It was 1998ish, somewhere in Sheffield, and I had a blind date.
We were going to see Blur, and the Shirehorses were supporting (remember them? even slightly? Mark Radcliffe and Marc Riley's parody group?).

The Blind Date has previously mentioned that he knew Mark and Marc, and would get us backstage to meet them.

Anyway, when the BD and I met up, it was immediately apparent that we had zero chemistry, and the atmosphere was pretty stilted. But what can you do? Sometimes you have to try and make the best of these situations...

So, BD and I go backstage and he introduces me to Mark and Marc. Suddenly I realise that I have absolutely nothing to say to them. I have no reason to be there. My mind goes blank. I stammer through a hello, and find a seat in the corner. And stay there, feeling extremely awkward. BD has abandoned me to chat to the other people he knows (not that I mind, but it's just now apparent to everyone that I am a spare part).

so I sit there. and I sit there. and I wonder how I can make my exit gracefully, and how soon I can do it.

then the BD saunters up to me and says "I don't feel so well, I'm going home. Bye" and leaves.

so I sit there some more. and then I leave without saying goodbye to anyone (like I had anyone to say goodbye to).

then I found my way back to the auditorium and watched Blur instead. and they were great. but something inside me had died a little that night.

I went backstage following a Little Feat concert at Hammersmith Odeon. This was the early 1990s, so it is fair to say that they were not in the first flush of youth.

Nevertheless, I suppose I had imagined scenes of bacchanalian debauchery, blizzards of white powder and rivers of booze. The reality was a bunch of middle aged men sitting around drinking Perrier water. Someone came up to me and offered me a choice of tea or a Diet Coke. I chose Diet Coke.

I had a brief chat to Richie Hayward (about the weather or something equally thrilling) and decided more fun was to be had getting the night bus back home...

Backstage at Glastonbury sometime in the 80's as a cub reporter for the BBC ( before saturation coverage...hell, this was radio! ) I stood next to Elvis Costello in the communal portaloo. I was way too nervous to say anything since he looked in a really bad mood. So, instead of saying 'hey, Elvis, you know I've always thought your King of America album was one of the finest records of the decade' I just brushed past him and probably gave the impression that I was a sulky singer in a third rate indie band. ( Which, spookily, at the time....I was! )
Later I queued up behind Naomi Campbell for a coffee in a paper cup. We swapped phone numbers and we had a secret affair for years. ( One of those statements is true ).
Chatted to Mike Scott of the Waterboys and he was charming but vague. Said 'hey Mike, what was that song you finished your set with here last year...I think you introduced it as something like Saints and Angels...I've got the complete Waterboys discography but I've never come across that song before'. He said he couldn't remember it at all. Next year the live set was released on CD and, lo and behold, said tune was there. Turned out he wrote it. How can you forget one of your own tunes like that? ( Probably best not to ask eh? )
Pestered Lawrence from Felt for an interview because I was a big fan. He looked at me as if I was some kind of peculiar lizard.
Escorted Mark E. Smith from an interview to a car. He was charm itself. Signed my Fall albums and gave me a ticket to an upcoming show.
I'd only been commissioned to do a general piece on the festival...not to go swanning it backstage but I was so proud of my blagging abilities. I ended up with a three day backstage pass with parking! One night I sat around a camp fire alongside the Waterboys and the Hothouse Flowers singing Irish folk songs ( which I didn't know ). I surreptitiously recorded it on my Sony Professional Walkman ( remember them? )
Got Van Morrison to sign Astral Weeks. He even smiled when the bloody pen wouldn't work.
Gave the geezer from Hothouse Flowers a t-shirt of my band just before he went out on the Pyramid stage. He said he'd wear it during the set. He did too. Er...tied up in his hair...
Supported the La's once. Lee Mavers had a massive fish hook in his back pocket and looked like a man who knew how to use it. And not necessarily on fish. Our drummer got into an argument about the rules of pool with him. I closed my eyes tightly and waited for the anguished scream resulting from an imminent puncture. Luckily, it never came.
More recently I was at a James Blunt aftershow and he was a thoroughly decent chap. I reckon that the hallowed cloisters of Harrow and a spell as a tank commander works wonders for a man. ( Even though it does appear to do funny things to one's voice )

