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| FPM C10 |
Exactly thirty years ago today I saw the Rolling Stones live for the first time. I was one month shy of my 18th birthday, and had just graduated from high school. I was a curious combination of naivety and hipness – I had grown up in rural PA where nothing ever happened and I had a nagging sense that cool things (like Stones concerts) happened to other people in other places and not to me. I’d been listening to the Stones, seriously studying them, since fifth grade (1968) so my definition of what was cool was ALL about the Stones. I grew my blonde hair to shoulder length, which was really extreme for the time and place; I pierced my ear because Keith did; I took drugs because the Stones did. I played a blue Fender mustang bass with a racing stripe through an Ampeg amp because that’s what Bill played.
That day, June 30, 1975, was absolutely beautiful. Blue sky, puffy clouds, not too hot. I told my mom that my buddy Dan would be picking me up to drive to Philly for the show, but that was a white lie – Dan lived in Camp Hill and I had to hitch-hike the 50 miles from my house to his before that statement would be completely factual. Hitch-hiking wasn’t a completely dead mode of transportation then (as it is now), and in fact a few months later I hitch-hiked 1000 miles from Arkansas to Pennsylvania. But that’s another story. All I took with me was a few dollars and my crappy little camera, a 126 that I “bought” with green stamps. You had to be within ten feet of the subject for it to work at all.
Dan Brown was a life-long mentor of mine, perhaps not always the most wholesome influence; he sold me my first hit of acid, for instance. But he was the coolest, baddest kid in high school, the one you were NOT allowed to hang out with – and so of course the guy you needed to hang out with to have any sort of “outlaw” cred. He was a few years older than me and had seen the Stones on the ’72 tour, as well as Dylan’s comeback with the Band in ‘74. So he outranked me by miles, and this trip to Philly was very much in the way of Dan taking me under his wing and showing me the ropes. I’d been to a few “important” concerts myself, notably George Harrison in Philly and CSNY in Atlantic City the year before, but Dan made it clear - there was just no comparison. The Stones have always been head and shoulders above the competition. If you haven’t seen the Stones, you really haven’t seen anything.
After a few easy rides I was on Front Street in Harrisburg. I used a payphone at a rundown motel to call Dan, and he made the short trip across the river to pick me up. Then we stopped at his place – probably to get some dope or a few beers – and said hello to Dan’s room-mate Ben. This is how together Dan was – he played guitar, so he moved his brother, a drummer, and Ben, a bass player, into a house right next to an all-girl Business School. It was party central. But on this particular day the party was in Philadelphia. Soon enough, so were we.
At that point I think I’d only been to the City of Brotherly Love twice before, and I was still somewhat daunted by The Big Dirty City. Very much the country mouse. Now we were in front of the Spectrum watching a display of martial force as the Philadelphia Police Force patrolled the area. Jesus, they were scary. All in black, from head to foot, with riot helmets on. Black leather monsters astride growling motorcycles, atop black horses, and scariest of all once I stopped to think about it, a big black armor-plated police bus with smoked windows. That was scary because you didn’t know if it was empty, or crammed full of Nazis.
I remember that one topic of conversation as we waited for the doors to open was the price of the tickets. I wanted to look at the stub last night, but forgot to, but I think the ticket cost $7.50 – by comparison, my first concert, Ten Years After/Dr. John, had cost $3.50 or $4. So there was a lot of murmurs of “who do they think they are?” in the crowd. Dan dismissed all of that nonsense with a wave of his hand – he had seen the show immortalized in the “Philadelphia Special” boot, one of the rare occasions when they played an encore – “Satisfaction/Uptight Out of Sight” with opening act Stevie Wonder. “You get what you pay for,” said Dan. “You want the best, you pay for it.”
The doors opened and the huge crowd funneled into the Spectrum. When I’d been there before I’d had seats in the stands, but this time we were on the floor in the general crush of humanity. We walked around, Dan being cool, me gawking a bit. The smell of pot quickly became omnipresent and you could see clouds of smoke hanging in the humid air.
