Crash Kings – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

This new Crazy Tour Stories segment was written by Michael Beliveau, bassist of the alternative rock band, Crash Kings. You can check out his wild road story, after the break.

We were on tour opening for Stone Temple Pilots last year when I made a complete fool of myself backstage.  We had just finished our set at the Paramount in Huntington, NY which is a new venue currently owned by Billy Joel.  I stumbled into the backstage still dripping of my own sweat from our performance and the DeLeo brothers (who we’ve come to know well at this point) are standing there talking with my brother and what looked to me like a just a friend of the DeLeo’s or management guy. He was casually dressed with a sweatshirt and baseball cap.  Robert turns to me and says with wide eyes a big grin on his face (as if messing with me) “Mike we want to introduce you to our friend, Billy Joel”.  Having no idea of his ownership or connection to the venue yet I quickly decided that this was not Billy Joel and they were messing with me.  So what did I do?  I laughed and said “Good one!”, barely shook his hand and walked away.  Later my brother comes up to me and says “Wow I can’t believe Billy Joel watched me play music.”  It was then that I realized that I had just laughed in the face of a legend.  Robert DeLeo will never let me live it down.  He was practically on the floor later that night laughing at what happened.  Pretty embarrassing, but oh well.  Sorry Billy Joel – I would have given more respect had I not had my head up my own ass.

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