Interview: Rolling Thunder Tour Manager Chris O'Dell

1975-11-15, Convention Center, Niagara Falls, NY

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George Harrison wrote “Miss O’Dell” about Chris O’Dell. Leon Russell’s “Pisces Apple Lady” is about her too. She’s the “woman down the hall” in Joni Mitchell’s “Coyote” and was pictured on the back cover of Exile on Main Street. Hell, she even sang in the chorus of “Hey Jude.” But she wasn’t just a muse or ingénue; she was, among other things, a tour manager - by some accounts the first woman to ever hold that role.

Among the many tours she managed was Rolling Thunder ‘75 (and half of ‘76). She pops up constantly in Larry “Ratso” Sloman’s memoir about the tour as a sort of utility player. One minute she’s handing out roast beef sandwiches to the band on the bus, the next she’s corralling everyone on a tour of the Vanderbilt houses (she also spends a lot of time as boss Louie Kemp’s enforcer kicking Ratso out of various places). As of a few years ago, she’s got her own book too: Miss O'Dell: My Hard Days and Long Nights with The Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and the Women They Loved.

I called her up to ask what it was like trying to manage this unwieldy tour.

How did you end up on Rolling Thunder?

I was already a tour manager. I'd been hired by Bill Graham's organization to go out on tours. The first one was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young reunion tour of 1974. Then I went to Europe with Santana and Earth, Wind & Fire. When I was in Paris, [promoter] Barry Imhoff, who had split from Bill, called me and asked if I would come and work on the Rolling Thunder tour. I flew straight from Paris to New York. I checked into the hotel and started work.

What does your work look like before the tour kicks off?

One of my things was setting up all the logistics, so booking the hotels, booking all the transportation. We were doing it by bus and with motorhomes, so there weren’t airline flights to set up. Barry had an office near Grand Central Station that we worked out of. Because the tour was not being advertised publicly, we had to keep it really quiet. Nobody could know the different cities we were going to.

How do you book a hotel without tipping the town off?

We had to use fake names. I'd call up marketing and say, "I have a group I want to book into your hotel." I can’t remember what name we used for them, but I don't think it was Rolling Thunder. The hotel didn't know. Nobody knew.

What's a typical day like then when you hit the road? What are you doing day to day, city to city?

I usually had to wake up fairly early because whatever was going on that day, we had to start planning for. I didn't worry about what was happening at the gig. That wasn't my responsibility. My responsibility was just dealing with the band members and their families or whoever they decided to bring along.

We always had a suite, a place with food and drink where the band could come. I was usually situated there with Barry or Gary Shafner; the three of us took care of everything. [Band members] would come in and ask for different things. If somebody was flying in, I'd have to do the travel.

If we were doing a show, it was really important to get everybody downstairs at the right time, because herding musicians is not an easy job, and then get them to the show. If it was a day we were traveling, it was about collecting luggage and getting everybody ready to get on the bus or the motorhome to leave for the next town.

I just reread the Ratso book and there's a funny scene where you’re checking band members off the list to make sure they all made it, like a teacher trying to keep track of unruly children. "Mick Ronson, are you here?" Check.

Pretty much. I’d check them off as they got on the bus. Other tours I’d done, we had flights to catch or chartered planes, so everybody had to be there. This was pretty loose.

During the shows, I didn't have any job. It was a time to relax, to start thinking about the next day.  I did try to go out front to watch “One More Cup of Coffee” and “Isis.” Those were the two songs I liked the most. There's one show, I remember I sat in the audience that night. I just was so amazed at how excited everybody was. It was like going to a circus. It really had that kind of feeling.

[After the show,] there was the herding back on the bus. Then I would go back and write a newsletter after we had our come-down time. The newsletter generally was telling everybody what was going to happen the next day. Although it became like People magazine.

You mention the newsletter in your book and it's also in Ratso's book. It had a lot more than just logistics.

It was a little gossipy, I'm afraid to say. I discovered on the very first tour I'd done to do a newsletter so that I didn't have to call everybody up and remind them of everything. I put things in like, where the nearest restaurants were going to be in the next city, just informational stuff.

With that one though, somehow we got into gossip. I signed it by another name [The Zebra Phantom], even though everybody knew I wrote it. It started talking about things that were going on behind the scenes. People would slip me notes under my hotel room with bits of information about other people. It went pretty well for a while and then it didn't work so well anymore.

What changed?

They outed me. The gossip became about me and Sam Shepard. I thought, "Okay, maybe I better be a little bit more careful."

Huge thanks to Rolling Thunder producer Louie Kemp for taking photos of these for me! Look for more from Louie in a coming installment…

Did you interact much with Joni Mitchell? I know she started playing “Coyote” on the tour.

Yes, we did. She and I were both involved in a thing with Sam at the same time - who by the way was married. She and I actually became friends because of it. It brought us together. After the tour, we kept in touch and talked a lot, discussed how crazy that was.

Did you ever talk about the line in “Coyote” about you [“he's got another woman down the hall”]?

Oh my God, yes. We had to laugh about it because what can you do? Two women who are doing a thing with the same guy, best thing you can do is get together. When I did the second tour, Joni was on that and Sam wasn't, so we had plenty of time to talk about it.

I feel like the breakout scene of that Scorsese thing last year was that footage of Joni playing “Coyote” at Gordon Lightfoot's house. What did you think of the movie?

I loved part of it and I hated part of it. I loved the real part. I was not excited about the fictional parts. I think it was off-putting. The thing about Sharon Stone being on the tour as a young girl, I remember [talking with] other people who were on the tour like, "I don't remember her. Do you remember her?" It put us into a mind game thing, like “were we like too out of it?”

Were you at the Madison Square Garden finale?

Yes, I was there. We had a party afterwards and Bob gave everybody gifts, and they took a group photo and everything.

What was the gift?

A medallion. He had some medallions made. Rolling Thunder medallions with a stone set into them.

Going from these tiny little New England towns to Madison Square Garden, was the vibe different?

Whenever you go into a major city like New York, it always feels different because people have friends there. They've got friends coming to the show, so there's a different attitude. The whole event feels bigger.

After Madison Square Garden, did you think that was the end?