by August Brown at The Los Angels Times
Tom Weber’s job was to take care of the most famous electric guitar in rock ‘n’ roll.
Since 2006, Weber, 63, was Eddie Van Halen’s personal guitar tech, tending to the hard-rock titan’s red, white and black “Frankenstrat,” which sired the riffs to “Eruption,” “Runnin’ With the Devil” and “Panama,” among countless classic headbangers. The Kentucky-based Weber kept it humming through the band’s final tour in 2015, and worked with Eddie until his death last October. Weber had big gigs lined up for Reba McEntire and Journey that year, and a planned run of stadium shows with Poison, Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard.
Fifteen months into the pandemic, though, Weber hasn’t found any significant work — in guitars or otherwise — to tide him over. He admits that he’s soon likely to lose his home, his guitar repair shop and everything he’s built over decades in rock without consistent tours to return to.
“I put my house into forbearance because there’s no way we’re going back to work soon,” Weber said. “No one is hiring a 63-year-old guitar tech after this. I know people who have killed themselves, who are losing homes, families, everything. I’ve heard colleagues say that with life insurance, they’re more valuable to their families dead than alive.”
As festivals and concerts return in fits and starts, fans might be forgiven for thinking that things are getting back to normal. Iconic venues like the Hollywood Bowl and Greek Theatre have announced summer schedules; California festivals like Coachella, Hard Summer and Rolling Loud have set dates for this year or early 2022. Even L.A. nightclubs, one of the first sectors to go dark as COVID-19 hit, will more fully open back up along with the rest of the state’s businesses on Tuesday.
But for the people who make their living on or from the road in the touring industry — from tour managers to lighting and sound engineers to truck drivers, stage riggers and merch sellers — “normal” is still a distant fantasy.
“I don’t know even what a ‘new normal’ is,” said Sandy Espinoza, the L.A.-based founder of the tour crew mutual-aid group Roadiecare. “People would go back to work tomorrow if they could, but there’s no more than dribbles of work. We’re all going to have to keep scrambling.”…
Continue Reading