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My mom grew up in the seventies. She was always going to concerts and has probably been to hundreds of them. The goal was always to get as close as possible so she could take pictures with my dad’s 35mm that had the giant zoom lens. She likes to tell me that for her, going to concerts really was like that movie, “Almost Famous” – it was about the music and loving the band so much that it hurt. Her favorite band of all time was and still is Led Zeppelin. She never got the chance to see them live before John Bonham died. She’s already told me that if they ever go on a reunion tour, I get to camp out a week in advance to get tickets.
In 1981 – before she was married and had kids – she went and saw the Rolling Stones at Candelstick Park in San Francisco. My dad and their friend, Mike, camped out overnight in order to score tickets before they went on sale. There were seven people altogether who made the trip from Sacramento to the concert – my mom, her little brother Rod, her best friend Jennine, my dad, his little sister Cindi, Mike, and a seventh person no one seems to remember. My mom thinks it was some dude who was a friend of a friend and my aunt says it was a girl they picked up along the way as someone’s date.
The group drove over the night before in a Winnebago and camped out in the parking lot. There were so many people there that it was like a giant party with free drugs and alcohol. My aunt Cindi actually didn’t have a ticket. My dad made her buy one from someone as soon as they arrived and she ended up spending all her money. She had to trade the t-shirt guy some shrooms for a concert shirt. An hour later, he had quit the business and had no more magic mushrooms. People kept coming up to the Winnie and asking to use the bathroom like it was no big deal. Bathroom privileges were given in return for money, pot, or beer.
My dad’s favorite song was “Sympathy for the Devil.” The Stones rarely played it during concerts because fights always seemed to break out during it. Because of that, my mom and some of the group made a giant banner that said “Sympathy for the Devil.” She bought four white king-sized sheets and sewed them together in the front yard. She spent so much money on red glitter just to fill in the word devil and a pitchfork. It was so huge that when they hung it from the balcony, it blocked the box seats and they had to keep moving it. Security threatened to kick them out. Mick Jagger acknowledged them by pointing and saying, “Thanks Sympathy.” My mom wasn’t up in the balcony when it happened. She was down in the crowd on my dad’s shoulders, cheering and bragging. The band didn’t play the song that day.
My mom said that one of the good things about my dad was that she could sit on his shoulders all night. Sometimes he would need a break. Then she’d pout because she couldn’t see. He would always let her back up, though. If she didn’t go to a concert with a guy, she’d always find a tall one and ask if she could sit on his. They would always say yes.
Mick went out over the audience in a cherry picker. He had a bucket of water and carnations with him. When he dumped it into the crowd, it went all over my mom because she was the closest to him. Later, her and my dad got so close to the stage that there was no one in front of them. She said it was like she was eye level with Mick and there was no one else around. He even blew her a kiss. It was one of those moments that seemed too good to be true. She had captured it with her camera. Those pictures became a source of argument between my parents when they split up. My dad wanted them. My mom didn’t care what he said. In the end, neither one of them got them. They were lost when their storage locker was sold. My dad forgot to, or just didn’t, pay the bill.
That wasn’t the only thing from my mom’s music collection that was lost to her. The giant picture frame with all the ticket stubs from the hundreds of concerts she’d gone to, along with the banner from the Stones concert, was also in the storage locker when it was sold. When my grandparents moved up to Washington, all her posters and the 8X10s that she had bought outside of Tower Records were thrown out. Her enormous collection of vinyl, which included rare albums like one of Lynyrd Skynyrd before half the band died was lost or sold. On the album cover, the band had been standing in front of flames. After the plane accident, the records were pulled from retail stores. All my mom’s records had been stashed in a friend’s basement while my mom moved. When she came to collect them, they weren’t there. Her friend still denies she had anything to do with it. I like to rub it in my mom’s face that my Led Zeppelin’s vinyl collection is almost complete.
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Going on road trips to concerts reminds me of this movie. It's one of my favorites.
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