Going to gigs in the 70s and early 80s was, as I’m sure you remember, a very different experience to today. Such things as Health and Safety didn’t exist, it wasn’t unpoliced but very casually policed. You could do pretty much what you liked without much opprobrium. As I was saying in the last blog, my friends were throwing up all through Wishbone Ash and still didn’t get thrown out. It wasn’t a corporate event, corporations didn’t want to be associated with high volume rock and its hairy followers. How different from today, eh.
The only advertising you occasionally saw was an advert for John Player No 6 cigarettes In the tour programme. Needless to say, you could smoke everywhere in all venues. You never went anywhere without coming home, stinking of smoke and drinking laws were, shall we say, lax. I was going out well before I was 16 and I looked it.
It was against this somewhat anarchic background that what I’m about to say took place at Newcastle Mayfair. For years I thought it was a Gary Moore gig but it wasn’t, it was that 1st solo album tour that Greg Lake did with Gary on guitar on 16th October 1981. I was 20 and had met Dawn a year and a half since, moving in with her that March. I don’t remember how many of us went but it was at least four.
As usual the place was packed and hot even on an Autumnal night. In an attempt to avoid the crush by the stage, we took up a position on the balcony, a few steps from the long bar which serviced the hairy hoards. Incidentally, the bars in the Mayfair were massive and there was one on each floor about 30 feet long and I think there was a smaller one too. You could also check your coat, a hangover from its dancehall days, but very useful.
Anyway, there we were, standing front and centre of the balcony as the band came on. It meant we had good sound. Remember the days of discussion about sound quality and having to walk around the venue to find out where it sounded best. I don’t recall who it was, but the lead guitar was inaudible and I remember walking around the city hall trying to find a position where I could hear it and finding a spot at the back and to the right.
If you’ve heard the live album released from this tour, it was the same set. Gary was just coming to prominence though of course I knew him from Colosseum II and Thin Lizzy. And my recollection is he essentially stole the show with some blistering playing.
The crowd was waiting for Parisienne Walkways and there was talk in the music papers beforehand that lads were timing how long Gary held a note for in the middle of the song. I forget the record at that point but he broke it that night, sustaining the note for a long time and the whole place was in uproar as he made the record. When I say, in uproar, it’s no exaggeration because, overcome with excitement, one of the local hairy men was hung over the balcony and held there for the duration of the note by his feet, freaking out, just dangling there 10 feet or more off the ground. You’d think the venue, fearing a death, would do something about this, but not at all. In fact no one seemed bothered, indeed many barely noticed.
These days it’d be all over social media in a flash, of course. The lad’s long hair was hanging down and people were pulling on it, trying to bring him down! And this is all going on while Gary was gurning his face off, holding the note, seemingly oblivious.
After about a minute four burley men in bike jackets, hoicked him back over the balcony to cheers. He was unhurt but puce-faced. And all the while, in a dark corner of the balcony, I recall two people were lying on the sticky floor, engaged in what at the time would have been called heavy petting.
I mention this because it’s quite shocking now, but in 1981, it really wasn’t. We just laughed about it. It was a gig and mad things happened when you mixed loud rock, snakebites and hormones.