After awhile the lights went down and the opening act started. We started working our way to the front, but when we got there we saw that the opening act was the freakin’ Commodores. We saw Lionel Ritchie’s horse face and then split for the rear again. I bought a tour program for $4 or $5 and looked at it while the Commodores finished. The pictures in the program were mostly from the ’72 tour.
It seemed to take forever but finally the lights dimmed and the air became electric with anticipation. We were far to the rear of the floor when we heard the opening chords to “Honky Tonk Women”. We didn’t see the lotus stage unfold, if in fact it did – some shows started with the stage already open. I’m not tall, maybe 5’7, and I couldn’t see much of anything. Dan, ever the mover and shaker, grabbed me by the shirt and started edging his way through the crowd. As we got closer, they finished HTW and charged into “All Down The Line” Every so often I would catch a glimpse of the stage. Mick was wearing what looked like pajamas – green pants and a white jacket with green stripes over a short-sleeved white shirt, and a white sparkly belt. Keith was all in black leather – black leather bell bottoms, a black leather jacket over a blue t-shirt, and was playing his Zemaitis guitar with the knife and skull emblems. Charlie had his hair cut very short, an uncharacteristic look in those days, and there was a giant black man standing behind him – Ollie Brown. I didn’t pay much attention to Bill or the new guy, Ron Wood, although I did think that Woody was really playing some great stuff – the slide in “All Down the Line” was killer.
Of course these calm reflections are the product of thirty years of time having passed. At the time it was like being in the Battle of the Bulge. The floor was boiling hot and people were crushing against each other, the sound was a gigantic metallic roar and not particularly nuanced, and the excitement of realizing that the Rolling Stones were in the same building with me was starting to make me a little crazy. Dan continued to yank me toward the front of the insane crowd. Finally I looked up, and there, right in front of me, was Mick Fucking Jagger. I was stunned. He was beautiful, for one thing.
When Dan and all of his buddies had returned from seeing the Stones in 1972, I had asked them what they thought about Mick as a performer. Jim Kramer, who was the high school’s heavyweight wrestler and as straight as they come, grinned devilishly and said, without hesitation, “I wanted to FUCK Mick Jagger.” Then someone else said “Oh yeah, we ALL did.” Now I saw exactly what they meant. It wasn’t like it made you gay or anything, it was just a fact of life. All of this flashed through my mind in a split second as Mick batted his Tammy Faye’d eyes and exuded an animal magnetism that was beyond anything I’d ever imagined. I pulled my crappy camera up and pushed the button and took the picture which is today’s header. It’s certainly not a GREAT picture, by any standards, and in fact over the intervening thirty years has been through a fire and ravaged by age, scanned and doctored up and scanned again. But it has an incredible amount of significance for me, because it’s a picture of the exact instant that I went beyond being a big fan of the Stones and entered into the lifelong obsession that so many of us share.
The concert was really long and really great, although there were some sections of it I wasn’t crazy about. I didn’t particularly like “Heartbreaker” and thought Mick looked dumb playing a guitar in it. “Fingerprint File” has never been a favorite of mine, and it bothered me that they were switching instruments – Bill playing a little keyboard you couldn’t hear at all while Woody played bass in a style I’ve never liked. And then when Billy Preston did his mini-set I was actually pissed off, because he had done the exact same songs the previous year at the George Harrison concert. Dammit, I didn’t pay $7.50 to see Billy Preston! I was really disappointed that he was the keyboard player anyway, because all of my buddies who had seen them in ’72 raved about Nicky Hopkins, and I was a big fan of his work.
But after Billy’s set was over Mick came back out from doing his midshow blow and went nuts. “Midnight Rambler” in particular was just crazy good, Mick whipping the stage with his glittery girly belt, summoning up some insane and improbable mascara-smeared demon. “Rip This Joint” was a blur.
After “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” they were gone, and we cheered ourselves hoarse, but not hoarse enough for them to honor us with an encore. After a few minutes the house lights came up and I stumbled out into the hot night air, changed.