Went to see Kasabian with a gang of ex-pat mates at a place called The Backstage in Munich a while back, and after a very good show of sub-Roses riffery I got talking to a scary looking fella who was coked-up to the eyeballs and apparently “Head of Security” for the band (we’d bonded over the fact that he’d just done 12 months at Her Majesty’s Pleasure near my home town).

So he got us to meet the band on a tiny raised area in the far corner of the club, and actually they were all lovely chaps, more interested in finding out how Leicester City had got on than indulging in any archetypal rock’n roll excesses, although they did share our enthusiasm for Bavarian beers. A (female) friend of mine was most amused about how grown-up 30something adult males could be reduced to a bunch of fawning schoolboys by the mere presence of (admittedly at this point not very famous) rock stars. But that’s the power of leather trousers and vintage Rickenbackers I suppose.

between groupie and ligger. Anyone can try to be a ligger but us blokes sadly don't stand a chance as groupies. Unless the massive know otherwise...

On a training course I was sent on many years ago, the person running it was famous, within the business I worked for at the time, for once allegedly succeeding in doing the male groupie thing with none other than Debbie Harry. He was a spectacularly unprepossessing looking chap who had dined off this tale for a number of years and to this day he is the only male I have ever met who can claim to have been a groupie, if only on that one occasion (and if indeed it was at all true).

I think about the indie women of my era- everyone I knew fancied Kim Deal and Tanya Donnelly but no one seemed to try to wangle backstage passes when they came to town in the hope of trying their luck. Is this because female rockers don't do groupies? Or merely that white male indie boys are all crap (as I sure was)? Surely lady rockers are after some love action in the same way that bloke rockers are?

I have never made it backstage ever by the way. I can't help but suspect that if I ever did it would have been a complete re-enactment of "How Soon Is Now."

I don't know why the general public assume it to be such a magnificent and magical place, as opposed to the sad reality of most venues, where it's somewhere you can observe the lesser spotted roadie in their natural habitat while drinking warm beer in a dressing room where some indie band has drawn a cock on wall...

The greasepaint, the warm beers, the snot. Snot?

In the dressing room, drinking the rider with a guy from WEA Records in Bradford whilst AC/DC go through the motions on stage during their first UK tour. Young Angus (and he was young back then) comes off stage in the ritual minute of gathering one's thoughts before going back for the encore. Face suffering from an extreme runny nose that requires the attention of the snot roadie to wipe afflicted area before the show can resume.

My brother plays in Paolo Nutini's band and whilst recording the new album got chatting to the owner of the recording studio, a real rock n'roll casualty.

This perpetually under the influence Irishman has seen loads of big names come through his doors, including one Michael Jackson, who invited him to a gig over in London.

Backstage that night where a crazy melange of celebrities, minders and Middle Eastern men in full get up accompanied by large Arab men with suspicious bulges near their shoulders. Our man spotted Paris Hilton, who proceeded to take out a massive joint. Having been unable to get any weed himself, he waltzes over to the hotel heiress and gives her a talking to about respect, the time and place, the insults she may be perpretrating against those Arab gentleman's culture. He grabs the J off her and goes back to his perch near the aforementioned Arabs.

Later on, he then sparks up the J, at which point Miss Hilton goes ballistic and makes to go for him. The bodyguards swoop down and hold her back. Our man just turns away and waves a hand to say "she isn't worth it lads, let her go".

Now THAT'S an after-show party!

It also puts you in charge of organising The Word Massive Christmas Shindig.

on that particular snippet was wrong sorry. That was from an interview at BBC Wales where Mark E. Smith came in to plug his Cardiff gig later on that night. I brought my Fall albums in and he signed them as I escorted him to his taxi afterwards. Should have made that clearer. Oops. Apologies.

the elevator.

