out there.

Speaker 1 1:35:38

Yeah, they don't play I know, you know, have you done a?

Speaker 2 1:35:45

lot over in the middle east.

Speaker 1 1:35:46

I do dubai, abu dhabi, dubai is wild. It's weird. I've been to dubai four or five times. I was there when the sultan or the sheik died and they put us we all had like we were on lockdown. It was really weird. But, um, that was in 2007 maybe.

Speaker 2 1:36:01

But dubai is interesting yeah, it's weird what happens there, like how they work things. It's like they're las vegas, you know for, like the middle east people yeah strange, but it's not like a puppet show. You know you go to an irish pub and no one drinks. That works there. The bartender has never drank in his life and he's pouring you a whiskey.

Speaker 1 1:36:18

You know you're like it's something that you don't think about. You know, because you obviously with their culture they're, they're, they don't well, at least in front I, I, we always joked about it. They're like mormons, you know, like, yeah, you don't ever want a mormon to drink your beer on while you're fishing, just bring two of them because they'll stare at each other all day. But those guys, you get them by themselves.

Speaker 3 1:36:36

They're out in the desert and they, freaking, go all out but yeah, it's weird.

Speaker 1 1:36:39

You go to a bar, you go to a restaurant there and they're serving you and it's. They can't. They've never partaked in anything that they're doing there, yeah.

Speaker 2 1:36:46

And then the dancing and stuff. I've never been in a resort in dubai and like there's like some british couple or whatever and there's a dj and everything yeah, and people kind of sit at their table and they kind of do this and then you could dance a little bit. But if you get body to body, the, the bouncers will come up and separate you. No grinding on each other in this country. You're like I don't want to be here anymore.

Speaker 1 1:37:05

Meanwhile they're flying in all these influencers and doing.

Speaker 2 1:37:08

Russians and everything else, russian models and stuff and whatever happens on the boats is something different apparently.

Speaker 1 1:37:13

Yeah, apparently, when you're out at the water, you can do whatever you want to an influencer, thought, model and video it and put it wherever you want. Yeah, you're in the ocean. Interesting, video it and put it wherever you want. Yeah, you're in the ocean. Interesting world. Dubai is very, very interesting. I always see these women that are like I'm in Dubai. I'm like yeah, I know exactly how you got there.

Speaker 2 1:37:30

Last time I went there was during COVID. Oh really, Dubai was doing all the UFC stuff.

Speaker 1 1:37:35

On the island, yeah.

Speaker 2 1:37:37

I was on the palm it's an island like a palm right. So I was this island right. So I was at the biggest resort there god, the name escapes me right now um, and I was with kiss, and we went there because they were the only place you could do a show. So the band had an idea with this guy, this american businessman, to go over there and play on the beach outside the hotel, build the biggest stage ever you know, play to the hotel which faces the ocean right.

Speaker 1 1:38:01

So we're their back would be to the ocean. Kiss's back would be to the ocean.

Speaker 2 1:38:05

And we put barges in the water that had explosives and like pyro and fireworks and shit and they played to the hotel. So the way it was sold to the government or whoever was that we're playing to people in their rooms on the balconies, right, and the balcony and the rooms cost like a million dollars a night on New Year's Eve or whatever, right, and they always had the biggest fireworks display on earth because everything's got to be bigger there, right? It's all about the picture and Kiss was like hey, make it bigger this year and put and everyone watches the fireworks show anyway. So we're going to play to the hotel watching the fireworks show. At the end it starts at the end of the show.

Speaker 2 1:38:42

That's a pretty cool lot, yeah, yeah so we emptied all the pools that were out there right before the beach. They put pyrotechnics and flame boxes in the pools they're shot up in front of the wrong yeah, with water in there and everything, and uh, it was we. We broke the guinness book of world records for pyro, really the most flame ever displayed, the most.

Speaker 1 1:39:00

What was that?

Speaker 2 1:39:00

like it wasnarly. It was weird because when I showed up and you know you're talking about heavy, heavy pyro, I mean there's a lot of product. Yeah.

Speaker 2 1:39:07

And they get pyrotechnics in the Middle East. It's weird, pyrotechnics and radios. Every time I go to Dubai or Abu Dhab, right, people use radios for different reasons in there drones, radios, pyro, really, oh god, even the band's hair product, you know. Everything gets stopped. So, shit, is this a maniac and a logistical nightmare getting all that shit in there, right? And you're talking about heavy product, like you think about bombs and shit. So we get everything into the country. We start learning the stage.

Speaker 2 1:39:39

I meet with the head of security for the hotel, who's like completely in the in the, you know, condora, he's got the white. I go to his office. He's got swords on the wall and he's got a big conference table. I'm sitting on one end, he's sitting on the other end. I'm like I have a map in front of me. I'm like can we look at the map? He goes sure, I'm pointing at the map, right, and he's like every time I say something like okay, and the next thing I'll say canine, how many canines are we to have? I want to do it after we get this. He's like tell me something, what do you know?

Speaker 2 1:40:20

about bombs and explosives and I'm thinking not a damn thing. Nothing, really, probably not as much as you. Yeah, he goes, then why are you talking about it? And I'm thinking like okay, here we go, shit.

Speaker 2 1:40:32

You know, and the guy that put me in the room was his assistant, like his second hand, his hand, right hand man or whatever and he's like, oh, he's a really nice guy, you have a really good meeting, it's really lovely. Like he was totally fucking with me. He knew he was going to cut my nuts off when I walked in there and he goes and you shouldn't talk about these things, I'll be in charge of this. You enjoy your stay and go have beers with your friends, like you did last night. And I'm like, oh okay, thanks for having me. I appreciate your time. Yeah, I'm thinking I'm okay, but yeah, thank you. And I walk out and the South African guy is the right-hand man. He goes. How'd it go?

Speaker 1 1:41:03

I'm like you fucking asshole.

Speaker 2 1:41:05

You threw me into the lion's den and he's like oh man, it's part of the gig here. You know, you just got to cut your nuts off when you walk in to let you know he's in charge and not you, and we usually don't let security guys on property. Okay, so I literally. At that point he goes You're gonna notice People are following you around. Everyone that works here Knows who you are. It's part of the gig and it's not like you can just blend. You're a large human being.

Speaker 2 1:41:29

They're like that's the guy you gotta watch, make sure he's not making plans With anybody. You don't make plans With anybody, so they just shut you down. Yeah, you just got to be careful, you know, like so I had a fixer. I have a fixer in Dubai.

Speaker 1 1:41:43

What's a fixer?

Speaker 2 1:41:45

You have the trouble. Get out of jail, free car guy yeah. He's with the chief of police and stuff and you know he's actually DJ Khaled's cousin, the DJ Go figure.

Speaker 2 1:41:54

He looks just like him. He's Foddy. Okay, foddy, the fix. And I didn't think I had to use them. You know, like I had to use them the first day we were there, because the dude that does hair for the band goes through customs and he puts his bag in the x-ray machine. When you land, you put an x-ray machine right. A lot of people don't know that You're getting x-ray on the way in, you know. Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 1:42:23

So he puts his shit in the x-ray and he's got a 223 around in his bag. He used it as a range bag in Southern California and then he put his hair and makeup shit in there and they put it through. They're like what's this big? He's pulling off a little hit. What's going on here? And they're like dogs, I want my treat. You're going to go over there until I get my treat from my boss. I call Foddy and this guy's freaking out desert.

Speaker 1 1:42:44

If he goes and gets him out in an hour and, uh, it's like a, it's a nicer version of tijuana, you just yeah, you just buy out, yeah, it's already prepaid. You know, that's the insurance policy.

Speaker 2 1:42:48

So you know I'm like well, there goes my get out of job free card day one. We're here for another month you spent a month there yeah, it was close to a month. Yeah, we had to build that giant stage and we all lived in the hotel oh, so, so you were advanced, and then COVID test every day we had a COVID tent and we had to do it twice a day.

Speaker 1 1:43:07

What a nightmare you had a wristband.

Speaker 2 1:43:08

Every day you had a different wristband. You take this one off, you put this one on mask everywhere. You know I was wearing a mask out of chiffon. I Googled what's the thinnest material in the world and it said chiffon's. I've had someone make me one. You can see my teeth through it, you know. And when I met the sultan of the resort, like the head of security, you know, he was like I think you probably think it's pretty funny wearing that mask, but I don't find it humorous. Yeah, you might want to wear a mask where I can't see your mouth moving. I was kind of like Roger that.

Concert Logistics: Moving Through the Chaos

Speaker 2 1:43:37

Roger that I hated the mask oh that I hated the mess.

Speaker 1 1:43:43

Oh god, it was the worst. Yeah, so that was an interesting time, you know. So you spent almost a month in dubai building that out for one concert, or did they play multiple just for the one show?

Speaker 2 1:43:49

new year's years yeah, countdown and everything, and then all the biggest firework show ever on earth. So it was pretty cool. I have a video of me doing this when they're all going off.

Speaker 1 1:43:56

It's just nuts, you know that's I mean that's got to be cool to watch so but yeah, yeah being there for a month. I bet you that place got old quick.

Speaker 2 1:44:04

Yeah, I was dressed in a condor. At the end I had the whole headdress and everything on was walking around yeah, I was being an idiot, but they're just staring at you like this dude is giant.

Speaker 2 1:44:12

I have a picture of me stuck in one like this and, uh, because they didn't make it my size, I didn't get one made. Yeah, it was stuck on my chest like I got stuck in like a sausage tube, and everyone's just laughing taking pictures of me. My arms are above my head, yeah, so don't have anything for the rib cage like that.

Speaker 1 1:44:26

No, no, they're slender people. Yeah, they're not walking around at 300 pounds, 280 pounds. It was an interesting time though. Oh shit, man yeah.

Speaker 2 1:44:35

No privacy. No privacy there, that's for sure. That lets you know that they're spying on you. I mean, it's a well-known thing. Really, you don't have privacy. No, no.

Speaker 1 1:44:45

What do you mean by spying on, like cameras in your room, what's bugged or what Probably? Or are they just following you everywhere? Yeah?

Speaker 2 1:44:49

I mean you're on surveillance at all times. I mean even the vehicles, like in America.

Speaker 2 1:44:54

You get pulled over by a cop who goes hey, man, I wasn't speeding and then you can go to court and fight it. They just take money out of your bank account, from your, from your digitally. You're speeding. You just had 50 bucks deducted. You don't go to court. You're not a lawyer. Your car was going too fast. You know, the first time I got in a car, the driver starts beeping. The car starts beeping. I'm like what's that noise? It keeps beeping out of my bank account. If I speed again, no shit, yeah. And if you, if you pull your money out of your bank, you get arrested. If you, if you take a giant chunk of money out of the bank, you go to jail. That's until they can figure out what the fuck, why, yeah, where you going, I mean every, every day they find lamborghinis and shit at the airport, just abandoned like people are moving in and out creepy, creepy shit. You know so. It know so. It's a thing.

Speaker 1 1:45:43

It's a weird world over there, yeah, so Did you ever do Doha or any of that? No, no, I never did Qatar.

Speaker 2 1:45:47

No, I went to countries where they do concerts. So if it's outside of that 55 I've been to. Then I was doing a show there, you know, oh, I know I have one friend that did a show with Soundgarden in Cuba, which was a crazy thing. Cuba, yeah, they did go on a cultural exchange program. You can't make money there. It's a communist country. So cultural exchange, so it was Soundgarden or one, yeah, soundgarden, and you know you had to leave your credit cards at home and your cell phones and everything else. You couldn't use any of it. So you couldn't bring anything, your food, nothing, you just show up and you can't, you know, can't make money.

Speaker 2 1:46:23

The band would pay you when you get home, whatever, but you couldn't like have cash Really, so they had full on 24 seven catering and everyone got diarrhea instantly, like everyone go figure and everyone's like you can't call anybody, you can't like spend money, can't go shopping.

Speaker 1 1:46:43

You're, oh god that'd be miserable.

Speaker 2 1:46:44

I think they're the only band that go to Cuba recently.

Speaker 1 1:46:47

Worst, worst client you've ever had to work with. Can you name them? Yeah, I don't care. Okay, looks like I just know how that industry is. So what's the worst client you've ever had to work for?

Speaker 2 1:47:00

Seal Really, yeah, the British singer Seal yeah, partially. I mean she's a total prick to me. That's why I say that. The circumstances, it's understandable why. But I just didn't care because I wasn't the person, it wasn't the outlet, I wasn't the punching bag. You know he was married to Heidi Klum.

Speaker 2 1:47:23

Yep the previous security guy before me was Martin Kirsten. You can Google a little bit of everything else. Martin was sleeping with Heidi Klum. The bodyguard before me was sleeping with his wife and they had a full-on relationship. It's well-known Paparazzi. He took pictures of them every day, Full-on thing. They got divorced over it. They had like three or four kids together and you came in and I came in.

Speaker 1 1:47:42

So you were hated because you were just he was watching me.

Speaker 2 1:47:46

Hmm, who's this fucking guy? Big tatted my wife. I was like no, and I just drove kids around soccer practice and then just drive him anywhere you want to go. He'd be nice and sweet sometimes and I got him. I got the job through a mutual friend that was working with him in Australia at the time and, uh, he just was miserable all the time.

Speaker 2 1:48:07

You know, like I drive him, he had a Honda Odyssey that we drive around and he was staying in a house that no one knew. One of the Clippers owned it LA Clippers and no one knew who was staying there and we wanted to keep it there in private. We weren't having Mercedes and shit rolling around. It was a Hondas, you know, tinted windows and stuff, and I drive them everywhere and, uh, his kids, I pick them up from school, all this stuff you know, and I remember he just would like you don't know how to drive. Like you know, the problem with americans is you know what, you know what this you know you should let me drive. You know, okay, everything. Like, what are you doing? Like I'd go in the house, like I'd bring this kid in the house, put him in bed because it was just left in the car at night. I'm like, uh, I'll take him in. You know, I've got kids and they're like what are you doing?

