Hampden-Sydney had a great track record of booking musical acts before they burst onto the national scene. One year, the then little-known John Denver played at homecoming. Shortly after, he became the well-known John Denver.

The previously well-known Chuck Berry who had large catalog of hits in the 50s and early 60s was mounting a comeback when he came to campus. We knew his music – every local band played his “Johnny B. Goode” at the campus frat parties – but the British Invasion and acid rock had passed him by. He was just starting to get some airplay again (with the God awful “My Ding-a-ling”). We got him on the rebound.

Because of the quality of the past concerts, the music nuts on campus began buzzing excitedly when posters for the spring concert started popping up in February. The organizers were on a roll. But I doubt even they realized they had booked the “future of rock and roll.”

The headliner was Grin, a band fronted by Nils Lofgren. Lofgren was in Crazy Horse, a group that had been backing up Neil Young in concert and on his albums. And in our minds, anyone who played with Neil Young, who was making very successful albums of his own and with Crosby, Stills and Nash, was automatically great. Plus, Lofgren had gone to high school in Maryland with one of the Theta Chi brothers. They had been in rival, but friendly high school bands.

In addition to Grin, there would be a warmup act, a guy nobody ever heard of. Whatever. I didn’t care about the warmup act. I was excited to see Grin. I wanted to get myself primed for the concert by listening to their music so I drove into Farmville to buy whatever Grin albums I could find. The only place that sold records in town was the 5 and dime store, Rose’s, where the records often sat in the bins for years. Great if you wanted an out-of-print record at a bargain price, which I often did, but not if you wanted a record that wasn’t in the top 10 when Chubby Checker was doing The Twist. So I drove up to Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia and several good record stores.

I found two of the group’s albums and played them for weeks, cranking up the volume with my windows wide open to prime others on campus for the concert. Winter was over and Lofgren’s music fit the optimistic mood of the beautiful spring weather, even when he sings about losing the slip of paper with the girl’s phone number.

The day of the show, we could hardly control our excitement. Remember, we had to drive 7 miles to get to a town called Farmville. We got excited about the arrival of mail.

We planned to drink and smoke just enough to get a nice buzz on and let the music take us away. We usually never drank wine, but someone made a huge bowl of Sangria and we started early because we wanted to leave the dorm early and get great seats in the gym.

Someone had some new pot that hadn’t been tested by our group before. Usually you knew what kind of high you would get, but every batch had little differences and we would discuss our feelings as if we were wine experts describing the year’s Beaujolais.

You did like to know the effects of the pot if you had to function in some way after having smoked, especially at an anticipated event that cost money that you couldn’t get back. It was another thing if you were just going to sit around a room and listen to albums with 6 other guys while drinking a quart of beer, drive to the truck stop, get a 5-day-old bologna sandwich and another quart of beer and call it a night.

By the time we were ready to head over to the gym, we were buzzing big time. I had the bright idea of wearing my sunglasses so no one could see that my eyes were spinning like a kaleidoscope. But the guys pointed out that by wearing the sunglasses at night, it just might be obvious what I was trying to hide.

We couldn’t wait for Lofgren. We arrived so early, we were seated right in front of the stage. We hoped we wouldn’t have to endure the opening act for too long. And right from the start we were sure we were going to be disappointed when we saw how big the band was.

For one thing, you don’t bring that many people if you are just going to play a couple of songs and leave. And we were suspicious of any group in those days that had different instrumentation than the Beatles. That was the gold standard. Why did you need more than 4 guys?

The Rolling Stones were a little odd in that they had to have a fifth, although their fifth, the singer, was pretty good. And the Dave Clark Five had an organ, which was kind of gimmicky, although it worked for them. But this guy had an organ and a sax. A lot of people, probably, I thought, to make up for the fact that they weren’t that good.

Then they began to play. Right from the opening note, they complemented the buzz I had in my head. Every time my mind anticipated a note, it was there. And when I didn’t anticipate a note, I was delightfully surprised by what was played. And the lyrics came a mile a minute and though I didn’t understand everything, it felt as if the singer was unlocking the universe to me. Nils who? I did not want this band to stop. I was completely absorbed, listening to this wall of sound band that was playing just for me, despite the fact that I was in a packed gym.

Mid-way through the first song I looked at Bert, who played guitar, and his eyes were fixed on the stage and his mouth was open in a smile of absolute delight. He was like a teen-age boy seeing his first copy of Playboy, discovering a great pleasure for the first time.

As the second song ended and the third began, the crowd was cheering wildly.

I turned to Bert and shouted, “Am I really, really high or is this guy really, really good?”  

Bert, who loved Dylan and had a poet’s sensibilities, didn’t want to take his eyes off the stage, but after a few seconds he glanced my way and quickly studied my face and stared at my eyes.

“Both,” he laughed and his eyes went right back to the stage.

We couldn’t get enough of that opening act that night, who we later learned was Bruce Springsteen. We wanted him to play forever. But he was the opening act. Nils Lofgren and Grin were contracted to play.

