Hard to believe it’s been 40 years since the tragedy at Riverfront. I was a young teenager but I remember it well. I’ve never been to a big concert with festival seating, and I’m probably past that age point where I would be in the target audience.
I haven’t seen the documentary mentioned in the article, but I bet it’s fascinating. It’ll be an emotional show.
I attended the show one night before the infamous one in Cincinnati, at Pittsburgh’s Civic Arena and with my then-girlfriend for company. Awesome show, and I was half-deaf for several days thereafter, but we were in the crush at the front of the stage and at a couple points came close to getting knocked down and trampled. All the ingredients were present for a Cinci-style tragedy, but for whatever reason it didn’t happen that night.
It was bit over an hour’s drive back from the show, and a half-mile from home I stopped for a traffic light at a deserted intersection, only to be rammed hard from behind by a drunk kid in his Dad’s ginormous Chrysler. He immediately took off, and my (rented) car was too badly damaged to give chase. We both had sore necks for a few days, but fortunately no serious injury. All in all, a highly memorable night.
I caught them at Chase Center. Roger and Pete kicked ass for a bunch of old farts. They had a small subset of the San Francisco Philharmonic to back them up, but had 4 violinists and 4 french horn players so the tunes from Tommy were fantastic. I had a nose bleed seat that I managed to buy the day of the show, and I was not disappointed. I had seen them in 1982 at the L.A. Coliseum which was 37 years ago.
I saw them in 1982 with festival [del]seating[/del] standing, so the lesson apparently hadn’t sunk in fully by that point.
Pete has famously remarked that The Who are now the world’s most expensive Who cover band.
I saw them in Det. shortly after the Cinci debacle.
Sadly, WKRP is no longer broadcasting from the Flimm Building.
There was a very poignant episode of WKRP about the station sponsoring the show and dealing with the fallout.
Saw them in DC a few weeks after the tragedy. And saw them in May of this year with the orchestra, still a very good show.