No Surprize wrote:Great story man and I never get tired of hearing them. Those kind of festivals will never happen again with such great bands in their prime. Can you imagine now a US festival of bands like that in their prime of their music careers? I can't. Back in the day we use to go to any and every concert we wanted to when bands headed down to Florida. Hell, tickets were cheap then, you could hit 10 to 12 shows a year for the price you pay for one good seat now. I remember going to see the Stones at what is now the Citrus bowl in Orlando. The Stones were supporting "Tattoo You", Van Halen actually took a detour off their "Fair Warning" tour to open for the Stones for 2 shows. They had an opening act who we didn't pay much attention to due to the fact we had a "rough experience" just getting there. 4 of us, always 4, driving the 3 hours and some change to get there. Left early, and it was so foggy you couldn't see 2 feet in front of your fucking face. Anyway to make a long story short we ran off the road by missing a stop sign, slammed into a park car, got our car off the parked car and finally made it to the concert with our car only managing to get up to 45 mph. So, we settle in and were to the left of the stage with a great angle view. Hot chicks all around us which made it even better. The chicks behind us were snorting cocaine and we were naive as hell to what that was but it wasn't long before they turned us on to an eye opener of it. Of course we had our "skunk" bud aroma and so we were set. I remember when VH came on they opened with "Mean street" and after a couple more tunes David Lee Roth shouted " Do you know what the first thing the newspaper critic will write about this show in tomorrow's paper? "How fucked up Van Halen was." "And you know the second thing they are going to write is"? "How Fucked up the audience was!" Then he bellowed out in a roar, Well this one's for the press and they broke into "So this is love". We all had a great time. Man, their were thousands of hot chicks in the hot ass florida sun. The Stones put on a great show, I remember they opened with "Under my thumb" and when the finally played the first chord to "Start me Up" the crowd to it to the next level. What a great time. It was also the last concert I seen with a personal best friend who was killed by a drunk driver while walking down a sidewalk in his neighborhood when he was only 21. RIP Mick, I miss you to this day and wonder what you might have been.
You're right about all the concerts we could attend back then. And the thing is, it didn't matter so much where your seat was, it was more the fact that you were there which is what the US Festival was all about - for us anyway. We knew it was going to be epic, record breaking, historic due to the fact that the promos for it were rampant and fierce. Cal Jam II had broken all attendance records the year before with 250,000 people and it didn't have near the number of bands that were playing at US.
Living near Chico, CA might as well have been the other side of the planet compared to where the concert was being held since neither my buddy nor I had a car at the time and we didn't know anyone else who was adventurous enough to drive that distance "just to go to a concert". But that was the thing - it wasn't just a concert and we HAD to be there. So, as any 19-year-old guys would do back in 1983.... we hitchhiked! 750 miles separated us from US and by God, the fact that we hitchhiked was going to be part of the experience and the story we would be able to tell!
Can you imagine the same situation today: 2 long haired rockers, both with backpacks, cut-offs, concert tee's, packing an ounce of radioactive pot, some mushrooms - just for good measure - hitchhiking along I-5 with a sign that read, "US FEST OR DIE!". We would be picked up by the first cop to drive by!
The story would have been a lot more colorful had we had to wait for hours at a time between rides, or if we had gotten robbed, or if basically anything would have happened other than what actually did. Within 30 mins. of sticking out our thumbs, we got picked up by these 2 girls who were headed to US from Reading, CA (75 miles north) and were happy to have someone to share the cost of gas with. They were far from good looking but that didn't matter - we were now on our way to the show and we were grateful! They ended up being really weird and we parted company with them as soon as we got to the venue.
I could go on and on about the trip and various things we experienced once we got there and subsequently got home - once the show was over, we still had the same 750 miles ahead of us!
Yup, those kinds of festivals don't happen as often here in the U.S. as they did back in the day, but that's what ultimately made them so special and the memories so awesome and cherished. And with how much it now costs just to see one band, I can't fathom how much one of those shows would cost!
Here's the stub for Heavy Metal Day at the US Festival which featured 8 of the biggest and hottest rock bands on the planet at the time.
VH was the headliner but ask anyone who was there, Scorps absolutely stole the show. They were tight, their overall sound was outstanding and they weren't completely and totally wasted the way VH was. It's a wonder Roth could stand up. In their defense though, no-one utilized the stage more than Eddie and Michael did. The stage itself was gargantuan! And on both sides were these long (100 feet easily) runways which Eddie used literally as runways. He would run the entire length of them while jamming which the crowd ate up.
Judas Priest was pretty damned good as well. Apparently it was at that point in the day when the sound engineers finally got their shit together and had all 4 sound columns working at the same time so when JP took the stage, they were twice as loud as any of the previous bands which the crowd appreciated. After the MC introduced them, the first sound you heard was Halford's Harley kicking over and revving which as I mentioned, now that all the speakers were active, filled the entire pavilion and the crowd went absolutely ape shit! And without hesitation, as soon as Halford arrived at center stage, KK wastes no time starting the intro to Breaking The Law which took the crowd to an even higher frenzied state.
Halford lives here in Scottsdale and regularly frequents the live rock band clubs around town. He's a very nice guy and is very approachable.
Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2012 2:13 am
