July 13, 1975 review amended: Summerfest in Rich Stadium with surprise guest Gregg Allman

 

The rock concerts in Rich Stadium hit their stride in their second season in 1975. 

July 13, 1975 

Summerfest Is a Big Rock Party;

What a Difference a Year Makes 

          Balmy weather, fine music, a revised security plan and the surprise appearance of Gregg Allman made Summerfest Part 5 Saturday the best rock concert yet in Rich Stadium.

          With 47,000 fans sprawled across the tarpaulin-covered Astroturf and up through the lower stands, it felt like a loose and enormous BYO party, beginning 20 minutes before the scheduled 5 p.m. start and ending a few moments after midnight.

          There were leftover holiday fireworks, Confederate flags, balloons, many Yes T-shirts and banners, show-offs shinnying up the end-zone ropes, occasional fisticuffs and even a streaker or two.

          Absent were last year’s surly gate-crashers, kept off the premises entirely by ticket checks on the incoming highways.

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MISSING ALSO was last year’s lineup of illegal drug salesmen along the walls of the field, though scattered entrepreneurs still did business despite the anonymous eyes of numerous undercover narcotics officers.

          Festival East’s Jerry Nathan said security and first aid problems were “500 percent improved over last year.”

          After a rather spiritless lead-off set by the British group Ace, the partying gained momentum from the high-powered rhythms of albino blues guitarist Johnny Winter and those bad boys from Boston, the J. Geils Band.

          Winter, thin and rangy in a black hat and bright blue T-shirt, shed his recent commercial polish musically as well.

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WITH HIS slide guitar slithering and slinking like a wildcat in love, he delivered a set of superheavy Texas blues laced with oldies like “Boney Maroney” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and, for an encore, “Johnny B. Goode.”

          The Geils Band, which has grown slick since the release of its “Nightmares” album, hit the black and white stage in silver lapels (singer Peter Wolf), red jumpsuits (pianist Seth Justman) and mirror-finished arrow-shaped guitars.

          The 40-minute set was less than their best, but they hooked into the spirit of the affair with Wolf’s jive (“all the sweat we can get …”) and a rave-up finale of “Ain’t Nothin’ but a Party.”

          Left unanswered as they came out to encore was whether they would steal the show from Yes, as they did here three years ago.

          For this pivotal moment, they chose a song that’s the essence of their smooth-talking, high-strutting, street-wise sound – “You’ve Got to Give It to Me.”

          The boogieing crowd thundered up a second encore. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Wolf announced as the band returned with an unfamiliar blond guy who sat down at the organ, “ladies and gentlemen, Gregg Allman.”

          The song was an Allman Brothers classic, “One Way Out,” with the guest organist getting in a few nice licks and vocals.

          Allman, last reported in Georgia to record a new album, introduced himself to promoter Nathan half an hour earlier and said he was “comin’ out to look over the gig.”

          WGRQ’s John McGahn, whose shell necklace Allman attempted to commandeer as a souvenir, described Cher Bono’s second husband as “pretty wasted.”

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YES’ ONLY RECOURSE after this was to space the crowd out. And the British quintet succeeded.

          After a 70-minute wait, their elaborate dinosaur-dominated stage drew appreciative gasps from the crowd as the gauzy curtain parted and the white-suited group broke into their intricate “Closer to the Edge.”

          There were enough special effects – fog, fiery light on the backdrop, the glowing dinosaurs – to counteract the sensation of Allman. The two hours of music, especially the old familiar tunes, did the rest.

          “Roundabout,” their biggest hit, was saved for the first encore and, naturally, got them a second one.

          Highlights were the emergence of new pianist Patrick Moraz as a fresh and elegant force in the group and the synthesized guitar work of Steve Howe, which probed deep into your galactic memories in “Gates of Delirium.”

          The next Summerfest will be Sunday with Eagles, Seals and Crofts, Judy Collins and Dan Fogelberg. Arrangements for further Summerfest concerts are incomplete.

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IN THE PHOTO: The J. Geils band in the mid 1970s.  

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FOOTNOTE: Gregg Allman had just married Cher on June 30 and, appalled by his drug problems, she filed for divorce nine days later. He flew here to get treatment at the Linwood Bryant Hospital and his doctor convinced Cher to come help with his recovery. During the next several months, they were seen regularly around town and he played a surprise concert for the kids at Canisius High School. Gregg’s acquaintance with the J. Geils Band went back a while. They shared a date at the Fillmore in the early 1970s.

For Yes, this was two weeks from the end of the “Relayer” tour, which had brought them to Memorial Auditorium shortly after it started in November 1974.