If you’ve ever wondered if the guys and girls who work for the big rock bands, be they crew, tour managers, promoters, and press, have as much fun as the band, well, sometimes they do. As David Libert lays out in his tell-all book Rock And Roll Warrior, back in the day when he was working for the original Alice Cooper band (and later with Alice as a solo artist), George Clinton and his various Parliament Funkadelic offshoots, The Runaways, Sheila E. he not only worked his ass off, mostly learning at the right hand of “Supermensch” legendary Alice Cooper manager Shep Gordon, but steered his own booking and management agencies as well. And he has quite the tale to tell.
Sure, the meatier stuff is the rock and roll excesses, but Libert’s rise in the industry, actually as a member of the 60’s band The Happenings, and all that happened to them, make for some solid beginning chapters here. It might be the guy’s east coast upbringing, born and raised in Paterson, NJ, as he was, or the fact that he befriended a wide range of people, from those he hung out with at Fire Island to a cast of characters populating the nescient music business of the time, or that he simply knew what a great job he had with Alice Cooper, but Libert was one of those guys who just got done what needed to be done. His solutions to the tour logistics he reveals are especially interesting, and in many cases, he was one of the first to implement these new approaches.
There are ups and downs here, as you’d expect from a rock and roll story, and even some jail time for Libert. But the man saw his way through everything with aplomb and here tells a very entertaining and, at times, heartwarming tale. David Libert certainly is a Rock And Roll Warrior.
~ Ralph Greco, Jr.
