Every year big rock bands tour England, Europe and America, presenting shows seen by tens of thousands of people. Yet the show is only a small part of the whole story. Antony Freeman spent last summer working as one of JETHRO TULL'S stage crew during their six-week UK and European tour and here begins a two-part roadie's-eye view of the operation.

Dawn at Marieborn on the East German border, cold, grey, misty and silent. Cars and trucks trickle through the checkpoint heading for Berlin. Some weak sunshine falls on the concrete bunkers, barbed wire, potholes and machine gun posts of no-man's land. It does little to alleviate the atmosphere of grim desolation.

A red and white striped coach decorated with a Union Jack and the name of Plymouth Argyle Football Club sighs to a halt at one of the barriers and a few bleary faces peer out of its windows. The engine dies. A grey-uniformed guard with a machine gun slung over his shoulder and eyes like pebbles in a rice pudding marches to the driver's side and looks for the door. Someone unwisely sniggers as the driver points him round to the other side of the coach. The door swings open. The guard plants his boot on the step. The door swings shut in his face.

The East German's hand tightens on the barrel of his weapon as the driver curses the faulty air valve and struggles to open the door again. The guard evidently thinks it was done on purpose. He marches stiffly up the steps into the coach, stares with contempt at its cargo of decadent roadies snoring in bunks and snaps something at the driver.

Martyn the driver wishes he was back home in Devon, shrugs helplessly and says 'Bitte?' The guard repeats his words at twice the speed and half an octave higher and Martyn's German collapses completely. He looks round for assistance. None comes. 'Ber-ni! Ber-ni!' he yells. Pudding face fingers his virility substitute again.

Berni the interpreter (who is a Hanoverian and no fool) is asleep, or pretending to be, on a bunk at the back of the coach. Berni is often asleep and generally not around when he is needed. The dawn after a long overnight drive is not an unreasonable time to be comatose but the expression on the face of the man with the gun makes the other occupants of the coach, now awake, wish that he wasn't.

A chorus of 'Ber-ni!' and much prodding and kicking ensues and the luckless Berni appears in shrunken T-shirt and ragged jeans, looking as if he has just fallen out of a commercial for liver salts. He discovers that the guard is asking for passports and wants to know how many people are on board. Fairly natural things for a border guard to be asking. Three sleepy voices do a count, out loud, and arrive simultaneously at different answers. 'Thirteen.' 'Fourteen.' 'Fifteen.' They count again and all make it something different. 'Fifteen.' 'Thirteen.' 'Fourteen.'

Berni mutters something that sounds like 'arschlocke.' He had a way with words. Two more people count and make it fifteen. 'Funfzehn,' he tells the guard, who throws another look of cold disdain around the coach, takes the stack of English passports and disappears back to his bunker.

Time passes, and so does some more, and some more. The tour manager's watch gets looked at with increasing regularity. The 300-mile drive from Munster has taken longer than the estimate of whoever compiled the itinerary and Berlin and the next gig are still hours away.

At last the guard reappears. The expression on his face silences the witticisms about firing squads and when's breakfast served. He is now carrying his gun in the operational position (it's probably all the security he has in the world) and he does not have any passports in his hand. The camera someone is pointing out of the window rapidly vanishes and in the bunk nearest the front, John, who has lived in Germany and learned to recognise shades of meaning in military faces, goes a bit paler and says 'Oh-oh.' Martyn sweats and opens the door. It stays open.

No translation is called for this time. Everyone knows what 'Raus! Raus!' means when screamed by a man with a gun. A few pretend not to hear but whatever the matter is it can't be ignored. Weary bodies still aching from last night's gig drag on an appalling assortment of filthy jeans and shirts and stagger out into the cold morning air.

We are lined up shivering in front of a concrete wall. The gun is being waved with increasing frequency. The sotto voce jests concerning firing squads are suddenly not so funny. The guard is doing a lot more high speed shouting and Berni can't understand his accent. The guard stalks along the line and counts us, stalks back and counts us again and carries on shouting at Berni.

'I think he is asking where is the other person,' says Berni. 'Here there are only 14.' More counting. The man is right. 'And he says where is the other passport,' Berni continues. Light dawns. The military mind has been fed with the wrong number. We try to explain. No good: 15 is the number he was told and 15 people and 15 passports he wants to see.

We all count each other and look in the coach. The guard looks in the coach too, in a manner that suggests anyone he finds there will be shot on the spot. We all stand around in the chilly May morning air trying to look very stern and British about this. Won't be put upon, y'know. Unfortunately it doesn't work and we are. The gun lines us up again, counts us again, tells us to stay put and goes back to the bunker.

