At Random: Jeff Hamer

By Matt Flumerfelt

April 13, 2009 09:50 am

— VALDOSTA — I met Hillbilly at my last job. He delivered coffee to the office where I worked. His real name is Jeff Hamer, but I couldn’t resist calling him by his nickname because Hillbilly has such a nice ring to it. That’s the name Jon Bon Jovi gave Jeff when he was working on Bon Jovi’s road tours. Jeff sold T-shirts and other merchandise for the band. It was big business.
Jeff toured with quite a few bands, selling T-shirts, programs, posters, and sundry items. As one might expect, he has a few tales to tell. He was on the road for 11 years with various bands — Aerosmith, Poison, KISS, The Scorpions, Twisted Sister, Iron Maiden, Slaughter, RATT, Cinderella, Anthrax and others. There was the time Tommy Lee threw up on him in an elevator in Denver, Colo. He said Lee never apologized or said so much as “excuse me.” Not the stuff legends are made of exactly, but truth is stranger than fiction.
“Bon Jovi was the king of the 80’s hair bands,” Jeff said. He has gold records on the wall of his home from the Slippery When Wet and New Jersey tours. The framed records were a token of appreciation to crew members. There are also gold records from the 7800 degrees Fahrenheit album — both the Japanese and American versions, and another from the band Skid Row that sold over two million copies. Stevie Ray Vaughan’s framed signature also hangs there.
In the picture accompanying the Slippery When Wet gold record, Jeff is seated next to Jon. He said they traveled all over the world — Japan, Australia, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, France, Italy. Jeff said he used to list his road experience on job applications but stopped because he found that no one believed he had actually done those things.
Before he took to the road with Bon Jovi and other rock bands, Jeff was working as a carpenter and handyman and playing guitar on the side in a band called Montana with a few friends. Mostly, he said he ran the sound system and lights. They played Country Rock, i.e. music by artists like Charlie Daniels, Merle Haggard, George Jones, Marshall Tucker Band, and others. He said the bass player with the band took off to do merchandising for various road bands. He called Jeff one day and asked if he wanted to start merchandising too. Jeff agreed.
“I was a total greenhorn,” Jeff said. “I had never even seen a mountain.” It was 1983. Jeff was 26 years old. He hopped a bus to Macon, where he rented a Rider truck as instructed and headed up Interstate 75 to Indiana, where he picked up his first batch of merchandise — inserts for a Motley Crue album. He joined up with the other merchandisers in Fort Wayne, Ind., then drove to Los Angeles, Calif., to start selling for Motley Crue.
“I didn’t even know who Motley Crue was back then,” Jeff said. They were well known on the West Coast but not in the South at that time, he said. Jeff was working with a guy called Homeboy and his brother and another guy named Dizzy whose father was a cartoonist for Walt Disney.
The band tour included the usual drugs, sex, wild parties, fights, and groupies hanging around the back gate. Jeff said the crew did not interact with the bands too much. They just did their job.
“I was just trying to make a living,” he said.
They tried to hide from the bands as much as possible, he said. If they caught sight of him and other crew members, they’d ask them to fetch T-shirts and run other errands. He was making about $375 per week plus $30 per diem for travel and expenses.
After Motley Crue, Jeff went to work with Duran Duran, who was very big at that time. A caterer prepared three meals a day for the band and crew, but Duran Duran didn’t let crew members eat breakfast or lunch, only dinner. He said every Duran Duran show was sold out.
“They were hot,” he said. “All the little girls would be screaming and crying, ‘Simon, Simon, I touched him.’”
Jeff spent two years with Duran Duran. Then, in 1984, he got the call to join the Bon Jovi tour in New Brunswick, N.J. When Jeff joined Bon Jovi, the band had just released Runaway, its first hit single. He said Bon Jovi’s whole family was there, his mom and dad, little brothers, etc., and they all wanted shirts. He said they played a lot of small bars where the band was basically set up in the corner. Sometimes they only played to 300 people, but Jon gave it his all every night, Jeff said.
In the beginning, Jeff said Bon Jovi was opening for a band called 38 Special. He said that when Bon Jovi finished its set and 38 Special came on, half the crowd would leave. Then they started opening for a band called RATT, which was pretty big at the time. Jeff said the crowd sometimes booed RATT. They preferred Bon Jovi’s mix of charisma and music.
Bon Jovi treated the crew very well, Jeff said. He rented bowling alleys on days off, so the crew could bowl and play pool. He paid, so the crew could watch the famous Roberto Duran-Sugar Ray Leonard fight on Pay-Per-View.
“If he saw us out on the town, he’d buy us dinner and drinks,” Jeff said.
The next band Bon Jovi opened for was The Scorpions, and Jeff said that’s when everything started happening. Bon Jovi’s record Slippery When Wet went No. 1, and the band went out on its own. They did a European tour, traveling to 13 countries. Jeff said it was better because they often played three nights in one place, so they didn’t have to travel as much. They performed on Pop Rock TV shows in Europe, the same ones stars like Jimi Hendrix appeared on.
Bon Jovi changed merchandising companies. Jeff said the band was burnt out after traveling and playing together for two years on the New Jersey tour and on the verge of breaking up. They eventually did break up but have since gotten back together, Jeff said, minus the original bass player, Alex John Such. After Bon Jovi, Jeff worked with Aerosmith for several months. He said they were a fun band to work for. He sold a lot of merchandise.
“They were all characters,” he said.
After Aerosmith, Jeff went to work for Jethro Tull, led by flutist Ian Anderson. They traveled all over the United States, from the East Coast to the West Coast and everything in between. Jeff said Tull was one of the best bands he ever worked for.
“You have to remember, they were already getting up there in age,” Jeff said. “They didn’t have to do a lot of running around on stage because they were just pure musicians.”
But Ian Anderson was another rock musician who wasn't very nice, Jeff said. He walked around smoking a pipe, just like an old man, Jeff said. He frequently passed Jeff coming on and off stage, within a few feet, but just kept smoking his pipe and went right on by. Jeff finally mentioned to a friend and co-worker that Anderson never so much as said hello. When his friend brought the lack of courtesy to Anderson’s attention some time later, he wrote Jeff a note. It read: “To Jeff, Hello,” followed by his signature, “Ian Anderson.”
After 11 years on the road, Jeff had enough and returned to Valdosta. He went from the bright lights and adoring women to working at Green World, where he stood under a chute with a plastic bag while it dumped dirt on him all day and got in his clothes, or stray pieces of bark ricocheted off his head. He continued selling merchandise on the side, closer to home, for artists such as BB King and Loretta Lynn. He sold coffee for 13 years, which is when I met him.
Asked whether his years on the road with some of rock’s most famous bands changed his guitar playing, he said that, other than picking up a few minor things, it hadn’t. He has his own style and is happy with it.

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