May 2025
I turned 14 in the summer of 1970, and I went to my first rock concert that fall with my friend Wes. John Sebastian was appearing at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania’s Bucknell University, about a half-hour from where we lived at that time. We had seen the movie Woodstock just a few months earlier, and Sebastian was one of the performers featured in the film.
A year earlier, Woodstock had proved that rock music was a potent force and had commercial possibilities. It must have been an eye-opening event for record companies. Artie Kornfeld, one of the promoters of the festival, told writer Bob Spitz that while he was working at Capitol Records as a talent scout in 1968, the label thought its legacy was with groups like the Lettermen—emphatically not a rock band. Kornfeld’s success as a songwriter and record producer had led to his job with Capitol, but his bosses were not hip.
Capitol had just released The Beatles (aka the White Album) and included the Band, Steve Miller, and Quicksilver Messenger Service on its roster of recording artists. Despite its investment in rock music, said Kornfeld, the board of directors at Capitol thought rock was a passing fad. Woodstock—both the event itself and the very popular film—must have shown any observant record executive that rock’n’roll was a huge cultural phenomenon, and one likely to be profitable.
However, no one could have guessed back then that a career in rock music could last for decades, or that vast fortunes would be made. Rock fans had begun to move on from singles, which had formed the bulk of sales in the early years of rock’n’roll, and into albums. By the late 1960s, albums became the driving force in record sales. For the next two to three decades, record companies enjoyed an unprecedented run of prosperity, sustained even longer by the reissue of their back catalogs on CD.
Rock’n’roll concerts also became big money-makers, and by the early ’70s, arena shows were widespread and frequent. As I noted earlier, though, my first experience was a show at a college gym. The bill was typical of the kinds of matchups I’d see at concerts over the next ten years or so. John Sebastian headlined, and the Buddy Miles Express was the support act. I knew Sebastian as a solo artist and a member of the Lovin’ Spoonful, but the only thing I knew about Miles was what I had read in Circus magazine.
Sebastian took the stage first, wearing a tie-dyed outfit like the one he wore at Woodstock, and playing a Gretsch White Falcon that had flowers painted on it. Before Sebastian came onstage, it was announced that Buddy Miles’s tour bus had broken down and he and his band were running late.
I realized years later that Sebastian probably opened because he didn’t want to follow Miles. Sebastian’s set was good, but it was just him and his guitar. Miles had a large band with a horn section, and a second drummer so he could come from behind his kit to sing and play guitar. He had just released his third album, Them Changes. Earlier that year, Miles had played with Jimi Hendrix at the Fillmore East, a performance that Capitol Records released in March 1970 as Band of Gypsys.
Miles deftly combined soul music and rock, and I was lucky that his performance was my first concert experience. His band was powerful and tightly rehearsed, and Miles worked the crowd in the manner of the great R&B singers he had backed during the ’60s. He cut an impressive figure. A big man—probably close to 300 pounds—Miles wore a tight, sleeveless Stars-and-Stripes T-shirt, and a pair of jeans tucked into knee-high fringed moccasins. He sported the largest Afro I’ve ever seen. At one point, Miles got up from behind his drums and played a Gibson SG Standard, left-handed, à la Hendrix. He did “Changes” and “Who Knows,” both of which were on Band of Gypsys.
It was a couple more years before I got to attend concerts regularly. My family moved back to the Harrisburg area and the two biggest venues, Harrisburg’s Farm Show Arena and Hersheypark Arena in nearby Hershey, Pennsylvania, were scheduling frequent rock concerts by the early ’70s. Both held about 7500 people, and seating was by general admission. There would be a large open area in front of the stage, and my friends and I grabbed spots on the floor as close as possible to the stage.
The lineup for the Deep Purple concert in Hershey in November 1972 was typically varied. The opening act was Elf. Four members of that band later became part of Rainbow, the group started in 1975 by guitarist Ritchie Blackmore when he left Deep Purple. I hadn’t heard of Elf, but they played an impressive half-hour set.
The second act couldn’t have been more different from Elf or Deep Purple, both hard-rock acts. Mandrill was a seven-piece group from Brooklyn whose music—a mixture of funk, rock, R&B, and jazz—reflected their African American and Latino backgrounds. Mandrill’s performance convinced me and my friend Randy to split the cost of the group’s recently released album a few days later.
Unfortunately, Randy’s date had to be home before midnight, so we only caught a brief portion of Deep Purple’s performance. I’m still a little steamed. In fact, I remember Mandrill more vividly than I do the other two bands.
Strange lineups were not unusual at concerts during the ’70s. When I saw Grand Funk Railroad in 1974, the opening act was Ballin’ Jack, a horn-driven rock band that had a slight R&B influence.
Other matchups made more sense. In May 1974, Mott the Hoople, Aerosmith, and Queen played at the Farm Show Arena. Queen and Aerosmith had just released their second albums, and Mott was the headliner. Queen played a tentative set. Turns out Queen’s guitarist, Brian May, and Aerosmith’s Joe Perry had killed a bottle of Jack Daniel’s backstage. Aerosmith, on the other hand, was fierce. Perry might have been hammered, but he burned during the group’s set.
Guitarist Mick Ralphs had left Mott the Hoople the previous year and was replaced by Ariel Bender, who tended to splatter notes all over the place. Despite that weak link, the band was terrific, largely because of singer-guitarist Ian Hunter’s undeniable stage presence. I saw him at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, New Jersey, seven or eight years ago, and he’s still a great performer. That night in ’74, the sound mix for Mott’s set was terrific, as if the band was playing at the Forum, a smaller venue in Harrisburg that had good acoustics.
