I was there when.......

[Bilbo]

Just a bit if fun for the old farts on here.....

 

I just saw a post on Facebook that reminded me that I was there when Marillion were doing their early gigs and were making a bit of a splash. I saw their first appearance at the Reading Festival. I began considering what other musical events or occasions we have all been party to that turned out to be important in some way. It doesn't matter how trivial it may have been. A few I can recall include:

Owning the first Def Leppard single 'Hello America' as a 7" single on Bludgeon Riffola records before they went on to play stadiums all over the US.

I was at the first Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donnington in Derbyshire.

I saw New Wave of British Prog band Twelfth Night when Geoff Mann was the lead singer.

I saw Iron Maiden when Paul DiAnnio was the lead singer and Janick Gers was in the support band (White Spirit).

I used to watch Motorhead guitarist Phil Campbell in a band called Persian Risk at The Isca, a local pub in Newport (Wales), before he got the gig with Lemmy. Persian Risk singer Carl Sentence went on to front a load of HM legends including Krokus and Nazareth and has recorded with Geezer Butler (Black Sabbath) and Don Airey (Rainbow, Deep Purple).

There will be more. What about you guys? We are all part of history. Where were you?

 

Edited March 11, 2020 by Bilbo

[No lust in Jazz]

I saw Amy Winehouse in a small club in Chester in the very early 2000's - a small crowd. My mate who suggested the gig seemed to think she'd go on to do something.

[paul_5]

I saw Korn as a support band in the mid 90s and remember being very impressed with them. They were opening for Primus.

[Dad3353]

Does this count..?

First Isle Of Wight Festival, Godshill ...

An unforgettable line-up of acts which went on to shake the world (or so I still like to believe...). Happy daze (very much pre-dope...). That festival changed my life forever, and I'm darned glad it did..! 

Edited March 11, 2020 by Dad3353

[BrunoBass]

I saw Oasis at the Northampton Roadmender in early ‘94 on their first tour. I think they’d just released their first single. Probably 100 people there if that. Twenty four months later they did Knebworth, amazing how big they were, like them or not. 
 

Also at the Roadmender, this time in 1995, I saw a band called 60 ft Dolls of whom I was a fan, some of you may remember them. Supporting them was a then unknown Feeder, who absolutely blew them away. Midweek gig, no more than 50 people in I’d say.

[bassbiscuits]

I saw Coldplay at Aberavon Leisure Centre in Port Talbot, South Wales, just around the time of their second album. It was a small sports hall packed the rafters with people and stank of weed.

I also narrowly missed the Stereophonics playing at our university ball in about 1994 or 95 - I queued to get in and managed it just after they'd finished. The bar then ran out of booze too. Poor effort all round.

I am somewhere in the crowd on the Stereophonics' Performance and Cocktails live DVD at Morfa Stadium in 1999 tho!

 

 

[MacDaddy]

In 1963 I was hiding behind a grassy knoll as President Kennedy drove past...

[fleabag]

I saw  Joe Jackson  ( anyone remember him ? )   before he became famous.  This was a band called Arms and Legs and it was a pub gig in Gosport.  I happened at that time to be living in the Portsmouth/Southsea area.

This would have been mid to  late 70's

Edited March 11, 2020 by fleabag

[Cato]

I saw Arctic Monkeys play Wolverhampton Little Civic to a capacity crowd of maybe 100 people, maybe spring/summer 2005, before any single releases or the debut album.

I'd never heard of them, a mate of mine had bought the tickets on spec because we fancied a night out.

It was a good gig but I don't think any of us thought that they'd be headlining the big festivals in 18 months time.

Edited March 11, 2020 by Cato

[BlueMoon]

In and around 1976, I was having a quiet drink one evening  in a local country pub in Cranleigh (Surrey).............and in walk two unassuming chaps, both with acoustic guitars. The barman tips them the nod and seems to know what the'll want to drink. They set up two stools in a corner and proceed to give an impromtu acoustic concert for the locals. Guess who??

Ronnie Lane and Eric Clapton. 

Gobsmacked or what !!!!!!

[odysseus]

57 minutes ago, Bilbo said:

 

I used to watch Motorhead guitarist Phil Campbell in a band called Persian Risk at The Isca, a local pub in Newport (Wales),

 

I rented a room off Dixie Lee, one of Persian Risk's drummers (and also Lone Star), for a couple of years.