After another half hour of putting upon us he returns. Still no passports. By this time half the cars and trucks in Germany have passed through the other barriers and most of their occupants have pulled faces at der stupischer Englischer football bus. Perhaps that was what did it. Perhaps the guard thought we were a football team. Whose idea was it to hire a football coach anyway?

His temper is even worse this time. He must have been getting ein bollockink from a superior officer in the customs hut. He shouts a lot more at Berni and then at the rest of us. We begin to wonder what sunset looks like at the East German border and whether we'll get remission for good behaviour.

Reality seems suddenly to have been suspended. The whole of existence now consists of concrete, barbed wire and people in uniforms with guns playing games with no rules and no meaning with pieces of paper and people with no uniforms and no guns. Go to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect tonight's gig money.

We are herded back into our mobile home. The guard disappears. We wait. Perhaps while we are waiting the entire East German army is being paraded, regiment by regiment, through some unseen observation point and shown us in order to be cured of any urge its members may have to defect to the West.

Then, suddenly, a blur of grey, a handful of passports through the driver's window, a curt 'git them wagons rolling' wave and the barrier rises. They have evidently had enough of us. Martyn breaks the world record for starting a coach and we do a wheelie across the frontier. All on board cheer and make faces at the border guards, who are watching us go with expressions of sardonic disbelief. The Stranglers had Martyn and the red and white striped coach after us; I wonder how they made out in such situations...

On the way to Berlin we pass bleak fields and look at sad-faced peasants who resemble refugees from the Middle Ages. Everything is in shades of grey and brown and black. Before falling asleep the last thing I see from the window, in front of the unending rows of electrified fences, barbed wire and mined strips of sand beside the road, is a memorial with a wreath on it to someone who tried to escape his lot and didn't make it. I slip into uneasy dreams of PA stacks and fences and amp racks and machine guns and passports and flight cases.

Day 20 of the Jethro Tull European tour has begun.

The Berlin frontier came and went, like so many others, while most of us were unconscious. In fact if it's sightseeing and meeting people you want, forget roadying; you'd best become a chartered accountant or a Woolworths manager. All the sights you see as a roadie are the insides of hotels, the insides of concert halls and the soundless, disconnected views from the window of a coach or a truck and the only people you meet are chambermaids wanting to know when you'll be vacating your room.

We were decanted into a hotel in the midst of the morning rush hour. We deposited our bags, looked at the distant, depressing view of a NATO early warning radar station from the fifth floor, got back in the coach and went to find the Deutschlandhalle. It turned out to be an impressive, multi-purpose sports stadium that looked as if it could be flooded to stage galley fights. The three purple and yellow Edwin Shirley artics containing Tull's stage gear, PA and lights had already arrived and stood by the huge load-in door, like 40-foot long chocolate boxes with wheels.

We discovered when we lurched inside just before 10am that the high-speed dash from Marieborn had been unnecessary. Usually the halls were empty and ready for the Tull operation to swing smoothly into action but the floor of the stadium was still knee-deep in litter from the Genesis concert the night before and large Braus with brooms were trying to sweep it all up.

The stage was still the Genesis size and shape and would have to be rebuilt to the Tull size and shape. We had probably only missed the Genesis crew by a few hours.

Our lighting crew, a hardy bunch from Zenith (Des, Colin, Gino and Bruce) started looking for points from which to hang their lights, the first operation of each day, and the PA crew (Pavel and Pete) and the stage crew (Andy, John, Ted, Geoff, Dave and me) vanished backstage into strange networks of echoing corridors in pursuit of a rumoured supply of sandwiches and coffee.

We found them, the usual Germanic idea of sandwiches — thin slices of cheese or undercooked meat on biscuit-sized pieces of powdery white bread — swooped like vultures and ate the lot. They were, after all, better than nothing and none of us had eaten since the previous afternoon. The coffee was plentiful, unlike the milk and sugar. Never mind, better luck next time. In this job you have only four things on your mind when you are working and three of them are food, drink and sleep.

Meanwhile, Kenny the stage manager and Tony the production manager were out front organising the rebuilding of the stage. Most of the stages on the tour were high (the bigger the band the higher they play) and all 12 or 15 tons of equipment had to be unloaded from the three artics early each day, wheeled inside, lifted or pushed on to the stage, unpacked, set up, then taken down, packed back into cases and loaded tightly back into the trucks by human muscle power alone.

In smaller bands that means hours of grunting and cursing hard work by the crew, who have probably only been getting an average of five hours' sleep and one take-away meal every two days AND licking t'stage clean wit' tongue IF they're lucky. Smaller bands, of course, commonly suffer the malady known as 'Wot Rider'. The crew and gear arrive at a venue and find that as well as no hampers there is no food, drink or electricity and the stage is the size of a double bed, despite the stipulations made in the rider to the contract that someone signed. When the crew protest the promoter will airily reply 'Rider? Wot Rider?'

