Kissing E with the Hair Band

06.02.02 | 12:39 AM ET

I‘d started driving two hours earlier with a quarter tank. Now, 75 miles later, I was kissing E, and my prospects were looking grim.

Northeastern Wyoming is largely desert—red dirt, brown rock. And desolate. Though I was on a major interstate, I-90, not only were there no truck stops, there weren’t even any crossroads. The three exits I passed did not lead anywhere; they simply curled onto abandoned dirt tracks. Ominously, they each had names that warned of abandon and despair: “Crazy Woman Creek,” “Dead Horse Trail,” “Dry Gulch.” By my calculations I’d gone halfway to a city called Gillette on a quarter tank of gas. If I didn’t find a truck stop soon, I’d be screwed.

When I left New York City two months earlier on a soul- searching walkabout of early Bush I-era North America, I had anticipated the sort of fun New Yorkers only dream about: drunken knife fights with surly nihilist Sioux, flood rescues alongside decent men, maybe some fishing with a revivalist minister, and lots of material for new songs. I called it the Great Excursion. Lord knows I needed a change. I had lost my job, my girlfriend had left me, my dog died, yet none of these things had been sufficient to propel me across the Hudson and out into the great beyond. But when my band broke up, I finally had an excuse powerful enough to achieve escape velocity. I bought a dented orange 1978 AMC Hornet for $500 and hit the road. Now, two months later, I was about to run out of trail, and out of gas.

I tried to keep my composure. I slowed to 65, took to the right-hand lane, cranked the Pixies’ “Doolittle,” rolled down the windows, and tapped my fingertips on the roof of the Hornet in time with the music. The mud-red scenery had started to blur when I suddenly felt a caress of air on my left cheek. I turned to find a huge bus pulling up beside me. The driver and another guy seated on the dash facing backwards - both long-haired dudes with beards - were looking at me, smirking, nodding their heads in my direction. I smiled and waved. They’d obviously caught me unabashedly singing to myself. They broke out into big grins, gave me the thumbs-up, then gunned the engine and sped past. The bus had a big Western motif. Rodeo? I thought. Then a second, identical bus followed. It too slowed, momentarily, long enough for the next driver to also give me a wave. NASCAR?

In the wake of the second bus, a Honda Civic with Wyoming plates sped by. Inside were four cowgirls, each with big hair. Several were topped with Stetsons. I could discern little in the brief glance other than: young, denim, makeup. Now there was one thing I could be sure of: I’d just been in the presence of Rock Group on Tour.

I’d also noticed that both tour buses had New York plates. Perhaps they had spotted mine, and that was the explanation for the thumbs up. Or maybe I had it all wrong, and they were just rodeo clowns in a jovial mood. Whatever it was that created that brief sense of camaraderie, I might never know. Now they were gone beyond the dirt-cloud horizon, and I was left dropping further and further below E.

“No-Buffalo Highway.”

“Yellow Water Hills.”

The dirt track exits continued along the interstate, laughing at me.

I realized I had to take a chance on one. Not because I thought that it would help to read yet another federally funded historical marker, but because in this otherwise empty lot stood my last hope: two magnificent, gleaming, silver tour buses.

Their doors were just closing as I came running up, past the ready-to-party Wyoming groupies and their catty stares. Surprise turned to amusement as recognition lit the faces of the two longhairs who’d earlier given me the nod. With the buses idling, they swung open the doors.

“Hey, man, can you guys help me out? I’m, like, completely out of gas!”

Their persistent glances toward the back of the bus told me that these guys, as friendly as they seemed, were getting pressure from The Man to get the show on the road. Literally.

“Sorry, dude, we run on diesel,” one of them called. “We don’t carry any gasoline.”

“Oh, all right. Thanks anyway.” I turned and slowly walked away, passing again the groupie-wagon, whose stares had gone to mockery. Just as I reached the Hornet, however, I heard the bus driver’s voice.

“Yo! How ‘bout this? How ‘bout you pull in between the two buses, and we’ll, like, draft you in?”