Speaker 1 1:48:50

up and leave his kid in the car and expect you to carry?

Speaker 2 1:48:52

him yeah, weird stuff. And um, then he'd be like what are you doing? You know, everything was this question and he was just very untrusting, okay, and just condescending and stuff that gets old. Real quick.

Speaker 1 1:49:05

Really quick yeah, so.

Speaker 2 1:49:05

I was like I'm out of here, I'm not doing this shit anymore. It wasn't worth it yeah.

Speaker 1 1:49:08

no, it was miserable. When you have a shitty client, I don't care who they are.

Speaker 2 1:49:18

They're just it. It sucks, man, it's not fun, but you know I heard he's a nice guy actually, but you know it wasn't nice to me.

Speaker 1 1:49:21

It's bad timing, yeah, bad time, which understandable yeah, whatever, I'm sure the security gets it in every now and then. That's part of the perks of the sure in the world.

Speaker 2 1:49:28

Travel in the world. What's weird about martin curse and he was a security guy before me that that was had a short-lived relationship with heidi klum. He went on to do security for chris cornell. He was a guy that went into a chris cornell's room when he was dead interesting so he had a affair with a wife and a suicide on his watch like most unemployable security guy on earth. Black cloud seems to follow you I would say so, he's probably.

Speaker 1 1:49:51

I mean, you're not going to be. No, there's not going to be too many clients jumping up yeah, do me next yeah work for us? Yeah, can you help my family?

Speaker 2 1:49:59

yeah, oh shit, yeah, he's probably the worst.

Speaker 1 1:50:03

Yeah, because I hear some horror stories. Man, I had to work this. Uh I when I had my security company and we had these guys come in from the middle east and they were looking to buy up like half of san francisco, like downtown, in the slums and oh god yeah and so we were driving these guys around.

Speaker 1 1:50:23

They didn't want us armed, and so, even though we were, we just don't see it yeah you know how it is, but, man, the way that those arabs talk down to you and treat you, oh sure I would say they put us, they put security below a cockroach sure you're a peasant, you're you're the help.

Speaker 2 1:50:41

You're like a yeah, an indentured servant.

Speaker 1 1:50:44

Yeah it was. It was always fascinating to me because you know I was, I was running that and and so you know I had everything lined up, pick up all that and airport, and where they're everything, and so, man, they just everything don't try to be friendly.

Speaker 1 1:50:58

Yeah, yeah they, the way they look and talk to you and the everything about it. And yeah, it was. They're only here, for I had them for four days when they flew in and they wanted to buy up a huge chunk of the shithole part of, I guess, all of san francisco but um they were gonna do this big like hipster, all redo everything street, yeah, and all. I don't know if it ever went through, but yeah, I remember that those were.

Speaker 2 1:51:23

That was one of the last gigs I ever worked and I was like man fuck yeah, well, you know, and that's why I never done ep, like people think bodyguard and then they think of executive protection, but I'm a different yeah, I'm a gig guy do shows, you know, so I bring people into space.

Speaker 1 1:51:36

Yeah, you know, because you're there to help and plan and all this and us, we're just, we're just, you're just security, yeah, you know.

Speaker 2 1:51:44

I guess the high pay is the only thing that crosses over. Usually it's good pay on ep style, but yeah, you know you gotta deal with that shit and usually a suit or something like that, or so I don't wear. I wear this to work. You know I don't. I don't have a suit. That's nice I really don't wear. I wear this to work. You know, I don't, I don't have a suit.

Speaker 1 1:51:58

That's nice. I really don't, yeah.

Speaker 2 1:52:00

Yeah, I mean I went to the Grammys, emmys, oscars, all that stuff with like, yeah, I did.

Speaker 1 1:52:04

John Voight at the Oscars. My wife and I got to go and I sat with him. I was just I did work for him for a little bit there and that was fun sitting in and that's where we did the the walk to the carpet.

Speaker 2 1:52:16

Yeah, yeah, it's weird right it's interesting world.

Speaker 1 1:52:19

You know we were there. Um, we also did. I don't know if you've, you probably never did it. You were doing way cooler shit. But the night of the hundred stars if you ever heard that was like a another big celebrity event together yeah, they had a lot of veterans and all that good shit there. So it was, it was interesting working those events and I mean, do these people can't even get a bite in? They?

Speaker 1 1:52:38

can't get a bite to eat yeah, when you're at these, so like I'd have to stand there, I'm like yeah, can you let the motherfucker eat?

Speaker 2 1:52:43

80 of people have adderall coursing through their veins.

Speaker 1 1:52:46

This is like high energy do you do a lot of drugs on the road? No me not, no, not you no dry snitching over here do you deal with a lot of drugs on the road like just yeah, I?

Speaker 2 1:52:59

will say who, but I work for a world famous band and I looked after the lead singer and uh, he was a notorious heroin addict and uh, really, for years, I mean, he's been in the business 40 something years and, um, you know, I was told that he was sober for 20 years when I got hired. And, uh, all they do is I take him to NA meetings and then he stays in the hotel, he doesn't go out, he doesn't do anything, he doesn't have anyone over, he stays in his hotel room. He's a brilliant performer, he still is. And I meet him in Sweden and my first show, the first show, was in Stockholm. And I go to the hotel and I meet the manager, I meet the tour manager, who I already knew, and then I meet the other security guys.

Speaker 2 1:53:37

All right, cool, yeah, you're with so-and-so. Yeah, cool, set breakfast, let's talk. And everyone was cool. And I'm like where's my guy at? He's in his room, it's cool, no-transcript. And I just kept walking past them Like I'm not meeting the client. I know it's half a week.

Speaker 2 1:54:11

And then he comes walking in on his own, like he went to the store and like came in with a bag, and then the other security guy's like oh, hey, so-and-so, this is your new guy in the lobby of the hotel. Like, well, hi, he goes hey, man, I'm just going to put this stuff in my room. I'll call you later. I'm like, okay, I'm like he hates me or whatever. I didn't know what to think Really. And I found out soon after that. He fell off the wagon and he was. So it turned into this thing where, you know, I would find room service trays down the hallway with a napkin over it. He's put a napkin over the trays and shaped like a wine bottle, shaped like a vodka bottle, you know. And then I was like that's weird. And then the next day another one. I'm like, well, we're in different cities.

Speaker 1 1:54:54

Same thing is happening in different cities? Yeah, on his floor.

Speaker 2 1:54:57

And I would order his food for him. So I knew exactly what the plate looked like, because he would never eat it all. I'm like, well, that's the steak and that's the berries that he wanted, and that's the vodka bottle, and the jig was up. So I go to the manager. I'm like hey, man, he's drinking. And he's like I know, yeah, everyone knew but me. Everybody had been around for 10 years. Like, oh yeah, he's off the wagon. Yeah, it was me, and the other band members didn't know, like they were clueless.

Speaker 1 1:55:23

Really.

Speaker 2 1:55:23

Yeah, and then it just got worse and worse and worse, and then it would turn into like text messages.

Speaker 1 1:55:27

Hey, go get me some heroin.

Speaker 2 1:55:29

I'm in, like Madrid, spain.

Speaker 1 1:55:31

Trying to look for heroin.

Speaker 2 1:55:33

No, I'm like I'm not doing that, boss. Like I'm so sorry, but like. But he had me go in and get him a vodka and he'd be like I don't know how much this costs. And he's like here, just take this. And it'd be like 500 euro or whatever. I'm like well, I'm sure it doesn't cost 500 euro for a bottle of booze, you know. And he's like, oh, just keep it. Oh and Kiss me on the cheek.

Speaker 1 1:56:00

Love you, man. I'm like fucking hell. You love me because I'm an enabler and buying. You. Shut up, it was hush money.

Speaker 2 1:56:04

Just don't tell anybody what I'm doing.

Speaker 1 1:56:05

I got all the money in the world. Hey, hush money spends, so I got warned when I first started.

Speaker 2 1:56:11

Whatever he tells you, I need to know the manager, I need to know everything he tells you. So I'd be like all right, cool, he told me not to tell you, but he had me get a bottle of vodka for him. He said, okay, how much vodka? A fifth? What time was it? How much money did he give you? 500 euro, just keep it. Good job. Tell me what else he does. I'm like all right.

Speaker 2 1:56:31

And he just leaves, I'm like would just go on stage, blow it away after the show, boom, and then, like you know, with the tell me everything, open dialogue with the manager and I this guy knew that the singer knew that, he knew that I would tell his manager everything and he was playing me. There's like a weird psychological game going on. So I'd go to the gym with him every day.

Speaker 2 1:56:53

He'd do this to this and everything else and he'd go hey ryan, did I ever tell you about, about my manager and what a piece of shit he is? I think he's gay. One time we were in Brazil back in the 80s bad old days we had these prostitutes on top of a limo and we're just like fucking them and like all of a sudden his girl Twig and Berries falls out. Meat to veg. It's a guy.

Speaker 2 1:57:21

And he saw this guy's genitals and he just kept fucking him in the ass. He must be a fag, and I'm laughing because the story's ridiculous. And he's like anyway, that's a funny story. Let's do some push-ups and I'm like what the fuck? And then the next day I go see the manager. He goes what'd he tell you? I'm like well, he told me you're a fag. And then you fuck some guy in the ass in Brazil over the limo and the manager's like that's not true.

Speaker 2 1:57:46

So now I'm like telling the manager all this shit that he's put, and he's having a laugh. He's like, yeah, go tell him, but he knows yeah.

Speaker 1 1:57:54

He's not telling, he's like he's just messing with the manager through you.

Speaker 2 1:57:56

Yeah, you want to hear everything I say Guess what homo. And then he got mean sometimes. You know he'd leave his own kids for me, right, Like he loves money so much. He'd leave his whole family, He'd let them die, and then I had to go to this guy and be like he said that you Fucked up and then the wife was calling me and everything. Is he drinking? I'm like no, I'm like lying to his wife, Like what I'm supposed to protect the package. You know what I mean. Yeah.

Speaker 2 1:58:24

But also, like man, it gets weird. So that sucks. I mean, I slept against a Four Seasons hotel room door so that he wouldn't sneak out when I went to sleep. I just sat there like this, so if he opened the door I'd fall in his room.

Speaker 1 1:58:37

Did he ever try to sneak out?

Speaker 2 1:58:38

No, but like he would send me messages that were like X, y, z, g, h, h, y, I'm like, oh God, he can't even type. He's on a bender. Oh, he's fucked. Like he can't even type a word. Yeah, they bring them to you at this hotel. They'll bring you whatever you want. Yeah, you have a giant suite.

Speaker 1 1:59:04

You have a butler, pick the phone up. You got it.

Speaker 2 1:59:06

He's like he's got his leather jacket and the earring on and the glasses Rings on his finger. I'm like, uh-uh, I could smell his cologne. He wore this unique cologne.

Speaker 1 1:59:16

I could smell it, so you knew if he was in a hallway. Oh yeah, yep, uh-huh.

Speaker 2 1:59:20

And then he started going downstairs. You know this band had aftershows at the hotel.

Speaker 2 1:59:25

Oh God and fans would show up and they'd done it since the 80s and he didn't go to after parties for 20 years because he was sober. He had no business when I was around. So when the fans figured out who I was, right away, you know, on the fan club websites and everything all over Facebook and everything and they're like oh shit, ryan's here, like he must be coming. Why would Ryan show up if he's not here, like he's always with him? So he started showing up and he'd go downstairs. And he'd go, he'd walk in. He'd be like is there any talent down there? You, he'd walk in. He'd be like is there any talent down there? You know, is there any? Like anybody? You know, women, you know. And I'm like, yeah, I wouldn't lie to him because I knew he was going anyway At first. I go no, there's no one there, it's a bunch of dudes.

Speaker 1 2:00:05

You know Still go, he'd be like let's go have a look.

Speaker 2 2:00:12

I go fuck and there'd be a bunch of hot girls.

Speaker 1 2:00:14

It's a miracle.

Speaker 2 2:00:14

Yeah, I just tell him the truth, like, yeah, there's a few, all right, should we go down there. I'm like, yeah, I mean, if you want to. You know like, okay, Give me 10 minutes, and then he'd be, he'd close the door. I'd be like, well, all right, you know like I could hear him through the door. You know like, oh God, and like sunglasses on.

Speaker 2 2:00:39

you know, ready to go you go down there and you just be like in the elevator, like, just like ready to like a little kid be going to the bar, and he'd be like he just got the first girl that he thought was attractive. Do you want to go to my room? That's all it takes. Do you want to go to my room? Like he didn't make it, he didn't hang out or anything, he just go. You want to come with me? You want to go? Okay, cool, and then you give him the hotel key. I already, I already turned his key off. I already made a new set of keys because I knew what he was gonna do. You know he'd be like, oh, here's my key, come up in five minutes and the room number is written on there. And then he'd come to me and be like, hey, I just gave that girl my key.

Speaker 2 2:01:08

I'm like I know, and so does everybody else in the bar, because everyone's staring at you. You know you're not you're the celebrity.

Speaker 1 2:01:14

Everybody's's watching you. You're not seen.

Speaker 2 2:01:15

I thought he's here the lead singer, you know and slide the key over and then I'd get him back to his room, I'd come back down and I'd tell the girl, like you could have that key. It's a souvenir. You're not going up. Yeah, you can't even get in the elevator with that key. So I have the real key. And then he'd call me like should we make sure she gets home, okay?

Speaker 1 2:01:44

I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'll be right there and I'll be like, hi, follow me. I wouldn't say anything, just walk to the elevator, walk and take them down, get a taxi for them and be like nice meeting you.

