That's awesome. Saw him with my brother a couple times in the late '70s, then again in 1982. There was something about his playing that was just different. I mean, he had the chops, yeah, but there was an honesty about him that was simply extraordinary. He didn't play
for you or
at you, he boogied along right there
with you. Good memories.
.
.
6 bucks a ticket.
I sure miss that.
One of the most down to earth musicians I've seen on the stage; the other being Nick Lowe. After every song; thank you, thank you, thank you. My first record by Rory was
Deuce (*******) and then a couple of months later,
Live in Europe (*******) in 1972, my junior year of high school. I spread the gospel and many a party ended with everyone pissed, singing "Goin' To My Hometown". I went thru 3 copies of
Live In Europe until I graduated the next year.
The sad part though was that he had zero marketing and it was all word of mouth. We'd call the local "progressive" radio station (WMMR) and request his songs and those hippie zombie DJ's wouldn't play his songs and Rory was concentrating on conquering Europe. I really feel he missed an opportunity at that time. Flash forward to 1975 and he's the opening act for 10cc. About 8 of us get good & trashed and we go down to the Tower Theatre to finally see our hero. Keep in mind he's still obscure in the US, so we have no idea what the reception is gonna be like. He comes out and opens with, you guessed it, "Goin' To My Hometown" and the place starts to rock. I mean really rock. People are looking at each other and going,
who is this guy? He's really 'effing good. By the end of the hour set the place is going wild, they love 'em. He gets 3 encores and he's trying to be nice and telling people to welcome 10cc but the crowd doesn't want to hear it. They continue clapping & whooping it up. They want another encore and 10cc comes on-stage and breaks into their first song. The booing starts and just goes on for the rest of the song. One of the members of 10cc, I think it was Eric Stewart, threatens the crowd that if they don't stop booing, they can go "F" themselves. One thing you
never, ever wanna do is threaten a Philly crowd. That's like pouring gasoline on a fire. I once saw a Philly crowd at the Spectrum make Debra Harry (Blondie) cry and walk off stage after about 4 songs. In defense of the audience, she couldn't sing her way out of a paper bag.
But I digress ...
Now the booing starts reaching ear splitting levels and some people are making a move to storm the stage. They got to about halfway thru their 3rd song and gave up. The crowd is cheering and chanting,
Rory! Rory! Rory!, and have no intention of leaving until their new hero comes out and gives them a couple of more tunes. But Rory's not coming out and the theatre staff turns on the lights and announces that the concert is over. More gasoline on the fire. Paper cups are flying, some guys are trying to set the seats on fire ... pure bedlam. Now they announce that the Lower Merion cops are on the way, over the PA system and this further enrages them. You'd think they told them that they were holding their mothers hostage. At that point we decided to skee-daddle and cheese it before the cops showed up. In the news the next day I read that 24 people got arrested and the township was seriously considering shutting down the venue because they were under-staffed to handle the crowd.
Ahhh ... good times! Very memorable indeed.
And those hippie pr$cks still wouldn't play his songs on the radio.