Mott’s road crew must have worked hard to get the sound nailed down. The Farm Show Arena was chosen as a concert site for its size, not its glamor or sound. Seats surrounded the floor area where the stage was set up, and the floor itself was packed dirt. Yet that’s where everyone wanted to sit or, most of the time, stand. Despite its—literally—down-to-earth atmosphere, a lot of big names in rock appeared there in the early 1970s, including Frank Zappa, ZZ Top, and Elton John.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the concerts I attended during those years, because I’m reading Peter Wolf’s new memoir, Waiting on the Moon: Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters, and Goddesses. Wolf was the lead singer for the J. Geils Band, which I caught live four times between 1973 and 1977. I can’t think of a better live band of that time, and certainly didn’t see one, apart from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. The J. Geils Band was a terrific, blues-based rock’n’roll group that showed every indication it could be America’s own Rolling Stones.
It didn’t quite hit that mark, but the J. Geils Band made ten studio albums between 1970 and 1981 with its original lineup—all of them strong and several of them outstanding. And it was a take-no-prisoners live act, as you can hear on the three live albums the group released.
John “J.” Geils drove the band with his skilled rhythm-guitar playing and brief, well-thought-out guitar solos. Stephen Jo Bladd and Danny Klein were a formidable rhythm section, and Seth Justman’s keyboards, especially his Hammond B-3 work, helped give the music its soul and R&B pedigree. Richard “Magic Dick” Salwitz played blues harp with the precision, passion, and mastery of Little Walter or “Sonny Boy” Williamson.
Wolf was the energetic front man, constantly moving on the stage and filling the space between songs with high-speed patter he had developed as a deejay at WBCN in Boston, Massachusetts. Wolf and Justman wrote the band’s original tunes, but every album contained a soul or R&B chestnut that showed where they had gotten their inspiration. The first time I saw the J. Geils Band, it was the second act in a show headlined by the Edgar Winter Group. Winter did well, but the J. Geils Band nearly stole the show. The next three times I saw the band, it was the headliner, and at all four appearances it stomped.
Wolf’s memoir is charming and fascinating. It helps that he writes very well, but it’s also a story worth telling. He’s a rock’n’roll Zelig, running unexpectedly into the famous and accomplished. Wolf grew up in New York City, raised by progressive, bohemian parents. His chance encounters with the greats in art and history included brushes with Marilyn Monroe, Norman Rockwell, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Later, he married actress Faye Dunaway, and in Hollywood met Alfred Hitchcock, with whom he discussed art.
Wolf got to see Bob Dylan early on, when Dylan was playing in small Greenwich Village clubs prior to signing with Columbia Records. In one of the many funny stories in the book, an underage Wolf finishes Dylan’s glass of wine several times when Dylan turns his back. After a few glasses, the great man figures out what’s going on.
Wolf went to Boston to study art, and his first roommate was David Lynch. He met and befriended Van Morrison, who was between labels. Wolf hung out with Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, and other blues heroes, and interviewed some of them on his radio show. And he started a band. The Hallucinations gigged around Boston for a few years before Geils lured Wolf and Bladd away to join his band in 1967. In 1970, the group signed with Atlantic Records.
The J. Geils Band built a loyal following for its live shows, and enjoyed some chart success with Bloodshot (1973) and Nightmares . . . and Other Tales from the Vinyl Jungle (1974). The band remained a steady seller for Atlantic, but didn’t achieve real commercial success until it moved to EMI Records and released Love Stinks (1980) and Freeze-Frame (1981). Wolf left the band in 1983 because it was moving away from its blues and soul-music roots.
By then, the concert scene had changed. Tours had become highly lucrative, and established bands played larger venues in big cities. But note the prices on the concert posters from the ’70s: you could see three bands for $4.50 if you bought your tickets before the show (about $30 in 2025 dollars) or $5 at the door ($32 today). The opening act was often unannounced, but almost always worth seeing.
Throughout the ’70s, I saw countless great shows in arenas that were by no means small, but not so large that you felt disconnected from the performers. By the end of the decade, assigned seats became necessary to prevent fans from stampeding into arenas and stadiums to get good seats. In time, seats were priced according to their proximity to the stage, thus changing the egalitarian nature of the rock-concert experience.
Higher pricing and assigned seating had the ironic effect—for me anyway—of making rock musicians seem less special. At most of the shows I attended in the ’70s, I could wander up for a brief, up-close look at the band if I had ended up with a seat far from the stage. Rigid enforcement of seating assignments kept me and my fellow fans from doing that.
All those shows in the ’70s had special moments—magical moments, really—that I still remember. At an Allman Brothers concert, I stood at the edge of the stage watching Dickey Betts at work. I saw British rock band Foghat four times. Foghat’s records never really captured how energetic and enjoyable the band was live, so I don’t own any of them. But I’m glad I went to the concerts. Dan Hartman, the bass player for the Edgar Winter Group, was from Harrisburg, which proved that even someone from our small Pennsylvania city could be a rock’n’roll star. I was too young to have seen the Small Faces, but I saw Steve Marriott, one of the true greats in rock, when he played with Humble Pie at the Hersheypark.
And I got to see the original lineup of the J. Geils Band in action.
Thanks to my friend Mike Stock for the photos of concert posters from his collection.
. . . Joseph Taylor
josepht@soundstagenetwork.com