Speaker 2 2:01:48

Yeah, our roadie's pretty wild. Yes, they're feral, but also very smart feral, huh, oh yeah, yeah, some of them are pretty wild. Yeah, I've had, I've met some interesting people over the years, oh, yeah, oh yeah, but they're brilliant.

Speaker 1 2:01:59

Are women like willing to do anything to get with these?

Speaker 2 2:02:02

It's not really about that anymore. The battle days are over, so there's no backstage buffoonery. You know like.

Speaker 1 2:02:09

Really no, all that's done. Yeah, like the rockstar metal days are all that. It doesn't happen anymore.

Speaker 2 2:02:13

The liability, the cameras, the people around. I mean there's just too many active eyes on you. So you're doing it on Channel 5. If you do it, you know what I mean. If you're backstage, I mean every venue's got cameras everywhere. Yeah. So, and then alcohol, and like underage people and a lot of considerations, you know. Yeah. Liability is the biggest one.

Speaker 1 2:02:31

I was with. I got to go and meet post at his starting, you know in Salt Lake and so we were back and I was talking to his manager and his security and all those guys and they were, they were talking and they're like bro, this new post, for like we love new posts.

Speaker 1 2:02:50

Yeah, and I was asking him like why they're like he has changed everything. It's only family, very close friends, business associates, and that's it, like there's no ragers. He goes back, smokes a few joints, has beer, whatever chills, and that's, and I was like, oh, this is badass, like this is the type that I could get behind, because but they're like, yeah, the days of just the craziness, like that doesn't work.

Speaker 2 2:03:15

It doesn't work anymore, especially for a roadie, to act crazy. You know, if the artist isn't acting crazy, then do you fall in line? I was with janet jackson recently. It's like, yeah, her son's coming. He's eight years old, you know she's 50 jackson has an eight-year-old son, yeah, which is crazy. You know, it's kind of like, well, and she's, you know, gone through a divorce and it's like you can't have, even with the eight-year-old backstage it's artists like what's gonna happen back there? You're gonna bring girls back, and who the fuck? Is that?

Speaker 2 2:03:41

yeah, like jenna knows everybody that's around her. She's very keen to what's happening. She's very smart. She's been on tv for 50 years.

Speaker 2 2:03:48

Yeah, you have to have your shit together yeah so you're dialed in doing a job or you're excused. You know, like, be professional, I'll be nice. She's the sweetest person I've ever worked for. Yeah, you know, and uh, but you have to act accordingly. You be sweet too. You do your job and I'll do mine. And she's a pro and she practices all day long. She's you know. She doesn't have it on like you can't just snap your fingers and go up there and you have to kill it Like she's good at her craft. So be good at yours and we'll have a good working relationship and we'll be all family. Don't bring any girls back here around my son that's not going to happen. So I haven't been around it since I first started, really, yeah, yeah, I mean there's a little bit playing here and there, but it slowly and surely went away.

Speaker 2 2:04:29

Now it's business where these performers are just in and out. Yeah and if anyone's screwing around, it's the artist. Okay, I did Drake last year and it's like he can do whatever he wants. He's a billionaire, I get it. He's got his own 747. He flies around in with his name on the side and says Air Drake, he can put whoever he wants in. He's got four bedrooms and they're designed by Louis Vuitton, you know.

Speaker 1 2:04:48

He's got four bedrooms on his jet.

Speaker 2 2:04:52

Yeah, and. Yeah he's a billionaire. He's got butlers that follow him around and pour his drinks.

Speaker 1 2:04:57

for him what?

Speaker 2 2:04:57

is that he's got a guy that follows him around. He just goes like this and just put a drink in his head. He's got a guy that follows him around that gives drinks to everybody else around Drake, hey man, you look thirsty.

Speaker 2 2:05:07

Yeah, you're hanging out with Drake, you want something to drink. He's like oh yeah, Mike will give you something it Next level. Really. Yeah, we had seven guys that were with me on that one, and then we had another five that were on top of them. So think about that. You got 12 monsters with you. Seven guys are logistics guys and five are just gorillas with guns. So my job was to make sure that it was a hard exterior, that all the thugs in Memphis and all the thugs in Houston will just walk in. You know what I mean? Because they'd scare everybody else with security t-shirts on, and the cops were even scared of some of these people, you know. So, backstage, yeah, you're going through a metal detector. You're going through your pockets. The only person that doesn't get searched is the boy Drake. He's the only one His bodyguards. You know there's ways to do things. You know I post things about how to get a metal detectors.

Speaker 1 2:05:57

I saw your knives?

International Tours: Security Nightmares Abroad

Speaker 2 2:05:58

Yeah, they don't work. You know there's. All this new technology is bullshit. That's just a big old money grab. You know live nation's got a giant monopoly on the concert business and guess who's buying these machines? Some company that we found it's like oh yeah, I'm. You know it's like ticket master. You know you buy stuff off of stub hub or whatever. Guess who owns that? Probably ticket master is buying their own tickets and reselling for double.

Speaker 1 2:06:23

You say this. We, my wife last night they went to um kane brown, kane brown yeah. She bought those tickets back in during christmas and like, oh, due to the because you know how they're, there's their price gouging and all that shit, so they change some things around. It's like, oh, the venue will release your ticket within 24. They never release the tickets and my wife's like we're literally at dinner going to drop off the little in my wife and she had to buy new tickets and she's like we've had these since christmas.

Speaker 2 2:06:49

Yeah, it's all bullshit, just resell them yeah when I was with pearl jam, it was a big deal. They were a fighting ticket master on with a. It was Neil Young. He used to put Clear Channel. Clear Channel was the company. They just keep changing their name. Yeah, yeah, that's what, like Pac Bell did with the phone companies. He just turned into Sprint or whatever. He just changed your name, rebrand Facebook. You know now they're what where they meta. Yeah, you just change your name everything. They're in lawsuits with the government too and it's like someone's going to agree somewhere. It's going to keep happening For sure.

Speaker 1 2:07:18

It's money. Yeah, so all the money yeah so.

Speaker 2 2:07:20

I, I took my, uh, my small microphone to say hey guess what? This is bullshit, watch this. And that was when they first opened, uh, rolled out the open gate systems. Yeah.

Speaker 2 2:07:29

Evolve and open gate don't work. The traditional magnetometers work better than them. And then, oh, those are junk. These are the new technology. You don't have to touch anyone, you just keep walking and I walk in. Yeah, I keep walking with titanium knives up and down my pants. You know they're metal. I'll stab right through your head, yeah. So I'm like, uh, this isn't working out, you know, and handcuffs were felt pop, dangerous. You know nothing, nothing. So, and now everyone knows it, bad people, people think I'm telling, showing bad people how to do stuff. Like I don't have a whole lot of thugs following this bunch of cops and stuff and military dudes, you know. And, uh, I'm like I'm showing good people what the reality is. This is like I'm the guy with boots on the ground at the concert dealing with all these people and do an extraction from somebody, grab somebody what's on them, yeah I know I treat everyone like they got a titanium knife on them, because a lot of people carry and they tell me about it.

Speaker 2 2:08:20

Yup, so it's like you know what are you dealing with. Like even if someone had an idea to do something at a concert, you get a group of people that could be havoc.

Speaker 1 2:08:27

Have you ever run into anything? Have you had any close calls with?

Speaker 2 2:08:30

Yeah, yeah, pearl Jam. I was in Nassau Coliseum. It's in Long Island, new York, and you know what a VOM is, a VOMitory Like. If you have an arena, there's like tunnels that go into the floor.

Speaker 2 2:08:43

Oh, yeah, yeah yeah, it's called VOMs, right, and they put seats above the VOMs. There's like seats above them, on the side of them. That's where the players kind of go and they high five people on. I'm walking Ed off, eddie Vedder, and he's the last one off the stage. He's waving at the crowd Good night, thank you. And he walks down the stairs with the flashlights out, and I was taught to always look up, because people will throw shit and you can grab it in front of their face so it doesn't hit them in the face Sodas, beers, whatever it is. I look up and I see this guy perched like a what do you call it? Goblin or a gremlin, like a, like a Gothic church or something he's like on the rail Like a gargoyle.

Speaker 1 2:09:20

Gargoyle, yeah, he's like this.

Speaker 2 2:09:22

He's got his hands on the pole and his feet are on the pole too, like a bird, so he's ready to come over. Yeah so he jumped like 20 feet, yeah, and I'm like I push Ed and the other guy, jesse, grabs him and pushes him and I tackled this guy against the wall, did you jump 20 feet, yeah, and literally right when he hit the ground I just smushed him against the wall and I was pissed For sure.

Speaker 2 2:09:49

So I was like 320 with a 500-pound bench. So I smashed the shit out of this guy and a pocket knife falls out of his pocket. You know, it's like everyone got searched and it's like was he gonna stab him? Probably not. But he got in the venue with a knife and he had bad intention. He could have just jumped on him, just put it right in his skull yeah and I was just kind of like wow that fast.

Speaker 2 2:10:07

You know, like it doesn't take a whole lot to get something done. You know people that want to do something. Intent is the weapon. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1 2:10:14

So somebody wants to do it, they're gonna do it yeah.

Speaker 2 2:10:17

And then you know it's like and then back then it's like no cops backstage or around the stage because artists didn't want to see them, because they're usually smoking weed or something. You know like this cop's gonna bust me or something. But you know nowadays like yeah, I'm a cop stage left and stage right and behind the stage, between me and my vehicle. So if there's an active shooter somewhere, go right out and you're not part of the active shooter protocol.

Speaker 1 2:10:35

You're with the artist to get the artist out.

Speaker 2 2:10:38

That's a PR thing too. You don't want you know guns and roses to get killed by some active shooter. That's massive, massive stuff and your law enforcement agency didn't handle it quick enough. It's like, well, we didn't get you out of here. It's not that you're better than anybody Everyone's human there. But like also, I can't have Axl Rush shot on stage like 20 feet from me.

Speaker 1 2:10:57

Yeah, have you ever had anybody try to rush stages? Oh God.

Speaker 2 2:11:00

Yeah, there's videos you can watch on YouTube.

Speaker 1 2:11:02

Really.

Speaker 2 2:11:02

Oh God, yeah, yeah, it's crazy. I've had stage invaders all my life. Yeah, I grabbed people off stage. There's a way to do it. You go out there and tackle them and you end up is bad publicity going on, tmz. Are you just wrapping up? Grab them and you have to know where you're going. You have to calculate it really quick where they're at on the stage, where your singer's at, who they're going to go for probably the singer, not always, but usually the singer. Some people get up on stage and just run around. They're like yeah.

Speaker 2 2:11:40

And then they try to jump off the crowd, then you can't get on. You're like, oh fuck, that's a bad look, but some stages are really wide then if you go to a theater shit, I just did a show, oh oh, in vegas I was with janet, so the stage was like 100 yards wide. I mean it was massive but really shallow, yeah. So if I guess someone gets up there, you have to run like 40, 50 yards to get to them.

Speaker 1 2:11:57

Oh, no shit yeah so you know, and there's no she's working the whole stage.

Speaker 2 2:12:01

Yeah, so I would be in the down aisles making sure like we would identify people way out, like first of all, before she went on stage we'd go. Any athletes Anyone look like they could physically get up there. You know the fat, older 60 year old woman, not worried. Yeah. It's going to take her like five seconds to get get her leg up on and pull herself up, anyone athletic.

Speaker 2 2:12:21

We just keyed right up in them. And if they're, are they looking to the side of the stage? Are they looking for security? Are they touching? Are they looking in front of where they're at, you know, is there a speaker wedge in front or hand on? Well, no, there's something blocking their, they're impeding their way, or it's just a deck. You know. So they could just jump off or push themselves up and go, and we used to like do little practice runs of how you could jump on, how how long it would take you to get to them. You know. So there was three of us around janet at all times, and we're just you know.

Speaker 1 2:12:51

I mean she's mega superstar, so that's a whole. I didn't know that there was really a difference from like superstar to mega superstar.

Speaker 2 2:13:00

Yeah, world famous, yeah, generational, you know. Kiss, yeah, huge brand. I mean, you saw little kids. The grandparents are great grandparents, you know, with old shirts from 1972. I got this at the Nassau, you know whatever.

Speaker 2 2:13:18

And it's funny with Kiss, when you'd wear old shit or have like memorabilia, gene would be like, can I have that? Like they check this out. I've been holding this my whole life, you go, could I have it? And they go. Oh, of course they just give it to it like their prized possession and you'd be like, cool ryan, send this back to the warehouse. He would just take shit off of people.

Speaker 1 2:13:30

But really, they were honored for him to take it.

Speaker 2 2:13:32

We just got everyone's cool stuff he's got a giant warehouse. It's as big as a football just full of toilet paper, hello, kitty, kiss stuff, you name it. I mean everything's in there pinball machines and golly I mean. And people just would bring stuff like take that shirt off, I'll give you a new shirt from the merch stand and people just rip their shirts off like here, go send this back to the warehouse. I like that. I've never seen that one really you know what's weird about KISS merch?

Speaker 2 2:13:58

The most interesting to me, fascinating thing for me, is have you ever seen the logo that says KISS, they're lightning bolts. It looks like something else. Nobody's ever said anything about it. It's like the SS A bunch of Jew guys have an SS right. You go to Germany to do shows, they round the S's off on their merch. You can't print that in Germany, so all the KISS fans in the world want the German KISS shirts from the shows because it's so unique. It's the only country that doesn't have the lightning bolts. Is that weird?

Speaker 1 2:14:25

Interesting yeah.

Speaker 2 2:14:26

You see graffiti that says KISS with the S's. People think it's funny and they graffiti that it's fucking weird man.

