A roadie is a member of a touring crew, one of the people who load the trucks, build the stage, tune the guitars and melt into the shadows before the first chord. The name comes from life on the road, and the job comes with long hours and very short nights.
A surprising number of stars started out carrying someone else’s gear. Lemmy, later the voice of Motörhead, helped the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s crew after moving to London in 1967. Noel Gallagher spent about two years as a technician with Inspiral Carpets and was coming home from an American tour with them in 1991 when he learned that his brother Liam had joined a band, the group that would become Oasis. Billy Powell had worked as a Lynyrd Skynyrd roadie for two years when he sat down at a school piano after a rained-out gig and was promptly hired as the band’s pianist. The lesson for any musician: be very nice to whoever is carrying the amplifier.