Lovins and I will have the band to ourselves at the meet-and-greet!
Arriving at University of Toledo’s Savage Arena on Saturday, Lovins and I picked up tickets and meet-and-greet passes at Will Call, the goods having been left for us by one of the bands performing at the Rock the Arena show. The tickets were front row (whoa!) and situated just behind a small general admission pit. The meet-and-greet came with no instructions as to where to meet or at what time. We figured we’d deal with that later.
After Lita Ford ended her set, we found somebody wearing an Arena Security shirt and asked where the meet-and-greets were taking place. He had a few sheets of paper and started looking through them. “Hmm, it doesn’t have any info on here. Let me radio somebody and find out.” We stood for a few minutes waiting for a response and then somebody else from the arena staff came over to us and asked which band had given us the passes. “Warrant,” we said. He radioed somebody, waited another few minutes, then came over and said, “Meet by the elevators on the second floor after Warrant’s set and somebody will show you to the meet-and-greet area.”
As instructed, following Warrant’s set we made our way to the elevators where we met with another staff member. We told her what we had been told and she said the whole day had been a mess when it came to meet and greets as each band was doing something differently. She thought maybe we needed to go to the 3rd floor so we took the elevator up. The staffer got a text saying that we needed to go to the first floor and, once there, tell the security that we were going to the Men’s Basketball Locker Room for the meet-and-greet. Upon our arrival on the first floor, we were told we needed to go to the fourth floor where we would be met by somebody who would escort us to the meet and greet.
At this point, you can probably see where this is going.
On the fourth floor, an arena staffer was sitting by the elevator. We told her the situation and, just like everybody else we had encountered, she seemed somewhat confused. She walked us over to the lobby of the athletic department and said, “This is where the meet-and-greet will happen. Let me turn on some lights.”
For those who think that hanging out backstage at a concert is pure debauchery, nothing could be further from the truth. Maybe in the dressing rooms things get crazy, but waiting in the lobby, it was about as tame as you could get. After waiting 10 minutes, the first woman we encountered at the elevator found us and said, “You need to go to the first floor. I’m not sure why they sent you up here. When you get down there, you’ll see some black curtains. Go through the curtains and you should be all set.”
Another elevator ride and we found the black curtains. Finally! Seemed like we were in the right place. Within minutes of getting there, Joey Allen of Warrant walked by, stopped to chat, and told the arena security woman that we were cool and were with him. She told him that we couldn’t go with him unless being escorted by somebody with an official backstage pass. Joey told us somebody would come get us shortly. In the meantime, we watched members of Trixter, Firehouse, Lita Ford’s band and Winger come and go – we were standing right by the doors to the backstage dressing rooms.
“Maybe they are all hanging out together,” I told Lovins, “and instead of just getting photos with Warrant, we’ll get photos with all of them.”
How naive I was.
We watched a guy, with an Event Staff sticker, be turned away by security even after saying, “I’m the guy paying the bands. If I don’t get back here, bands don’t get paid.” He seemed legit to me and not some crazed fan looking to drink beers with Lita Ford. He was turned away for not having the “proper” pass.
Another event staffer came up to us and told us that the meet-and-greet with Warrant was happening on the fourth floor and we needed to go back up there and wait. Great, here we go again. We got on the elevator – Savage Arena has staffers in each elevator – and the woman who pressed “4” for us asked us if we were going up there to meet our fans. “Um, we’re the fans,” we told her. She was older though I don’t think that’s an excuse – we don’t exactly look like ’80s hair metal musicians.
Back on the fourth floor, the woman who was sitting up there by herself seems confused as to why we had returned. We went through the whole story and as were telling her all this, another event staffer came by. <Paraphrasing> “I’m really sorry. This whole thing has been a mess. All the meet-and-greets were supposed to happen here but I think Trixter is the only band that even came to this area. All the bands seems to be doing their own thing and none of us got any sort of communication about what was happening. There is also hired staff at this event in addition to each band’s staff. I’m going to contact the production manager and get an answer for you once and for all.”
There we sat for another few minutes, having missed all of Ratt’s set while waiting to get photos with Warrant. Eventually, the staffer came back. “I’m really sorry guys but the production manager said the Warrant meet and greet already happened and is over.”
We didn’t pay for the meet and greet (they were being offered on Warrant’s website for $99) so can’t really say we were ripped off. And, it’s my understanding that people who paid for the meet-and-greet opportunities were supposed to have received an email from the band’s tour manager with specific instructions. Unfortunately, those instructions weren’t shared with the arena staff who did their best to help us solve the mystery but who didn’t have all the information necessary to lead us to the right place. But, it was a disappointing ended to an otherwise perfect day.
“Backstage” and “Meet-and-Greet” sound pretty glamorous, huh?