[Earbrass]

Saw Pink Floyd in 1974 at Wembley Empire Pool, as it then was; they played a couple of tracks nobody had heard from their forthcoming album, including "Shine On You Crazy Diamond".

I was also at the Stone Roses gig at Alexander Palace in 1989 - taken by a younger colleague eager to introduce me (already an old fart at 29) to the "new" music.

EDIT - just remembered, I saw Bob Marley and the Wailers in Brighton on his last ever tour in July 1980, just a few months before he passed away.

Edited March 11, 2020 by Earbrass

[Happy Jack]

In the late 70s my local was The John Bull in Gunnersbury and I was trying to make it into the pub's pool team. Some Saturday nights I'd be in the back room playing pool while some pub rockers called Streetband played the main room, and the singer would chat up my girlfriend (Isabelle) between sets.

He was Paul Young.

 

[Frank Blank]

1. After a dramatic entrance Jim Kerr fell off the front of the stage at the Lyceum and had to be helped back onstage by audience members.

2. An enormous rockabilly fellow getting on stage, again at The Lyceum, with The Cult and doing the classic chicken dance. Several roadies appeared to get him off the stage, all of whom he dispatched with flailing punches. He eventually rejoined the crown but only after drop kicking Jamie Stewart into the wings.

3. SPK supporting The Birthday Party at the Electric Ballroom. SPK had animal skulls on sticks as stage props during their set which they threw in to the audience when they finished. I picked one up, a sheep skull I think, my finger found something squelchy in the the eye socket, a rotten eye. The smell was epic. This was the most violent gig I’ve ever been too, a friend of mine had his ear spit in two during the fray, he was (and still is) vey proud of it.

4. During a Killing Joke souncheck Raven was informed that guest was trying to get in. I went to see who it was and looking in through the window was Billy Duffy. “It’s Billy Duffy” I reported back,  “Tell him to fück off” came the reply. I went back, opened the window and said, in my most gentlemanly tone “I’m afraid Paul’s tied up mid-soundcheck at the moment but he did specifically request that you fück off”, which, seemingly, he did. During the actual gig Duffy returned but Raven clocked him and between songs shouted “Oi Duffy, I thought I told you to fück off?”, which, this time, he promptly did.

5. During a Crystal Method show in Houston (I was working for the support band) ZZ Top turned up. Billy Gibbons had ZZ Top headed post-it-notes with his autograph which he stuck to anyone who asked.

6. Working with a band at the Phoenix Festival in 1996, the tour manager ran up to me and said “There’s some nutter sitting on the DJs podium and he’s rocking it so much ******* can’t scratch” I ran over to eject the fellow but as I approached I realised it was Goldie, ”S’alright, I’m fücking off” he grinned.

7. Returning from a Banshees gig in the early eighties, about thirty of us boarded a train at Liverpool Street. Once we’d all found seats someone shouted out, “It’s Gripper” and indeed, sitting quietly on his own was Mark Savage who played Gripper Stebson in Grange Hill. Once he realised we weren’t going to throw him out the window he was a good laugh.

8. Hearing a rousing chorus of Stand & Deliver being sung by a crowd of football supporters alighting from a train at Euston. Only on closer inspection did I see a highly embarrassed Adam Ant walking along the platform with his wheelie suitcase as the crowd sang behind him, he looked like he wanted a hole in the ground to swallow him up.

[Happy Jack]

In 1979 I went with a friend to The Nashville Rooms in West Kensington to score some dope. William & I were hanging around the main bar, which was rapidly filling up with a bizarre assortments of mods, rockers, punks and new romantics ... these were people you never saw in one place unless something was kicking off between them.

Will had the self-preservation instincts of a lemming and flagged down a passing skinhead to ask what was going on.

"It's a great new band called Madness" he shouted. 

Will and I looked at each other, said "nope, me neither", and we went off to find our dealer.

 

[Happy Jack]

In 1981 I was living in a derelict Council block in Roffey Street on the Isle of Dogs. Things had slightly ... erm ... gone to 5h1t for various reasons and this place was like a communal Halfway House for people connected to a certain bunch of wannabe musicians & rockstars who never got anywhere.

I had a mattress on the floor in what was once a large bedroom so, when Bruce Bruce (singer for local pub-rockers Samson) needed somewhere to crash for a while he threw another mattress alongside mine and we shared the room for a few months.

