Testing the limits of Batmania

One can only imagine how aggravating a day June 25, 1966, was for Adam West.

He’d signed on for two personal appearances at Shea Stadium, at 2 and 7:30 p.m., part of a concert that included Frank Gorshin, the Young Rascals, the Temptations, the Chiffons and Junior Walker and the All-Stars, and it was coming apart.

The show’s promotor was Harry Bloomfield who, although convicted of income tax evasion in 1949, was still granted a license to put on the show. A thousand tickets were stolen from a publicist’s office, and several of the booked acts, including Skitch Henderson and his Tonight Show Orchestra and M.C. Bruce Morrow, abandoned ship because of dismal ticket sales.

The local Teamsters union, fearful that they wouldn’t get paid, threatened to walk before the show until West personally guaranteed the crew’s payment in advance.

As it got closer to 2 p.m. it was obvious that only around 3,000 people were in attendance as. All this and West had to wear his Batman costume, the gloves, the tights, the cowl as the afternoon temperature climbed to 87 degrees.

After the musical acts, a gate in leftfield opened and West as Batman was driven around the field in a Cadillac convertible – not the Batmobile – close enough to the stands to shake hands with the overheated kids in attendance. As the PA system echoed through the nearly empty stadium, West reached the stage and asked, “Have you seen any unusual looking people around here?”, the cue for Frank Gorshin as the Riddler to appear on stage. A sample of their onstage schtick: Riddler: “Why are the Mets like my mother-in-law’s cookies? (Riddler is married?) They need a better batter.”

West and Gorshin left the stage, then reappeared without costumes. West sang. Gorshin did celebrity impressions. Reportedly the 7:30 show was better attended, but even an audience of 5,000 in a place that seats 55,000 makes for an oppressive scene.

If it was the first true test of Batmania, it failed. The franchise wobbled a bit but recovered the next month when the Batman movie opened and scored well at the box office.

After the concert, promotor Bloomfield concluded, “Shea Stadium is not conducive to concerts.” When he was reminded about the Beatles’ capacity concert there, Bloomfield replied, “The Beatles were a freak attraction.”

"The war is over"

Fifty-three years tonight I attended my first “real” rock concert, Neil Young at Madison Square Garden. I’d been to two Rock and Roll Revival shows but I don’t count them as authentic rock experiences – seeing legendary elders Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Bo Diddley was exciting, but at that point they were essentially oldies acts.

The logistics around Young’s 1973 tour are amazing in retrospect. Today, major tours tend to occur in the summer or fall when travel is easy. For this tour, Young played 61 shows between the first week of January and the first week of April, with nearly all the January concerts played in cold weather cities. And some strange bookings. Two shows in Alabama – Tuscaloosa and Mobile – maybe because the song Alabama was on his last album, Harvest? Shows in Roanoke, Virginia, and Des Moines, Iowa. Overall, a promoter’s dream and a performer’s nightmare.

Not my ticket

The unannounced opening act that night at the Garden was Linda Ronstadt, her first time opening the tour and, after years of playing clubs like the Bitter End in New York City and the Troubadour in Los Angeles, the largest audience she’d ever faced. “She didn’t really want to do it,” said her manager. “She was scared.”

Throughout the Young shows she often played to indifferent crowds, but the shows served as a crucible of sorts and by September Ronstadt had her first gold album as her career took off (and overtook Neil Young possibly in popularity and certainly record sales).

There was no announcement when Ronstadt came on stage and I don’t recall her introducing herself or her band. Nerves, I guess. What I remember mostly was a lot of people milling around during her set looking for their seats, their friends or someone selling joints. And there were lots of joints. As soon as the lights came down for Young, the smell of marijuana was overwhelming; naïve me, it was my first experience being around it and reminiscent of the smell of chicken grilling outdoors, it only made me hungry.

Young played most of the stuff you'd want to hear, like Cinnamon Girl and Southern Man, but in the 1970s it was a badge of coolness and authenticity and honoring one's muse if artists insisted on spending a good part of their onstage time playing some newer stuff, so part of Young's setlist was dedicated to songs that wouldn't appear on record until Time Fades Away. But he also sang the obligatory Heart of Gold, a #1 hit a year ago, and Old Man so folks left the show happy.

