Our MOST Embarrassing Gig DISASTERS w/ Tim Pierce

hey everybody you know me and you know tim i'm here in tim's studio we're hanging out we've been playing guitar actually my guitar's not even plugged in tim was playing guitar and uh we were just talking about some hilarious stories some things that happened to tim because i always love to ask tim tim what are the most you know embarrassing things that have happened tim has all these great stories about this stuff and kind of like the adele story that he told in one of the videos that we did recently so tim what was the neville brothers story that that you had told me well i got to do the tonight show with aaron neville and this was the jay leno version of the tonight show and those of us who've done it it runs like a very smoothly oiled machine you get there and you do a rehearsal and everything goes perfect and then you wait a couple hours in the green room and you see some other stars or whatever and then you do the actual show the show is basically over at 6 or 6 30. wait are you getting nervous though during this or no no there are nerves yeah but when you do the rehearsal i mean they're so professional the idea is you once you do the rehearsal and you realize oh we got this you know it's great we got this so the song was uh bill withers you know uh what's what's the classic bill withers i literally i know i know i know um phil withers yeah i know i know he starts assange singing ain't no sunshine whoa so we're doing ain't no sunshine and it's awesome great musicians freddie washington uh bill schnee was in the booth you know running the sound you know it was just really really really an amazing group built jim jim cox was playing keyboards a guy named steve lindsey who we all loved was playing keyboards also he was kind of the music the md for it so aaron neville is singing ain't no sunshine and we do the rehearsal dean parks had actually played on the recorded version but it was not available for whatever reason so it was kind of subbing for dean so i did a really smart thing i borrowed a great acoustic guitar from a friend of mine with a great pickup in it right it's beautiful and we did the rehearsal and it went great okay so we you know there's a couple of hours between rehearsal maybe two and a half and the show and i i put the guitar on the stand and walked away what i didn't realize is i had left the guitar plugged in which for those of you that don't know if you leave it plugged in it drains the battery yeah so we got out to do the show and then everything does have to go like clockwork because it's just like you see it on tv it just runs it runs and we get up to play and there's no sound and there's a curtain in front of us that's the thing you're in the band and you're getting set up and there's a curtain and all the most professional dedicated people in the world are getting ready to do your thing and film your thing and the guitar doesn't work so what is going through your mind at the time terror fear but the main thing i remember is that you know the band is playing during commercials and this is when this happens basically and they stretch it out a little bit well they had to stretch it out basically it was an infinite moment of fear because i'm going oh i'm stopping the entire tonight show i and i i don't know what i did but this guitar has no sound so what do you so what happened was it turned into this dream where i just heard the tonight shows playing the band is playing baby whatever they're playing and i'm hearing it and it's just going on forever it's like time started to stretch a nightmare that began to just stretch into an infinite undefinable stretch of time right the look on aaron neville's face now he's he's one of those guys who he was wearing a sleeveless shirt because he's he's ripped yeah and he's tall and he's strong and he's standing right in front of me looking at me like who are you and why did we hire you he didn't say that but that was the look it was like you know like i've gone my whole life with great musicians and now this [Music] not this guy right so vicky randall who's the percussionist okay she goes she came up they were trying to figure out what's going on so the band was playing but she was able to exit the band the band knows they need to keep vampires yeah they know that there's a a problem so they're just playing and playing and playing and i'm sure jay leno's i can't see jay leno's i'm sure he's sitting there going guys you know just let's get on with the show she comes over she finds out what the problem is she said i think i have a guitar in my dressing room and she had a parker fly which has a piezo in it sounds pretty darn close enough acoustic guitar yeah so she brings out the parker fly and what you have is this i have to search for the footage because what you have is five traumatized musicians and a singer who's probably really angry doing ain't no sunshine and afterwards there was no real uh attaboy we understand it was kind of like man that was bad there's gotta be footage of this out there there has to be and i had a fleeting thought that i would find it before we we uh we convened and i told you about it but that's okay i mean trauma needs to be uh put away i think i everybody know has these