Speaker 1 2:14:32

Things that you'd never even know everything. Blow your mind yeah tell me the plane story. Oh shit, uh. You're supposed to be on a particular plane.

Speaker 2 2:14:41

There's a couple yeah, yeah, um, it went down right. There's a guy that was doing security for the band muse m-u-s-e. Uh, british guys really nice and I had to fly to amsterdam to meet them and do a few things in england with them, just real quick fly dates, press and stuff. They're doing an album launch, so the band didn't really know me. Their security guy wasn't able to make it, so I filled in just for this week yeah and we were flying on this private jet.

Speaker 2 2:15:03

I forget what country we're going to, but everyone's been in turbulence. It's been on a lot of planes and stuff. Even you get those air pockets where you drop and you're like, oh, and then it goes away. This was the biggest drop I've ever been in my life and it was a really small plane moving fast, okay, and I remember the stewardess. It's like you get on a private jet. It's like 10 of us on the plane and the girl's giving us really nice like ahi tuna salad and stuff like really good food. And I put my eyes on the back of the plane by myself and I was looking at my phone watching a movie and I put my thing down. My salad was right here and that shit hit so hard that the salad hit was. The ranch dressing was all over the ceiling like dripping really. The salad was everywhere and I took a picture of. I guess I could find it and share it with you, but it was crazy. I mean there was lettuce every second.

Speaker 2 2:15:46

I threw it everywhere, you know really and god, I thought I was gonna barf you know I don't throw up for anything and I was just like my stomach was sitting at my throat and the band was looking at me like what the fuck you want me to do we're in the air.

Speaker 1 2:15:57

I can't help you here that was a scary one.

Speaker 2 2:15:59

I mean, it felt like we were going down. It lasted like four seconds so it was just terrifying. We're like we're going down, you know um makes you feel helpless, real quick and my belt on it, and the flight attendant like somehow got her belt on too, and I don't know how anyone didn't hit the ceiling, you know? I mean it could have been a really bad accident, you know, break your neck.

Speaker 1 2:16:17

For sure.

Speaker 2 2:16:19

But I got on one airplane and leaving LAX and if you ever fly out of LAX you go over the ocean first and you curve around. All the takeoffs go over Pacific and then go East. It's to get them away from the landing planes, right. So they kind of curve around. Yep.

Speaker 2 2:16:33

So I was with this band and I was a younger guy and the band was cool. They were the same age as me and everyone had this plan to eat a bunch of Ambien right when you get on the plane and just pass out and wake up in England.

Speaker 2 2:16:45

And they're like Ryan, come on, we're all going to be knotted off. No one's bothering us here here, here you go and I'm like I've never really taken Ambien before. I'm like not supposed to take this. You know it wasn't prescribed to me, but fuck it. Come on, I want to sleep too. I eat the ambien. Turns out the band didn't even eat it yet. They're gonna wait. I thought we eat it, right when we get on the plane. So I eat it and they don't, right. So the plane's taken off and I'm like shit, I'm already feeling it. I'm like, oh fuck, I'm getting goofy. Right, I already had, like they were in first class, that I was in coach, right, so give me a champagne or give me a beer or something. They knew that stewardess knew I was with the band.

Speaker 2 2:17:19

That gave me a beer and I don't tell anybody slug the beer with an ambient. I'm gonna be on this plane for 12 hours. Yep, right over the ocean, like literally not in, cruising out to nothing like that. We're still going straight up and, uh, it's like I got an alarm. I've never heard an alarm on a plane in my life I've been on a million planes. I was like what the fuck? Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seat. We have an engine failure and we're going to circle around five minutes. We're going to let the you know the pilot's telling us exactly what's going to happen and I'm like this is fucking unbelievable.

Speaker 2 2:17:52

Here you are with an up like about every minute, that we're just circling around and what they do is they spray foam. Like you ever seen that? They spray foam all over the. So it's just case you skid out. The landing gear wasn't working. The, the, the, the, the monitor that says it's down or up, for the pilot said it was not down and then someone had to spot them from the ground and convince them that it's down. You know like you're. We see your wheels. You know I'm like I'm hearing this. I don't know why he's telling us all this information. Terrifying my band. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 2:18:20

And I remember we landed and it was like first class always gets off first, right. And when we landed there was like fire trucks and police everywhere they're following us like racing alongside the plane and you know all this shit was going on. And then we get off on the tarmac and shit and the band's like dude, that was crazy. And I'm sitting there, I can't even walk. I was like dude, they were going to get a wheelchair for me. That's so stupid. So spinal tap Just wheeled me around like the Ramones.

Speaker 1 2:18:45

That's hilarious.

Speaker 2 2:18:46

That's the last time I ever did anything like that. I can't do that again. It's a bad look for the bodyguard.

Speaker 1 2:18:52

I don't want to be paralytic. For sure you learned a lesson you smell like beer. Yeah, learned a lesson on that one.

Speaker 2 2:18:56

Yeah, it's down my shirt.

Speaker 1 2:18:57

That's freaking hilarious.

Speaker 2 2:18:59

Oh, the other plane story? Yeah, the one I think you're talking about. I worked for Travis Barker. Okay, Right at the end of from Bleak 182. Yeah. Right at the end of the Meet the Barkers television show. It was a reality show on MTV, yep, and he was doing a thing with a guy named DJ AM.

Speaker 2 2:19:18

I believe, Okay, where a DJ would spend next to him playing the drums, yeah, and they were playing clubs Kind of a hot deal. He always had side projects and transplants and stuff with the Rancid dudes and he was traveling around the country doing that. I got hired to go do some dates with him. I was doing LA shit with him. He was doing appearances around LA. I'd go with him. I was doing LA shit with him. He was doing appearances around LA. I'd go with him. It was fine and I'd get payment from his assistant. His name was Chris. He went by Little Homie, that was like his nickname. Okay, travis hired him from a car washing lot in the Inland Empire in Southern California. He shined the rims up really good. He's like you want to work for me. He's got a diamond necklace on him, famous stars and straps, you know Yup and uh.

Speaker 1 2:19:56

I forgot about that brand.

Speaker 2 2:19:57

Yeah, it was big at the time. It was popular, you know, and Travis from the same area as me, so we got along good. And then but little homie was the guy that would put my payroll in Cause. He was the assistant and he just was like two stone or didn't care to like give me my money, it'd be in here, just overlooked it, you know hey homie, what's up, man?

Speaker 2 2:20:16

I've been paying like a month just wondering. Even corporate america pays you in 30 days. You know what's up. Well, let's take cash next time. He's like well, there's your responsibility. He always have some smart ass shit to say to me. And uh, you know, I went to travis.

Speaker 2 2:20:28

I'm like hey man, like I'm not getting paid, you know, like that I don't pay you. Like they have people for that, you know. So I go homie. I'm like, look, I'm gonna walk. He's like you're gonna walk the fuck out of here. Then I'm like all right, bye. Like that's my, that's my thing. I don't stick around. You don't pay me, I'm not your friend you know, so I left.

Speaker 2 2:20:44

The guy that replaced me gets on the airplane for the next gig. The plane fucking crashes. It's a big story. Little homie dies and my replacement dies on that jet shut dj, DJ AM the pilots die right. So the only survivors are DJ AM and Travis. Yeah. And they're burnt on 80% of their body and Travis didn't fly forever after that. I don't think he still does.

Speaker 1 2:21:07

I don't blame him.

Speaker 2 2:21:09

And you know that was the one where I was like holy shit, like stand up for what you believe in. And then, like you know, poor guy.

Speaker 1 2:21:15

And then, like you know, poor guy, Damn. You would have been on that plane if you were getting paid, I would have been in that seat.

Speaker 2 2:21:18

Yeah, that same chair Sitting across from homie, you know. That's kind of some. Yeah, and then you know, I saw Travis at like a I was doing a show in LA with oh what. Slayer. Slayer got banned from LA for 20 years for causing a riot. And.

Speaker 2 2:21:33

I did the first show back. How was that At Palladium? I'll never forget it. It was madness. I mean, I was at Palladium in Hollywood. It's like there's these doors along the side of the floor and I was just shoving people through these doors and just closing them behind them and there's cops were everywhere, LAPD was everywhere, just arrested everybody.

Speaker 3 2:21:58

Shoving people through. I saw him at the show and he looked at me like you know. Final destination yeah, oh, it's the dude that left, you know. So it's pretty weird.

Speaker 1 2:22:01

Damn, that is. Yeah, that's who would have thought.

Speaker 2 2:22:03

Yeah, escaped the close one there. Yeah. Well, so I've had a few close calls. You know bus accidents. I was on Morgan Wallen in 2022. I was this guy. Then Hardy was the opening act and uh, I remember we were driving down a highway in Tennessee, we're almost back to Nashville and Hardy was sorry. Hardy was behind Morgan's bus and he his driver had like a stroke and the bus went off the road. I mean you could Google it and see the. I mean I think there's pictures on the internet. Yeah.

Speaker 2 2:22:31

Um, but the driver had a stroke and the bus went off. And I don't know if you've ever been on a tour bus, but there's like like granite tops and stuff and microwaves on the wall. There's a lot of shit in there, everything was tossed, like those countertops came off, like the couches were everywhere, like tvs were gone, like you know no one could find their cell phones like there's, where's my cell phone, this wreckage, you know.

Speaker 2 2:22:51

And, uh, everyone got fucked up. People's toes, bones were sticking out of their feet and stuff, and some people got jacked up, you know. But he was right behind us. You just never know when it's going to happen. Yeah.

Speaker 2 2:23:02

You know Shit, I was on a bus with Good Charlotte in Miami, outside of Miami, leaving a show, and we had all this food. You know, you always have food on the bus afterwards and then you eat it. You're going to eat all this shit and there on the side of the street, on the side of the highway, and the band was like, hey, let's pull over and give them our food. That might be cool. They're just sleeping on the side of the fucking highway in Miami, yeah, and the bus driver pulled over and we ran over there and just put the food next to him. We didn't wake him up, we just put it down. We're like what the fuck? And just ran back to the bus and we're and like, right in front of us, like like it was like a minute in front of us, there's a massive accident with bodies everywhere. I mean like there's a huge casualty, like you couldn't even get through it.

Speaker 3 2:23:43

no shit, we're just thinking like damn if we didn't pull over like we'd be right in the middle of that thing.

Speaker 2 2:23:47

It was like perfect distance of where we would have been yeah that speed, you know it's like yeah unbelievable it's crazy how things happen, yeah and we're like damn, it's like we never did that ever. That's the first time and only time we ever did that, you know oh shit, it was only you know, it's just something that's one person thought about, you know so the security world is a wild.

Speaker 1 2:24:05

I mean, I'm not even just a security world. The life on the road is such a fascinating wild adventure and I mean it's. It's probably not for you, because you have so many moving parts and I don't even know how you even just function by everything that you're putting together, but it, I mean god there's every city's different, every crowd is different, every venue's different and you have to adapt to all of that yeah, I mean adapting really comes with international.

Speaker 2 2:24:36

I mean us has got a pretty good baseline, you know. I mean, but a market versus b and c market, it's big, big difference, you know freaking what like language barriers?

Speaker 1 2:24:45

you're trying to deal with money bacteria.

Speaker 2 2:24:49

Oh yeah, money exchange rate. You know um, we call them shitters. Uh uh, roadies have a name for foreign money. Hey, do you have any shitters? That means, do you have any local current? I don't know what they're called.

Speaker 1 2:25:00

You know, do you have any shitters?

Speaker 2 2:25:01

Yeah, yeah, cause you don't learn Thai bot versus a, you know, pound versus whatever. Yeah. Oh, english pound, and then Scottish different banks, same queen, australia. Yeah, you got any shitters on. You Like, how many is this? You're like 10 to one. Like don't break it down. You know, there's like what xccom I think is what it's called Okay, the currency thing. You just type in what it is and you're like oh, it's 10 bucks. Very cool, you know.

Speaker 1 2:25:24

Makes life easy.

Speaker 2 2:25:25

Yeah, and then there's like weird currency shit like in like Argentina, unique there. Like if you have $100 bills you can get shit for cheaper. It's like having a coupon. You're like, what's your bill? It comes out to 150. Why have $100 cash US? And you know what they do. You're in a fancy restaurant and you give them the $100 bill. The waiter will put it down in front of you and he'll put on like a napkin or a piece of paper the serial number of the bill you just gave them, because Argentine waiters and stuff were known for switching them out Like oh sorry, we can't take it today, just give me your credit card. And they just took your $100 and gave you a fake $100 and then swiped your credit card, paid the restaurant and paid themselves. So they get a $100 tip on a $150 bill and then you get a phony bill. So they write down your serial number and they give it to you. To's like they kind of have to do that it's good, good, like you know, good thing to do.

Speaker 1 2:26:24

It means they're honest what's a trade secret being on the road, or what's something that most people don't realize that happens being on the road with all these celebrities shit uh, what you can get away with really, really, yeah, really yeah with law enforcement with you.

Speaker 2 2:26:39

Okay, yeah, I mean, I've witnessed some things, but yeah, I mean a lot of guys will just look the other way and be like, oh man, don't worry about it. But like I've seen people blast right through security checkpoints, like without being searched, like getting on a plane in an international flight. Like I worked for a guy that was insane, like it was a manager of a band. He'd be like, take off your shoes. He goes, I'm gonna take off my shoes, I'm not showing you anything, I'm walking through here. You walk through the beep, beep, beep, opens the door, walks right on the tarmac and gets on the plane. My fucking plane. I'm not doing anything with my fucking plane. Get the fuck out of here, jerk, really, yeah, jerk me off. You know, I'm like, I'm like, uh, and I'm thinking like I don't, I didn't go with it, I wasn't even going to save him. I'm like, fuck that. He's not even the artist, he's just the manager, he's my boss.

