Posted on 11/21/2019 6:02:39 PM PST by DoodleBob
THE WHO bandmembers Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey share their detailed personal accounts of what happened the night of December 3, 1979, when 11 young people were killed outside a coliseum before their concert started. In the WCPO documentary "The Who: The Night That Changed Rock", they talk about how this single event forever changed rock and the lives of so many people. While they didn't know about the deaths until after the concertended, they have lived with the pain of the losses for 40 years.
"You know, I'm still traumatized by it," says Townshend. "It's a weird thing to have in your autobiography that, you know, 11 kids died at one of your concerts. It's a strange, disturbing heavy load to carry."
"That dreadful night of the third of December became one of the worst dreams I've had in my life," recounts Daltrey.
The band's longtime manager, Bill Curbishley, witnessed the deaths and made the call to let the band play. "Despite everything," says Curbishley, "I still feel inadequate. I don't know about the guys, but for me, I left a little bit of my soul in Cincinnati."
(Excerpt) Read more at blabbermouth.net ...
I was in my first semester at what is now Kutztown Univ. near Reading, PA when this happened.
Joel Selvin rock critic for the SF Chronicle wrote a scathing article about how those shows were run. He used the term “Push them around a bit” when it came to crowd control. It was bound to happen at some point.
I was outside of Philadelphia and I remember seeing this on Channel 6 news at 11pm, I think from Jim Gardner. They played The Spectrum a week later (I missed them that time around).
I decided to pass on the Chicago stop of that tour. They played the old Amphitheater. The next year I joined the Corps so my concert days were postponed.
L
I never knew,,,
I thought the deaths at the Altamont Speedway Free Festival on December 6, 1969 was the day that changed rock forever.
I remember someone died while trying to fly from the top of Giants Stadium at a Grateful Dead concert.
Festival/general admission seating is still a thing. I usually don’t go up front unless I really like the band AND I’m certain it won’t get crazy. I did go to a metal show recently, and the surge was scary. It’s amazing more people haven’t been killed since then.
Altamont closed the 60s. The only change that show ushered in was the demise of Hell’s Angels as concert security (it’s still disputed if the Angels were primary security).
We never had anything like that happen at the Cotton Bowl Jams years prior to this event.
I thought that February 2, 1959 was the day the music died.
Sign of the times back then when the young people became lemmings and looked at these people as if they were somehow Gods or bigger than life. It was all pushed mostly by the leftist of the day. Many of the same folks who glorified hard drugs, “If it feels good do it” dogma etc.
I was no exception...Saw the Who at Anaheim Stadium I believe in ‘73...Leon Russel was also on the bill.
That’s definitely a good candidate date, but December 15, 1944 was probably even more important and a bigger tragedy.
“I’d walk over you to see the WHO”
I was living in Dayton around that time, and knew a few people that went to that show.
They said they had no idea it happened but recalled that some people actually picked up their feet and got carried by the crowd. They were scared that if they tripped they’d be trampled.
It didn't do anything to rock...Altamont many agree was the end of the 60s innocents and demise of the hippies. This was compounded by the Charlie Mason events of the late 60s and very early 70s. By then, for the most part, flower power and the hippie bull sh*t were a thing of the past that most but a few diehard holdouts wanted to forget. On the west coast, most people moved on.
More than 18,000 tickets were sold for this show at Cincinnati Riverfront Stadium for which there were only 25 police officers allotted for crowd control. The set was to begin at 8PM, but the doors were still closed at 7:45 when an anxious crowd, hearing The Whos warmup and mistaking it for the opening number, surged toward the opening doors.
The Beverly Hills Supper Club was a sprawling maze of a club just across the bridge from Cincinnati, OH. It was possible to have several events going at the same time as was the case on the night of the fire simultaneous banquets, receptions and larger events like the John Davidson concert all connected by narrow passageways within the same structure.
The exact cause of the fire was never determined, but what is known is that the fire was well underway when it was discovered by two waitresses. The ornate Cabaret room, where two comics were warming up an audience of at least a thousand in a space meant for about 600, held the majority of the buildings occupants.
Busboy, Walter Bailey, stopped the show to make an announcement about the fire. Several people made their way toward the exits hed pointed out while others didnt take the threat seriously. When the fire reached the room, the crowd panicked.
Bruce Rath, a firefighter interviewed in the video above says of that night:
When I got to the inside doors, which is about 30 feet inside the building, I seen this big double doors, and the people were stacked like cordwood. They were clear up to the top, the people. They just kept diving on each other trying to get out. I looked back over this pile of it wasnt dead people, there were dead and alive in that pile and I went in and I started just grabbing two at a time and pulling them off the stack, and dragging them out, giving them to the busboys.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.