Tana Douglas documents her life as Australia’s first female roadie with AC/DC in memoir, LOUD
As a teen runaway from Queensland, Tana Douglas hit Kings Cross before her life changed forever when she moved in with AC/DC in Melbourne.
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Tana Douglas was a teen runaway from Queensland dodging drug-addled pimps in Kings Cross when she joined the rock’n’roll circus.
After sneaking into the 1970s club Whisky A Go Go to indulge her love of music one Saturday night, the under-age Douglas was taken under the wing of legendary roadie Wane “Swampy” Jarvis and put behind the sound desk to watch the show.
The troubled teen desperately searching for purpose – and a job – found both as she keenly observed the men behind the scenes, those working on the sound and lighting desks as other crew members switched over guitars and checked cables.
After volunteering to help a crew load out the gear after a gig a couple of weeks later, Douglas became Australia’s first female roadie and documents her amazing life in rock’n’roll in her rollicking memoir LOUD.
“I’d always had a love of music. It had been like a saviour and a talisman for me. I’d been travelling all over the country non-stop ever since I ran away from home and I needed to get a job … so when I found out that not only did you get to travel with this job, but you got paid as well, this is what I’m doing now,” she said.
“I was looking for some sort of family unit as awkward and unlikely as a road crew is for a young 15 year old girl, to be a caring family unit, they really were in their own way.”
Douglas was 17 when she moved in with AC/DC, living in the Lansdowne Road house in St Kilda where the fledgling band was based when they weren’t recording their debut album High Voltage in Sydney.
The band paid her an initial wage of $60 to look after their stage equipment and instruments; by the time she left them for her next gig, she had also added sound engineer to her resume.
Douglas honed her skills as a lighting roadie for Australian tours by Suzi Quatro and Status Quo, who she would form one of the closest relationships of her five-decade career.
LOUD is bursting with tales of legendary parties and ridiculous, over-the-top antics by rock stars and their crew families in hotel rooms and grand mansions.
George Harrison flirted with her at a Whitesnake tour party at the Henley-on-Thames estate of revered British musician Jon Lord – “I’d marry you tomorrow if you stopped smoking” – and French superstar Johnny Hallyday propositioned her after she built him the biggest lighting rig in the 80s for his Paris residency of mega-concerts.
She did cocaine with Iggy Pop and David Bowie backstage at a London gig she was running and watched as fans at a gig in Helsinki hurled live fish onstage as the Godfather of Punk cajoled them.
And she found herself sleeping on the tour bus most nights when she toured with the Go-Gos during their hellish years of hotel rooms and self destruction because the reception desks refused to book another female member of the party in their establishment.
Elton John, The Who, The Runaways, Santana, Neil Diamond, Ozzy Osbourne, The Police – Douglas made history with them all in her role as not only lighting guru but all-round fix-it crew member.
LOUD makes it clear who were her favourites and which are not.
But for all of the excitement of being in the front row for the rapid explosion of concert light and sound technology and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the most famed rock stars of our times, Douglas also had to conquer sexism and endure personal tragedy as a “roadie”.
Not only did she have to combat the prejudices of men who didn’t think she could do the job, she copped punches and abuse from female fans jealous of her position with bands.
And there was the double standard which she fears remains today about having personal relationships within a touring family.
“If a male crew member scores with a female artist, he’s a hero, he’s a legend. If a female crew member does it, it’s like ‘Oh, what’s she after?’” she said.
Douglas expresses some regret about the sacrifices and mistakes she made in her personal relationships and as a mother who travelled the world trying to make a living for her child which resulted in a heartbreaking custody battle with her own mother.
But as the pioneer who blazed the trail for women who wanted to pursue a career path in technical realm of the live music industry, Douglas is buoyed by the examples of a new generation somehow managing to balance their aspirations with family life.
“I think it is wonderful there’s more women now doing it, and having the chance of relationships and families and that sort of thing which was just so impossible when I was doing it.”
ENJOY AN EXCLUSIVE BOOK EXTRACT OF LOUD.
By Tana Douglas.
The Australian music scene in the ’70s revolved around the pub circuit. One of Melbourne’s most notorious pub venues was the Matthew Flinders Hotel, a rough-and-tumble beer garden that held about a thousand punters and had a late-night liquor licence.
And while Angus was technically of the legal drinking age and could be in a bar, management had decided to run with the underage schoolboy hype; as far as the press and the public were concerned, he was underage.
The funny thing was that Angus was a teetotaller, so either way the joke was on them. We, on the other hand, couldn’t understand how he was such a high priority on Australia’s Most Wanted List for eating chocolate, drinking milk, smoking lots of cigarettes and playing guitar.