I smiled, nodded, held my breath while the car started. Thirty seconds later, I was drafting like a Tour de France cyclist through the American outback.

I realized soon enough that I’d never thought to ask them who they were. If they were rock stars, they seemed pretty old. And if in fact they were the rodeo, well, I never knew that rodeo guys had groupies. For the groupie car was still with us, and every time they passed me, I received alternating glares of consternation, rancor and jealousy.

I spent the next hour in nervous concentration, staring at the lead bus’s rear fender and the way-below-E gas gauge. Occasionally, I glanced up at the groupies. They waved at the darkened bus windows with glee and fear, and looked at me with hostility and fear. It was not exactly fun, but it was hope. I counteracted my worry as best I could with a Sonic Youth cassette.

It was a relief when, at last, we crested a hill and the flat gray valley of Gillette puttered into view. I had made it. Even if I stopped now, I’d probably be able to get a lift, though certainly not from the groupies, who were now applying mass quantities of makeup. Fine. If I had to, I could walk in.

We circled into a single-store truck stop, and I peeled off from my escort and coasted to a stop at the pumps behind the store. By the time I’d strolled back out to the center of the parking lot, the buses were disgorging mostly 30-ish raggedy looking types, but also a few 50-ish guys with spectacular manes of hair. It appeared as if a few members of the cast of “Cats” had landed in Wyoming.

I didn’t have to decide if I should talk to these guys. As soon as the drivers made eye contact with me, they laughed, waved me over, and shook my hand.

“Yo, New York! What the hell are you doin’ all the way out here?”

“Oh, I’m taking some time off, just spending the summer driving around, seeing the country.”

“Cool. Hey we’re from New York too! Most of the crew, at least.”

“So you are a band then? Who are you guys, anyway?”

“We’re Whitesnake.”

The implications were staggering. Whitesnake. Arguably the worst band of all time. Certainly, a band that flouted all that is wrong with rock ‘n’ roll. They stood for all that I railed against. Yet here I was, in backwater Wyoming, chumming it up with them. In fact, damned if they weren’t—and this still pains me to say—nice guys.

“Yo, we were all cracking up on the bus, towing some New Yorker through the wasteland!” said lion-maned rock star No. 1.

“Yeah, so where you headed, anyway?” said leonine rocker No. 2.

I informed them that my next major stop would probably be Seattle.

“Seattle?” The Whitesnakers looked at each other. “No way! That’s where we’re headed. We’re doing two nights at the Kingdome this weekend.”

“Yeah, you should come check it out.”

“Right, we’ll hook you up! Backstage pass. Party! You wanna?”

Now this was an offer I had to think about. Though I’d been playing in bands for a while, and rubbing elbows with musicians no longer held any glamour for me, the thought of all-access-arena-rock was a different matter. If nothing else, maybe I’d get in on some of that free love that apparently no longer existed anywhere other than in heavy metal videos.

I waffled. “Backstage, huh?”

“Fer sher, dude. Party!”

Backstage. Kingdome. Whitesnake. I inhaled deeply, sensing a moment of great importance.

“I, uh, you know what? Nah.”

I never did meet a Sioux Indian, either.

Running into more big-city musicians was not what I had planned for on my Great Excursion. But that, it turned out, is the point: that plans and travel frequently work best when they are mutually exclusive. I eventually gave up on any itinerary, and never made it back to New York. I wrote few songs, but started writing fiction instead.

Years later, I look back on my early travels with happiness, but I look back on my music career with mixed emotions. It was fun, but probably consumed way too much of my life. That night however, as I pulled out of the truck stop, fully gassed, and turned onto the blue highway towards Cody, I harbored no such disillusion.

I may never be famous. I may never cavort on stage, pouring my soul out to thousands of fans. I may never even get any of that free sex that metal bands were always bragging about. But in the world of underground music - think of all those unsigned bands laboring away at this very moment in some dingy basement bar—I’ve done my part.

Sooner or later, everyone gets backstage. But you may only get one chance in life to blow off a band like Whitesnake.

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