Tucson’s got McDonald’s and bars and Sears and Taco Bells, but there any resemblance to life as we know it stops. It’s hot as a hairdryer, dusty and abandoned as my Styx collection, and everywhere you look there’s a cactus. Tall and thin or small and scrawny green prickly things. Everywhere.

Even, it occurred to me, backstage at the arena where somewhat green and prickly Peter Wolf and Seth Justman are definitely the worse for wear. The long lean man in black with the intense eyes behind the shades, the Keith Richards rockstar-thin legs in leather and the zebra shoes has put the rap on hold while he’s digging around in a crockpot for some congealed spaghetti; the small, Bolan-haired, ear-ringed elf-man is pouring himself a drink and staring middle-distance. Last night up in San Francisco they saw a local band, went to a looong party, forgot to go to bed and journeyed straight down here to Arizona where they just played a lethal, lengthy show. You spend 2V2 hours bounding in the air like a frog, tossing yourself around the stage like an r&b pancake, shaking more hands than Jerry Brown on his last Presidential bash and falling to your leathered knees doing hey-hon’-give-it-todaddy spiels and see if you’d rather get your arms around a bottle and some spandex when you’ve finished, or just sit in a room full of wilting roast beef slices and turkey turning at the corners with your CREEM correspondent. The price of fame.