But my wife has a tale. Back in the day at Manchester Uni her housemate persuaded here to go see a band she knew from her schooldays in Oxford. After the gig, said friend persuades her to pop backstage to see the band - they are, after all, old friends. Security passed, the two young women somehow get split up and my wife stumbles across the dressing room first. Spying in their midst a slightly drunk bleach-blonde early-twentysomething woman not of their acquaintance, Radiohead react precisely as you'd imagine - part embarrassed shuffling of feet, part pleasant enquiry as to who she might be. "Sorry, I'm a friend of ***** ******," she says to the bloke she vaguely recognises as the lead singer, "...you must be Tim."

Remember Rats and Delicious? I was not going to use the term "groupies" in case they were grown up members of the Massive but I did find this reference to them in a book about XTC, called Chalkhills and Children, where it mentions them
Rats & Delicious

They actually went on to record a single. Bonny girls they were. Popular too.

...got chased out of the backstage area of the Wolverhampton Civic (or possibly the neighbouring Wulfrun) a few years ago, by Aimee Mann's manager. He'd casually wandered back there only to be greeted with a friendly 'Who the f*!* are you?' by Ms Mann, who then summoned managerial assistance.

It wasn't his first foray into the nether regions of that venue because a couple of years earlier he, I, and a couple of other mates made it unchallenged to the dressing room after a Wilco gig. Jeff Tweedy was friendly enough despite my inane questions, Jay Bennett was a miserable so-and-so, but again we were asked to leave when they noticed that one of our party was greedily tucking into their Pringles and sandwiches (to be fair, the offender - hello Mark Holdaway, last seen teaching in Brighton - hadn't eaten all day).

A few years ago for my mates 40th birthday we went to Athens for a short break and to see Simple Minds. Not knowing where the gig venue was we wandered around until we spotted figures dressed in black sporting passes. "Aha, road crew" we thought, so we asked them if they were heading for the venue. Yes they said, follow us. I explained it was my mates birthday and a tall chap introduced himself. "Hi, I`m Eddie the bass player" He was really nice that we didn`t know him from Adam, got us in backstage for free and we climbed off the stage onto the front row to the glare of a bunch of pissed off Athenian Minds fans. Nice guy, Eddie!

Well Ian Dury and the Blockheads did at Leeds Poly in 1977. Sold out gig and fans kept appearing from the dressing room. Turns out they were pulling them in through the window.

Ian was a little nonplussed about the dish of Kit E Kit alongside the beers and sandwiches. Turns out his management had jokingly written it into the rider and the Social Sec, eager to please, had delivered to the letter.

On the next tour, Ian's show came to the bigger Leeds Uni. My chance for fame came when I was invited from the special guests area, alongside a dozen others, to perform a chorus line behind the band on the encore. I imagined we would be adding our weight to Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll. Instead we had to sing the title over and over again from a different tune, like a bunch of lemons. Which song? Fuckin Ada. (pardon my french). The shame...

in Adelaide a few weeks ago. My friend and I were invited backstage by the road manager and the bassist, Andy Lewis (to "calm the boys down"). Backstage was just one room and it was only us and the band and Paul plus a roadie, so very intimate. Wine had already been spilt up the wall - real rock n roll stuff, hey. Paul was very nice but also intent on becoming very pissed. He took an instant dislike to my red pants and spent most of the evening suggesting we would have more fun without them (I'm a girl, so he's not gay - don't worry). I let him get me drunk on wine and his lemonade and vodka special. We had a good old chat about this and that - for some bizarre reason he thought I spoke fluent French - and mostly sat there insulting each other. He seemed to like that. Anyway we spent about three or four hours backstage. I gave him my band's demo. Next morning I get a call on my mobile from him (private number, damn) thanking me for a good night, telling me to never wear the red pants and promising he'll listen to my demo.
Weird.
By far my best groupie story and would have great bragging rights if anyone I knew actually had heard of Paul Weller.