Because of all the publicity around his schoolboy image, there was frequently a police presence at those early shows.
It was here in the Matthew Flinders one night that it looked like it could become a problem. I’d spotted some plainclothes policemen during the show from the front-of-house sound desk and, at the end of the show, they started making their way towards the backstage area.
“Whoa! Hi, guys! What can I do to help you?” I called out as I ran to catch up with them. “We need to speak with this lot,” they responded.
“Sure, I’ll take you back there soon, but right now Angus and the others will be getting changed. I’m sure you understand we can’t go yet, me being a girl and all. There’s no way out of the dressing room without crossing the stage, so we can all wait here.”
They agreed after I went into great detail, as to how sweaty and cramped the space was in the broom closet the pub called a dressing room.
“You want a drink while we wait?” I asked one of the policemen innocently. “Could be a while.” “Yeah,” he answered, but insisted, “Let me get it, though.”
I ordered then quickly drank a large Jack Daniel’s and Coke, which the policeman dutifully paid for. Yes, you heard it here: he paid for it, and I was seventeen. When I’d finished my drink, I let him know what he’d just done.
“So, I guess you’re here to bust Angus for being underage? Well, he’s not, it’s all a publicity trick – but I am. Thanks for the drink, guys!”
And I walked off to start the load-out of the equipment now I knew the Boys were off the hook. These are the skills that aren’t in the job description. Whatever it takes!
***
It wasn’t all wine and roses within the band – there were fights. But not the silly ego trips that most bands have. Conflicts usually broke out when they were having a hard time getting something right musically in a rehearsal, or in the early stages of writing a song. Malcolm was a perfectionist: near enough was never good enough.
One time, Malcolm and Angus were in the living room working on a song in which the guitar solo wasn’t coming together. Malcolm became frustrated. “Do it the same way you did it last time.”
Angus seemed a little distracted. “I don’t know, it’ll be fine.” To Angus’s surprise and mine, Malcolm got up and stormed out of the room. “If you can’t be bothered, then neither can I.’
As he left, arguing back over his shoulder to Angus, he accidentally slammed the neck of his beloved Gretsch guitar into the doorway. He continued to his room and slammed the door. “Oh, S …!” I’d never seen the brothers fight like this, resulting in something of value getting broken.
After what seemed like an eternity, I asked Angus, “What should we do?” – meaning him.
Angus said he thought it would be best if we let Mal cool off a bit. Then Angus turned to me and said, “I think you should go see if he’s alright.” What? I thought. ME?
Angus said, “It’ll be better if you go, as he isn’t mad at you.” I felt bad for both of them though, so off I went to see if Mal was okay. Roadies are frequently put in positions when interacting with a band member can involve the plea of ‘don’t shoot the messenger’.
This can clarify the brutal truth that a roadie is often sacrificed to save a relationship between band members – not Angus’s intention, but important to remember when getting maybe a little too close to your bosses.
I quietly knocked on the bedroom door, half-hoping Mal didn’t answer. I looked back over my shoulder to where Angus still sat on the couch watching and prompting me to knock again. This time I said, “Mal, it’s Tana. Can I come in?”
When Mal let me in, I was shocked to see his guitar lying on his bed with its head hanging off to the side. The first thing I said was, “It can be fixed! We’ll find someone to fix it.” Mal knew more about guitars than I did, so he knew it could be fixed.
What was upsetting him more was the fact that he’d lost control. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper,” he said. “We’re not going to get anywhere if we don’t stick together.”
The two of us sat and talked in that room for a long time. Mal sat on the end of his bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his thighs, and I was sitting on the floor nearby. This incident changed our relationship further. We became closer, close enough to have sex.
Malcolm put up a strong front, but he also needed looking after, and he could talk to me. Were we an item? No. It would have got complicated if it was common knowledge that we’d slept together, and that would have changed how the rest of the band viewed me.
My worst nightmare was any of the Boys thinking I’d only taken the gig so I could sleep with one of them. I’d like to think Mal was protecting me from the potential negative reactions of the rest of the band – or he may have just been acting like a typical guy.
That was the AC/DC way: you just didn’t talk about it. I’d never been in a relationship, so I had no idea what I was doing, and Mal was busy preparing to conquer the world.
What is it they say about your first crush? He will always have a place in my heart. We were just a couple of kids sharing a moment in time.
LOUD by Tana Douglas is published by ABC Books on February 11, $34.99.
Originally published as Tana Douglas documents her life as Australia’s first female roadie with AC/DC in memoir, LOUD
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