Setlist:
Honky Tonk Women
All Down The Line
If You Can’t Rock Me/Get Off of My Cloud
Star Star
Gimme Shelter
Ain’t Too Proud to Beg
You Gotta Move
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Happy
Tumbling Dice
IORR
Heartbreaker
Fingerprint File
Angie
Wild Horses
That’s Life
Outta Space
Brown Sugar
Midnight Rambler
Rip This Joint
Street Fighting Man
Jumping Jack Flash
Epilogue
Dan and I remained close friends and played together in a band that is still remembered in our little rural PA community as just about the most fun anyone ever had there – every gig was a party. In a place like this, you have to make your OWN fun, and nobody was better at it than Dan. We played a LOT of Stones songs. After we broke up Dan moved to Denver, but for the first few years he would come back to visit and we would get the old band together and throw another party. Then after awhile that stopped and we lost touch, as people sometimes do. Just the occasional letter or phone call. Amazingly, we ran into each other in Atlanta at the B2B show in ’97, and renewed our friendship. That was a GREAT show, and it was so great to see Dan again. Afterwards we went to a blues club and then stayed up most of the night drinking in the place he was staying.
In ’99 Dan came home for a visit and we got the old band together for our 20th anniversary. After that we stayed in touch through email and were always planning the next gig. We compared notes about shows we saw, and talked about seeing the Licks show in Denver together, but it didn’t happen. I emailed to see how the show was, and his response was uncharacteristically undetailed and flat – just “yeah, they were really great.” But actually Dan didn’t go to the show because he was in a hospice dying of cancer. He didn’t tell me, or any of us back home, I guess because we all looked up to him and he didn’t want us feeling sorry for him.
I couldn’t make it to Denver for the funeral, so I threw a wake for him in the bar where the old band used to play. Everyone told stories about Dan – there were a lot of them - and at the end of the night, after many tall frosty pints of Guinness, all of the old boys gathered around a microphone and everyone in the whole bar sang “You Gotta Move” with tears streaming down our faces.
[Edited by FPM C10]
[Edited by FPM C10] |
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| Joey |
Fleabit ...................................
My C10 Brother !!!!!
Outstanding Post .
Please feel free to take the rest of the week off .
Flacky Carson !
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| glencar |
Interesting story, FPM. May Dan rest in peace. |
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| Mr Jimmy |
Mighty fine of you to share those powerful memories with us.
Thanks. |
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| jb |
Nice story~! |
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| scratched |
Wow. Thanks for sharing. |
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| Saint Sway |
thats a great story. Thanks for sharing.
sorry about your friend. Sounds like you gave him a real fine send off. I'm sure he was beaming from up above during that.
cheers!
btw... if you replaced the 2 Billy Preston songs with 2 new songs from the upcoming record, I'd sign up to see that set list right now on any date of this tour.
quote:
FPM C10 wrote:
Setlist:
Honky Tonk Women
All Down The Line
If You Can’t Rock Me/Get Off of My Cloud
Star Star
Gimme Shelter
Ain’t Too Proud to Beg
You Gotta Move
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
- band intros -
(new Keith song here)
Happy
Tumbling Dice
IORR
Heartbreaker
Fingerprint File
Angie
Wild Horses
Oh No Not You Again
(another new song here)
Brown Sugar
- b-stage -
Midnight Rambler
Rip This Joint
Street Fighting Man
- encore -
Jumping Jack Flash
[Edited by Saint Sway] |
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| sirmoonie |
Great read, FPM. Every word. |
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| pdog |
quote:
sirmoonie wrote:
Great read, FPM. Every word.
So good I read it twice, on two diferent message boards... |
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| FPM C10 |
quote:
pdog wrote:
So good I read it twice, on two diferent message boards...
I always post my big wordy posts on both boards. Keno's board is my first home and I will always post there. We wear the same size tinfoil hats. |
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| cabledogg2 |
Very moving, thanks for sharing |
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| PeerQueer |
Losing close friends is often one of the first realizations of our own mortality. I have buried too damn many friends. Why I am still here and not them really makes no sense to me. Too much drug, drink, and rampant anonymous sex, one would think Life woulda put me in check long ago just to balance the karma books - and yet, in a few days I will fly off to Miami to hook up with some folks who will do nothing less than contribute to my continued corruption.
