What’s My Scene caught up with Tana Douglas to chat about her book LOUD.
TANA DOUGLAS is a trailblazer. A gamechanger. Groundbreaker. An Australian legend. Tana is the first women roadie in the world. LOUD (ABC Books, 11 February 2021) is a memoir of a massive life, toured large and wide, lived on the road, off stage, from AC/DC to Elton John. Volume cranked to eleven. This is as good as rock bios get. What goes on tour stays on tour – unless you’re the first woman roadie in the world.
At just fifteen, Tana Douglas ran away to the circus that was rock’n’roll in the 1970s, taking a job with a young band called AC/DC. While still a teenager she headed to the UK and later the US to work for a who’s who of bands and artists. Life on the road was exhilarating, hard work, occasionally surreal but never dull, particularly when you’re the only woman in the road crew and the #metoo movement is still 40 years away.
Whether wrangling Iggy Pop across Europe, climbing trusses while seven months pregnant, drinking shots of JD with Bon Scott backstage at Wembley, or donning a tailor-made suit to do lights for Elton at Windsor Castle, Tana did it all.
Funny, poignant, reflective and revealing, Loud is rock n roll like you’ve never experienced it before, by a woman who not only survived the all-male world of touring but climbed to the top and lived to tell the tale.
“This is much better than any other roadie book. It’s an extraordinary story about a woman in rock and the way she had to behave to get ahead, the sacrifices and so on, so many lessons but then this is also a rock history of real note.”
—Lindy Morrison
LOUD
A life in rock’n’roll by the world’s first female roadie TANA DOUGLAS
ABC Books|11 February 2021| $34.99| Trade Paperback
Includes tales from the tour buses of:
AC/DC ELO ELTON JOHN ICE CUBE ICE-T IGGY POP INXS LENNY KRAVITZ LUTHER VANDROSS NEIL DIAMOND OZZY OSBOURNE PATTI SMITH RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS SANTANA STATUS QUO SUZI QUATRO THE POLICE THE RUNAWAYS THE WHO WHITESNAKE AND MORE!
Tana Douglas was fifteen when she took her first job as a roadie with AC/DC. Now recognised as the world’s first female roadie, Tana has worked alongside some of rock’n’roll’s biggest names in a career spanning three continents and more than 30 years. Tana currently resides in Los Angeles, California. Loud is her first book.