Speaker 2 2:27:20

But like I'm, not walking onto an international tarmac? And guess what Nothing happened. I did it with a band. I'm not going to say who it was, but very well known band. I flew to Tijuana from LA on a private jet right, but they were not clothed. These guys had like fucking rusted revolvers on them. They were old. They showed up they were like 60 years old. Yeah, I'm like you, ever shot that thing in the last 60 years, Fuck man. And they just were so confused None of them spoke English.

Speaker 2 2:27:50

I was like I demanded that they were like fit and they spoke English, and none of them. They were old. You got old, they're just like, I'm like yeah yeah, yeah, I'm like fucking, yeah, yeah, yeah. Here we go.

Speaker 2 2:27:58

So the jet lands at the FBO. It's like the private terminal right and the tour manager is like this big shit talker. He's like man, we're not fucking stopping, we're going to be late for our show and where the fuck are you? I'm like I can't go past security onto the tarmac. He's like he had all the passports for the band and everything, because usually you hand the guy agent comes on the plane, you put like on some money and maxley put some money in the passport and you're like let's get this over with.

Speaker 2 2:28:26

Yeah, let's speed this up all right, everyone, lean in on the jet and take a picture, take your selfie and then let's get the fuck out of here. You're not gonna go. Let me run this number. We'll run it through through your Mexican intelligence Like fucking fuck off you know, get the picture, take the money. We'll be back for when we leave, you know. Give you another a hundred on the way out, oh good. You know, and uh, this guy's like no, I'm searching everything, and he goes all right, everybody off the plane.

Speaker 2 2:28:53

And the police were like they're doing this. It's like females are like oh, you can't do this. And they just walk right into my cars waiting for them, bulletproof cars, right to the venue and I'm like what the fuck was that? Those, the people, the police at the FBO, shut the FBO terminal down when they went to the show. There's no one working it Like now. You can't leave. No shit, you can't leave. There's no one there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 2:29:18

Told the pilots to get off property, Can't come back in, and locked everything lights out. Really, Planes grounded Right, and then so the the tour manager's like fuck, the pilots are like we, we can't go back there Like I'm like no dude, I'm not doing that International crime, no. And the ferry manager's like hey, we got to get out of here. How the fuck are we going home? And they live in LA. We're in Tijuana, it's two hours away. I convinced the bulletproof cars of these Mexican cops to drive them to Beverly.

Speaker 1 2:29:51

Hills In the bulletproof cars, really, yeah, that's the best part about Mexico.

Speaker 2 2:29:54

I mean money talks, yeah they got to the border, dropped their guns off, kept driving this shitty fucking. In the meantime, one of the guys locks the keys in the car, right In a bulletproof car, and you got guys drilling the keyhole and shit trying to break into a bulletproof car During the show. I'm like, hurry the fuck up, they're gonna come off stage in 30 minutes. You know one car is just blocking everything. It's going to block all the trucks and the whole loadout. Oh my God. And they finally get it fixed and it's got like a hole in the door and shit you know. And then I'm like, is that bulletproof? And then you know they get home and then, like I already fell asleep by the time they went home and I get a call from the tour manager. I'm like, sleeping my phone. Hello.

Speaker 2 2:30:34

I think something's wrong. He's like, hey, am I supposed to give these guys a tip or something? You know, these Mexicans drivers just drove to America to take this famous Hall of Fame band to their houses. He's asked me if should I tip them. I'm like, man, fuck you dude, I'm going to bed. Give them whatever you want, I don't care, I'm never going to see these people, ever again.

Speaker 1 2:30:52

You know, just give them something, do a four-hour round trip gnarly.

Speaker 2 2:30:55

Yeah, I'm like this is the cars were terrible too, there's tijuana.

Speaker 1 2:30:59

Shit yeah, tijuana is a interesting place. 1995 suburban or something it smells like cigarettes it's like terrible, the fucking thick windows they don't roll down at all no, no, if you're lucky, you get a couple inches on, yeah, on an armored window the doors are heavy to close anyway.

Speaker 2 2:31:16

But these were like almost impossible. Yeah, like don't open. Tell them don't open the door. And they thought so, don't crack the seal. I'm like no, you're not strong enough. I'll do it from the outside, yeah.

Speaker 1 2:31:25

Different world, man, different world. That people just don't understand, the logistics and the chaos that goes on with it.

Speaker 2 2:31:31

Yeah, there's plenty of that.

Speaker 1 2:31:33

Yeah, all right. So what are you doing?

Speaker 2 2:31:34

now. So I just finished. Janet Jackson, she's going to continue in Vegas in May and she's doing a residency at Resorts World up there in Vegas. But I'm moving on to the Rock, the Country Tour, which is going to be a festival tour in the southeast of the United States and it's Kid Rock. Nickelback.

Speaker 2 2:31:57

Hank Williams Jr and Lynyrd Skynyrd. That's going to be fun. The four big names, big and Rich and a bunch of other people are there. I think the Ying Yang Twins, a band called Rehab is going to be there and Afro man is going to be performing.

Speaker 1 2:32:11

He's still alive. Afro Man's still around.

Speaker 2 2:32:13

They're at the very bottom of the flyer, but those are the three that stuck out to me.

Speaker 2 2:32:23

He's still hands. They're at the very bottom of the flyer, but those are the three that stuck out to me. Yeah, still got getting after it. Yeah, such a cool thing it's. We bring a massive show with camping 50,000 people to nowhere usa. So kid rock owns a tour and last year we did without jason aldean of a kid rock owns a tour part owner and, uh, the idea was to take massive shows to places where people had to travel to go to concerts. You know, like you know, we're going to Ocala, florida, and it's like, yeah, it's a drive to, you know, fort Lauderdale or whatever. In the past to go to a show you got to drive two hours and now I'm bringing it to your house, your backyard country people, good folks out in America that don't have to drive anywhere. Yeah, the only thing is it's a good idea. It's pretty cool too, very USA patriotic. I mean, the vibe is cool Law enforcement, come, multi-agencies and stuff, because the counties can't support that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 2:33:03

Oh for sure. So we load in campers and RVs and gun searches. We have gun safes to lock them up. For the weekends, that redneck three-day drunken festival. You don't want anyone shooting anybody.

Speaker 1 2:33:15

So are these? They're not in like a venue, these are like fields and they're just building it all out.

Speaker 2 2:33:21

So it's like a Woodstock style type of, and the logistics are kind of a nightmare because places have one highway typically, so it's kind of like, all right, well, what are we going to do for traffic? How do we get 50,000 people in here efficiently without losing their minds?

Speaker 1 2:33:31

Yeah, sitting there for five hours, yeah, and they kind of have to.

Speaker 2 2:33:34

They're in their rv loading day, and then there's water and there's like power considerations for all these people and god, yeah, so I'm in charge of that. Yeah, there's a team of seven guys that go out there and they're like it's called haven solutions and we go in there and kind of make sense of the security part. You know, you work hand in hand with production yeah but you have to have the security consideration.

Speaker 2 2:33:55

so we put cameras everywhere that watch traffic, we got traffic cops that give us intel and accidents and arrests and they have a full-on jail set up on site, you know, because the local jail can't support it and it's too far away. Yeah.

Speaker 2 2:34:08

So you can't even get in and out, so he's got to put him in a tank there, you know. And medical considerations, you know. Medevac, you know, because Everything's mobile setup center. Yeah, you're doing, yeah, and we're in a trailer and it's like air conditioner is pumping and it's hot as shit out there. And yo pelham alabama you know, you're just getting a little summer.

Speaker 2 2:34:26

Oh yeah, roasted sweating yeah I need 150 security guys with security or staff shirts on. You know where do you get that? I gotta bring them from atlanta. You gotta get a big company from a major market and bus them in and get them hotel rooms. That's not cheap, yeah. So it's kind of weird. You'll have like people from a different city doing security, you know, and they're sitting in the sun all day long and like trying to get them not to walk off posts and you know, can I get some water? Can I get a break? You're like, well, where's your supervisor?

Speaker 1 2:34:52

Supervisor You're like oh shit.

Speaker 2 2:34:54

Now you're like a babysitter. You know you're just having flash. Do you have a flashlight? Uh-uh, I'm like, oh shit, how can you see anything? You know, it's just all the dumb shit you got to deal with, oh God, but I enjoy it. It's a good way to sharpen your pencil, so to speak, and get your feet on the ground and kind of like show people how to. He was Kid Rock. I know him. I used to work for him directly.

Speaker 1 2:35:16

He seems like a pretty cool dude.

Speaker 2 2:35:18

Yeah.

Speaker 3 2:35:22

You know, when I got hired by him, his assistant just died yeah.

Speaker 2 2:35:24

That shit. Yeah, sasha put an ATV at his house and Bobby found him. That's kind of. I mean, that was just this last year, correct? Oh no, it was a couple of years ago. It was a few years ago, yeah.

Speaker 1 2:35:32

Yeah, maybe I just heard about it last year. Yeah, it's a massage show.

Close Calls and Plane Stories

Speaker 2 2:35:36

Yeah, I came in right after and, like you know, he wasn't in a good mood. His friend just died at his house and he found him, he called 911 and they put that 911 call on TMZ. Yeah, and it was a traumatic thing for him. You know he just went down the driveway. Yeah, he's screaming on that phone call Fucking friends dead. You know all this other shit you know, and it's kind of like, hey, man, you want to come in here and take his place like fuck you know you took his spot yeah yeah, and it's kind of like you know, he just was like he kept doing shows like right after, how do you stop?

Speaker 2 2:36:08

you just fly in and then shit. I remember the first show I did with him was a reno laflin nevada. Oh god, laflin event's a dump. I mean, it's just a. If you're going to get in, you got to come in the last minute. If you want to get out, you got to leave right from the stage. And he did neither one of those things. One way in, one way out. There's one hotel across the street and everyone's staying there.

Speaker 2 2:36:34

And then his plane got grounded because the hotel and I'm like shit, what's he going to do? He's just going to go to bed. He went to the fucking casino bar and everyone's got Kid Rock shirts on. I'm like this is unbelievable, my first day with him and everyone's like Kid Rock. He's like no, fuck, leave me alone. It's like this constant he's walking. This is a fucking nightmare. You know what I mean? Like I couldn't. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong and he was in a bad mood and all the other shit and I was like fuck, he didn't know who I was. You know. He's like where the fuck's my security guy? And he's right there. Like you know, he came off the airplane.

Speaker 1 2:37:14

I'm like shut up.

Speaker 2 2:37:14

I said you know, let him you know. So that was an awkward intro. I just tried to stay quiet and just do it. Yeah, who the fuck are these guys, the cops that gave me the escort here? I'm, like you know, rough room.

Speaker 1 2:37:26

Yeah, I'm sure that was a weird transition taking over, because I mean his friend worked for him for yeah he was the guy. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 2:37:33

So and then you got to fill those shoes, yeah, shoes you can't fill, no, yeah. So he's kind of like be quiet, be professional and do your thing, and we'll learn.

Speaker 1 2:37:42

We'll learn each other from here on out. Yeah, but I mean, obviously it's been going good, right.

Speaker 2 2:37:46

Yeah, yeah. Like you know, I bounced out to do you kind of have to right. Yeah, so I tour more than the band does typically.

Speaker 1 2:37:59

Yeah, which that takes a toll on you, man. How are you able to stay physically fit?

Speaker 2 2:38:05

I'm trying to figure that out. I'm professional help now, yeah right, it's just crazy, man. Baselines are so much different than everybody else. That's part of the reason I moved here eight years ago. Yeah, that's part of the reason I moved here eight years ago. Yeah, I, just there was too much action. You know I was in LA. People would call me hey, come do this, come do that, here I go.

Speaker 2 2:38:22

Couldn't say no. I know it's like you got to fly me there, you got to get me a hotel room, so now I'm more expensive.

Speaker 1 2:38:27

Maybe I don't need you.

Speaker 2 2:38:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah shit. You know I could, but I just avoid that shit I'm sure that's.

Speaker 1 2:38:37

It seems like being on tour is more stressful, but I feel at the same time, being a personal security guard for somebody, that's probably a different type of stress, because it's just you're never off, you're never off you're never off, even when they're sleeping you're, you're on, yeah yeah, your phone doesn't turn off.

Speaker 2 2:38:54

You can't turn it off, yeah, so you have to tell everyone. You know, hey, man, like don't, don't, I'll call you. Like it's just what it is. You'll wake me up. I'm in a different time zone. I'm 12 hours off. If my phone rings, weird, hang up, because if you're international, the ringtone is different you're out of the country hang up.

Speaker 2 2:39:17

Yeah, don't wake me up. In fucking singapore, dude, don't do that, got a long day. So it's just like constantly like waking up and being terrified in a bed where am? I? What am I doing? What time is lobby call? What are we doing? Today?

Speaker 1 2:39:25

there's my sheet. What have you picked up from being on the road for so many years? Are there any little like things that you you do while you're traveling that make life easier?

Speaker 2 2:39:37

uh, make life easier um. I think it's just repetition you know, I always tell people, when you get into an airplane you watch the pilot get that plane fired up nine or two right down this log man. He must be really smart. It's like I do this every fucking day. You know. It's the same thing as your car. Your kid watches you turn the air conditioner on the heat theater, if I can move the vent rearview mirror, side mirror. It's like you just learn the steps you know.

Speaker 2 2:40:04

So the more you do, that repetition makes you an expert so it's just, I do it a lot and when I send my resume to people they're like oh shit yeah, you're hired like you don't have to interview anybody. It's like if you've been around 20 years at this level, you already know. Yeah, yeah, I got hired by a very famous comedian, gabriel iglesias. You know, and?

