Year: 1980
Runtime: 106 mins
Language: English
Director: Alan Rudolph
A young Texas good‑ol’ boy who’s a whiz with electronic gear lands a gig as a roadie for a wild, traveling rock‑and‑roll show. As he powers up amps, lights and stages, he discovers the high‑octane world behind the music, where roadies keep the show rolling.
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Read the complete plot breakdown of Roadie (1980), including all key story events, major twists, and the ending explained in detail. Discover what really happened—and what it all means.
Travis W. Redfish Meat Loaf is a beer‑drinking, bar‑brawling, good‑humored Texan who works as a distributor of Shiner beer and helps his father, Corpus C. Redfish Art Carney, run the family salvage company, whose motto is
Everything will work if you let it!
Together with his best friend and business partner, B.B. Muldoon Gailard Sartain, Travis tackles everyday gigs on the road while navigating loyalty to family and a taste for adventure that keeps pulling him toward bigger, louder stages.
One day, while making deliveries in their Shiner beer truck, they spot an RV stalled on the roadside. At first they laugh it off, but a spray of charm from Lola Bouilliabase Kaki Hunter, a huge Alice Cooper fan, changes everything. Lola’s gaze hooks Travis, who hasn’t heard of “her” before, and the dust‑crusted RV becomes the doorway to a wild journey. The group’s road manager, Ace Joe Spano, wants Travis to drive them to Austin for a show by Hank Williams Jr. Hank Williams Jr., a gig produced by Mohammed Johnson, a role embodied on screen by Don Cornelius Don Cornelius.
Travis proves himself with clockwork speed and technical tricks, impressing Johnson enough to demand more dates. Yet Ace’s pushy control and Lola’s scheming create tension, and Lola leans on Travis to keep the work rolling so Ace can claim the glory. After a bar fight leaves him dazed, Lola wins a quick trip to the airport and a flight to Hollywood, where Travis wakes far from home.
In Hollywood, Travis’s pitch‑perfect ability to fix equipment earns him a strange kind of fame. He threatens a band into playing and even builds a DIY generator powered by cow dung to keep Blondie’s show alive, catapulting him to national attention as the “greatest roadie that ever lived.” Along the way, he grows close to Lola, even as she keeps her age and boundaries in check — she’s sixteen and saving her first time for Alice Cooper, though she can’t resist flirting with other musicians.
A tense realization emerges: Lola’s feelings aren’t one‑sided. When she gets jealous after Travis spends time with Debbie Harry Debbie Harry, their bond strains. The couple heads to New York City to see Alice Cooper’s show, and Travis plans to leave Lola behind to pursue his Texas life again. But the legend of Cooper interrupts those plans. The stage icon knows Travis’s reputation and begs him to stay long enough to fix Cooper’s sound system. In return, the star buys him a bus to bring him back home, and Lola is granted VIP treatment, backstage access, and the possibility of a night together — a beacon of hope for their precarious romance. He also discovers that B.B. Muldoon and Alice Poo Redfish Rhonda Bates are getting married, and he races back to Texas for their ceremony, torn between loyalty to family and a love he’s just beginning to understand.
Home again, Travis witnesses the wedding of his best friend and sister, a bittersweet moment that underscores the distance between his dreams and his roots. Then Lola, who’s given up being a groupie for now, calls with news that she’s come to Texas to be with him and has even considered a new path as a psychic. Their plans collide when a UFO suddenly lands right in front of them. Lola taps into her growing psychic awareness to sense that the aliens’ craft is broken and asks Travis to fix it, signaling a surreal, otherworldly turn to a roadie’s extraordinary life.
Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 14:22
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