This was also the night when Secretary of State Henry Kissinger reached the Paris Peace Accord, officially ending U.S. participation in the Vietnam War. Someone came onstage and handed Young a note as he announced, “The war was over.” It was rumored that both sides were close to an expected agreement, but to hear the official word from Neil Young is a little cooler – and much more memorable – than getting it from Walter Cronkite.

Rolling with it

Steve Winwood showed Mozartian skill playing the keyboards at age four, and by the time he was 14 was playing and singing in a professional band, the Spencer Davis Group.

The band's Gimme Some Lovin', which he wrote, played organ and sang lead on entered the Billboard chart at #100, hitting #7 for two weeks in early 1967. Seemingly recorded with no thought towards sound balance, its loud, sweaty party rush doesn't give the listener a chance to catch a breath. 

Cue the Summer of Love footage of dancing hippies as an artistically restless Winwood left Spencer Davis to form Traffic. The band spent several months woodshedding in a rural cottage without electricity; when they needed to plug in electric guitars they ran an extension cord to a neighbor's home. 

Traffic's 1967 album Mr. Fantasy is a whirlwind of flutes, sitars and psychedelic effects, a perfect soundtrack for the times. Winwood's voice kept things close to earth and the band remembered that extension cord for the guitar workout Dear Mr. Fantasy, a cut presaging the sound of Jimi Hendrix and Cream. 

Traffic's promotional video for Paper Sun, the single off Mr. Fantasy is a strange one, filmed at the British Museum of Natural History. 

Only year later Winwood was on the run again, joining Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker to form Blind Faith, whose debut was opening for the Rolling Stones at a free concert in London’s Hyde Park. Following a brief tour of the U.S., they imploded. 

Winwood declined an offer to join Crosby, Stills and Nash – having survived the ego trips and drugs that sunk Blind Faith, he could be forgiven for not wanting to join another volatile environment. He did a memorable jam with Hendrix on Electric Ladyland’s Voodoo Chile and played keyboards on the B.B. King, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf in London session albums before reforming Traffic. 

Traffic 2.0 was a staple of FM radio; John Barleycorn Must Die (1970) and The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys (1971) charting at #5 and #7 in the U.S. respectively. They were versatile enough to be heavy (Pearly Queen), jazzy (Low Spark, Glad) or rustic folky (John Barleycorn). Winwood broke up the band in 1974 and did keyboard session work with Lou Reed, Toots and the Maytals and George Harrison, including playing the synthesizer on Marianne Faithful’s Broken English single. 

Then, while many of his contemporaries stumbled about figuring how to update their sound, Winwood had a career renaissance. His album Arc of a Diver (1980), was a one-man production, performing all the singing and instrumentation, as well as engineering himself. The record included the single When You See a Chance (#7). 

Back in the High Life (1986) went triple platinum, with the single Higher Love reaching #1 and earning Winwood Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. Roll with It (1988) and its title track (a rewrite of Junior Walker’s Shotgun; Holland, Dozier and Holland received writing credits) hit #1 on the album and singles charts. 

Smug rock fans felt Winwood's embrace of synth-pop was a sellout, a betrayal of artistic integrity. In truth, it's the sound of a virtuoso musician understanding and adapting, something he's done countless times during his career. 

Seeing Winwood today in concert is a thrill, having listened to his music for nearly 60 years. But Winwood, as with Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Paul McCartney, any artist with that kind of long-tailed legacy, is also holding up a mirror as we see ourselves in them, all of us trying to come to grips with our own mortality. Same as watching a Robert Redford film or a video of Mark Volman goofing around with the Turtles. Best to just roll with it. 

Fantasy Park revisited

Fantasy Park was a 48-hour theatre-of-the-mind music festival, an imaginary rock concert aired by nearly 200 radio stations over the Independence Day weekend in 1975. Cooked up by a Dallas radio station, it used a mix of cuts from live and studio albums backed with crowd noises, complete with stage announcements, backstage interview and sound effects.

