Taper: Scott Wittich
Transfer from 1st generation tapes: Shawn McCorkle
Mastered: Thor
Equipment: Panasonic cassette tape recorder with VU meter (model unknown), Memorex cassette tapes
Line up: Jesse Colin Young, Santana, The Band, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
Five or six of us drove from Ashland, KY to Cleveland the day before the concert. We slept (or tried to sleep) in our sleeping bags overnight outside Cleveland Municipal Stadium to be sure we got a good spot in front of the stage. When the doors finally opened the next day, everyone surged forward, which was very scary. If I had lifted my feet, I would have been carried along by the crowd. If I had fallen, I would have been trampled. We got through the doors, the crowd cleared and we rushed down to the outfield where the stage was set up. We were in the perfect location, center stage and just far enough back to be able to see over the edge of the stage to the back of it. We opened our sleeping bags, spread them out and lay back for a great day of music.
This was my Woodstock. It even rained during the first act, Jesse Colin Young, who sang a rain appropriate song during his performance. I don’t remember what it was, but it may have been his song "Summer Rain". Up through Santana's set, we were able to stretch out on our sleeping bags. I think the sleeping bags spread out on the ground kept people out of our space during The Band's set too. It wasn't until after The Band that people started squeezing in and eventually we had to stand up and let people stand on our sleeping bags.
Before The Band’s set, which is at the end of the third disc, you can hear my friend mention the outrageously priced $1 beer! How could Capitalism rear its ugly head at what we thought was a hippie gathering!
By the time CSNY came out, everyone from the stage on back past me was standing. We had no choice. It was so crowded there was no room to sit. From the beginning of their first set, people were yelling “Sit down” and it was only going to get worse. After “Immigration Man”, Graham says, “We’re going to be here for another 2 ½ hours” and you can hear my friend say, “Can we sit down now then?”
After “Helpless”, Stephen asks people to sit down and this is when people really begin to yell because no one did sit down. We wanted to, but we couldn’t. When Neil says, “There’s a moon out tonight”, I don’t know if he was referring to the almost full moon (the full moon was the next night.) or to the way the crowd was acting.
The yelling continued and the crowd is so crushing that after “Traces” you can hear my friend say, “I’m going to get my sleeping bag and get out of here”, but so many people were standing on our sleeping bags, that he had to leave it behind.
It’s not on the recording, but before the acoustic set, a roadie came out and said that the band would like everyone to sit. He told everyone to back up, starting from the back forward, to give us more room in the front. Unfortunately any extra space was taken up in the middle of the crowd and never reached the front. Assuming that we now had more room, the roadie told the people in front of the stage to sit down followed by the people behind them and so on until everyone was seated. As people in the front sat down, those of us still standing further back became squeezed tighter and tighter together. I was on the back edge of people standing. Everyone behind me was sitting with their knees up to their chins. If I had tried to sit down, I would have been sitting on the head of the guy behind me.
CSNY came back out and began their acoustic set amidst continued yells to sit down. During “Teach Your Children”, I saw that the people who were in the same position I was in to my left, had been pushed backwards over the people sitting behind them. It looked like a wave of people, all falling backwards on top of each other. I had had enough. My tape recorder was hanging in front of my chest and I didn’t want it to be crushed into my ribs by human dominos.
I moved to safety at the edge of the field during “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”, “The Lee Shore” and “Triad”. It was hard to get through the crowd. I was still holding the mic up to record the music and avoid crowd chatter, but every time I had to slow down or stop, someone would talk into or near the mic. After “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”, you can hear the joker who said, “Testing, Testing” into the mic as I passed by him. After “The Lee Shore” you can hear someone asking me to mail him a copy of the tape. He wouldn’t leave me alone until I took his address, which I lost (if you are reading this, you finally have your chance to get this recording.) During “Triad” I must have been taking a picture and some guy asks me for a flash cube. You can hear me tell him, “You can have it”. I was pretty fed up.
During “Triad” the sound noticeably changes as I move through the crowd and the acoustics of the stadium change. By the end of “Triad”, I reach the edge of the crowd. Even though I was still recording, I really didn’t care by this point because I thought the recording was ruined after everything I had gone through. When I see one of the guys I had come with, I just don’t care if the mic picks up what I tell him. “I couldn’t take it… crushing each other. Falling over each other. I was afraid I was going to get hurt”.
From my new position in front of the speakers on the right, the recording actually improves. The crowd is finally quiet. From time to time, mostly noticeable during “Triad” and “Old Man”, you can hear applause and cheering that doesn’t seem to fit with what is being sung or what is happening onstage. There were light poles in the stadium that extended out over the lower deck from the edge of the upper deck. There was a guy (guys?) who was shinnying out on those light poles and unscrewing the light bulbs until they went out. It would have been a long way to fall. How could anyone be stoned enough to do that, but not stoned enough not to fall! Every time a light went out, the crowd applauded.
Firecrackers were also going off from time to time, especially before and after the encore, which you can hear.
The comparison to Woodstock continued after the concert ended. The field was covered with trash. We walked back onto the field hoping to recover our sleeping bags, which we did. After a good washing, my sleeping bag was fine, except for a few cigarette (?) burns. I still have it… my equivalent of “The Woodstock Blanket”.
The next day I read in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that someone had died when he climbed up the net behind home plate and rolled down it. He fell though a hole in the net. When his friend was asked why they were doing that, he answered, “We wanted to know what it felt like to be baseballs.”
At least that’s the way I remember it.
Scott W