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The day the mayor of Boston sprung the Rolling Stones from a Rhode Island jail
By adamg on Sat, 07/18/2015 - 11:32am
Today's the anniversary of Kevin White's 1972 call to police in Warwick, RI to convince them to release the Stones - who'd been arrested for a scuffle the night before - or there'd be a riot at the Garden, where 15,000 fans were waiting for them.
Photo of White on the stage at the Garden, telling fans the Stones had been busted, but that he'd just freed them and they were on their way.
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Comments
I noticed this was also posted on
Joyce Linehan's Facebook feed. Linehan conveniently neglects to mention the fact that her idiot boss Walsh would have left those potheads in the fucking can. Unless John Fish was one of those waiting at the Garden.
Thanks, Joyce!
She booked her share of junkies back in the day.
The music scene in 1990 was awash in junkies. Some of them had "huge draws', (attracted large crowds).
Many of the more successful bands were junkies with trust funds, who could afford to be on the road for the time it takes to cohere a large audience.
And then Boston had its own junkies in bands,lots of them. You'd see the young effete Harvard junkie band guy trying to hang out at Fathers in Kenmore making attempts to suck up to the older grizzled junkies there who couldn't stand him.
Heroin and musicians have had a special relationship since the days of Charlie Parker, but the spectacle of white Gen X trust fund cases getting loaded was particularly goofy. Kind of like James Taylor's grand kids.
The Middle East worked out a junkie spotting regimen to try and keep an eye on them. They'd crave sugar so they'd be the ones gulping chocolate Yoohoo and not buying drinks.
80s scene
In the 80s, sometimes the booking agents of clubs would be junkies also, or dealers, or both, and they would book the bands of their junkie friends/customers. It was like a whole little cabal that was often hard for other bands to penetrate.
are you talking about
DW from G500?
Or the band named after candy
who had a thing/not thing with the musician daughter of the fatuous ex-fashion columnist from the Globe?
He also took the stage with James Brown
http://rockhall.com/blog/post/10427_how-james-brown-saved-boston-in-1968/
"My city is in flames"
There are mitigating circumstances to this event that go beyond Kevin White being worried about a bunch of Stones fans at the Boston Garden.
Transplants and other come-latelys to Boston might not be aware that in those days the now much desired South End was basically a slum, and largely populated by Puerto Ricans. A few days before the Stones Concert there had been a Puerto Rico Day celebration in Blackstone Park, some people got drunk and rowdy, the TPF (Tactical Police Force) were called in (again, you have to be from here to remember THEM), and they did not arrest people gently. Accusations of police brutality and targeting of Puerto Ricans flew, resulting in rioting, fires, looting and general unrest that continued on, and it was into this atmosphere that the Stones concert was to take place. The last thing Kevin White needed was 15,000 Stones fans rioting in an unairconditioned (as it was in those days) Boston Garden on a hot July night, especially when he had to pull the police detail to put them in the still restive South End. Hence his eagerness to get the Stones onstage as fast as possible, and hence his speech to the crowd, which contained the immortal line "my city is in flames", a line quoted to this day.
The Stones had a bit of a track record
Their 1966 tour included a show at Manning Bowl in Lynn. As I recall, Boston wasn't in the cards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manning_Bowl
So Stones concerts were considered to be a handful.
As for Walsh, here are some bands from his neighborhood.
Dogmatics: https://youtu.be/x_QakUvlcgM
Last Stand: https://youtu.be/i0VulEh1NWM
The Queers: https://youtu.be/JopoiDosV6U (Moved to New Hampshire)
Mung: https://youtu.be/9iNYZ8StKws
And a few friends from elsewhere in the area.
Voodoo Dolls: https://youtu.be/0I4ucCMsTZo
Jerry's Kids: https://youtu.be/0I4ucCMsTZo
Never leave out:
The Fabulous Billygoons with Dr Felix Cruel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlojqD5LTLM
I will never understand why tear gas
which causes people to blindly panic is ever used to "quell" a crowd, angry or otherwise. You'd think by now they'd have come up with something to gently lull people into a giggly, dozy harmless state.
Nature provides!
The Commonwealth feared its kids then.
Older people were initially hostile to these mass music events. There wasn't much of a precedent nor were there workable facilities and skills attained. People more or less winged it. Sound systems barely existed and mass event management was mainly handled by sports franchises.
The Beatles did their last show in Boston a few months later, in August 1966, and they parked it in Suffolk Downs.
http://www.beatlesbible.com/1966/08/18/live-suffolk-downs-racetrack-boston/
But, to be fair...
"the TPF (Tactical Police Force) were called in (again, you have to be from here to remember THEM)"
They did beat the shit out of a bunch of Southie folks at the Rabbit Inn bar.
I remember them going up and down Hyde Park Ave with like, 20-30 bikes at a time.
Just sending a message. Give them credit, they were tough pricks.
They were tough
until I saw some of the older guys string a shitload of high test fishing wire across Walford Way and then started throwing rocks at the TPF. The first two went flying then the rest stopped perplexed.