Lost Boys and Good Men In An Insane Music World

Our Music Editor reveals what goes on once the crowd is gone and the tour bus gets back on the road.

Celia onstage

What qualifies someone a “good man”? Sadly, when it comes to the music industry, my bar is pretty low. This may not be a surprise considering the number of times I have dodged unwelcome hands, tongues and even a full on “I don’t want to get together and play music with you, I want to fuck you” from male musicians. I am an attractive woman in a male-dominated industry; this is part of the reality I became conditioned to resist to the point where a colleague told me that my vibe offstage was “clearly unavailable.” I learned to be uninviting as a self-defense mechanism.

Many stories have been published in recent years about predatory males in the music industry, resulting in the relegation of some formerly respected artists to the ranks of the “canceled”. I had hoped to reflect in this essay on the times that I have been helped, respected, recognized and encouraged, and recommended for work at the highest levels. Instead, I couldn’t help but find myself focusing on – for lack of a better term – the bad boys. Or at least, bad boy behavior. 

One of the things that qualifies a guy for the “good” category is whether or not I feel safe around him, and I have felt safe and supported by many, many men on my music journey. I have had the rare perspective of looking over a bandmate’s shoulder on a plane ride, in the middle of a tour, and eavesdrop-watched him slumped down in his seat as he scrolled endlessly through photos of his wife and kids on his phone. I’ve watched bandmates retreat to a quiet end of a dressing room or backstage areas to take a video call with family, obviously aching to connect with home. 

This distance is something I deeply relate to. My own father, though not a professional musician, joined the United States Merchant Marine in his young adulthood. He had a third grade education, so the union wage he earned being out at sea was better than any dry-land job he could find. His benefits even put two of my siblings through universities on full scholarship. He was never around, yet he provided for us with his sea voyages and international travel, which took its toll on my parents’ marriage and our family over the long stretches when he would be out on the job. 

I grew up knowing only the conflicting feelings of being a child left behind. Then, as an adult, I felt the sting of discovering the dishonesty, casual encounters and substance abuse of former partners, who were also musicians. When I grew up and into my own role as a touring musician, I was faced with the reality that my male colleagues were good guys – they had great wives, girlfriends and kids; saved up for houses, made investments, flew their families to the show, paid for school and summer camp with their earnings. Unfortunately, those same men would also fall into depression, despair and loneliness and develop self-destructive coping behaviors: dependencies on substances; alternative stage personas that bleed into offstage life; serial casual sexual encounters. I reluctantly developed a seed of compassion for these men, as I felt similar pressures on my mind and spirit while carrying on an augmented existence.

I received this assignment – to write on “good men” in the music industry – just before the news came out about Dave Grohl: that rock and roll’s perennial “good guy,” the guy with the omnipresent smile and gung-ho demeanor and 21 year marriage with kids, had admitted to fathering a child with someone other than his wife. 

This is where it becomes difficult to talk about who the good guys are. Again, the main factor for me in determining who is “good”, is who feels “safe” to be around. I suppose for me, in my working environment, it’s like I’m everyone’s sister. A man who would be my fierce protector in the band could turn around to enjoy the intimate company of a female fan or a Tinder rightswipe outside of our musical “family.” The number of times I have felt encircled by male protection feels equal to the times I have been aware of male colleagues behaving questionably with other women. 

I started talking to some of the men I have worked with about this, and one of them made a statement that raised my eyebrows: “Being onstage basically puts me in the same position as being an attractive woman.” My first reaction was “Dude, you CANNOT be serious with that sentence.” But since I love this guy like a brother and am curious about his inner life, I said, “What do you mean? I don’t understand.” His reply was “Look. I am an average, middle-aged white guy. If I walk up to a 20-year-old young woman and proposition her, she’ll be like, ‘eeeuw, who is this old guy?’  But after I’m seen onstage in an arena, I have girls throwing themselves at me. It is insane. People who don’t work like we do have no idea how unnatural it is. No one prepares you for it, and the unreality, the scale and fantastical nature of it encourages insane and unhealthy behavior.” 

We were at a coffee shop; he motioned towards an attractive young woman a couple of tables away. “Ask her if she wants to have sex with a paunchy, 55-year-old married guy with kids. She’ll probably say no. Ask her if she wants to fuck Dave Grohl, and you might get a much different answer. Imagine women coming at you wanting you, day after day after day.” That weird reality eventually begins to feel normal, along with the feeling that no one will know if you indulge in the insane, unnatural fantasy atmosphere that has become your life. 

