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Cool rock n roll photos
- Thread starter Chad-Chicago
- Start date
"He had developed his own limited, or very simple style. He was never very keen on improving himself as a bass player and half the time I would play bass on the records because I would tend to do it quicker. Right back to those early records; I mean, at least half the bass on all recorded output is me anyway. Rog used to come in and say, 'Thank you very much' to me once in a while for winning him bass-playing polls."
--David Gilmour On Roger Waters
I attended the concert above at the Long Beach Arena and The Ramones were literally booed off the stage. The arena was selling sodas with ice in paper cups and the band was getting pelted with ice chunks. A lot of cymbal crashes took place while they were playing.
You gotta remember that Sabbath hadn't toured in a few years. They had a concert at Anaheim Stadium 4 months earlier (which I also attended) where Sammy Hagar opened, Van Halen was the second act and they did a faux sky dive appearance to the concert, Black Sabbath was the third act, and the headliner was (yukkkk) Boston. When Boston came on, the stands and the field started clearing and looked like rats jumping off a sinking ship...me included.
Die hard Sabbath fans wanted more so the Long Beach Arena tour happened. Sabbath was hard core, hard rock FM radio. At the time, The Ramones were still kinda teeny bopper, AM radio (think "Rock and Roll High School") and the two fan bases did not mesh. Imagine the atmosphere if Cold Play was opening for Rage Against the Machine or System of a Down? That's pretty much what happened here.
It was fun throwing ice chunks at them, though.
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Dave Koz flanked by the Fearless Flyers in 2022: Cory Wong, Mark Lettieri, Joe Dart and Nate Smith.
This was my first Sabbath concert. Sabotage tour, '75 at the Orange Show Stadium in San Bernardino.
The original Skynyrd (pre plane crash) was 2nd on the bill and a relatively unknown Peter Frampton opened the show in the afternoon.
Ah, I remember it well. Seems like only 49 years ago…
D
We threw beer cans. At Sabbath's roadies. Mid-70s. Madison, WI. Lots of bands started their tours in Madison because the audiences just loved the experience and were forgiving of minor performance errors. So it was kind of shocking what went down on the Sabbath concert around 1975. The opening band, whoever the hell they were, started about an hour late, played a 35 minute set, and walked off the stage. It took Sabbath another 60-90 minutes to take the stage (around 10:30 pm when the drugs were already wearing off). They played a 40 minute set and walked off. No encore. No recognition that the audience even existed. The lights went up and the roadies started clearing the stage. We started booing. Loudly. One roadie flipped us the finger double, and a dude near the stage tossed a beer can that hit the bass drum square. Then the roadies as a group started fingering the crowd and yelling all kinds of nastiness. The ever-loving, ever-forgiving Madison crowd lost it, stormed the stage and basically destroyed all of Sabbath's gear. So much for Sabbath tour stops in Madison. Their arrogance and condescension were too much for me. I still love the Paranoid album, but I never bought anything by Sabbath after that.
The Ramones in Liverpool. The "Bird" is the word.
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Questlove's one of my favorites in part because he's not shy about sharing his thoughts.
A friend of mine did a support tour in Britain with Black Sabbath (Dio, Mob Rules era). The fate of Sabbath support bands was well chronicled (possibly with the exception of the 1978 Never Say Die tour, where Van Halen were the support. I was there. They were superb). The evidence my friend's band wasn't welcome is that my friend's custom PJ, mahogany slab (with Telecaster bass neck) has a deep indentation, replete will milled edges, where an old 10p piece was thrown at him (florin sized, not the new ones). One of the guitar players had a string cut by a similar projectile.
The Van Halen/Black Sabbath tour was the pre-Ramones/Black Sabbath tour just a month or two before in 1978. The Anaheim Stadium concert was part of the Van Halen opening act tour just after their first album came out. However, Sammy Hagar was added as the opening act and Boston was added as the headliner. That concert would have been perfect if they had eliminated Boston from the lineup.
In a Los Angeles Times Calendar section interview with Ozzy while they were in L.A., Ozzy was talking about the Van Halen/Black Sabbath tour and candidly admitted Van Halen was so good, they should be headlining that tour. At least he had the gonads to say what everyone else was thinking.
I don't think anyone in the UK was quite ready for what came out on stage when Van Halen opened for Sabbath, but they were all immediate fans. 1978 VH were absolutely unique.
