Yet that was not to be the only Spinal Tap moment of the night. Earlier in the week Bob had called me excited about a new wireless transmitter that he had bought for his guitar/amp rig. This was 1981 and few if any club-level bands had wireless equipment as the technology at the time was expensive. Bob mentioned to me that during his mid-set solo, he wanted to leave the showroom and walk through the crowded Troubadour bar area while still playing. It didn’t sound like a bad idea, but something went terribly wrong.

Bob leaves the stage as planned, spotlight following him out the door. The wireless unit is working just great with his soaring guitar riffs blasting through his dual Marshall stacks perfectly. It was nice for a couple of minutes, but was becoming insane after he had been gone for seven or eight minutes. The audience was becoming bored. I always knew that he as well as most lead guitarists can be painfully over-indulgent in their solos and I constantly warned him to keep them limited. At the ten minute point, I knew something had gone wrong as he was still playing somewhere as we continued to hear him through the amps.

Gene and Carl were understandably pissed and wanted to get on with the rest of the show. “Where the fuck is he?”

“I don’t know man, I’ll go find him.” It was not to be an easy task. I looked, but he wasn’t in the front bar nor was he serenading the crowd that was waiting to get into the club on the sidewalk. Yet I could still hear him playing from somewhere through the showroom amps, even over the roar of the freight train that was rolling directly in front of the club. (Railroad tracks had run East-West along the median of Santa Monica Boulevard from Downtown Los Angeles to Culver City for years. They were removed in 1984 and immortalized in the Eagles song, ‘Sad Café,’ which was an ode to the Troubadour).

The train! He couldn’t be. He was. In his enthusiasm over the his new wireless connection toy, as well as being engrossed in his guitar solo he had wandered across the tracks and was stuck on the other side when the boxcars rolled by. Caboose finally passing, Bob pranced across the asphalt, dutifully still playing. Luckily, he would not trip on the tracks in his stilettos and finally returned to the stage to finish the show, much to the relief of Gene and Carl. It was probably the longest guitar solo in the history of metal.