things that happen though these kind of gig disasters yeah you fall off the stage you step on a set list whatever you know um so everybody can relate to that story well i have one other one that i hesitate to tell because i i i could have done better in the situation but here we go yeah okay so rick rick springfield i it was my boss for a while we did four world tours and one of our openers was corey hart and corey and i became friends you know we really liked each other and i ended up doing his records too okay and he invited me to do a one-off at the world's fair ground whatever the the grounds of the world's fair in new york are i forget what it's called what that park is called and do three songs at this big giant musical festival for one of the radio stations and so i learned the songs i made the deal with the nr guy for what i was getting paid got on the plane flew in on saturday met all the radio people had dinner with them that night cory was coming in the next morning from toronto or vancouver or wherever he was and i practiced the songs in my hotel room again and again so i was doing what i do which is focus practice on the songs because i'm getting it was a large audience a huge audience and and i wanted to be ready and focused and relaxed and you know deal with whatever nerves you know that's that's how you do it you're just a game you know you you get ready for the game and i was standing in my hotel room which was literally across the highway from the park the venue and i couldn't see the the actual venue but i knew that it was basically the next piece of land across from the hotel and so all day long i'm looking at my hotel room watching vans take band and crew you know the various bands and artists that we're playing to the hotel i'm thinking i just hop on one of those vans and head over there i know right because i i should have done that but they actually actually had a limo that was going to take me at three o'clock okay so at three o'clock i go down into the lobby and i'm sitting there with my guitar and i wait for about 40 minutes and i i look outside well there is a limo part out there and i look over and there's a guy frantically calling somebody on the house phone and i go that i mean i'm the only person in the lobby i have a guitar case that can't be my limo driver because he would notice the obvious i'm the only guy in the lobby and i have a guitar right so i walk up and tap this guy on the shoulder and i say are you looking for tim pearson oh yes yes so this gentleman had moved to new york from east india two weeks prior you know where this is going no no and he was so relieved because we were already 40 minutes late right okay so now you have to remember this was before cell phone sure there was a phone no gps yeah there were no gps no nothing yeah there was a portable phone not a portable form but you know wired phone in the back of the limit sure so there was cell service i didn't own a cell phone at that time a lot of people didn't own cell phones so it's probably mid 90s or so right yeah even earlier yeah earlier than that i just can't remember it might have even been late 80s is that possible yeah possibly yeah once again i've put it out of my consciousness so he proceeded to drive me off into timbuktu and i kept asking him do you know where you're going do you i think it's what's right it was right over there i've got it i've got it we'll get there and i'm dialing on the cell phone on you know this dead cell phone in the in the limousine and the scenery kept changing you know like film at the beginning of the sopranos where it starts it's like one whole different locale and then there's another locale and then another locale we weren't even in the same universe anymore i was i didn't know where i was i was maybe 30 miles away i didn't know and at a certain point i mean i kept thinking okay i'll get in a taxi but he kept he he kind of kept going and he kept wanting me to stay there he kept assuring me that's what it was coming back to me now he kept assuring me that he knew how to get there and i guess really i didn't realize until afterwards that we were literally right across the highway that was my mistake because i had never been there before i didn't realize my so when you started you were right almost there yeah we were across the highway from the piece of land that the venue was on my god and at a certain point the gig came and went oh and we were still out there lost and i couldn't reach anybody and i i i honestly thought that if i did jump out of the car and got into a cab i would be later because we were so close to the actual you understand i watched vans all day go to the gig yeah but i waited to this this guy to take me right before the gig to the gig so all that time was like tim you're looking at your watch thinking like okay this is yeah he's i mean he lost 40 minutes just not seeing me in the lobby right and then he drove me far away from the gig and i so i i guess i guess i was okay because i really didn't have time to make a plan b and he kept reassuring me why wouldn't i think he i mean he he was the guy they hired why would he not know how to get me there and eventually i just had him take me back to the airport oh my god oh no and the anr guy never paid me it was