The Mad Anthony Cafe Day

By John Kivlin - johnk@playboy.com

Okay...I know it's been 4 days since the Chicago show, but I really wanted to sort out my whole experience before I put it down in words so as not to seem like a blabbering little schoolgirl in my assessment of what happened to me on saturday, May 16. So here goes....

As some of you know, my brother had won a contest to be a roadie for a day for Van Halen. Because he is the loving, intelligent sibling that he is, he selected me to accompany him on what would turn out to be the most kick-assest rock and roll day of my life.

We arrived @ the west gate of the Rosemont Horizon @ precisely 3:00 per the radio station sponsoring the contest and were taken downstairs to the production room and given our all access backstage stickers. After affixing them in a clearly visible spot on my person, we were escorted out from behind the stage to meet our 'boss' for the day. We were introduced to Kevin Dugan, Mikey's bass tech and our rock and roll mentor. He is the best, most personable guy in the world. He didn't make us feel like we were a bother at all and was totally enthusiastic about letting two complete strangers follow him around like a couple of puppies.

Our first official duties were to tape up Mikey's wireless receivers next to the stairs on his side of the stage. I've got to give a shout out to the guys at Shure on this one. These thing are gorgeous, flexible and could pick up his signal if he decided to run out to the back row of the house. Once those bad boys were in place, Kevin told us the next task, and the most important one @ that was to set up the Mad Anthony Cafe. The Cafe itself was his little backstage area with the two key components being the ambiance and the bar (duh!). Michael's choice of ambiance this tour was a seventies theme, having just seen "Austin Powers" and loving it. He had a spinning disco ball with colored lights shooting out of it mounted to the ceiling, a couple of kick-ass lava lamps, plenty of beads hanging from the door and my favorite effect - a velvet Jimi Hendrix poster with two black lights shining on it to make it glow (70's style)...

Next Kevin (Dugie) opened up a drawer in one of the cabinets and started pulling out Mikey's basses, telling a different story for each one. About the 3rd one down, he pulled out the Jack Daniel's bass and told the story of how it came about (there WAS drinking involved when they thought of it). In the middle of this story he says to me, 'Here hold this'...so I'm standing there holding the same guitar Mike had when he was flying across the stage in Panama.

After some little adjustments to the bass amps, the band showed up for their sound check and we got to meet Mike himself. I can't even begin to express what a bunch of great guys they are. I am nobody. He's Michael Anthony and it was like I was an old friend to him. He was really warm to the idea that his bass tech had a couple of extra hands that day. Personally I'd be a little wary of complete strangers handling my expensive stuff. He posed for a couple of pictures with us and told us to make sure that we got a good meal with the crew since technically we were working, and headed up on stage for the sound check. Right away Alex kicks in with the drums for 'Without You' and they just started wailing. I'm standing there on the side of the stage watching Van Halen sound check and I'm thinking how glad I am I'm sober just so I can remember every single minute of what I'm actually witnessing. In the middle of the song Mike looks over at my brother and I with a 'what do you think?' kind of look and we give the requisite "thumbs up"...no shit thumbs up, they were shredding. After the sound check the band had to go to the hospitality room because they had interviews, etc....and we went to go grab a little dinner backstage...

During our meal, Gary walks in and grabbed some salad and sat down at the table next us. I wanted so badly to talk the guy, but he was eating. A couple of minutes later the local NBC affiliate began a program chronicling Michael Jordan's entire career and Gary jumps up, climbs up to the TV to turn it up and sits right next to it. I've read he's a huge NBA fan...they show a segment on Michael's 63 points in the double overtime game against Boston in 1986 and I think I heard Gary saying something like "Yeah, but who won the title Michael???"

After we ate my brother and I are standing right outside the cafeteria type place and Mike comes flying out the hospitality room on his way somewhere when he looks over and sees us and comes right over to us again. He asked us if we ate, we said of course. He asked us if we were sticking around for the show and we said of course. Then he told us it was cool meeting us and he had to go warm up for the show.

Next, Dugie took us back to Mike's spot off the stage and started changing his strings and asked me since I play would I like to have the old ones? Uh...yeah!!! Michael Anthony's bass strings from the Dallas show are now on my piece of shit Gibson and I will never play that guitar again. I gotta go get a couple of Peaveys just like Mike's now.

When everything was all cool and ready, Kevin took us outside and said our day wouldn't be complete until we sat in the bus for a few minutes. Now granted, it was just the tech bus, but it was pretty damn cool nonetheless. Danny (my brother) and I had a beer on the Van Halen crew bus and just sat there thinking about the day, while Dugie is telling us all these stories (he's been Michael's bass tech since 1980)...I don't really think I should repeat any of the stories because I don't know what the statute of limitations is in the states most of the occurrences took place, but they were kick ass stories.

Around 7:00 or so, Dugie told us he should probably take a nap before the show, so we said goodbye, and he gave us his card so we can mail him the pictures we took and we left.

This is when we headed over to the Clarion to meet the Chicago VHML party, but we were too late. That part bummed me out. I was really looking forward to spending a little time with you guys. So we sat in the Clarion bar and shot some stick before heading over to the show. About 7:45 we started over to Horizon and were about to walk in with the ticket holding public (we were actually given seats from Rock 103.5) and one of the ushers told us that since we had backstage passes we were only permitted to enter from backstage (what kind of rule is that?)...so we did and we watched the whole damn thing from Eddies side of the stage.

I'm not even getting into the show itself, because so many others have already conveyed just how cool the whole thing was. It was great. End of story.

After Jump and the lights came up, we walked back around to Mikey's side and said goodby to Kevin Dugan and check this out...the man hugged us and told us to keep in touch.

Rock and Roll man...

In closing, I feel that sometimes the term kick-ass is probably a tad overused. But you know what? Not in this case...This day kicked ass.

JK