Oooofff. I  I know what he’s talking about. I have been a speed bump in the merciless stampede between hyper-enthusiastic fans and their rockstar target(s). I have been grabbed by my shoulders and violently shoved aside, charged by a trio of fans breaking through to the backstage area, yanked down the stairs leading up to the stage (perilous, when wearing platform heels) and have even had fans climb onstage take over my place during a duet in front of 15,000 people. [Editors Note: only an experienced stage performer with supreme confidence could handle this situation as well as Celia did!]

There is a difference between a power imbalance due to status, stage of life, or physical size, and what I have observed firsthand: the phenomenon of men who have inadequate emotional or psychological tools to resist an unending smorgasbord of pretty and willing women. Now, I don’t necessarily believe this creates a power imbalance in favor of the woman. Rather, it’s a situation that bluntly reveals a perpetuated adolescence that is allowed and encouraged by the traveling-circus, “Almost Famous” atmosphere. There is an infantilization that results from everything being provided for you: food, the schedule, transportation, lodging, even wardrobe and well-being perks like massage and medical care. Some adults can still adult, if they have the emotional maturity and awareness (or have done the work to reach it) to see through the fantasy façade of the entertainment biz. Others, however, are Lost Boys, looking for a solution – a substance, or a surrogate Tinkerbell or Wendy to help them numb the separation, ungroundedness and tedium of such an unreal existence.

It is possible to find a way to step back from the Smorgasbord of Easy Encounters to work towards a new level of transparency with their families, wives and partners. I’ve seen men who — after having a booty call at every tour stop for years — go cold turkey and say “It’s not worth it” to jeopardize what they have with a new partner at home. I’ve seen men admit they have developed a distorted view of women and enter 12-step programs to find a spiritual solution. There are guys who meditate backstage, check in with support groups, or go to therapy to reduce their willingness to do harm. After years of empty road sex, they seek to address the emptiness that comes from being ungrounded, isolated from a community or family back home. One former male colleague, now in a loving, monogamous relationship, confided to me that he had entered Sex Addicts Anonymous and is now sponsoring many other men, helping them abstain from acting out in unhealthy ways. 

Perhaps the journey for these Lost Boys is the same as it may be for any addict or any habitual user of self-destructive self-soothing: use the painkiller as long as it works, and when it stops working, you become ready and willing to do some adulting. 

I have watched my friends and colleagues enough to believe that this may be just the slow and painful process through which wisdom is reached; we fuck up, we feel shitty, we sense — or hear painful testimony from others — that we are leaving human scorched earth behind us. For a while, we may be in denial or just don’t care; the payoff for the behavior is, well, paying off. Then, somewhere along the way, awareness hits. They come to understand the adult consequences of their behavior. They also, in time, realize they are still worthy of love and forgiveness, especially from themselves. At this basic level, I can relate to that process all too painfully.

“Good” men are open to change, and to healing some of the hurt they have caused. How could they do better? They could ask for help and recommit to being more present for their loved ones. They can bring new awareness and more mindful behavior to the rock and roll workplace; maybe sitting down with younger musicians and offering a heads-up about the unreality of the attention they are about to experience. They could make a point of seeking out and recommending female or non-binary techs, musicians, designers and crew members that I know are out there looking for work. Having more non-cis-males in the “family” might help denormalize callous treatment of women outside our  inner circle. 

Recently, organizations like Backline.org have begun to offer self-care and mental health support for touring musicians. Their Touring Notebook even comes in a Partner Edition to help families and partners with pre-tour prep, the time while the musician is on tour, and re-entry – which, in my experience, is a jarring culture shock that sometimes must be managed even though your body just wants sleep and quiet.  

There will still be those who will prefer to cross boundaries both implied and clarified, who in their current state of emotional immaturity, sociopathy, or psychopathy are not safe, and women are wise to share information on how to avoid them or make it harder for them to keep preying on the unsuspecting. But are all transgressors bad guys, forever and ever? Or are some on their land-mine laden path to being better husbands and fathers, sponsors, mentors and teachers? I don’t have a definitive answer. What I do know is: I can’t help loving a few good men, my musical brothers, who have made bad choices but are still good guys.