During the 45 minutes we’re on the phone, Steve “Pineapple” Alberts – a behind-the-scenes mainstay of Australian live music – misses seven calls.
Alberts, 58, has 40 years experience as a roadie and five years as a mentor to others, in an industry particularly vulnerable to mental health issues, addiction, depression and suicide.
He usually gets 25 calls or messages a month, from people reaching out for support.
But as rumours began to swell last week that public gatherings would be banned – a crucial response to the coronavirus crisis, but one which will decimate live entertainment in Australia – Alberts got around 30 calls in just a handful of days, from colleagues who were suddenly, shockingly, completely out of work. Five of them, he says, were thinking about ending their lives.
While there’s been no comprehensive research into the Australian industry, non-profit organisation CrewCare believes that the suicide rate among live entertainment crew and roadies – who number around 10,000 in Australia – could be 10 times the national average. Alberts himself lost 17 industry friends last year; the year before that, 14.
And now at least five months’ worth of job prospects have dried up, virtually overnight. According to the CrewCare director Tony Moran, and verified by four companies Guardian Australia spoke to, every major live music production and crewing company in Australia is standing down, or has stood down, their part-time and full-time staff – and that’s only around 10% of the industry, the rest of which is casual or contracted. “It’s the first industry to stop dead,” Moran says.
According to Live Performance Australia’s most recent figures, 26.3m tickets to live performances were purchased in 2018, in an industry worth $2.2b – an increase of 14.8% from the year before. Streaming technology could bring a bit of money back to musicians and performers, but it won’t help the backbone of their industry: the roadies, tech teams, tour managers and riggers who set up the shows that sustain their careers.
For now, all their work is gone – bookings have dried up until late this year or early next, and there’s no sign of when it will return.
“I think we’re all just in disbelief in how fragile the industry turned out to be,” Moran says. “We’ve had peaks and troughs before … but I don’t think we ever could have conceived how this could happen. It’s just shell-shock.”
Alberts – who has five kids – says that in just two weeks he lost bookings up to August that were worth $56,000: “I’ve got four weeks of wages left in my bank account.” Of the 36,000 who applied for jobs at Coles this week, only 5,000 were successful – and Alberts wasn’t one of them. “I’ve been applying to Coles, Woolies, night jobs, forklift driving, construction. They just don’t have the jobs. It’s pretty shocking. It’s dire straights. I’ve never known anything like this.”
Alberts will be fine, he says; he’s not sure about the others. “They don’t know when there’s going to be work, and the money is running out. They’re thinking, ‘I’ve let everyone down. I’ve let my family down. I don’t know how to provide … how long do we have to wait?’
“I’ve got a lot of friends that are going to lose everything.”
‘Everything has been shut down. There’s nothing’
Like all seasoned roadies, Alberts has many skills: he describes himself as a site manager, a production manager, a project manager; a rigger, a lighting designer and a technician. He has worked on tours for Paul McCartney and the Dalai Lama, and speaks with a gruff but warm voice that’s filled with as much passion as it is despair.
“I was that guy in rock and roll that didn’t fit in; I was a punk before it became fashionable,” he says. “Loud, outspoken, unruly, that guy that took a lot of drugs and still did the work, because in the 80s that was acceptable.”
The person who introduced us describes him as “the oracle of touring”. Alberts can see into the future of the industry because he’s been through it all before. “I got through many addictions, mental health breakdowns, I attempted suicide. I got through the other side. So now people reach out to me – because, ‘If he got through it, I can get through it’.”
Life as a roadie is a brutal cocktail when it comes to mental health, he explains. Your income is job to job, and you answer to many; Alberts, for instance, works – or worked – for nine production companies as a contractor, and three as a casual. All those companies now have empty schedules ahead of them, and have had to stand down staff. For casuals and contractors, there’s no leave, no sick days, no security. “This week’s pay cheque pays next week’s bills, and there’s not enough to put in the bank,” he says. “Long service leave? That’s a 45-minute lunch break.”
The hours are long and often at night, meaning your colleagues are your social life. When you’re on tour, there’s no home to go to at the end of the show. When you’re off tour it’s quiet – and often, you’re alone.
It’s not just that. “Our industry is full of tough old bastards, male-dominated, and they don’t like reaching out for help. They don’t want to ring Beyond Blue because they feel they won’t understand, because our job is more a lifestyle than a job,” Alberts says. “Even the young ones are hardened like that.”
He’s worried that the social distancing being recommended by government and health authorities could make matters worse. “Everything we do for a living is about creating happiness for others. And all of a sudden there is no collective … now no one [has reason to] come together as a group, to be happy.
“It’s not just the roadies and performers. It’s the ushers, the people who sell at the food stalls, security, the freight and transport companies – we’ve all been put out of work, as of last Friday,” he says. “Everything has been shut down. There’s nothing.”
Of course, once the ban on mass gatherings is over – and once the economy picks back up – the live industry will be resurrected too. But for Alberts, that feels like worlds away. “I just don’t know how long it will take before that happens. That’s the key to all of this: we just don’t know.”
‘This is our time to be strong’
Australian non-profit Support Act, which offers financial and mental health support to the industry, has just launched a major fundraising and awareness initiative: The Sound of Silence. “They’re helping as much as they can,” Alberts says, of Support Act. “But you have to put your financial situation on the table [to ask for help], and a lot of people are too embarrassed to do that, so they go by the wayside.”
Insiders told the Guardian that many roadies aren’t eligible for welfare or the stimulus, or are too proud to ask. And those who can get benefits are encountering a deeply flawed system, and an untenable waiting period.
Alberts says older roadies are already teaching the younger crew how to be more financially responsible. But the most urgent need is more funding: he believes a $50m boost to Support Act would save the government money in the long term.
The industry is rallying in other ways, too. Howard Freeman, another legend of the touring industry, sent a mass email this week on behalf of CrewCare, encouraging shuttered companies and the newly unemployed to look out for each other.
“Call three people a day to see how they are doing,” the email reads. “If someone is really down and struggling, ring them again that afternoon or night.”
Freeman recommends closed businesses host small social events like barbecues, to help people gather together and eat (maintaining that 1.5 metres between). “People who can bring a plate bring a plate; those that can’t, don’t,” he writes. “Even if it’s just inviting someone over for dinner. Keep up that contact.”
All Access Crewing in Brisbane, one of many agencies who have stood down staff, has set up a daily food bank for its employees, and are paying core crew the equivalent of the dole for six weeks as they wait for benefits. The managing director, Dee Dimmick, told the Guardian not everyone is in a position to do that. The best thing the government could do right now, she says, is get rid of the welfare waiting period. “That would make an enormous difference.”
In the meantime Alberts and some other colleagues are working on a Facebook tool for roadies: a sort of crisis check-in for people to tell the world they’re OK each day.
As the email from Freeman reads: “The live events industry is always the first one to put up their hand to help out others. Now we need to help ourselves.
“The small thing you do today and tomorrow, could mean the difference to someone out there doing it tough. This is our bushfire. This is our tsunami. This is our hunger appeal. This is our time to be strong.”
• Crisis support services can be reached 24 hours a day. The Support Act Wellbeing Helpline is available to all in the music and live performance arts industry: 1800 959 500; Lifeline: 13 11 14; Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467; MensLine Australia: 1300 78 99 78; Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636