A strange thing, life. Stranger yet, death.
Thanks for the post - it was appreciated. |
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| LadyJane |
Damn you, Flea. Now I'm all choked up. Beautiful send off to Dan.
What a great memory. It has been 30 years for me as well. I saw the Buffalo '75 show...so I can relate to the details of the performance. We had the Crusaders, though as the opening act.
Thank you for sharing your memories!!!
LJ. |
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| Lord Homosex |
FPM did Jagger really play guitar on "Heartbreaker"? I never knew he did that in 75. remebered on "Fingerprint" but not on Doo doo doo doo
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| Sir Stonesalot |
Flea...
The guy who said, "Yeah, we ALL did!" was none other than Uncle John. He still says it about that night.
I only knew Danny Boy Brown for about 10 years. I instantly liked him. I also instantly knew that he was trouble. That's why I liked him right away. A kindred spirit. I am proud to say that I ran the soundboard for one of those Little Chicago Band reunion gigs, and not ashamed to have shed those tears standing arm in arm with Scott and Cart, singing "You Gotta Move". Man, I miss that guy.
Funny thing, you bringing up Dan. I just thought about him the other night. In fact, he had me laughing my ass off. After the Sleater-Kinney gig at the Troc, Sub Pop was having an after show party for the band. It was open to anyone who was 21 and had a ticket for the show. Anyhow, the beer special was...PBR 12 oz. cans for a buck. I bought one, and just as I was gonna open it, I remembered Dan..."Muh gwanpappy dwank pap bwew wibbin,...", and I started laughing hard. So there I was, by myself, laughing at a can of PBR for no apparent reason. All the rock n roll weirdos and lesbians were looking at me like I was crazy. Even from beyond the grave, Dan can still get ya. |
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| midnightmagic |
Very nice story and I am sorry about your friend. |
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| FPM C10 |
quote:
Lord Homosex wrote:
FPM did Jagger really play guitar on "Heartbreaker"? I never knew he did that in 75. remebered on "Fingerprint" but not on Doo doo doo doo
I think you're right. I sort of blur those two songs together because I don't like either one of them very much, and thought doing them back to back was the worst segment of the show. I just remember thinking how WRONG Mick looked with a strat strapped on over his Lana Turner Pajama ensemble.
I STILL think he looks wrong. Keith and Woody look like they were born with guitars. |
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| FPM C10 |
quote:
Sir Stonesalot wrote:
Flea...
The guy who said, "Yeah, we ALL did!" was none other than Uncle John. He still says it about that night.
You are CORRECT, sir! And it's just as funny coming out of him as it was coming out of Jim Kramer!
quote:
Sir Stonesalot wrote:
I only knew Danny Boy Brown for about 10 years. I instantly liked him. I also instantly knew that he was trouble. That's why I liked him right away. A kindred spirit. I am proud to say that I ran the soundboard for one of those Little Chicago Band reunion gigs, and not ashamed to have shed those tears standing arm in arm with Scott and Cart, singing "You Gotta Move". Man, I miss that guy.
Me too, man. Me too. Every damn time I do something cool I think "I can't wait to tell Dan about this." Then I remember that I don't have his current email address. The only other person I do that with is my mom, I guess because they'll both always be part of me. Plus she LOVED Dan - not when I was a kid, I was NOT allowed to hang out with him then, but after the damage had been done, so to speak, she thought of him as a son. He used to bring his guitar over and sit and sing her songs he'd written, and she'd get a bottle of Jameson's out and they'd have a wee drink.
I think that rendition of "You Gotta Move" was the best song LCB ever did.
That was the 1990 reunion you did sound for, wasn't it?
quote:
Sir Stonesalot wrote:
Funny thing, you bringing up Dan. I just thought about him the other night. In fact, he had me laughing my ass off... Muh gwanpappy dwank pap bwew wibbin,...", and I started laughing hard.