Speaker 1 2:40:20

is. Uh. Is he still around, or was this a while ago? This is when he did. I was a big fan of his. A long time ago he actually started in boise.

Speaker 2 2:40:26

Yeah, he came to boise, they fired the other guys and hired me. I was like and they fired the security team. Yeah, and I took, took over same thing with janet, they fired them too. Um, so when you jump in the middle of a tour, it's weird Because, like there was a guy there, now the guy's not there. Now you're there and usually the artist is like oh God, you know, a change is bad for an artist.

Speaker 1 2:40:45

Yeah.

Speaker 2 2:40:45

Bad in the middle of a run.

Speaker 1 2:40:46

They want everything the same. The cadence, yeah.

Speaker 2 2:40:53

Like boom, I do this same guy, same and he'll shut up. So I jump in there and the tour director, this guy named Sai Hanif, he runs his tours and he contacts me. You got any questions. I'm like yeah, and I said I already have it built. It's a document I have and he's like hotels what are we doing? Dayrooms Are we rolling in midnight? What's our check-in time? What are we doing? What does he do in the hotels? You know the jet do we get tarmac access? We have drivers every day. How many drivers do we use? You know bag tags. Do you have bag tags order? What kind of credentials we're using? You know I have a list of questions. You know what kind of dietary restrictions you have?

Speaker 1 2:41:28

that's 21 years of experience.

Speaker 2 2:41:29

Yeah, yeah medical conditions, medication, you know? Does he have an assistant? How many? Who's his manager? Who's who's this, you know like, and he goes. I'll catch up to you on a phone call. There's a lot of questions, but I like where your brain's at. I know I got the right guy, you know. So it's like if you just show up and you're like oh this guy didn't even ask any questions.

Speaker 2 2:41:47

You know you can't really create a picture of it. Yeah, I ask picture of how it's going to roll. Yeah, everything else is personality. Like can you have a conversation with anybody? Yeah, sure, can you shut up when it's time to shut up? Great, are you omnipresent? Excellent, are you helpful? You?

Speaker 1 2:42:05

know that's what they're looking for. Are you helpful?

Speaker 2 2:42:06

Like I don't ever say I don't know, I'm not sure, but I worked for the Chili Peppers, anthony, there's things called day sheets that we put on the wall everywhere. We scatter them and say what time loaded it is, what time the first band goes on, what time doors open, you know what time the sun goes down and then what time the main act is on, and on the Chili Peppers we'd write sunset and it was in red right. So you know that's not a band.

Speaker 2 2:42:34

Yeah yeah, and Anthony Kiedis is like hey, I've never seen Sunset play, I might go check them out. And we're like that's the fucking sun going down, that's not a band, he's like oh shit. You know what I mean. Like is this things that you don't? I mean shit. Like Kiss doesn't go on stage if the sun is up. They don't go on stage if the knows that. Duh, how would you know that? So, because they have pyro and the pyro looks like shit, you're just burning money, basically without knowing anyone.

Speaker 2 2:43:01

No one sees smoke, yeah, it's just. It's a clear, yeah, and during the day yeah. So it was a big thing. I had to know what time the sun set every day. So if gene simmons comes out in full makeup, what time does the sun go down? Young man, you know 7, 35 and a half, okay, and he'd walk away if.

Speaker 2 2:43:17

If he didn't know, he'd be like are you fucking new? Like do you know what you work for? Are you lost or why do I have you here? You're not very helpful are you, you smart, did you go to school? You know? Do you know how to talk and speak? You know, and Gene would have shit on you. You know, it was scary, know, the big wig and everything you know.

Speaker 1 2:43:44

I met him at an event. I was working, actually, with the wife. I got a picture and he's yeah, big guy big guy boy boots, leather jacket, sunglasses, hat.

Speaker 2 2:43:47

Yeah, he's a big, big person. Yeah, man, what a life.

Speaker 1 2:43:48

Yeah, interesting stuff you how long you plan on doing it for?

Speaker 2 2:43:51

uh, you know, what's funny is when I first started touring, I see old guys repping bengay on their knee like oh, fucking knee, I have surgery of knee replacement and I was like 22, you're like dude, go home, fuck. You know, now I'm like kidding, I don't have too many gray hairs, but, um, I've been around 21 years, so when there's young people out I just like dude, get over here, kid.

Speaker 2 2:44:10

You know like I'm that guy, that's been got it yeah, I mean I'm not at levels for people that have been around forever. Yeah know, but I was at the very end of the battle days, you know. So it kind of I've seen the change in the industry and like I was there, you know like, and I started with Pearl Jam, I didn't start in a van, you know, I'd never done a van tour, I've never done a club tour. I started with arenas and stadiums, you know so I've always done the big ones, damn the big ones, damn man. So it's like the hard part is you make a lot of dough and if you've been around 20 years and you're a security guy, director, yeah, you could ask for whatever you want, really. So you know, I can become a doctor and get the same kind of pay, or I could keep going on the road, yeah, so that's the hardest part of your job or what?

Speaker 1 2:44:53

what would you consider the hardest part of being on the road with a band you know?

Speaker 2 2:44:57

I always told myself, like I knew a guy. I used to look up to, a guy I still do, kind of um, he was with metallica forever, okay, and I think he's still with guns and roses now, but he went away for a couple years and personal problems that sort of mountain came back. Um and uh, he's on all the movies and stuff, metallica. You see him on all the films. He's been around and I remember he used to tell the band what to do.

Speaker 2 2:45:18

Hey guys let's go Put your hand in here. We're going on stage and everyone's going on him. And then he'd walk on the stage, he'd walk out. I'm like damn, what a leader. You know like the band follows a security guy around it. He just looked like he was over it hey man, groundhog's Day.

Speaker 1 2:45:36

Yeah, can I come over?

Speaker 2 2:45:37

No, man, I don't really give a fuck about that. I just don't care about what your requests are. No, we're not doing that and I don't really want to be here, but people loved him and I was like I never want to be over it, yeah, so right now I'm somewhere between. Really, I have a kid in college, you know I've been gone most of her life, you know, so it's kind of weird. Well, there's like a flip side of that coin where everyone thinks it's cool. For sure, what you do is so interesting.

Speaker 1 2:46:06

Tell me more. You work for so-and-so.

Speaker 2 2:46:09

Yeah, A clown at the party. So you know, when I first came home off of Pearl Jam, I had gone to like 15 countries and I was so excited to tell my family of all my travels. It's like a kid going out for the first time. Yeah.

Speaker 2 2:46:21

And I didn't realize. But I've been talking for like talking everyone's ears off for like an hour and a half and my brother looks at me. I have one sibling who's my brother by 14 months old and he's like, hey man, no one gives a fuck about any of that shit. I'm like, just fucking, let someone else talk for once. Dude, oh, really, yeah, no, fucking, oh yeah, jerk me off. I don't care, dude, like whatever you know, like stop, like fucking, come back to your town where you live with your family and just get off fucking the moon or wherever you're at. I'm like, for real. He just punched me in. I was like, okay, so then I just stopped talking like that, just shut up at the table. What'd you do?

Speaker 2 2:46:59

Just make sure you're not talking about yourself and what you just did. We just broke the Guinness Book of World Records. Yeah, I was in Dubai. It's crazy. They take money out of your car. It's interesting to people. But when you're around the people that you're around all the time, it gets kind of rattling off stories from the road, stories and our war stories or whatever you know you can imagine. Right For sure, if you told your war stories over and over, it's kind of like all right, dude it's not your entire life, it was a few years in your life, but like I, actually still do it, you know.

Speaker 1 2:47:27

Yeah, but that's tough, though, because you're still holy shit this is.

Speaker 1 2:47:35

This happened because you take that recipe for I don't want to say disaster just for adventure. You got the celebrity aspects, you got the travel, you have the money, you got the fame, you got the women, you got the drugs and the party and you're gonna have so cool and incredible stories, but at the same time, it's like people aren't watching that. You're the first one up. Yeah, you're already scheduling drivers. They need to be staged at this time. We're rolling these checkpoints. We got to hit this before we get to the airport. We need to resupply here. We're going to land. We need this, the you know, and that's what people don't see. They hear like, oh god, you were there for the guinness book world records, but yeah, they don't know that you sat in some hotel for a month dealing with assholes in dubai that don't even want you there and they're spying on you.

Speaker 3 2:48:23

You know it's like, yeah, you know you're like cool for one moment.

Speaker 1 2:48:26

Where they come out they do their thing. You're like. You're probably like, oh my god, I get to go home off the stage and into the room oh yeah, I just want to be done yeah, you get in to get out.

Speaker 2 2:48:35

It's like a doorway at CQB. You're like get in the door to get out of the door. I'll stand on that door. Exactly as long as they're on stage, they're exposed. I mean I do. Events Like EP is different from my world, because my client goes on that stage on a scheduled time.

Speaker 2 2:48:54

You know they're on stage at 9 o'clock, right there, yeah. So it's a lot different dynamic when you talk about security, yep, because you're against the fucking odds at all times. For sure. I was at a concert venue in England that got bombed the show before I went with Motley Crew, no shit, ariana Grande got bombed right before I got there and we had to cancel the show. I was like we were the next day, really yeah. And it's like I went back to that venue with Janet Jackson and you know I'm like everyone gets a little hairy, oh yeah. And then guess what Bomb threat came in, like all it takes is a phone call and I'm like, hey, we got a threat, it's low level, we're working on it.

Speaker 1 2:49:38

We don't know it came from a cell, shows up and I have to tell the artist. You know, like, hey, I gotta tell you the thing you know and all right how often are you dealing with threats? Oh god, bomb threats and things like. Is it almost every show? It's no. It's not every show.

Speaker 2 2:49:45

No but at least once a tour, usually oh okay, in england's more uh, relevant to be on top of things with counterterrorism and local law enforcement and stuff you know. On the last janet show I did in that that same city, um, some guy came in the backstage with cameras. He pretended to be pressed. We don't have press that janet shows. There's no photographers let in. We have one photographer, it's her photographer yeah she's been there, done that.

Speaker 2 2:50:09

She doesn't need the press. It's janet jackson. So I'm very clear to everyone. There are no photographers for that one guy, and here's a picture of him and you've, you've got to know him.

Speaker 2 2:50:18

So you know, yeah, yeah, so you know he wears the pass right here and he'll show it to you every time you stop him. He'll be like here and then you should. Nobody looks like already. That's the only guy authorized to take pictures. And this guy I walk in front of the stage, this guy standing right in front of her with these two cameras slung over his, you know, and I lost my mind and I grabbed him physically and shut him right out to the back. I'm like called everyone, the general manager and everybody. I'm like this is fucked. You know he stood right in front of my artist with this shit. You know like what he wasn't.

Speaker 1 2:50:46

Uh, was he a legit camera guy or it's just some?

Speaker 2 2:50:49

dude that snuck in and was like I'm with the press and like some idiot, let him in. Oh my god walked in. He had the story arab guy. You know, I'm just like, uh, it's like he said this machinery, basically these are these heavy things that you don't even know you're looking at in an x-ray. You have no idea what you're looking at. I show people all the time weapons stuck on their laptops. They don't even see them. No, you know, I mean, I could pack things right back.

Speaker 1 2:51:09

I've brought yeah through tsa having a knife under a lot, not unintentionally, I don't even know. Yeah, I get there, I'm like, oh shit, yeah, I wonder if I can get a hold.

Speaker 2 2:51:17

And the material and the density of what's on top of it. These people are poorly trained.

Speaker 1 2:51:21

Oh God, so I lost my shit, you know he didn't go to jail.

Speaker 2 2:51:24

Really, yeah for trespassing. Yeah, and trespassing, like there's a different law there that they arrested him for. So the head of security for the building happened to be a cop too, so he was like, yeah, we're going to take this really seriously. I'm really embarrassed and like, dude, they have problems there. Yeah. Your building has been blown up. Yeah.

Speaker 2 2:51:47

You know what I mean. Like fuck it. You got to be really tight, you know, and I was scared the whole day. But but, um, yeah, I did a show with Drake in Detroit and Detroit's got a huge area, population, massive, no-transcript, different perimeter, a different hard line. You know they call the fusion center. You know you get all the three and four letter agencies involved and on it there's some kid pranking, you know, and you know you go to jail for that. Oh, you should. So you're wasting the city resources and you're like you know false terrorist threats and stuff.

Speaker 1 2:52:36

They don't that kids or whoever's making that threat is. It doesn't realize the layers that oh yeah to put that event on. Yeah, at that size. Yeah, one little ha ha ha phone call and there's a lot of things up the venue in detroit, the new one, the nice one.

Speaker 2 2:52:50

It's right next to the stadium where the tigers play and there's a tigers game going off too. Oh, you're dealing with that and the. The end of the game was the same time as the in the. Uh, the load in for the for their show, so the load out for them, the load for us. There's mass casualty event written all over it, secondaries and everything else. They just shut the streets down, like everything was shut down, just foot traffic coming in looking for large packages and stuff and shit. I did a show with Drake in New York City, barclays last year and there was like NYPD showed up, like we had a fake ticket ring going on here, like there's people at every single show selling fake tickets.

Speaker 1 2:53:26

And we've been on them.

Speaker 2 2:53:27

We're really close to catching them and it's big on your show. So they had me go out in the street like to go sell. I was working with NYPD Like I'm not a cop. They put me out there. I'm on camera, stay on the set. They kept saying stay on set. I go, look at the cameras and like right here to right here, remember the landmark? Stay in that square. It's right next to a subway.

Speaker 1 2:53:46

And they're filming it all.

Speaker 2 2:53:47

Oh yeah, they're watching. They had detectives all around me. It was like texting this guy from my burner phone.

