Ever wanted a trip back to the 70s where bigger and better really hit the stage?
The Grateful Dead’s marijuana ember and a solo-rock composer with a Guinness
world record might just convince you to fast-track it to the nearest time machine!
The Grateful Dead spent nearly all of the 70s actively touring. They were based in
San Francisco, and one of their favorite venues in the city was the famed Winterland
Ballroom. But after years of concerts and other events, it was falling apart,
to the point that legendary promoter Bill Graham decided it was time to close.
Graham chose the Grateful Dead to headline the last concert on New Year's Eve 1978. There was an
incredible demand for tickets, with people from as far away as Tokyo inquiring about attending.
To make the event extra special, there were some incredible guests, and the Dead's set
had quite the beginning. Instead of a traditional countdown, Graham descended
on the stage as "Father Time" transported on a 12-foot-long “ember of marijuana”.
Among the attendees were famous names like Bill Murray, Al Franken, and NBA star Bill Walton.
"This isn't 1979. This is actually 1968, and we're back at the convention."
The Who were riding a massive wave of popularity leading up to their
fabled concert at the University of Leeds in February 1970. They'd just
released their rock opera Tommy and had played at Woodstock the previous summer.
In an effort to release a live album harnessing the energy of their Tommy shows, the band
booked concerts at both Hull and the University of Leeds. The Hull show was great, but the recordings
were thought to be unusable because bassist John Entwistle couldn't be heard on some of the tracks.
So they switched to recordings of the Leeds show, which turned out to be a fortuitous decision.
Nowadays, many fans acknowledge this as The Who's definitive live album,
which is saying something considering the full breadth of their live catalog.
Elton John released a self-titled album in 1970, but it didn't have much success in
the United States, as the British rock star had yet to perform across the pond. That all changed
when he made his American debut that August at the legendary Troubadour in Los Angeles.
John was only 23 years old, and the Troubadour could only hold about 300 people,
but that didn't stop a legend from forming. His record company booked
him for six days at the club, where he would play a total of eight concerts and
mesmerize the audience with his unique brand of piano-based rock and roll.
Though John was nervous at first and the Troubadour audience was surprised
by his flamboyant costume, it all turned out quite well. By the end of the week,
the concerts were a major celebrity hangout and everyone wanted to be there.
Eventually released as a critically acclaimed double live album, the Allman Brothers shows
at the Fillmore East in March 1971 are the stuff of legends. While the band didn't have
much commercial success in their early days, their live shows immediately drew crowds. So what they
really needed was an album that could harness the energy and excitement of their live performances.
The Allman Brothers played for three consecutive nights from March 11th to the 13th. They were in
the midst of a grueling touring schedule that saw them play as many as 300 concerts in 1970 alone.
Some of the most memorable performances ended up being a nearly 23-minute version
of "Whipping Post" and a 19-minute rendition of "You Don't Love Me." Unfortunately,
these would be some of the last shows to feature original guitarist Duane Allman,
who would die in a motorcycle crash a short time later, which only added to the mystique.
"It felt at times like it gave us more incentive to, to work even harder."
In the mid-1970s, Queen were just beginning their rise to mega-stardom. They had their
first real hits in 1974 with the singles "Seven Seas of Rhye" and "Killer Queen.
But in 1975 everything changed forever when they released A Night at the Opera, which
included the famous anthem "Bohemian Rhapsody" on it, which was their first number one hit.
One year later, Queen played one of their biggest concerts ever, on September 18,
1976 at Hyde Park in London. There were an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 people
in attendance. The show was put on for free, and it's still the largest in Hyde Park's illustrious
history. The band opened with the intro to “A Day at the Races” and a version of "Bohemian Rhapsody"
before launching into other classics like "You're My Best Friend" and "Stone Cold Crazy."
"It was packed beyond belief, and it was really like coming home to a sort of hero's welcome."
Taking place at Watkins Glen, New York, Summer Jam 1973 featured three heavyweights of the era:
The Band, the Grateful Dead, and the Allman Brothers. The idea had been conceived the
year prior, when the Dead played a show at Dillon Stadium in Hartford,
Connecticut. Several members of the Allman Brothers sat and played a
couple of songs with the Dead, thereby prompting the inception of Summer Jam.
The location was the Grand Prix racetrack, and the bands initially planned for a maximum of 150,000
fans. Word soon spread, and in the end there were an estimated 600,000
attendees. Organizers brought in 100,000 gallons of water, 500 cops, and three helicopters,
and tickets cost just ten dollars. The events were complete with a parachutist who tragically
died upon landing, as well as numerous arrests and dozens of abandoned cars littering the highway.
The Beach Boys were one of the biggest draws in America in the 60s. But by the middle of
the following decade, their popularity had waned after a string of inconsistent releases,
though they could still pull in quite the crowd. In 1976, they released the album 15 Big Ones,
and played shows with lead singer Brian Wilson for the first time since the mid-60s.
On September 1, 1977, the Beach Boys played to between
75,000 and 150,000 people at Central Park in New York City. It was part of the WNEW
radio station's annual summer celebration, and the Beach Boys were filling in for Jefferson Starship.