One day he never came home. Didn't come back for his record collection or his clothes, just vanished.

Until he re-surfaced a week later as the new singer for Iron Maiden.

 

[hooky_lowdown]

I saw Radiohead (not called that back then) a few times when they first started playing pub gigs in Oxford in the mid 80s.

[Happy Jack]

One of the early monster gigs at Knebworth with a line-up to die for ... so good that 40 years later I don't remember anything about the gig except the point when the DJ between bands put on Jilted John.

When we got to the appropriate moment, about 40,000 people all yelled "Gordon is a moron" in unison.

[yorks5stringer]

Saw Longdancer at the Marquee some time before Dave Stewart became a Eurythmic and also an early version of Tears for Fears called Graduate. Remember Gary More depping with the Sutherland Brothers and Quiver in the early 70's too. Oh, and Paul Kossof with John Martyn

[Happy Jack]

Which reminds me that I was at Bad Company's first London gig after their first album came out. 'Twas at The Rainbow and - as we all realised later - they had the 40 minutes of material that was on the album and f***-all else.

They kicked off with Can't Get Enough.

Then they played the rest of the album, including Can't Get Enough.

Their encore was an extended 20-minute jam of Can't Get Enough.

All through the gig there were hundreds of people screaming for them to play something, anything, by Free.

They didn't.

 

[Happy Jack]

Incidentally, and seeing as this is a genuine "I Was There" thread, can I just point out that I am one of the very few people (relatively speaking) who actually SAW King Arthur On Ice at the Wembley Pool.

Seriously.

Accept no substitutes.

Far more people have claimed that they were there than could possibly have attended one of the three (count them, three) shows that Wakeman played. He even riffs a chapter about this very subject in his Grumpy Old Rock Star book.

But I was there and I saw it.

 

[Leonard Smalls]

I was on the Events crew at Leeds University, somebody asked me if I'd mix the band who were playing in the Tartan Bar as he had a date... I had very little clue, but managed to get a passable sound from The Sisters of Mercy - it was one of their 1st gigs.

I also saw the Red Hot Chilli Peppers 1st UK gig at the Clarendon in Hammersmith - maybe 50 people there - and I was at the infamous Mean Fiddler gig where Hillel Slovak "was taken ill" leaving just the 3 of them to continue. Flea coped very well and played even more notes than he usually does!

 

[Earbrass]

6 minutes ago, Happy Jack said:

Incidentally, and seeing as this is a genuine "I Was There" thread, can I just point out that I am one of the very few people (relatively speaking) who actually SAW King Arthur On Ice at the Wembley Pool.

Seriously.

Accept no substitutes.

Far more people have claimed that they were there than could possibly have attended one of the three (count them, three) shows that Wakeman played. He even riffs a chapter about this very subject in his Grumpy Old Rock Star book.

But I was there and I saw it.

 

Me too.  I think it was May 1975??? I seem to remember attending 3 big gigs in the one month - Led Zep at Earls Court, Yes at QPR and Wakeman at Wembley. Two of them were excellent.....

Edited March 11, 2020 by Earbrass

[BrunoBass]

1 hour ago, Earbrass said:

I was also at the Stone Roses gig at Alexander Palace in 1989 - taken by a younger colleague eager to introduce me (already an old fart at 29) to the "new" music.

Reminds me, I saw The Stone Roses in Stratford-upon-Avon at the Town Hall, summer 1989. There was a real buzz about them and I’d loved all of their singles up to that point (they hadn’t yet released their album). 
 

My lasting memories are that they didn’t play for very long (it felt like they were only onstage for twenty minutes), and that they weren’t actually that good. But it was more about the excitement of the time and seeing them that made it an occasion.

Edited March 11, 2020 by BrunoBass

[Happy Jack]

"I think it was May 1975??? I seem to remember attending 3 big gigs in the one month - Led Zep at Earls Court, Yes at QPR and Wakeman at Wembley."

Yup, 1975, and my Arthur ticket was my consolation prize for not getting a ticket for Yes at QPR.

Well, that plus I knew I wouldn't have to sit on wet grass for the entirety of Tales Of Topographic Oceans.

Oh, and I walked past Earl's Court on the Saturday night ... and there were still tickets for sale on the door. It wasn't sold out. I didn't have any money so I kept walking.

Edited March 11, 2020 by Happy Jack