Back on the Road Tour

The **Back on the Road Tour** was a concert tour played by American rock band All Business throughout 1998. Staged in support of their ninth album *The Lonely Road* (1998), the tour visited a number of stadiums around the world, with a majority of shows taking place in the American south. Billed as a reunion for the recently reformed group, it was the first proper tour the band had undertaken since their Industry Titans tour five years earlier (not counting the quickly cancelled Friction Makes Heat tour). It would be the final tour featuring all 18 members of the band.

The Back on the Road tour started out as a fairly austere production, with the band running through standard renditions of songs on a relatively plain stage. This would begin to change during the second leg, which visited a number of Southern states. All Business's experiences in these cities brought an increasing feeling of patriotism amongst members, which they began to incorporate into their sets. "Honky tonk" versions of classic All Business songs would be played, with guitarists Moe Silk and Erman Holt learning slide guitar and banjo, respectively. A United States shaped B stage would be added (amongst a number of other new B Stages) and vocalist Rolly Rockefeller would start hang gliding to it from the other side of the stadium; he would miss and land in the audience on a number occasions. By the tour's fourth leg, the band was almost exclusively playing in the South. This would inspire the group's tenth album *God Bless Americ*a (1998), released on July 4th.

In total, the Back on the Road tour comprised 127 shows over 5 legs. It grossed $212 million, becoming one of the highest grossing tours of all time. However, due to the increasingly high cost of operating the tour, All Business did not break a profit. The shows themselves drew mixed critical reactions, with some believing the excess of the production overshadowed the music. There was also considerable controversy raised by environmental groups due to the high volume of tour buses the group brought with them, with each member having one double decker tour bus to themselves on average. Factors such as these allegedly inspired band co-leader Vernon O'Shaughnessy to persuade several members to enlist in the armed forces, which began at the tours conclusion. Though it is speculated this was to take them off the payroll, the band claimed it was due to the excessive patriotism they were feeling at the time. These changes would have a considerable effect on the group moving forward.

## Background

As All Business's first outing since their brief split on *18 Kings* and the project's ensuing solo tours, there was notable distance between the band's members at the tour's start. Most members traveled separately from their bandmates, instead hanging with their recently formed posses. This meant different things for different people: Erman Holt simply traveled with his family, for instance, while others had packs of dozens following them around. Lady Simone Augusto's posse was particularly notorious. Her disillusion with the group, in part over her gender based exclusion from *18 Kings*, manifested in rage that her bodyguards carried out. Her posse would regularly instigate fights with other posses, and sometimes even main band members. Erman Holt, for instance, was thrown into trash cans on a number of occasions by them due to Augusto's frustration with his low intelligence.

Other members had more competitive spirits with one another. Vernon O'Shaughnessy and Rolly Rockefeller, for instance, would race each other in their private Boeing 747 jets. Upon hearing the statistic that "flying was the safest form of travel", the lead singers felt comfortable to push the planes towards their top speeds. According to one of their pilots, these races were "the most scared [they had] ever been in [their] entire life".