[quote]
Blue Riggin!
"And I think ah'll have some muhself!"
[quote]Sir Stonesalot wrote:
Even from beyond the grave, Dan can still get ya.
Yep. When we had trouble scheduling last year's memorial show (the one that ended up happening in the VFW) Scott and I kept saying "If we screw this up, we'll hear about this for ETERNITY!" |
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| FPM C10 |
quote:
PeerQueer wrote:
Losing close friends is often one of the first realizations of our own mortality.
Oh, at my age I'm way past that.
Dan was just one of those guys you thought would NEVER die. That he'd never stoop to anything that boring. |
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| BILL PERKS |
WHERE IN ATLANTIC CITY DID CSNY PLAY IN 1974? |
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| FPM C10 |
quote:
BILL PERKS wrote:
WHERE IN ATLANTIC CITY DID CSNY PLAY IN 1974?
I hate to sound like a dipshit but I don't know what exactly the venue was called. It was outdoors, Santana opened, and there was a friggin' monsoon going on during CSNY's set. I remember looking over to my left and seeing palm trees bent in half and rain coming in sideways. We left before it was over.
My buddy Pete got the tickets and drove. I was just along for the ride. Plus we bought a bunch of mescaline...so my memories of this one are kind of fuzzy.
Neil Young had a hat on. I'm sure about THAT. And David Crosby announced that Nixon had resigned that day. That was in '74, wasn't it? |
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| FPM C10 |
I remember they started with "Love The One You're With", and that "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" was the highlight. Don't remember anything else. |
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| J.J.Flash |
That was good posting muttafuckas!
I'm sorry for Dan my friend.
Goddamnit...after reading that....it's hard to get back to my concentration here at the office.....
Thank you master! |
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| J.J.Flash |
quote:
FPM C10 wrote:
[...] I grew my blonde hair to shoulder length, which was really extreme for the time and place; I pierced my ear because Keith did; I took drugs because the Stones did. I played a blue Fender mustang bass with a racing stripe through an Ampeg amp because that’s what Bill played.
[...]
Err.... when did you cut your blonde long hair Flea.....
That didn't look bad at all...... |
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| FPM C10 |
That's not ME, as you well know, my friend Jay Jay, and that guy's hair is brown. I think I cut my hair around '77, probably something to do with punk.
I have at different times affected a "soul patch" but my sweetheart Miss Youngblood has put the kibosh on that ever happening again.
Turns out it's GAY.
Who knew?
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| J.J.Flash |
quote:
FPM C10 wrote:
That's not ME, as you well know, my friend Jay Jay, and that guy's hair is brown. I think I cut my hair around '77, probably something to do with punk.
I have at different times affected a "soul patch" but my sweetheart Miss Youngblood has put the kibosh on that ever happening again.
Turns out it's GAY.
Who knew?
Did you become bald nowadays? |
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| FPM C10 |
quote:
J.J.Flash wrote:
Did you become bald nowadays?
No, thankfully, I have become neither bald nor fat in my dotage. Hair thinner, middle softer, but not bald & fat.
Thanks for asking, Jay Jay! |
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| Candace Youngblood |
It is gay.
Just hearing the words "soul patch" make me cringe.
Yuck! |
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| FPM C10 |
quote:
Candace Youngblood wrote:
It is gay.
Just hearing the words "soul patch" makes me cringe.
Yuck!
Hi beautiful! You have set me straight viz-a-viz soul patches.
Can I grow one of those gnarly neck beards like Jack White is sporting these days?
No self-respecting gay man would wear one of THOSE! |
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| J.J.Flash |
quote:
FPM C10 wrote:
Hi beautiful! You have set me straight viz-a-viz soul patches.
Can I grow one of those gnarly neck beards like Jack White is sporting these days?
No self-respecting gay man would wear one of THOSE!
Talking 'bout GAY...... could you show me that picture of W. in black leather with that GORGEOUS massive moustache?!?!
Puss Puss..... |
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