Speaker 2 2:53:55

I carry a burner phone because I have to. You know what I mean. And I'm texting. Yeah, I'm out here, man, my daughter's waiting, she's over, she's in line, she's holding the place in line. I'm right next to the thing and the guy's like I'm coming, I'm coming.

Speaker 2 2:54:08

I got these backstage passes. They were credentials that were real. He sent pictures of them. They get right to Drake, like the ones he was selling online. They go right into the dress room. If he didn't have a ton of monkeys in front of the room, they'd walk right in, you know.

Speaker 2 2:54:22

So I took exception to that. And then NYPD is like same guy. Then it's the same guys. You know like we're going to get them. You know the DA was there. Yeah, all these detectives, new York detectives, are kind of you scared. No, I'm like okay, stay on set, this is what you're going to do. You're going to make contact.

Speaker 2 2:54:40

And I got cash from the accountant, like $100 bills, and they said go copy them so we have evidence. They put them in a photocopier so all the numbers are shown so when we arrest them we could tell what money you gave them, we could prove it and bills in this I didn't make. This was a lot. It's thousands of dollars, right? So I'm putting this, these hundreds, in the copy machine and it turns out the new copiers don't copy money, did you know that? No, you can put a hundred dollar bill in a copy and it'll come out blank. And I was like wait a minute, this printer's broken. I go to the other printer same thing and I'm like what the fuck they're like? Oh, yeah, yeah, some printers don't do it. Take it all with your phone, or what. Yeah, I had to get a picture imprinted yeah, oh my god, what a nightmare.

Speaker 1 2:55:17

I didn't know that printers don't print money. It's like a counter. Uh, counterfeit thing, I don't know paper is wild, what they're able to do with people, don't? Your normal american doesn't realize the capabilities of paper. Yeah, how tricky and the layers of it.

Speaker 2 2:55:29

But so the guy saw me uh out there and he got scared you look like a fucking cop well, that's that he saw you standing there.

Speaker 1 2:55:36

That dude's a cop. I'm like I'm big.

Speaker 2 2:55:38

I got tattoos and black glasses. I'm really tired. You know, I really was tired. I'm like dude, I'm fucking over this shit, I'm gonna, I'm gonna leave if you don't come right now. He's like dude, don't leave. I said I'm taking the money and everything, like dude. I'm standing right here next to the thing and, uh, they were worried that this guy was gonna fucking, like there'd be multiple guys that fucking roll me you know that's what they're worried about.

Speaker 2 2:55:54

I'm like I'm not nervous, really yeah they were right next to me, you know, they were close enough. But then I figured it was someone that knew me like my face, because I'd been around for 60 shows by this point, you know. So I was around drake for a long time okay.

Speaker 2 2:56:06

And uh, the guy's like forget it, no deal. Like he told me he was really close and he could see me, and he's like no deal, and he took off. I went, fuck, I waited there for like an hour and uh, you know, they found the guy and something happened to him. I don't know but they found. They found the guy that drake's people found him and something else happened. I don't know. I wasn't there how is drake?

Speaker 1 2:56:24

he's under a bunch of shit.

Speaker 2 2:56:25

Yeah, nice guy I never saw any buffoonery. Yeah good, I never saw anything that was around quite a bit, you know he was living in the arenas with us like really yeah, like in Memphis.

Speaker 2 2:56:36

He wouldn't go to hotels. He'd live in the dressing room for the Grizzlies. Really, yeah, it's easier. Security, he's a target Security. There's a reason people don't stay in Boise. What hotel would you stay at if the best hotel in Boise 300, the one across the street? What else? The Holiday Inn? There's no Four Seasons or anything here, so there's no five-star hotels in Boise. And by deduction you could discover where the artist is at. They're in the same 100 yards downtown. That's the only place to stay if you're an artist and you're just inviting everyone down there. If they find out and everyone that works at the hotel is going to tell their friends and post it online Yup, because we're not used to having celebrities here Is that?

Speaker 1 2:57:18

why Is that a big reason why we get all?

Speaker 2 2:57:21

Because the tour manager will go through their schedule and be like Boise B Market. Let's just go to fucking Seattle and stay at this nice hotel with restaurant selections and stuff. We'll be there for a couple days.

Speaker 1 2:57:31

Interesting yeah.

Speaker 2 2:57:32

There's no, I mean the nice restaurants.

Speaker 1 2:57:34

I've never compared like that's what would, Because I always ask I'm like I see these guys, I'm like God, no one ever comes here.

Speaker 2 2:57:38

Yeah, they don't stay.

Speaker 1 2:57:40

Well, I guess Post and Jelly Roll are coming.

Speaker 2 2:57:43

Yeah, they just came, my buddies do security for Jelly Roll. Oh yeah, do they already do that, or is that coming up? Jelly Roll came recently, yeah, but it didn't happen. They already have a bunch of security guys with them, Like more than he needs, I think. Yeah for sure. Nice guy though, Well fucking A dude.

Speaker 1 2:58:03

I appreciate you coming on. This is a cool look into the world of what it takes to run some tour security management. I mean, you wear talk about wearing a lot of hats. Yeah, you got quite the resume.

Speaker 2 2:58:21

Yeah, it's it never stops. I'm always evolving. You know you never. You never need to act like you know everything you know it's just I try to put myself in different positions.

Modern Concert Security and Future Projects

Speaker 2 2:58:29

You know where I'm the new guy sometimes, or you know if you if you hang around a band, like I did with kiss forever, but it's like you you kind of lose sight of a lot of things, like what. I went from Kiss to Drake at some point right, and with Kiss I'm rolling around like a boss man. Everyone knew me there. I did whatever I wanted. I didn't have to sign off with anybody for anything. If I wanted tickets I'd pull them out of my pocket because I was a ticketing manager as well for Kiss. The guest list ran through me.

Speaker 2 2:58:57

So every time I walked into a venue I'd get handed 100 hard tickets. They're all P1s, or P1s are the highest level ticket and then I'd go through the guest list and obviously the band's guests would get the best ones. Yeah, tommy Thayer's tickets would be on his side of the stage. Gene Simmons' friends would be on his side of the stage. I don't have to hear about it after the show when they come backstage Like, yeah, I was really far away from where you play all show. Why are my guests on that much? You?

Speaker 2 2:59:20

know, and then it's like you know, paul Stanley, where am I? Guess I don't put them right in front of you. If they want, you want floor seats, you want ones off the floor. I give them an option. You know, usually off the floor so you can sit down. You know it's my mom. Where are you going to put her? It's like build a riser in the middle of the floor for mom to look at you.

Speaker 1 2:59:39

That is insane of how and just how many layers that you're dealing with per show. Yeah.

Speaker 2 2:59:44

But then I go to Drake and I'm no longer the ticket guy, I'm not the guy that's been around 10 years, I've been around 10 days and like I don't have that status there anymore. So you got to check yourself. All right, I'm security guy. They don't need to know my name or anything. People never learn my name. Yeah, I did 70 shows with a guy and he didn't know my name. There's no way, really no way. I said I talked to him like once in, like drake, or just like six months. He doesn't roll like that. He doesn't like roll around and hang out with roadies and stuff. He just moves with purpose. I go here, car goes straight here, but we go to stage, then go here you travel with drake that long and just you don't ever have a conversation.

Speaker 1 3:00:24

No, just doesn't give a shit, or?

Speaker 2 3:00:26

just I, just you know, I don't put myself in front of him. He's got a bunch of people around him. It's like you holler at me if you need me.

Speaker 1 3:00:32

There's no one here that shouldn't be here I feel that it's either a very high trust level or they just well, he knew who I was.

Speaker 2 3:00:41

It's just like you know, like you just don't attach yourself to people like I mean.

Speaker 2 3:00:45

He's got 12 security guys around him yeah I'm not one of the main five guys around him, I'm part of the second layer, okay, you know, like when he showed up to show he sees me first and I make sure no one touches him. He walks right to the metal detector, you know, and then I walk him to his dressing room, I drop him off with his dressing, gal abby, and then I wait for his bodyguards to come in because they're getting searched.

Speaker 1 3:01:06

Yeah, you know after spending so much time with these celebrities and just different personalities, does it make you realize like they're just like everybody else?

Speaker 2 3:01:18

or people say that to me all the time, like, hey, they're just humans, like everybody else. Yeah, that's true on a biological level, but also the word fan is short for fanatic. So they really aren't like other people. There's something that makes them a star and that's the reason that people fill arenas for them, you know. So they are like other people because they are human.

Speaker 2 3:01:37

There's something different about them, but they have a star quality about them and some people are superstars you know what I mean when other celebrities look up to them. There's people like Tom Cruise, where you're like what a megastar. And then celebrities get around people like that oh shit, tom Cruise, or Sylvester Stallone. The first time I saw Sylvester Stallone in person I was with Hilary Duff at Ferrari in Beverly Hills. She was looking at cars and I was like holy shit, it's fucking Rambo, that is Rocky Balboa, and she's like what are you talking about? No idea, she's like 19. Yeah, no idea.

Speaker 2 3:02:08

She's like why are you acting so funny?

Speaker 1 3:02:09

I'm like dude fucking Sly, stallone, stallone, come on come on, she's like you're weird, she's like no idea. I don't even know who. That is the issue, dude, who he? Was you're like, oh god yeah it's like you know, it's all relative, all right, we're going home, we're renting movies. You're gonna sit your ass here and watch all of this you'll see.

Speaker 2 3:02:26

So I mean, I was with janet in vegas and missy elliott you know, missy elliott oh yeah, she came to the show and she came backstage and like she was like. She was like, oh my god, it's jen. Like you know, it's a celebrity that. But another celebrity, a different level, like you were what I watched as a kid. You're the reason I'm here. I've watched you, I want to be like you and like in the holy shit, you know. So there's different levels to it, you know which is it's.

Speaker 1 3:02:49

It's funny to think about, because you know a big lesson that we try to teach our kids you idolize no one. Yeah, idolize no one. And then here you are with swift.

Speaker 2 3:02:57

Can I go?

Speaker 1 3:02:58

you know, but it's. It's one of these things where it's like you're you. You have these celebrities that are, even though they're a mega celebrity, they're, oh yeah, starstruck over other celebrities. When I met taylor swift.

Speaker 2 3:03:10

The first time I was with hillary and taylor was a known name, but she wasn't t t swift yeah there was no swifties.

Speaker 2 3:03:19

You know, like I was doing a photo shoot for some magazine. There's hillary taylor and like lauren conrad was the other one. Okay, so three girls were in this like photo shoot hair and makeup and everything and like taylor was like the youngest one. She was kind of like this small and goofy sitting there. I remember her security guy was greg dent at the time and her mom was there and Hillary's like yeah, but she hasn't said hi or anything.

Speaker 2 3:03:39

I don't know, is this a weird? You know celebrities around each other in that close proximity, especially females. It gets real strange. But Hillary was definitely the biggest name there. Yeah. You know, so it gets weird. Now she's a megastar like super duper.

Speaker 1 3:03:52

Psy-op. She's a fucking. Yeah, I'm sold on that one.

Speaker 2 3:03:56

I didn't I never thought she was that talented, but whatever, it's not. That's the thing.

Speaker 1 3:04:00

I don't think I'm so glad I don't have swifties for kids that's, that's one thing I'm grateful for yeah we don't listen to that bullshit here, I know I know not doing it, I like it not doing it, none of my business.

Speaker 2 3:04:11

You know, I first work at uh started working in rock and roll. I was uh working for pearl jam, yeah, and I there was a spotlight that was kind of like weird and out of place to me. I don't even know what the fuck I'm looking at. I've never been to a concert in my life. I'm like, is that light broken? The band was standing around me and I was on the middle of the floor. Every band looks at their stage before they do a concert. They want to see the light show, they want to sit there and make notes. I a spotlight and a fire or whatever, and cause they're on the stage. I got to learn what people are seeing and I'm out there with the band. They're watching the light show, stuff Like that light looks like it's broken.

Speaker 2 3:04:42

You know the production manager looked at me. His name was Jerry Gillen and he was like shut your fucking mouth. He's like I don't need these guys here and you say that something don't talk about how does this look and how does this sound. Go to security, security guy. Oh, no shit, yeah, rip your fucking lips off. No shit, yeah. And I never. I say that. After that, every week. I say that like once a week. How does this look? I don't care, gig hop, I do my gig. Yeah, you call it gig hop. And when you get in someone else's lane you're like, and you know, I had another tour manager with Kiss early on. He was like you ever seen a car accident? When a car veers out of their lane, what happens? And he goes bah.

Speaker 2 3:05:27

And he puts that in your face. You know. And he goes you're dead. And what happens to everybody else? They keep driving past you like nothing ever happened. So that'll be you. If you keep your mouth open, you're gonna stay someone else's lane, everyone's gonna keep going. This train ain't gonna stop, you'll just be off the train. Yeah, so like, stay in your lane, dude. Yeah, yeah, well lessons are learned, yeah yeah, so I tell young guys that now stay in your lane, buddy, yeah yeah, give them the same analogy all right, cool, yeah, yeah well, I mean at the same time, you know, right, cool, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 3:05:58

Well, I mean at the same time, you know the client or whatever shows up and they think everything's perfect. I feel like they never see the shit show and the chaos of everybody trying to make it work and somehow it does. They just walk out, do their role and they go right back to their bus or whatever it is.

Speaker 2 3:06:14

So when they hear somebody pointing things out that's going to yeah, we almost blew up the Guinness Book of World Records guy in Dubai.

Speaker 1 3:06:22

He didn't listen to what I was saying. Wait. So the oh yeah, because you had to have it certified yeah.