I caught bits and pieces of it when it originally aired and then again this past Labor Day weekend when the program streamed online. The slate of artists was a mid-seventies wish list; today it’s “classic vinyl”:

Friday: Chicago, Elton John, Joe Walsh, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton.

Saturday: Cream, Shawn Phillips, Pink Floyd, Carly Simon, James Taylor, Carole King, Poco, Alvin Lee, Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Dave Mason, Steve Miller Band, BB King, Stevie Wonder, John Denver, Beach Boys, War, Grand Funk, Yes.

Sunday: Deep Purple, Steely Dan, Jesse Colin Young, Cat Stevens, The Who, Rolling Stones, Moody Blues, Marshall Tucker Band, Allman Brothers, Van Morrison.

Monday: Harry Chapin, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Santana, Bee Gees, Paul Simon, Seals and Croft, America, Joni Mitchell, Doobie Brothers, Loggins and Messina, CSN&Y, Bob Dylan, Beatles.

Looking back, it’s a little odd. John Denver, Seals and Croft, and Carly Simon? Shawn Phillips, whose highest charting U.S. album reached #57? No Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane (Starship at this point), The Band, Jethro Tull, ELP.

In two years, nearly half the Fantasy Park performers would begin losing traction artistically and in album sales, replaced by performers who had yet to work out their sound or were still toiling in the minor leagues, like Boston, Fleetwood Mac, Peter Frampton, Wings, Heart, Bob Segar, Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty.

But for now, and as befitting a concert of the mind taking place during the smiley face decade, it’s nothing but good vibes all around. During the Beach Boys set, we’re told by the program’s roving reporter that the band was “really getting into it.” “It’s 1965 all over again,” he added after I Get Around, forgetting that the record came out in 1964.

Fireworks follow the Moody Blues, a Frisbee competition is held “over by the lake” and some dweeb talks kite-flying. During Joni Mitchell’s performance, a nurse who helped with the medical tent delivery of a baby is interviewed (a girl, 7 lbs., 10 oz., no name yet, but Joni would’ve been nice). No mention of any ODs or bad trips.

All 48 hours played over a looped bed of crowd noise that included a woman shrieking every couple of minutes, a Woodstockian Wilhelm scream that makes one wonder if the Ohio Players weren’t on the bill.

Fantasy Park naturally ends with the great white hoped-for, a Beatles reunion, a what-if played out repeatedly at the time in the rock press and during stoned conversations among fans. With between-song patter taken from Let It Be and other sources, their relatively brief set ends with John’s “We’d like to do something that we don’t normally get the chance to do,” – well, yeah – then A Day in the Life.

As the song ends, we can assume that the 750,000 concert goers have dropped through a trap door and the program ends abruptly with the sound of crickets chirping.

When it aired in 1975, listeners supposedly flooded radio station phone lines looking for tickets and directions. The IRS showed up at one station following up on gate receipts to ensure the government got its cut. Not quite as extreme a reaction that the War of the Worlds broadcast received in 1938, but maybe that’s an idea for a future special: Martians invade Woodstock.

Gimme shelter

Fifty years tonight I saw the Rolling Stones, and in a roundabout way began making my way into the rest of my life.

The Stones announced their 1975 summer tour by playing Brown Sugar on a flatbed truck rolling down Fifth Avenue in New York City, shows that included six nights at Madison Square Garden. For me, discovering pot and holding my youthful belief that rock music was a signpost on the road to illumination, seeing the Stones live was a necessity.

With 120,000 tickets available over six evenings, I drove into a deserted Manhattan around dinnertime, parked a block away from the Garden and bought seats for the June 24 show.

I chose June 24 purposely. What better way to celebrate the third anniversary of the first date with my then-girlfriend? Uh no. She seemed less than thrilled about the prospects of spending this special evening listening to songs about the Boston Strangler (Midnight Rambler), inter-racial sex (Brown Sugar) and groupie sex (Star Star).

1975 Rolling Stones live

If she’d managed any enthusiasm at all for the show, it likely began to slip away as we navigated through the scary flood of humanity that washed up on the sidewalks around the Garden on a concert night: kids out of their gourds stoned and/or drunk, guys selling drugs and bootleg t-shirts, ticket scalpers, wild-eyed city people, vendors selling their diarrhea-inducing gyros.

