Last Call

Scott Alderman, tour producer, metalhead and author

Veer Mudambi Worcester Magazine | USA TODAY NETWORK

Fans of heavy metal may remember the infamous 2000 “Tattoo the Earth Tour” with Slayer, Slipknot and Metallica headlining. Shrewsbury resident Scott Alderman was the producer and sat down with Last Call to talk about earning the enmity of Sharon Osbourne, organizing shows in rodeos and parking lots, making sure the stage didn’t catch fire (again) and his upcoming book, “Caravan of Pain” out March 15.

Why was the “Tattoo the Earth Tour” so infamous?

The tour struggled to come together — getting it off the ground while we had so many people and entities trying to stop us from doing it. When we started the tour, we were still building it, in a way. It began in the middle of July but we didn’t announce it until the middle of June. I didn’t know the end dates when we started or who was going to show up to the first show.

Plus we had Slipknot, who had just gone platinum, and they’re just an insane band, and their fans are insane.

Insane in a good way or bad way?

I think in a good way. I had a sense back then that the kids who go to our shows are not going to go shoot up their high school. They’re getting it out of their system — I always thought of it as giving them a place for that. But we got banned in Boston — we were so loud, there was so much cursing on the stage that old ladies were riding around trying to find the party to get it shut down. Within a couple days, the mayor banned Slipknot and Tattoo the Earth for life — and it was one of our better shows. We had like 12,000 people but we couldn’t tattoo because it was still illegal in Massachusetts. We couldn’t even do a demonstration.

Who was the first band that committed?

Slipknot — we were trying to find a headline band. I was trying to get Red Hot Chilli Peppers or Metallica. I had a guy who was working with us and he mentioned Slipknot — said they’re hot, they just went platinum, and they’re a little bit dangerous. When we saw that Slipknot was really the band we wanted, we went to their agency and they had already committed to playing Ozzfest. So we worked on them and doubled the offer and they left Ozzfest and really pissed Sharon Osbourne off.

You think you made a powerful enemy that day?

Oh yeah, oh my lord. It was a double edged sword. Clear Channel — that was Live Nation back then — at the time owned all the amphitheaters. She had the pull (with Clear Channel) and got us out of those locations, so we were left playing rodeos, parking lots and horse tracks. The original tour was supposed to be like 38 days but it got cut down to 18 shows for lack of locations. She had got a big headliner — a hot band — and then we stole them away. She had every reason to be angry — I would have done the same thing in her place. When she found out that half of our dates were Clear Channel venues, she was like, “no way.”

So how about the tour itself — once you got it going?

It was like “Spinal Tap” meets “Carrie.” Every show was just insane. In Kansas, the stage got lit on fire, and in Wisconsin, the leader of Slipknot got maced a few hours before the show by the head of security at the venue. This is the craziness of the tour — it turned out that the year before Slipknot had performed there with Ozzfest and didn’t like how they’d been treated so it was off to a bad start. That show, Wisconsin, had the worst vibe ever.

Were you worried at all then?

That show, yeah I was scared — but I was scared the whole tour, cause I just had a nightmare that someone was going to die at one of our shows. The problem was we were playing alternative venues — not amphitheaters. Playing at amphitheaters was like going to a fivestar hotel after you’ve been camping. Mostly, we were playing at parks where you had to set everything up from scratch. That’s the part that really wore us down — setting up the stage at a Texas rodeo in August — it was 110 degrees. It wasn’t meant to support a music show and people don’t like to go to alternative venues because they’re not known.

Though we didn’t have any problems with our fans. They knew what they were doing. The EMTs told me that the metal fans usually don’t get hurt — it’s the shows like Blink 182 or Green Day that attract younger kids and they can get hurt.

Had you wanted to do a second year?

Yes! But basically, everyone screwed us the second year — Slipknot’s manager and Sharon Osbourne. We were going to do Slipknot and Marilyn Manson but Ozzfest just doubled every offer. We were in the position where we’d have to pay three to four times what the show was worth and still play in rodeos. Plus, Clear Channel owned thousands of radio stations and were able to keep us off the radio. That’s something that hasn’t changed one bit — the music industry is run by a very small group of people. They spent millions to stop us in our tracks.

There is some satisfaction in that though — that they spent so much money to do that.

Absolutely, I get a lot of satisfaction out of it. Getting it off the ground and being one of those people that made it real sort of changed me. That was in some ways more important to me than anything. Obviously I would have loved to have sustained it for 20 years like Warped Tour and made all that money but it just didn’t work out that way. That’s why we shifted gears and did the first tattoo convention in Massachusetts.

When did the law change in the Commonwealth?

Once I saw that we weren’t going to put out a second tour — which was just crushing — I saw that the law had just changed in Massachusetts. I decided to put on the first tattoo convention in the fall of 2001. We drew like eight or nine thousand people. We had artists from all over the world, and guys who did hand tattooing from Borneo — it was a really successful show.

What inspired you to write the book?

I sketched out an outline of what became this book in the year following the tour. I wrote a memoir in 2020 and my plan was to write a few of them about my life. The next one was going to be about the time 30 years ago, when I worked at an AIDS hospice during the AIDS epidemic in New York City — a heavy book. Then the pandemic hit, and I wanted to write a book but I didn’t want to write that one — so I settled on Tattoo the Earth.

What did you learn from this whole experience?

I was out of my mind for the majority of trying to get this off the ground. It was a crazy vision quest. A part of what I learned is to trust my own instincts. Now, I’m much more comfortable with who I am and what makes me up.

“Caravan of Pain” will go on sale on March 15.

Scott Alderman of Shrewsbury, is author of “Caravan of Pain,” which goes on sale March 15. SCOTT ALDERMAN