My First Rock Concert
(I was 14)

August 18th 1972, Dillon Stadium, (Outdoors)
Hartford, CT.

THE LINE UP

Phlorescent  Leech and Eddy
(From the Turtles & The Mothers of Invention)

The Kinks

(Then it rained for 80 minutes)

The Beach Boys

The Doors

(The concert ended at 1:30am)

(And now the story behind the concert...)

1972. 14. I was a sophomore. Sophomore means 'wise fool' and it is entirely true. By now  was steeped in the music of the day. Almost every day I would walk over to my friend's house after school and we would play each other records all the way through (stopping to flip the LPs over) and then talk about them and play cards. He was a sophomore too. He went to the other HS across town. He was 16 and had very long hair. Like Mark Farner long hair. He was the one that told me about the Dillon concert. I asked 'how do we get tickets'? He said 'we'll buy them there'. I trusted he knew what he was talking about. The day came and I told my parents I was just going over to my friend's house. I figured I'd be back from the concert before 11pm and nobody would be the wiser. I think we took the bus to the closest point to Dillon stadium, then we walked. There were 4 of us all together. All sophomores. I was the youngest though I tried to hide it. There were lots of people milling around outside the gates.  We went to a few scalpers but they wanted more than we could afford. Then my friend went off on his own and came back about 15 min later. He had one ticket. My heart sank. He showed it to all of us. It said "ADMIT ONE". Then beside that someone had written in "+ 3". I thought wait a minute, that can't be right. But by then we were walking towards the gate. We stood in line, my heart pounding. Then it was our turn. The guy looked at the ticket and said something like 'this ain't right - where'd you get this'? My heart was racing. I thought we'd go to jail. How would I explain I needed to be bailed out of prison to my parents? My life as I knew it was over! We all looked at the guy with soft kitten eyes and he said 'God damn it - off you go'! We were in. Holy crap! We looked at each other with that wonder that only teenagers can experience. We were in! The stadium was full of people. There were no seats. It was 'General Admission' (plus three) and you had to squeeze in to find a place. The only hole that was open led right to the front of the stage. I remember thinking 'Oh no, I'm going to lose my friends and get crushed'. But all four of us made it together and there we were standing at the right side of the stage. We were way early. It was daylight and the concert didn't start till about 8 or 9pm. All the while people were pushing for position. The other two I was with went off to get a drink and that was the last we saw of them. I knew it. I stood fast by my friend. No way I was going lose him or this spot. My friend was there to see Flo and Eddy and The Kinks. I knew about Flo and Eddie from Frank Zappa, but I had no idea they were originally from The Turtles. I   recognised the old songs when I heard them. The Kinks did a terrible show and people actually threw beer cans at them. One of them hit Ray Davies on the head I remember. They quit shortly after that. Then it rained. The ground got very muddy with people trampling all around. I remember my bell bottom jeans felt very heavy because of all the mud that was caked on them. I didn't care for the Beach Boys. They were too friendly, if you know what I mean. All those surf hits just turned my gut. I was listening to Deep Purple, Focus, EL&P. Beach Boys was just not me at that time. When my watch showed 11pm I started to get nervous. What was I going to say to my parents? I'd lied. At that age you don't think about how frantic your parents are. You think about how angry they are going to be. We had wrung our clothes as best we could and had sunk into the mud. We were stuck. Figuratively and literally. Shoulder to shoulder and now, for some reason that still escapes me to this day, we were about 60 feet from the stage. How did that happen? Then came The Doors. I wondered if they had a new singer. How was this going to work? Ray, John and Robby came on stage. No singer. They started the first song 'Love me two Times'. Surprisingly Ray Manzarek did all the singing and he was pretty good too. It was late because of the rain delay so they only played three songs. I'd never heard 'Mosquito' before (it is from the first post-Morrison album called 'Full Circle', and I thought it was incredible. So then there was like a 20 min version of 'Light My Fire' which was superb and it was over. How do we get home?









VESPA VIDEO - SEPT 2014