This Nostalgic Life is a free weekly publication rich with nostalgia brought to you by co-creators Eric Vardeman and Mick Lee. If this is your first time reading, you can subscribe using the button below so you don’t miss receiving any future issues delivered straight to your inbox.
Welcome to the 41st issue of This Nostalgic Life where the usual suspects, Eric and Mick, are telling stories about their first concert experiences. Strike up a lighter and hold it up high as you read along with this week’s tales!
The Monsters of Rock
by Eric Vardeman
Summer, 1988. For the first time ever, The Monsters of Rock tour was tearing up stadiums across America on a 22-date, multi-band extravaganza. Up to this point, The Monsters of Rock had been a European festival held primarily at Castle Donington Raceway in Derbyshire, UK. The tour was now bringing the experience to American fans. MTV (especially Headbanger’s Ball on Saturday nights) was giving it plenty of coverage. The tour would be making a stop in Kansas City on July 10th and some friends and I convinced our parents to let us travel three and a half hours north, unsupervised, to attend the show.
Looking back, I guess it probably wasn’t that big of a sell to let us take a road trip. Out of the seven of us that went, four of us had just graduated high school and would be leaving for college in a month or so. It was time to let us spread our wings a bit. Our plan was to drive up Saturday afternoon, attend the show on Sunday, then drive home Monday morning. The Monday part was important for me because I had to be back in town in time to go to work at 5pm that evening.
As you can tell from the ticket, the show started at 1:30 in the afternoon and it was already miserably hot. Kingdom Come was the first band on the stage. They were fairly new on the scene. They had a video on MTV (“Get It On”) but nobody really knew anything about them other than they had been branded as Led Zeppelin copycats. They played for about 40 minutes. They were “meh”.
The second band on was Metallica. I believe their album, And Justice For All, had just come out but the single “One” had yet to blow up. The crowd near the stage was whipped into a frenzy almost immediately and stayed that way the whole set. Their set lasted about an hour and they were, honestly, the most surprising of all the bands as they were really good live.
Dokken came next. They were one of the two bands I was there for as guitarist George Lynch was and still is one of my guitar heroes. There was absolutely no chemistry between band members on stage as Lynch and Don Dokken had been at odds for quite some time and it was clearly evident during their one hour set. A couple of my buddies and I got down close the the stage to watch Lynch play and, not matter what was going on between band members, he did not disappoint.
The Scorpions had an hour and a half to blow us and I honestly can’t even remember their set. I know they did all their “hits” but I have no memories of their set. In our defense, the band went on around 6pm and we were hot, tired, and hungry. Plus, they were the one band that none of us were really motivated to see so we were probably in various lines procuring food and drink.
Now, this next part I cannot independently prove but several of us believe it. When we arrived earlier that day, we had managed to find seats in the lower level towards the back of stadium. A little further back than we wanted but still had a great view. Plus we weren’t far from the mid-level overhang so we were starting to get shade in the evening. Anyway, I think Van Halen was supposed to go on around 8pm but were late getting on. It had been a long, hot day and the fans were getting restless. Our crew was sitting there, minding our own business, when a someone’s drink came crashing down from the mid-level deck and landed on our seats. Without missing a beat, one of my friends threw his drink up over his shoulder, back in the general vicinity of the original drink came from. Another cup came down, the another, then hot dog, then trash. Another friend of mine threw their cup into the air towards the mid-level deck. And as fast as it was coming down it was being tossed back up. Soon, like a human wave, the food fight was slowly making its way around the stadium. Lower level fighting mid-level, mid-level fighting both lower and upper level. It was ridiculous. Trash filled the air like confetti on New Years Eve. When the lights finally went down for Van Halen to take the stage, people were still fully engrossed in the battle. It took a few moments of stage noise to pull people out of the food fight fever dream and back to reality.
Van Halen did not disappoint. Their set, which lasted over two hours, included Roth-era and Hagar-era songs as well as a couple of Sammy songs. They ended the night with a cover of Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll”. A couple of us tried to get close to the stage to watch Ed play but it was jammed. It didn’t really matter though, he was all over the stage. By the time we got back to our hotel around 1:00 am, we were spent. But we had just seen the greatest show that any of us had seen, to that point in our lives. And the best part? The tickets were only twenty-five dollars. TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS. Are you kidding me? Get outta here!
Show Me The Way
by Mick Lee
It was the spring of 1994, I had recently turned 16 and I was really coming into my own as far as music tastes went. I had graduated from listening to Dad’s favorite albums to having my own favorites in my first ride. Classic rock and old Southern rock had quickly become my music of choice.
It was all over the radio that gods of Southern rock, Lynyrd Skynyrd, were coming to the area for a concert, and I was instantly sure I had to be there. Along with Lynyrd Skynyrd would be an act I had no knowledge of called the Kenny Wayne Sheppard Band, and a classic rock artist that I was sort of familiar with, Peter Frampton.
I had several friends who planned on going, so I was pumped at the notion of going to a real concert. The only thing standing in my way was my Mom, who very quickly dismissed the idea that I would be going. With the concert being over an hour away, and no one in the party being much over 16, she did not like the idea of that road trip. Especially since the destination was a rock concert, which in her mind, was second only to a Satanist revival in terms of the evil scale.
For days on end, I begged and pleaded, but she was firm that I wasn’t going. I felt certain I could change her mind, and gave money to my friends to get my ticket anyway.
A week out from the show and she still wasn’t budging. I quickly changed tactics and stopped bringing it up, as I had already decided I was going and was going to lie to get there.
The day before the show I told her I had plans to go bowling and she bought it. I had to leave early that evening to meet my friends and get to the show on time. She thought my time of departure was odd and questioned it. At this moment, I can’t recall what lie I told her.
But I snuck out, met up with my friends, and enjoyed the hell out of that concert. Pete Frampton opened the show and played almost all of his classic album, Frampton Come Alive. Kenny Wayne Shepperd was up next and instantly became a favorite of mine. Then Skynyrd took the stage, playing all the hits, and the whole place sang along and rocked out for the entire performance.
I made it back home early enough to avoid suspension and thought that I had pulled off a perfect deception.
But the next evening, we were watching the local evening news and they were covering the concert. They had had a reporter there outside the venue doing a story. I had seen this reporter, and as we watched, I quickly sank into my chair, crossing my fingers and hoping that we wouldn’t see what I was afraid we were going to see.
But then it happened. As the reporter was giving the story, a small band of five teenagers walked by, and the tall red-headed one looked straight into the camera, flashed the horns, and flicked his tongue at the camera. That kid was me. I had just been busted on camera being at the show as my Mom watched on in horror.
Let me just say that the grounding that followed that incident was more than worth it as I had a hell of a time at that concert, and still think back on it often even today. And every time I hear “Show Me the Way” by Frampton, or “Sweet Home Alabama” by Skynyrd, I sing along and the scenes from that night play over again and again in my mind.
Thanks for joining us for this edition of This Nostalgic Life. We’ve hope you’ve enjoyed these concert stories, and we’d love to hear yours too! Drop us a line with your story of your first show and we may print it in a future issue. But until then, we’ll see you next time.
I love Dokken!!