Speaker 2 3:06:27

So he's busy like typing the numbers and I'm like, yo, you're up on stage. This is New Year's Eve, dude. All those are going to fucking go off in two minutes. Get your ass on stage, please. And thank you One second Once. I'm just finalizing the signatures. I'm like, dude, do it after. And he's like, okay, I'm done. I'm like, come on, I'm going to grab him by his. He's in a suit with a briefcase and he's supposed to go up there and like, largest thing in the world, yay. And then's like, where's this fucking do that? You know, we're on rock and roll night party every day, the finale, the confetti's coming out. And he comes out and I'm like, go go, you're up. When you're done, get straight back to me of my light. I'll do this with my light. You need to come straight to me, do you understand? And the guy's like, yeah, sure you know. And he walks in there.

Speaker 2 3:07:11

He goes on this day, the lord's year 1990 you know, I'm like like we're all like we're all on the side of the stage going, oh fuck. And Paul's over there like with his makeup on, like what the fuck hit the button and he's like edging them out. It's on YouTube, you can watch it. He's kind of like, okay, he's like looking at me and everything like, and there's these flame boxes it's like a box if you're if you're, if you're like 20 yards away, you're like like it burns you.

Speaker 2 3:07:39

He was between two of them oh my god they're like, we're like we're all flashing our lights and he's like looking down he can't see because the spotlights are in his face. It's like suit in a briefcase. And then boom, pyro. Guy's like fuck it, bah hits the button and he goes oh, like he's between these two flame boxes. And everyone, everyone's like oh, like. I remember the production manager grabbed the manager, doc McGee. They were hugging him like oh, fuck, you guys thought you killed this dude. Oh, we all flinched, like we were grabbing each other like oh. And then he's like oh, and we're like dude, you almost fucking died out.

Speaker 1 3:08:09

there Comes out, he's just smoking. Live TV youtube fucking new year's.

Speaker 2 3:08:18

Oh my god, this guy dies at a kid's show. My timing's everything. Yeah right, that was one of those surreal moments where like dude, no one died.

Speaker 1 3:08:22

It's crazy. We're like pack it up we're at it yeah, at that moment you were probably like I am so over being here, I know so dumb fucking hey man, yeah, yeah well, dude, thanks for coming on. I appreciate your time. This was this is a great conversation. I love the the story.

Speaker 2 3:08:37

Yeah, man, I got a bunch of them.

Speaker 1 3:08:39

Oh fuck, we'll have to have you back, not for TV.

Speaker 2 3:08:41

Yeah, I got a bunch of them, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll get there some point.

Speaker 1 3:08:45

Well, dude, travel safe. I know you're headed back out on the road and head on a ready to tell some more. I'm sure this one's gonna go pretty well awesome man this is a 100.

Speaker 1 3:08:58

She's even nodding. This is this. Is what we like to do, man. Just have conversations with people and just open up people's eyes to different industries and what goes on in the world. I mean, people just don't think about just the logistical nightmare that goes on to a concert. Even the performers, I'm sure, don't even know half the shit that goes on. So yeah thanks for coming and sharing that with us. Man, I appreciate your time perfect.

Speaker 2 3:09:18

Thanks, cheers man.

Speaker 1 3:09:19

Thank you right on did you want to talk about knives or anything right? Are you making and selling those? Uh, you want to plug?

Speaker 2 3:09:24

it at all uh, I'm trying to think what I got. I got one coming up with half face blades again I'm actually wanting to get him on the on this yeah, yeah I want to get him out here, man, maybe you could put in I in the.

Speaker 1 3:09:35

I met him just recently at the down in Salt Lake. Okay, I followed him since the beginning, like when he first got out, yeah, and so, but I just, I was walking randomly through an expo and I was like I know you and I'm like yeah, and so we started bullshitting.

Speaker 2 3:09:47

Nice enough guy, yeah.

Speaker 1 3:09:48

Yeah, all just just walking the show and I no idea who that fucking dude is.

Speaker 2 3:09:54

Yeah it's weird. He followed me early on. It was really weird, like I wasn't even following him. He gave me a follow for some reason. It was because a bunch of SF dudes I know were like on my page somehow and he followed me and I was like that's cool, he's got a cool story and stuff. He was still making the knife back then, you know, and randomly, shit, man want to design a blade for us. And I was like fuck yeah half-face blades. Yeah, it's fucking huge.

Speaker 2 3:10:18

And he's like come up with a design and a prototype and stuff and I'll get it done. And he made a prototype, sent it back to me, I tested it. You know I talked about metal and hardness and, like you know, cryo and quenching and all of this stuff. Nice design, you know, and it did really well. Sold out in seven minutes. I think. He sold like 100 blades or 200 blades in seven minutes really. And uh, you know, I got paid and everything which is like you know wasn't used to that, it was just kind of a hobby. I was like, fuck, I want to do this all the time. Yeah, so I'm like, I got another one. He's like send me the 3d print. So now I have access to a 3d printer and I just keep spitting out designs and you know I want to keep, I want to go as fast as he can go, but he's got such a big business now. It's like oh, next quarter A bunch of employees.

Speaker 1 3:11:02

Yeah.

Speaker 2 3:11:02

Next quarter. I'm like, what's that mean In three months? I'm like, let's do it now. I have so many ideas between now and three months, so I'm learning to kind of like crank Every quarter. We got an idea.

Speaker 1 3:11:14

Dropping one. What's the name of what you're doing now? What's the name of your company? So people listening.

Speaker 2 3:11:18

Oh, fieldworks F-L-D-W-R-X. So right now if you go to fieldworkscom, it's pretty much a t-shirt mark. I've been really careful to not exchange money with people, so to speak. I'm somewhere in Scotland doing something with whoever, and now people, customer service, and when's my knife coming? All this it just takes up my bandwidth. So I want to be on the design process and I want to be part of the whole thing.

Speaker 1 3:11:42

But I don't want to.

Speaker 2 3:11:44

I don't want to collect people's information and take their money and then ship to them and deal with everything else. Okay, you know what I mean. So I've been very careful not to do that. Even the t-shirt company is print a garment, a direct to garment printing, which is the best. I don't see there's nothing hanging anywhere. There's no shirts made already. So could I get one of those? Yeah, order it online. I got to go back to Idaho and go to the shop to get it, so I won't do that. I collaborate a lot with people and I try to keep my hands off out of people's wallets. I know what a nightmare that could be. It is nightmare that could be.

Speaker 1 3:12:14

It is.

Speaker 2 3:12:14

And then it'll just eat up your time and a lot of money and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 3:12:17

So that's cool that you're able to do that and get your name out there or at least be part of the process, and then send it off to him.

Speaker 2 3:12:24

He takes care of it. Yeah, and we got Mutiny Metals. We have a. We have a gun shop downtown Meridian. It's called Bishop Defense. I don't know if you've been there, meridian, evan Bishop runs it. It's his store. You know, got a store in San Jose as well, called Bullseye Bishop. Okay, and they service each other. I know it's pretty slow right now with gun sales. Is it?

Life Lessons from Two Decades on the Road

Speaker 2 3:12:45

Yeah, but we have custom slides, mag wells, barrels, threaded barrels, non-threaded barrels, triggers we got our own frame coming now, really. So a full-on pistol setup a la carte. You know however you want it, and we're going to do a pistol for Ed Calderon. So Sneak Reaper Industries. Ed Calderon is the Mexican cartel cop. I don't know if you heard of Manifesto radio podcast.

Speaker 1 3:13:09

Yeah.

Speaker 2 3:13:09

So Ed's a good friend of mine and he's going to do a Sneak Reaper gun. So that'll be a hit. Yeah, he sells everything. He can sell anything. When I started trading with Ed, we found out we both had a mutual interest in precious metals gold and silver.

Speaker 2 3:13:27

I don't like money in the bank, it's a number on a computer, yep, and I know too many hackers to be comfortable with that, so I put a lot of my stuff. I was really cautious about Bitcoin and everything else too, because like, well, the new thing, you know, so I'll just buy the gold, you know, no one knows where that's at, so I feel better with that. You know, I always say that gold and silver is transferable anywhere, and I don't get anywhere. And I have cartridge companies that can get stuff anywhere. So you know you don't carry it with you on an airplane. Raise a red flag, you know. Yeah, so anything over ten thousand dollars $10,000, you get flagged right, you get arrested. Yeah, if you get caught twice you can go to jail.

Speaker 1 3:14:00

Oh, no shit yeah.

Speaker 2 3:14:02

If you have one like we used to go to airports and break out nine grand to everybody Just to get on the plane and land you give it right back, you know.

Speaker 1 3:14:08

Yeah.

Speaker 2 3:14:09

One guy carries the bag. We get on the airplane, nine get off. I have a hundred grand back in my back. Yeah, so that's the law, anyhow. Um, but yeah, precious metals, we sell silver. I was branding silver so I got a bunch of cool people to put their logos on the silver and you know, 28 at spot for silver goes for 40 bucks, online it's 12 an ounce. We make it on silver pieces for a special stamp no shit.

Speaker 2 3:14:32

So with ed we're selling a thousand at a time, right, just 12 000 an hour. Okay, you could hear the, you know. And then we were doing it for special causes too. I got a group called Special Projects Community SPC. It's a group of ragtag dudes like me, some cops, some like outdoors dudes, ed Hackers, like it's a bunch of stuff, and they're cool guys that do different things, you know. Are they?

Speaker 2 3:14:55

local here and they're cool guys that do different things, you know. Are they local here? No, it's guys from all over the world. Okay, and we just started this group online called SPC and then Special Projects Community. We started doing things like showing people how to do this and showing people web security, opsec, persec, you know, OSINT stuff. And then we would find some people like on the web they were having a hard time Like someone died. We time like someone died. We're gonna collect money for this people's family pay for the funeral. So we're gonna drop this silver tomorrow 5 pm and we get that 12 000 sent to the family of the person that died or whatever. We had a kid that was bullied, you know, online. He had nerf guns and he was doing like presentation drills, you know, and he was like doing mag swaps and stuff and he got shit on all over the internet and he was, you know, he had learning disabilities and stuff and a big, bigger kid and we flew him out to Vegas and he was training with SEALs and running nods and stuff.

Speaker 1 3:15:42

Oh shit, that's cool.

Speaker 2 3:15:43

With pointers and stuff. He's like, wow, full auto. And then he went online, made a video. We made a video out of it. His mom flew in with him and stuff and he's like check me out now, nerds. So I brought him up. We had a canine foundation, we did a Malinois foundation. We donated $12,000 to train Malinois for people that needed them. And then we did a thing with Baz Basilton the Recovery of Kids Arc it was called Recovery of Children.

Speaker 2 3:16:08

He goes out and gets kids that have been abducted and stuff. He goes and finds them Old SF dude or CIA creep or something. I forget what the story was, but try to put it to good causes that we all came up with, you know so yeah, that's cool yeah, on the side branding silver, you know, you get the silver nugget and it's kind of a cool story you could tell people about and carry in your pocket or whatever yeah I used to pay best in cops with gold.

Speaker 2 3:16:29

That's how I at a night. Yeah, you just give them a piece of silver or gold and yeah, do whatever you want god, I feel like, I feel like I could just talk to you for days I'm sure, I haven't even peeled any of the layers yeah all right, we're gonna, I'm gonna have you back on.

Speaker 3 3:16:44

We're gonna, I'm gonna yeah you're definitely coming back, god, I want to.

Speaker 1 3:16:48

I want to pick your brain about some more stuff, but man, good for you, dude cool man appreciate you yeah I appreciate you coming on and appreciate raul recommending you yeah, rose, raul's a gnarly guy.

Speaker 2 3:16:58

Yeah, dude, he's hilarious. He's a great shooter yeah, yeah, Really good.

Speaker 1 3:17:01

So he was like man, you got to get this guy out. I was like done.

Speaker 2 3:17:04

Done. You know, the first time I met Raul was at, you know who. Bill Rapier is no Still Team. Six shooting Amtac firearms.

Speaker 2 3:17:15

No, he's in Coeur d'Alene. Okay, in Idaho, solid dude, 6'4" black belt, fucking, better shooter than anybody I ever met, just a solid guy. He's just dialed in on everything. I showed up to one of his classes. It was like a combatives class and we were doing we were hitting stuff and shooting and medicine and stuff and Kali knife karate and Raul was his host. So he's the guy. He showed up at the class and he's like looking at my tattoos and stuff. He's like looking at me. He's like how much time did you do? He just came up to me. That's the first thing he said to me and I was like four years University of Kansas. He's like all right, all right. That's the first time I met him. And then the first time.

Speaker 2 3:17:53

First time I went to his house we had like a little get-together and get in the pool and stuff. Between days of shooting and stuff, we shoot for 12 hours, go to his house, swim, eat some food, tribal stuff, get to know each other. And I show up with an 18-pack of tall boys. I was like yeah, we crack some Bud Lights or whatever. And I show up and he's kind of looking at my Bud Light like yeah, come on in. I'm like hey, boys, what's going on? That's when I start cracking it open and Bill's like you know, I don't drink, ryan. And he goes into this story about how one of his SEAL buddies killed another SEAL and he was like you stopped drinking that minute. And I'm like Raul, you want one? And he's like no, I'm Mormon. I'm like oh, and then everyone else drink any beer.

Speaker 2 3:18:39

Really, I'm like, hey, you want this for your house, just in case company come over, he goes. No, you can take it with you. Oh my God, I walked in with an 18 pack. I walked out with a 17 pack Awkward. Yeah, yeah, so I won't do that ever again. Yeah right and no booze allowed.

Speaker 1 3:18:57

I'll just show up. Yeah, I'll feel it out first. Yeah, yeah, make a beer run later. But cool man, I appreciate you.

Speaker 2 3:19:04

Right on, man Get you out of here.

Speaker 1 3:19:05

So I know she's probably like get me out of here. I got to pee I thoroughly enjoyed it.