But such deprivations are not suffered by outfits on the scale of Tull, although similar stories could no doubt be exhumed from their earlier years. The larger and better organised the operation the less it suffers from 'Wot Rider' and the more readily you can depend on having large numbers of large helpers (known in the trade as hampers) to assist with the heavy work or, in fact, do most of it. And on having sandwiches and coffee backstage. And apart from the occasional overnight drive, like last night's, on having a decent night's sleep after each gig.

Such are the heights to which the dreams of apprentice roadies occasionally aspire. When they get the chance to HAVE any dreams, that is. Lower down the scale the nearest thing you get to a dream is the kind of numb, head-spinning hallucination which is the symptom of much hard work, long hours and no sleep. It usually starts as you are driving your rented three-tonner plus gear and fellow crew south on the M1 just before dawn and usually ends in a ditch. I remember a tour with the Doctors of Madness...

Back at the gig, a fork lift truck and a dozen or more hampers materialised out of the woodwork and the equipment rolled out of the trucks and on to the stage in an almost miraculous fashion, or so it seemed after some of the communication difficulties we had been having with hampers elsewhere. We had a hard time even explaining that cases labelled 'stage right' went on the right hand side of the stage and cases labelled 'stage left' went the other side.

The lighting and PA equipment appeared first, followed by a pause while the lighting trusses were assembled and winched into the air on chains (a process known as 'flying' which can also be applied to part or all of the PA) and then the components of the inner sanctum, the stage gear.

The final European gig at Kiel in north Germany was, for us, the easiest one. The hall was so vast that all three artics were able to drive in and reverse to the stage, which turned out to have an hydraulic lift underneath. The whole thing could be lowered to floor level, loaded with gear and raised again. Why aren't they all like that?

By now, halfway through the tour, the routine of unloading, setting up, preparing and testing all the equipment was well practised and went smoothly. Everyone knew exactly what went where and where to kick it if it didn't work. (All this applies, of course, to every other band, large or small; it just happens to be Messrs Tull that I'm talking about.) Today's load-in was perhaps a fraction slower than it could have been, however, owing to the presence among the hampers of an exceedingly attractive young lady whose name I did ascertain but have since forgotten. Every time she bent to pick up a PA horn or push a flight case up the ramp to the stage half a dozen chivalrous Englishmen dropped what they were doing and rushed to help. Rule Britannia.

Jethro Tull had played at the Deutschlandhalle before, as they had at most of the venues on the tour, so the regular crew knew the place well. But some venues on the tour did give a few people nasty surprises — like the previously unseen Kuppelsaal in Hanover, nearly two weeks later. Its one good point was that it was literally next door to the hotel. We arrived there to find that it was a charming little circular hall with a charming little semi-circular stage, bits of which went up and down. It was very nearly a 'Wot Rider'; there was only just enough room to set up the stage gear and a small PA and when the band arrived and saw how much space there was for them to stand in the gig was almost blown out on the spot.

Much discussion with the promoter followed, while we awaited the command to tear the gear down and pack it away again. For two hours it was in the balance but in the end the gig went ahead and, surprisingly, turned out to be one of the best on the tour, perhaps because of the sudden change from huge, echoing halls to a small, intimate, front-parlour sort of place where the band could actually see all of the audience. There was even a crowd of noisy Blackpudlians in the gallery behind the stage which made Ian Anderson's day, Blackpool being Tull's birthplace.

"Now the seats are all empty
Let the roadies take the stage
Pack it up and tear it down
They're the first to come and the last to leave
Working for that minimum wage,
They'll set up in another town..."
From 'The Load Out' by Jackson Browne (Courtesy WEA)

Another place which everyone knew well but which still came as a nasty surprise was the dreaded 'now it's closed down now it's reopened no it's not it's closed down again well we've just reopened it' Glasgow Apollo. Luckily someone had the good sense to make it the second gig of the tour to get it out of the way; from the crew's point of view the place is a nightmare and the prospect of that still to come would have hung over the European stretch like a black cloud. The band seemed to like the place, though, and it was a good audience that night.

For those who don't know, the Apollo is a slightly converted old cinema or music hall, built in the days when all the equipment an artiste needed to bring with him was his suitcase, top hat and violin. The only way to load in 15 tons of gear is through a small doorway at the back of the place and down the long, narrow aisles. Then it all has to be lifted six or seven feet on to the stage. If you have ever tried doing that with three artic-loads of equipment you will understand. It's even worse for the lighting crews; they have to crawl around in what must be the filthiest, smallest and unsafest roof space in Europe to locate the flying points for the lights.

