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Slipknot’s filthy overalls worse than Bono’s old pants: official

By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 25 January 2019

When artists go on tour and sell their tickets at rather high prices, fans often say things like “they’re so greedy” and “what a bunch of greedy bastards” and “they can stick their overpriced tickets between their sweaty butt flaps and whistle”. All of which is justified.

Except that one reason for higher ticket prices is the size of the behind the scenes team that is required for a top-flight tour who all need to be paid. Like, did you ever even consider the person who has to wash Bono’s greasy boxer shorts?

To be fair, no one ever has. Why would you? I try to spend as little of my day as possible thinking about Bono’s pants. I’ve really got it down to nothing more than a few minutes now. Except today I read a New York Times article about the guy who has to wash Bono’s pants while U2 are on

It turns out that until Hans-Jürgen Topf started thinking about it about 20 years ago, very few people gave Bono’s pants much thought at all. I dread to think what that meant for said pants by the end of any one tour. But don’t worry, now they are thought about and taken care of.

“It’s very hard to find someone who is passionate about laundry”, says U2’s tour manager Jake Berry, adding of Topf: “He is passionate. He is a pioneer”.

“My reputation precedes me”, adds Topf. “Nobody tackled the subject of laundry, nobody wanted to learn it, until I developed a system for it. The artists live their life, and I live my laundry life”.

What could possibly get the image of Bono’s soiled undies out of your brain though? According to the article, the worst thing Topf ever had to deal with were Slipknot’s overalls, which had been “sprayed with beer, cream and fake blood, and left in garbage bags for three days”.

Nice. You should read the whole article here, because it turns out that tour laundry is more interesting than you thought.