A Disc Throw From Eric Clapton

Summer vacation was nigh, at hand... the last day of tenth grade, and Eric Clapton tickets were going on sale the next morning. Our school district let us out a week earlier than all the Salt Lake City schools, so we stood a good chance of getting a decent place in the ticket line. Back then, before the internet, we actually had to purchase tickets at the source, in this case, the Salt Palace box office. This meant, that if we wanted good seats, we had to camp out overnight in front of the Salt Palace on the concrete. I borrowed my sister's car for the occasion, a red Ford Mustang 2, with white vinyl roof complete with AM FM eight track tape player. The moment school let out, my best friend Jon and I were off to Salt Lake to camp out for tickets. When we arrived there, only six people were ahead of us. Soon there were hundreds of people behind us, and before long it was dark. It was exciting for a couple of sixteen year olds to be there in down town Salt Lake in the wee hours of the night... an adventure I will never forget. The police checked in every couple of hours to make sure nothing too crazy was going on. To them it was all pretty routine. No one wanted to lose their place in line, so everyone behaved when the cops were around. The concrete was hard and uncomfortable, which made it difficult to rest, so Jon saved my place in line while I walked around to stretch my legs. As I strolled about the outer walkways of the Salt Palace at midnight, I discovered that lots more people had arrived, and were now waiting in line. I was glad we had arrived early. I soon learned that some of the people there weren't waiting for tickets. They were there to make money off the campers. One old transient was selling homemade moonshine, and others were selling drugs of various kinds. We saved our money for tickets, and when the box office opened the following morning, we purchased the entire second row of section B. Jon and I got the best seats in the house... front and center.

It wasn't difficult selling the tickets. We could have made lots of money, but sold them to our friends for what we paid for them. The show wouldn't be until June 21st, so Jon and I made plans to gather as many Frisbees as we could find to take with us to the show. We spent the summer riding around on my dad's Honda Trail 90 looking for unattended discs. By the time we were done, we had gathered over twenty flying discs to take with us to the show. The challenge would be getting them past security, so we developed a plan. Girls were the answer. Two of the people we had sold tickets to were our girl-friends (not girlfriends) Dana and Charlene, and on the night of the show, we persuaded them go tuck the discs into their shirts to make it appear as though they were big with child. There were still a few discs that wouldn't fit in their blouses, so we bent them around our ankles, pulled our socks up around them, and draped our pant legs over the bulges. As we approached the security checkpoint, masquerading as very young supportive expecting fathers, we put our arms around the girls, and strolled past the checkpoint, and went inside. Piece of Poodle pie. They didn't ask to look inside the girl's purses, or anything. Illusion is everything.

As we strolled to the front of the arena floor, it became evident that our seats were the best to be had. Because of the height of the stage, we could see better than those in front of us on the first row. We began removing the flying discs, and reshaping them for flight. Soon there were more Frisbees than anyone had ever seen at the Salt Palace. Others had brought discs to throw as well, so there was plenty of plastique for the hucking. It was a pleasure to watch them make their way to the upper seat sections, then with one big throw, drift all the way across the arena. More fun than a barrel full of junkies.

Soon the opening act began. Blues, lots of it... played by a couple of old Black guys* who really knew what they were doing. They were great! I knew that Clapton was a huge blues fan, and had anticipated a bluesy performance. They were so good, and played lots of familiar old blues standards. We were really getting into them, and they seemed to appreciate our enthusiasm. They finished their set, and again the discs began to fly. Unable to resist the temptation to conduct a social experiment, I looked straight up, and pointed toward the ceiling. As I looked back at the other 13,000 people, I noticed that everyone was looking up, wondering what everyone was looking at.

Before long the lights again went down, and music began. It was a song I knew, Badge, co-written by George Harrison. But where was Clapton? I watched the guitarist playing a red Gibson open body. "No that isn't him... no beard, he's too young and his hair is too long to be Clapton" I surmised. Then the man playing the red Gibson stepped up to the microphone and began to sing. It was Eric Clapton after all, and he was ten feet in front of me, playing one of my favorite songs. Right on! This was Clapton's Backless tour, and he was still enjoying a lot of notoriety from the success of his Slowhand album. It was great to watch his technique from such close proximity. I was impressed how worn his frets were, and how precisely he could bend the strings. I watched in awe as he played the slide on Wonderful Tonight. He played two encores, the final being Cocaine, to which he received a huge audience participative response, "Cocaine" as the song ended.
* I felt really stupid the following day when I read the review in the paper and learned that the two old guys were Muddy Waters and BB King. I wish I had known that when they were ten feet in front of me. An announcement of some kind would have been nice. I suppose they just assumed everyone would know who they were.

7-7-7 @ 11:11