The very next day, they performed at the Narragansett Race Track in Pawtucket,
Rhode Island, to an estimated 40,000 people. It's thought to be the biggest concert in the state's
history, and there's now even a street called "Beach Boys Way" in tribute to the epic concert.
"It was a very important concert in their history.
It was kind of the end of a chapter of their career."
The 1970 Atlanta International Pop Festival hasn't gotten nearly the same amount of
attention as other iconic festivals, but it was still quite the show. The 1969 festival
had been incredibly successful and they had hoped for that same success this year,
with a bill featuring some of the most popular performers of the day.
The list even included the cast of Hair from Memphis State University.
The festival began on July 3 and ended in the very early hours of
July 6. The Allman Brothers played on both the opening and closing nights.
The other musicians included the likes of headliner Jimi Hendrix, B.B. King,
Johnny Winter, and Spirit. An estimated 400,000 people showed up to watch it all.
The concert was also significant because it was headlined by a Black performer at
a time when racial tensions were incredibly high in the South.
Five years after his epic 1970 show at the Troubadour, Elton John once
again found himself in Los Angeles, this time selling out Dodger Stadium for two incredible
nights. He was coming off two number one albums when he took the stage on October
25 for the first part of his two-night stand, with 55,000 fans screaming in anticipation.
Wearing a glittery Dodgers uniform and at times wielding a baseball bat from atop his piano,
John absolutely delighted the 110,000 people in attendance. Potentially the most memorable moment
happened during his performance of "Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me," when the crowd pulled
out their Zippo lighters and illuminated the pitch black of the stadium with an orange glow.
The concerts lasted three and a half hours each,
and the first took place just two days after John had been honored with a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame. And at one point, he was even joined onstage by a live lion.
"Also, due to a scheduling error, the Dodgers had a game that night,
and Elton had to bat fourth in the lineup."
While the United States certainly had its fair share of iconic concerts in the 70s,
England could also certainly throw down a rocking festival. And one of the biggest
British rock concerts of all time took place in August 1970. The Isle of Wight
Festival was then in its third year, having begun in 1968. It had grown from a modest
8,000 fans back then to reportedly more than 600,000 in 1970. Some of the acts included
Miles Davis, The Who, the Moody Blues, and Joni Mitchell, among many others.
The concert particularly stands out as one of the final live recordings of Jimi Hendrix's career,
as he would die less than a month later on September 18. Though it was said to have been
marked with chaos, the festival was surprisingly well-run for the amount of people in attendance,
even though there was, naturally enough, copious amounts of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
They might not be widely talked about much nowadays, but back in the 70s,
California Jams I and II were outrageously awesome. Both were held at Ontario Motor
Speedway in southern California, with the first one taking place in 1974 and the second four
years later in 1978. The first edition's bill included Deep Purple, Emerson, Lake,
and Palmer, Black Sabbath, Earth, Wind & Fire, and several others. 1978's lineup, meanwhile,
included Foreigner, Heart, Aerosmith, and more. Either way, you couldn't lose.
Both California Jams were well attended, with 250,000 tickets sold to the first one and 350,000
to the second. The events were produced by ABC Entertainment,
which also broadcast some of the performances. In true 70s festival fashion, the highways were
clogged with abandoned cars as concertgoers left their rides to hear the music. In 1974,
the stages were built on a temporary railroad track, and fans were allowed to camp out overnight
due to the chaos of more than 42,000 cars trying to make their way out of the packed parking lot.
It seems like whenever there was a massive rock concert being held in the 60s or 70s,
the Grateful Dead always made an appearance. That was certainly the case at Raceway Park
in New Jersey in 1977. According to Billboard, the concert sold 107,019 tickets. In addition to
the Dead, the Marshall Tucker Band and New Riders of the Purple Sage also performed,
and it was said to have been New Jersey's biggest rock concert ever.
"It's the young people who are willing to extend the effort to get here. The older
ones don't want to walk for a couple of miles after they park their car."
The show took place on September 3, and it was special for the Dead for
a number of reasons. It marked the return of drummer Mickey Hart following a car accident,
and it was also the first time in two years that they played "Truckin'", probably their
biggest commercial hit. According to the Asbury Park Press, officials from an adjacent town sued
to stop the Dead from showing up, fearing that they would bring outlaw biker gangs
with them. But a judge refused to stop it and the concert went off mostly without a hitch.
French composer Jean-Michel Jarre holds the Guinness Record for the largest paying
rock concert by a solo artist, as more than three million fans saw him play
in Moscow in 1997. He got his start back in the mid-70s, and within a few years,
he became known for his extensive concerts that attracted huge audiences.
On July 14, 1979, Jarre played the biggest concert of his career up to that point at the Place de la
Concorde in Paris. It's estimated that between 1 and 1.5 million people saw him on what was the
French holiday of Bastille Day. This was actually the first time that he'd performed by himself in
an open-air setting. As Jarre recalled in a 2016 interview with Red Bull Music Academy,
part of the reason so many people came out was due to the two nights of rehearsal before the show.
The concert started at sunset, and they had to block off part of the square to set everything up.