All the unpacking of cases, assembling of lighting trusses, disposing of empty cases and sundry heaving about has to be done on top of the seats in the first half dozen rows, which probably explains the state they are in. If only the people who own the Apollo would have the sense to knock a doorway through the wall beside the stage into the street... In fact this country has a distinct shortage of large, modern, well-planned venues suitable for big, touring rock bands whereas it seems that every town and city in Europe has at least one and sometimes two or three. Still, ours not to reason why, ours but to get on with the job.

The PA, Tull's own and one of the biggest used on the tour, was rapidly assembled and wired together. Each hall was treated to a different size and shape of PA, depending on the space available on stage and on the size of the venue. This stage was big enough to launch a Saturn Five from and the arena was vast. The only bigger one we played, as far as I can remember, was the Olympic stadium in Munich, a colossal place with a roof like a circus Big Top and seating for something like 12 000 people. That was given the works; every piece of PA was used, all 20 000 watts of it, driven by 24 Crown DC300A amps. The Birmingham Odeon, with its tiny stage, had the honour of receiving the smallest PA and terrible it sounded too. In America, where the smallest venue is about the size of the Olympic stadium, Tull's entire PA is used and is augmented by equipment hired from Tasco. But America is another story.

Some of the crew were dancing around energetically. Others, knackered, worked more slowly. 'Come on, hurry it up,' cajoled Andy, one of the speedier ones. 'You're not keen enough.' Everyone fell about and 'keen' became one of the joke words of the tour. We got keen hampers, keen waiters, keen chambermaids and keen border guards.

Before long, ear-shattering bleeps, whistles, roars and tapes of Ian Dury announced to everyone between the front of the stage and the back of Berlin that the PA was functioning. Sweating stage crew, busy unpacking and setting up the drum kit, amplifiers, speaker cabinets, keyboards, monitors, microphones and miles of wiring onstage, replied with the traditional merry riposte — 'Stop that bleedin' noise, we're trying to work.' It didn't really matter; most roadies are a quarter deaf anyway. It's an occupational hazard, like the dirt and the dust and the grazed knuckles and crushed fingers. Musicians who have been playing for a long time in loud bands must be almost stone deaf.

Each of the crew had his own specialised jobs to do once the general labour of unloading was over. My responsibility was the keyboards; two lots, one each side of the stage belonging to John Evans and David Palmer, eight instruments in all plus mixers and monitor cabs. The setup included the roadie's bane, a Hammond C3 organ (very heavy) and a newly-built and rather expensive pipe organ, also heavy, which Ian elegantly called 'the whistle machine'.

The Hammond was a bundle of fun, especially at packing away time. It separated into two parts but not everyone realised the fact. Have you ever seen two humpers struggle to put an entire Hammond in the case for its top half and then try to put the lid on?

David's pipe organ, a splendid example of British craftsmanship though it was (made by Mander of London), turned out to be a temperamental and unforgiving device. It wasn't really meant for touring and was both heavy and fragile. Behind its Perspex windows lurked rows of metal pipes like those you see in a fairground organ. They had originally been tuned at a temperature of 60 degrees F in the workshop but were promptly subjected to extremes of hot and cold weather as soon as we hit the road, with the result that the wretched instrument was never in tune.

In England, at the start of the tour, the organ was playing flat because the weather was so cold. Its pipes had to be warmed up with a fan heater before each gig. It was eventually retuned by a man from Mander's before we left England, only to go horribly sharp two days later when it encountered temperatures of 70 F or more in Europe. Some of the venues were like ovens; during soundcheck at the Olympic stadium the temperature hit 82 degrees. So in Europe the pipe organ had to have its pipes cooled each afternoon by the fan heater blowing cold air at them. (A similar device was used to maintain the temperature in the tuning room each day.) During the recorded gig at Berne in Switzerland, 10 days later, we even had three cups of ice standing inside among the pipes in the hope of keeping it in tune. At one time the poor machine was almost a semitone sharp and was obviously feeling very unhappy about the whole business.

All the equipment on stage had complex interconnections with various mixers, amps and monitors. A wiring diagram of the whole lot would have looked like a lunatic telephone exchange. But it was very well planned, or evolved I should say, like some kind of primal life form, and it all worked very well.

Meanwhile, high above the stage, some of the lighting crew were crawling along gantries aligning the 100 or more one kilowatt lamps and three Super Trouper spotlights were being installed and tested at the back of the hall.

By this time everything was proceeding at a manic pace, the first few hours of a non-stop stretch which would end with the crew collapsing into the coach at the end of the load-out around 2 or 3 am the next morning. A pretty average day, if so; getting on for 15 or 16 hours of almost continuous work, to be followed by a few hours stretched out in a hotel, followed by the next day's gig somewhere else. The routine repeated itself endlessly. It became another level of existence, a lifestyle as separate from the rest of humanity as that of an astronaut or a monk.

(To be concluded next month)