After fifty years, I’ve forgotten a lot about the show – how could I’ve not remembered that Billy Preston was part of the band for the tour? What I remember best was the spectacle. The giant lotus flower that opened to reveal the stage. The stupid inflatable phallus that rose up from the stage (her enthusiasm now vanished). Jagger swinging on a rope over the stage. Steel drummers accompanying the band on Sympathy for the Devil – they played Sympathy for the Devil! And for some reason, the haze of cigarette smoke around Keith Richards and Ron Wood.

The Stones, man!

(An audience tape of the concert can be found on YouTube. The band sounded a little chaotic, but it was the Stones).

While I’m fuzzy about the show’s details, what occurred afterwards remains clear. Back at her house The Tonight Show was on; Kenny Rankin was singing. Rankin was a popular singer/songwriter with a jazz influence, laid-back music perfect for Sunday brunch programming on an FM rock station. As we watched, she told me how stupid the concert had been and that she’d rather go see Kenny Rankin.

She may as well as admitted to being a Republican.

We had friends who got married out of high school and converted to Christianity. How much of an influence were they? Was I ready to take eternal vows or submit to some mysterious conversion? Or give in to a lifetime of nodding out to James Taylor? Four months later, we agreed to move on. 

In 1975, life seemed full of endless possibilities; I just needed to make the right choices and be true to myself. No crystal ball could have predicted it any better.

Surf's Up

I found the Beach Boys in 1964 when I Get Around hit the charts. It had an instant appeal and didn’t sound like anything else on the radio in that summer of the British Invasion; it wouldn’t be until decades later that I’d realize how complex I Get Around is, seemingly all chorus, no bridge, almost an endless circular loop. It was the first notice that Brian Wilson thought about music, and heard it in his head, differently than anyone else.

Three years later, already a candidate for canonization by having written and recorded God Only Knows, Wouldn’t It Be Nice, Caroline No and Good Vibrations, Wilson sang the quietly elegiac Surf’s Up alone at the piano for Leonard Bernstein’s prime time rock music blessing “Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution.” It was to be the centerpiece of Brian’s “teenage symphony to God,” Smile. He struggled to complete the album before his growing paranoia, drug issues and man-child excesses eventually sank it.

Brian in 1965

For decades Smile remained one of the great “what ifs” of popular culture. In his 1993 sci-fi novel Glimpses, Lewis Shiner’s central character time travels back to 1966 to encourage Wilson to finish the record. For those who read the book, it only added to Smile’s myth.

Brian’s trials over the next few decades are well-documented; in 1999 he publicly re-emerged and began touring again, backed now by younger, like-minded musicians. At the Beacon Theatre in New York City, he looked at times a bit startled, as if he’d just woken up to find himself on stage leading a band again. His stage movements were awkward. But the worshipful audience was behind him right from the start when we booed Mike Love’s talking head during a brief Beach Boys history video that kicked off the show.

During his summer 2000 tour performing the emotional powerhouse Pet Sounds, the audience knew every note – we cheered Brian’s brilliant production details, from the bicycle bell and horn in You Still Believe in Me to the bass harmonica solo in I Know There’s An Answer. The train whistle and barking dogs that end the album, sounds that always sent a chill on record, heard live and loud pinned me back on my seat. Wilson's stage moves were still non-existent, although he got out from behind his security blanket keyboard to play bass for a few numbers. I checked back at the setlist from that show. Thirty-four songs.

Encouraged by his band, in 2004 Brian finally completed and released Smile. I had mixed feelings about the record, a suite of interconnected pieces that were sometimes thrilling and at other times corny Americana. We’ll never know how the public would have reacted to the record had it been finished and released in 1967, whether it would have been seen as a masterpiece or interesting novelty. Hearing it in its entirety at Carnegie Hall gave a vibe outside of the usual concert experience, a spectacle that even attracted Lou Reed, who walked past me on the aisle.

What strikes me about those three concerts was the adoration that came off the audience.