like jesus and corey understood they all understood because then he copped to what happened they knew exactly what happened so i was not blamed for it but it really i should you have to have kind of a military attitude when you're on the road and i should have had a more you know i should have put on my camos and gotten to the gig in one of those vans i knew this session once where and by mistake i had my wawa pedal open all the way to the highest you know the most skinny thinnest sound you could possibly have dennis right thinnest sound you possibly have so we're getting a guitar sound and everybody's trying to get a guitar sound and i'm going why does it and i'm thinking these guys have this this studio it was at a m which is which is an amazing studio thinking these guys have got something really messed up here because they're most running around with the mic mic or the broading they're going through the wall you know something out there we're moving mics we're testing all this stuff and you got to remember you're with musicians who are getting paid a lot already you know so the pressure is it was a tracking date you know and no i realized at a certain point i went poop on the wand and i went oh and i think i actually skated because i think i just clicked it on and went oh yeah we got it sounds great now it must have been i must have been a bad cable and then everybody was so relieved we just went right to work so that those things you can kind of uh recover from quickly that wawa again tim [Laughter] you should know yeah and then oh you're right oh yeah so another one alberto gatika used to hire me a lot amazing engineer david foster's engineer and a great producer in his own right and we were doing a session and he was kind of at his wit's end because he he said to me tim you need to help me i need your help with this i don't understand it's just not sounding right it's not sounding right and we had actually cut some guitars on a song but i'm like sounds sounds pretty good to me i you know you know maybe you know once again i'm thinking it's just how the studio sounds today you know it wasn't my favorite studio yeah and i won't mention it but it wasn't my favorite studio and i never really was that happy with the way things sounded at this particular place i mean he may have said you know can you go out and look at the mics and you know he has placed the mics which he's brilliant at and you know everything and i go out and i look and i have two cabinets and he's been recording the cabinet that's not plugged in and so i'm thinking yeah this studio is no wonder i hate this studio just doesn't sound very good and he's going well tim must know what he's doing that's his sound i guess his sound sounds maybe it sounds like it's coming from the side we hired tim for the modern sound i guess that's modern sound but then at a certain point it was kind of like okay you got to help me out here you you got to help me this i don't know what's going on but i need your help really well i took the cable and i plugged it into the cabinet that had the mics in front of it and started again when i was in a band one time i was i was in this band and um and we had this gig uh a gig came up with this club called brownies in new york city and they called us and uh it was my old band and we had only been together for about three weeks right and we get a and but we had this demo that we had made uh in the studio and all these a r guys were calling me oh my your your blue demo is amazing so this guy calls me from brownies like we have a gig uh we had a cancellation do you want to come and play so we drove from atlanta to new york city to play and every a r person there there must have been 10 labels that were there and one of my friends jim fallon i don't know if you ever knew jim and jimmy yes yeah old friend of mine he was head of a r a m he came with with one of my best friends dave uh brings jim down but everybody had heard these tapes and everything so we get to the club and the sound man that's normally there is sick so you have some substitute sound guy so so it's our turn to play we go up and um and we start playing and and uh you can't hear anything monitors there's no monitors right we're playing and then the third song in the guy comes up and he forgot to put a snare mic up right so there's no snare mic and this was the the such a disaster but i couldn't really tell because we didn't have any monitors or anything so we really couldn't tell how bad it was so anyways my friend nick ferrara who's a lawyer nick camp comes up and he's like well he goes uh maybe we should talk tomorrow about it and then my buddy dave comes up with with jim fallon and and he comes up and he's just shaking his head and i said how was it and this i said well to quote jim who came with me i've seen worse [Laughter] it was absolutely the most dreadful thing ever and then it was like okay we were basically dead in the music industry and we ended up getting a record deal a year later but we had to go and make a record on our own and everything goes to show you though that don't take gigs when you're not prepared absolutely you know but you just i mean you never know with these things right there's guys that was just fate it wasn't meant to happen though