MELBOURNE, Australia (CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — Trailblazing Australian promoter Michael Chugg has teamed up with Aussie rock critic Iain Shedden to pen a new book, titled "Hey, You in the Black T- Shirt," providing an insider's view of some of the world's top bands.
Chugg has brought artists ranging from Frank Sinatra and Elton John to Bon Jovi and Pearl Jam to Australia over the course of his storied career and his wealth of experience provides excellent grist for anecdotes.
In an exclusive excerpt on themusic.com.au, Chugg talks about Fleetwood Mac's 1977 Australian tour in support of rumors. According to Chugg, the band's hospitality rider presented challenges, including setting up a medieval marquee (read tent), replete with carpets and hanging tapestries. The band also needed a ready supply of limes at every date, a fruit that was banned from certain interstate commerce at the time, rendering Chugg into a 'lime smuggler' in his own words.
Chugg also elaborated on the various adulterants that the band requested.
"Their tastes in alcohol, not surprisingly, are five-star French champagne, Courvoisier cognac, Tanqueray gin and Pimm's, a drink I knew about only because my mum liked one on special occasions." Chugg noted.
He was also not shy in discussing the band's drug use: "There was also cocaine – lots of it – although I wasn't aware of that at the beginning. An assortment of interesting people turned up with it. In Mac world, at the peak of their vacuum cleaner capabilities, whatever went up their noses was never enough." Chugg wrote.
He also discussed his own drug use, rather candidly. "I had made a rule, round about 1971 when I first started smoking marijuana, that I would never do powders." Chugg said, although he later broke this rule.
" I broke my rule. I chopped a few lines of the good stuff. I bowed to peer pressure. If you didn't do it you weren't going to be part of the mob. You were going to be banished. So I did it and that was that. Cocaine remained one of my partners in crime for decades." Chugg added.
The book is set for release on October 1st. – CelebrityAccess Staff Writers
