“I went backstage to my dressing room, and an LAPD officer stopped me”: The time Tim Pierce opened for the Eagles – and then had his backstage pass revoked
Imagine getting banned backstage from a concert you just played. For session great Tim Pierce, that was the bizarre reality on New Year’s Eve 1999, when the Eagles reportedly had him barred from the venue just moments after his set.
In a new YouTube video, Pierce describes the surreal experience of being a part of the Millennium Concert: playing guitar in Linda Ronstadt’s band at the newly opened Staples Center in Los Angeles on 31 December 1999. The star-studded bill included Jackson Browne and the Eagles, and tickets went for up to $1,000.
“[It was] the biggest night for musicians in history at that time”, Pierce recalls [via Guitar World]. “Every musician and artist I knew had a huge gig for great fees that night. No matter who they were, somewhere in the world, they had a huge gig.”
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But the night quickly took a strange turn.
“About halfway through the Jackson set, my wife and I went backstage and I was informed all of a sudden that my backstage access was about to be revoked and denied,” says the guitarist. “We were informed that at the end of Jackson Browne’s set, we were no longer welcome in the building.”
Confused, Pierce began investigating: “My mind went into overdrive and I began to investigate and I realised that all of the Eagles crew had a tiny yellow dot – a sticker – that had been attached to their laminated photo ID credentials. We didn’t have the yellow dot. My mind began to spin and I began to formulate workarounds. What could we do to stay in the concert?”
He then reached out to a friend, audio engineer Dave Covelli, who happened to be the manager of the Staples Center. “I said, ‘Dave, any chance of us getting credentials to stay? Because they want us out of here.’”
With Covelli’s help, Pierce was eventually granted a new Staples Center-issued pass: “I attached our Staples Center passes to our pants or shirts or whatever and sat by the side of the stage ‘cause we wanted to see the Eagles,” he says. “It was a ghost town by the way,” adding that the Eagles staff had “pass[ed] us by with daggers in their eyes over and over as they looked at us sitting there.”
“But there was one more moment of awkwardness,” he continues. “We decided to leave and drive away before the encore to beat traffic. So, I went backstage to my dressing room, and an LAPD officer stopped me.”
“Even with all my credentials, during the Eagles concert, it was a forbidden zone to go back into the dressing rooms. I had to start telling this nice officer my story and [that] my guitar was backstage. So, he gave us an exemption to walk down the hallowed halls of Eagledom.”
Tim Pierce is a seasoned session musician, and has a comprehensive guitar masterclass with over 1,800 videos and more than 150 hours worth of lessons. Check it out at timpierce.com.
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