July 5, 2007
by Penny Rush-Valladares
This summer marks 40 years since the Monterrey Pop Festival and the Summer of Love in San Francisco. My memory of that summer is vivid. I was just seventeen, visiting California with my mother. While driving down Sunset Strip, it was being talked about on the radio. I wanted to go up the coast to Monterrey, but my mom wouldn’t let me. Instead, I came back home to experience my own Summer of Love at a Be-in at Kansas City’s Volker Park with hundreds of other young hippies.
It’s been 30 years since the release of ‘Roxanne,’ prompting the highly anticipated reunion of The Police on a huge world tour. The Police is one of my favorite bands. I saw them in concert six times in the 80’s. Has it really been 30 years?
The other night, I watched Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono, and Olivia Harrison (wife of George) on Larry King Live, as they sat backstage at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, where they had all gathered together to celebrate the 1st anniversary of the Beatles ‘Love’ show, performed by Cirque du Soleil. They spoke of how wonderful they thought the show was and how they each personally came to be involved. To them, The Beatles represented a spirit of creativity and love that is still very much alive in the show.
These dates and those occasions serve as important trigger points for me and others like me, I suspect.
I was very much a part of the music scene in the 80’s and 90’s, having owned my own concert catering company, serving as den mother to many touring acts and their entourages. From the magical energy of those early shows, I was captured by a trajectory that would weave me through encounters with rock and roll legends like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Bonnie Raitt and countless others, eventually leading to a connection with Sting and the Police, with which I was able to fulfill my own rock and roll dreams.
And now some twenty-five years later, I find myself, as a grandmother, feeling the need to document my experiences in the music scene in Kansas City and beyond, and monitor the apparent decline of the music industry, as we know it. I seem to be functioning as a historian with a rock and roll memoir that tracks my journey from the Beatles invasion in ’64 to the remarkable emergence of the rock and roll touring industry as it lit up the country and the world.
My memoir begins with a first-hand account of seeing the Beatles in 1964 at the Athletics Stadium in downtown Kansas City, in a seat that cost $8.50, unheard of in those days. Since my friends couldn’t afford such expensive tickets, my parents came along purchasing $1.00 tickets at the door.
John, Paul, George, and Ringo were escorted onto the stage by what seemed like hundreds of uniformed policemen. A wave of hysterics, like a high-pitched symphony of cicadas, washed over the stadium as they entered. Bursting into song, the amplification was dwarfed by the ceaseless roar of the audience that only escalated in volume and pitch. I was one of those girls that you see in the old films of the concerts. Not crying openly, but mesmerized by the energy of the four magical mop-topped English lads; hopelessly trying to capture them on film from my seat on second base.
I would see the Beatles again in St. Louis in 1966 at the new Busch Stadium. This time my brother and his family made the drive from Kansas City with my mother and me. The same ceaseless screaming made it hard to hear any of the singing, but it was wonderful all the same. An experience I’ll cherish forever.
In August, my husband and I will celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. He’s younger than I and never got to see the Beatles nor the Police. We are pondering our options, the Police in Chicago or ‘Love’ in Las Vegas. Either way the revolution is still permeating the field, and the excitement for some remains undiminished.
By Penny Rush-Valladares
www.rockandrollstories.info
http://rock-and-roll-cafe.blogspot.com/
Comments
patmcq (anonymous) says...
While you were watching the Beatles at Arrowhead, I was in a deep depression as a freshman at Mt. St. Scholastica College in Atchison, KS (now Benedictine College). I spent that whole night sitting on my bed listening to the radio, which was playing Beatles for the occasion.
But I wasn't as bad off as my friend, who was a postulant in a convent. I had made the mistake of telling her about the upcoming performance, so she was in agony that night as well. She had such a huge crush on Paul that, when she was asked what name she would take as a nun, she chose Paul. Thank God, she didn't have the hots for Ringo--Sr. Mary Ringo of the Holy whatever.
July 6, 2007 at 12:25 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
LeeNYC (anonymous) says...
You folks are young. My three best concerts: Elvis at Madison Square Garden in 1971 (I think), Jim Morrison and the Doors at Hunter College, and the Rolling Stones at Shea. All very powerful performers. Had a chance to see the Beatles at Shea in their first US performance and turned them down. I regretted that later.
July 6, 2007 at 10:13 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
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