Smile wasn’t Wilson’s only what if moment. If he’d been diagnosed early on and treated by real therapists instead of entrusting charlatans, had his supportive and talented younger brothers Carl and Dennis lived longer, his road may not have been so difficult. Even so, a Mount Rushmore of 1960s pop composers would offer up Wilson, along with Lennon and McCartney and Burt Bacharach. To label his music simply as being about “surfing” and “California,” does Brian a disservice. His brilliance was universal.

I was at The Garden Party

The origin behind Rick Nelson’s Garden Party is well-known. And it's all true. I was there.

My friends and I were high school juniors in 1971 who dug early rock and roll. You had to dig a bit to find it (any pre-Beatles rock back then was seen as passe), but we tuned into Gus Gossert’s Sunday night doo-wop program on WPIX-FM and bought those budget-priced Oldies But Goodies compilation LPs. 

In June 1971, we attended the "Rock & Roll Spectacular" at Madison Square Garden featuring, among many acts, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Four Seasons, Jay and the Americans and Little Eva. A follow-up show scheduled for October 15, 1971, just might be our Woodstock: Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, the Coasters, Bobby Rydell, the Shirelles, Gary U.S. Bonds and Rick Nelson, billed as the “special added attraction.”

 

There's no video of the show that I'm aware of, and a handful of stills taken of Chuck Berry, so I'm relying on my not-so-total-recall from 54 years ago.

We bought tickets from a local record store and somehow scored floor seats a few rows back from the stage set in the middle of the arena, not unlike a boxing ring. It was an older crowd, without a black leather jacket or DA haircut in sight. The rumor was that John Lennon, George Harrison and Bob Dylan (or some combination thereof) would be attending, but that kind of wishful thinking was rampant back then. I remember looking up at the luxury boxes and thinking any one of them might have been watching the concert from that vantage point. 

Looking back with the perspective of the present, it was clearly going to be difficult for Nelson and his Stone Canyon Band to win over the audience. He was Hollywood, a nepo baby born of television royalty and whose presence didn't quite jibe with the rest of the bill: grizzled R&B veterans who'd been sharpening their showmanship with non-stop touring since the Eisenhower administration, plus local favorites (the Shirelles from New Jersey and Bobby Rydell – well almost local, Philadelphia). 

And just for the record, Nelson was a local son as well, born in Teaneck, New Jersey before his family moved to Los Angeles when he was still a toddler.

But the starting gun for the cascade of booing that evening was the twang of the band's pedal steel guitar. New York City in 1971 was John Shaft, Frank Serpico and Ratso Rizzo. Country music (aka back then as country & western music) was for shit-kickers and Hee Haw episodes. Someone got close to the stage and flashed him a middle finger. 

Contrast that reaction to the one for Bobby Rydell. I remember a guy behind me yelling, "Mazel tov, Bobby," something that stuck with me because at the time I didn't know its meaning.

Promoter Richard Nader reassured Nelson afterwards that the booing was directed at the police who were breaking up a fight. Possibly true but it feels like the words of someone trying to smooth things over with his star attraction. Playing anything even remotely country (and covering Honky Tonk Women as Nelson did) was misjudging the venue and the audience.

What Nelson really needed was Kris Kristofferson waiting offstage.

Aside from Nelson, what I remember most was Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, who closed the show, both larger than life. Diddley was a revelation, making prescription eyeglasses cool, getting distorted tones out of that square guitar. Berry duckwalked, swung the guitar between his legs and played a jukebox worth of classic songs. The house lights came up for Johnny B. Goode, everyone standing and singing "Go, Go Johnny Go." Who didn't know those lyrics?

Although not a part of the program that night, one mainstay of the rock & roll revivals was Chubby Checker. Like Nelson, in 1971 he was also looking to change his image and recorded an album of self-penned music called Chequered. It included a song titled Stoned in the Bathroom. 

Predictably, Chequered flopped. A year after the concert, Garden Party went to #6 and gave Nelson some critical cachet as a country-rock pioneer. He died on New Year’s Eve, 1985 during the crash landing of his band’s plane. Chubby Checker has survived several decades in history’s dustbin and will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame later this year.

As Chuck Berry sang that night, "It goes to show you never can tell."