Crikey! That's a list! Any wild and crazy things happen to you at any shows?
Oh yeah...
1. Met Def Leppard on the Pyromania tour, my first concert ever. Was walking past the tour bus and they popped out and just started talking to us. Very cool dudes.
2a. My first Judas Priest show had three moments. Before the doors opened, back in the day of festival seating, we were in line about 6 hours early. We kept seeing these Hell's Angels about (it WAS a Priest show...), generally minding their own business. As the afternoon became evening, the line started tightening up, and my girlfriend, who was wearing a pair of jeans it took her 30 minutes to get into, turned back toward me (we had gotten separated by about three people) and said something about some twit rubbing her ass and wouldn't stop. Before I could get to her, one of the Angels who happened to overhear asked her who it was. She indicated the guilty party, who was removed from line by his collar, taken around the side of the Knoxville Civic Colliseum, and never seen again. About ten minutes later, the Angel came back and kinda hung near us until we got in. Wonder what happened to our butt-rubber?
2b. Same show..still outside but almost time for the doors to open. By natural line matriculation, I had managed to get up to about 20th. As the doors opened, I was walking into the outer hall of the coliseum, where you go in, turn right, and go through a set of double doors to get into the actual concert hall. As I approached the double doors, I was shoved off my feet and went shoulder first into a cop who was standing with his back against the metal part that separates double doors. He made a groan and went down like a sack of flour. Another cop came running over, claiming I had done it. Fortunately, a third one saw me flying off my feet and saved me from being arrested for assault by telling him I had been shoved.
2c. I later found out from cops at a different show that the cop I had been shoved into had 3 broken ribs but was OK, and that during the show that night there had been 2 stabbings and 3 rapes reported. Good show though...
3. Same venue, Van Halen, February 1984. I was on the opposite side of the coliseum this time. It is fronted by solid glass. As the crowd was clambering to get in, I got pinned behind a door with a young girl between me and the glass wall on my left. It shattered. She went through completely, so fast that I went through also and the glass fell on my right shoulder. They let her in but made me go back outside. So here I am picking shards of glass out of my shoulder being forced back into this mob of people. Eventually we managed to break the door off its hinge, I got in, threw the ticket at them, and went on. Never one offer for medical assistance. I still have scars there.
4. Won backstage passes for a Ted Nugent/Aerosmith show. Met Ted (very nice guy) and spent most of my time with his singer Dave A'Mato. He told me a lot of fascinating things (anyone in Ted's band is immediately fired if they so much as drink a beer before the show), and he took us to meet Aerosmith. Joe, Brad, and Steven were a lot of fun. Their dressing room included a cooler of beer for each of them and a full bottle of liquor placed every 2 feet along the mirrored wall, no repeats of brands. Joe tossed me a bottle of Southern Comfort, grabbed a bottle of something, and we commenced. Chased it with beers for about an hour off and on. All in all a good time.
5. The only other headliner I ever walked out on was Bon Jovi sometime in the 90s. My first wife had won tickets, but being the stick in the mud she is (I did mention FIRST wife...) she wanted to leave by 10:30 because she had to work the next day and forgot to ask off. So we watched the opening act, who I was there to see anyway having already seen Bon Jovi twice (a band called The Poor opened, very good show), stayed long enough for her to see a little of the Bon Jovi show, and left. I hope she gets plenty of sleep.
Bitch.
6. Motley Crue and Warrant played at MTSU while I was a student there. My roomie was a Crue junkie, camped for a week and got us front row tickets. And I mean front row, maybe three seats off center. I hated and still hate Warrant, so I ignored them. All during Crue's show, I had a straight line of sight between drums right into Tommy Lee, and he kept pointing toward me. Could have had something to do with the fact that we were surrounded by frat fags and I was the only rocker he could see, I dunno. Anyway, my roomie had found out that Warrant was supposed to go to this club in town after the show (Mainstreet for those familiar with Murfreesboro), so after the show he was shagging ass to get there. As I was more slowly leaving, looking for someone to spend a little quality time with
sex: ), a security guard grabbed me and asked if I had been on the front. I said yeah, and he opened my leather jacket (it was winter) and saw I was wearing a KISS tour shirt. He said, "Must be you. Come on." I was freaking.
Come to find out, Tommy Lee had sent him out to try and find me. He told me he noticed me in the crowd and I looked like someone to party with. We commenced. And kept ON commencing. This was their "clean and sober" tour. They lied. Oh my GOD did they lie. Nikki kept shooting up all evening, Vince was plastered, Mick made a brief appearance and then disappeared, but me and Tommy and about half a dozen more just got ripped. He was one of the funniest people I've ever met, and it was natural funny, not booze induced. My roomie found out the next afternoon where I'd been (I left with another backstage denizen
) and was livid.
I've stepped on about 50 people, been stepped on twice, met a ton of performers, had my share of anonymous gropings backstage, been in fights before, during and after the shows, and more tales than I have time to type. Overall, a great experience. I miss the late 80s/early 90s something fierce.