and it's it's adversity out there it never sounds the way it's supposed to you you're dealing with some kind of adversity out there live no matter what yeah i mean i have a great story about rick springfield we had a spinal tap moment where we were at the buddha con in in japan doing multiple nights it was just the biggest venue in tokyo or was anyway and every band every rock band has a grand entrance the open opening is the most that's why spinal tap works right it's the most important moment in a lot of ways just those first few seconds when the lights come on so we get on stage and the you know it's full and i think you know there's some kind of intro music that's playing and some smoke well the technicians at the boudicon had overdone the smoke to where when the lights came on there was nothing to see except smoke and i couldn't see i could not even see my guitar that i was holding and so we're playing the song basically blind with smoke i mean i couldn't see this far away not only the first song but the second song it's just completely the audience is seeing nothing but a great cloud did stonehenge come down that i mean that was but that was something that we were laughing so hard and then finally the reveal when the smoke cleared and the audience is grateful to see us yes we're so grateful to see them it was just amazing so tim why is it that those are the things that you end up remembering for the rest of your life for me it's always the funny things the absurd things you don't remember the great gigs or i don't remember the great gigs i remember just all the funny stuff that happened like that it's just you can't i mean because you can pretty much control most things in life and when you lose control it's it's great it's just great yeah in retrospect no matter what you're going through or how hard it is i mean when i didn't make it to corey's gig and i told my wife she thought i had messed up somehow i mean she was mad you know and then i was like honey no i didn't what do you mean you couldn't get to the gig another thing happened on rick's gig that was amazing we we were near the end of a tour and we were in phoenix getting ready to play after the sound check and after phoenix comes la which is five nights at the universal amphitheater which is all the people that you know and all the universe people live some famous people it's the pressure gig you know the the gig that you're kind of waiting for and it was the end of the tour this time so i'm in phoenix and we do our sound check and i go back to the bus and you know how buses their steps up into the you walk up you so you open the door yeah walk up to the first step i close the door but as i'm closing the door i balance myself on the step with my thumb sticking out the door oh my god so and you know what a bus door is like it's flush metal with no no no no no gap there's no gap either that's right so i s basically slam the bus door shut on my thumb oh my god totally shut click sealed oh my god and so then i open it back up and it's crushed you know the nail and everything so straight to the emergency room i go there they look at it and go yeah you crushed your thumb we'll bandage it up for you send me back and so all these thoughts are going through my head am i going to have to do without me what am i going to do they wrapped it in a big white you know ball right yeah right yeah i took the pick and i just played light as a feather with this big white ball that was around my thumb and i got through the gig with the crushed thumb and it was like i just used my forearm and this big white ball of the bandage and the pick held and did the stuff i was supposed to do got through the gig and we were able to do the uh the universal amphitheater and all those nights in a row but the moment when it happened it was like oh no of all the time yeah it's not like we're going to the midwest where maybe to us it's not the people we know you know sure this was the you know the big gig was coming up the big run of gigs was coming up so tim until we meet again until we meet again great hanging out yeah thanks for coming to california for a minute thanks for inviting me yeah that's all for now don't forget to subscribe if you're a first time viewer ring the bell that'll let you know when i go live and when a new video comes out give it a thumbs up leave a comment that's very important if you're interested in the biato book go to my website at www.rickbiota.com follow me on instagram at rickbeat01 check out the new beatto ear training program at beautiertraining.com and if you want to support the channel even more think about becoming a member of the biato club thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 712,598

Keywords: tim pierce, tim pierce guitar, rick beato, music, music production, embarrassing moments, funny moments, embarrassing moments on live tv, embarrassing moments for celebrities, embarrassing moments on stage, The Tonight Show, Talk Show, Live Show, Story time, Jimmy Fallon, David Letterman, The Late Show, Guitar, Jay Leno, Bill Withers, Aint No Sunshine, Disaster, Funny, Backing Band, Guitar Fail, Fails, Music Horror Stories, Live music fails

Id: J3qIchqRFyw

Length: 22min 26sec (1346 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021