Eventually, Lofgren wandered into the power vacuum Springsteen had created on the stage. His light, airy pop melodies were no match for a crowd that had been revved up by the power of Springsteen and his band. After 3 songs, Lofgren, who seemed to be weaving a bit himself – again I wasn’t sure if it was the fact that I was loaded or he was  – and said something to the effect of, “Well, I think that’s enough” and he walked off stage. And the amazing thing was, the crowd agreed. We had been wiped across the floor by the power and shock of seeing someone who was destined to become one of the all-time greats of rock and roll and we hadn’t been forewarned.

What we also didn’t know until later was that our friend, Chris, the Theta Chi who had gone to high school with Nils, had gone back stage for a pre-concert visit. Chris was a man of mystery and he always had the best dope. It was not the garden-variety ditch weed that usually floated around campus. It was if he had it directly flown in from Vietnam, and then helicoptered to campus.

He and Nils began smoking backstage and discussing old times while Springsteen played. But they started too early and continued too long and by the time Nils got up to play, as the story goes, he was wasted. Completely. And Springsteen had just put down a powerhouse show. The beauty of the weed is that instead of clouding his mind, it gave Nils the clarity to see that the crowd had been hungry and it had been fed by Springsteen. They didn’t need the desert that Lofgren would give them. So he accurately assessed the situation and got off the stage.   

After that show, I joined the crew that helped set up the gym for the concerts. At one our first meetings of the new school year, instead of studying our Norton Anthologies of American Literature, we spent the entire evening trying to come up with a name for the T-shirts we would wear as we set up the stage. Not that anyone would see us, but this seemed very important at the time.

Since most of the crew lived in the Maples dorm, our ad hoc committee eventually came up with The Incredibly Delicious Sugar Maples Stage Company. Remember, this was a time when there were bands with names like The Strawberry Alarm Clock and the Peanut Butter Conspiracy. For the spring concert, Linda Ronstadt was booked. This was two years before she hit it big with Heart Like a Wheel. She had followers based on her radio hit, Different Drum – I was one – but mostly on the West Coast.

I was very excited. It was the main topic of conversation with me all Spring. I had been delightfully surprised by Springsteen, but it was great to be getting an act I knew.

I was taking an overload again, 6 classes, and 3 of them were English classes and needed a lot of time for homework but I was getting pretty disciplined by then of going to the library every night and studying right after dinner. 

So the Friday Linda was to show up, we all hustled to the maintenance area after classes to get the risers to set up. Because he was in charge of the crew, Ray was entrusted by the school to drive the truck. The rest of the crew put their lives at risk by riding in the back of the truck.

I say this because while Ray was very smart, his mind sometimes would wander. Like the time we went to the quarry earlier that spring to swim and he drove into a ditch. We were stuck in the middle of nowhere, long before cell phones. We were still wet from swimming and would surely miss dinner. Why did he drive off the road, we asked. There was no oncoming traffic. In fact, there was no traffic. Why?

 His explanation: He had seen a couple of pretty girls up ahead and was so struck by their beauty, he began writing a poem in his head. He didn’t want to forget it so he focused on only that and not his driving. Luckily a farmer happened by with a tractor and a tow rope before our teasing of Ray turned into anger about our plight and we made it back to campus for dinner.

Since there were no pretty girls or girls of any kind on the Hampden-Sydney campus on a Friday afternoon, we got to the gym safely and began evicting the guys who were there shooting hoops. I started pick up anything not nailed down which might be used as a projectile during the show if a drunken frat boy got his hands on it. I just had grabbed a couple of basketballs under the hoop near the front door when they opened and Linda and the band came in. I was stunned. I had never been this close to a star before. And it was one I was crazy about.

I had been on the curb in Washington. D.C. just a few months earlier when Nixon was inaugurated for his second, doomed term. Because of the cold weather, but more likely because of who he was, we were among the very few on the street when he drove past only a few feet from us and glared. But he had been in a limo with the windows up and traveling about 20 mph.   

But Linda was not some repellant, hulking symbol of malevolence. She attracted fans, with her huge eyes, her penchant for wearing cutoff jeans and going barefoot on stage and, of course, her voice.

“Oh, cool,” she said. “Basketball.” And held out her hands for me to toss her one.

I was too stunned to say anything – which would prove to be the pattern of the night. Although I knew my job was to clear out the gym, I stopped my preprogrammed duties and gave her one of the balls I had collected. Maybe she likes bad boys.

She caught it and took some shots and the band joined her. I had faded into the background to them. In my weakened mind, I was hanging with Linda and her band. This was my chance to talk to her, but in a pattern that would follow me for the first half of my life when it came to initiating that important, initial conversation with a girl, I didn’t say anything.

That’s because I was searching for the perfect thing to say and I was busy writing and rewriting that perfect conversation starter in my head. By the time I had it ready, the few times I did get it ready, the object of my desire had long since given up, gone home and gone to bed.

With Linda, I figured someone in the limelight had heard everything there was and they had also heard every “original” question that reporters and fans could ask. I knew I had only seconds to make my impression. My mind raced, trying to top all those that had approached her before. It raced so fast that it went completely blank, almost as if I had suffered a concussion. I was frozen in place.

My paralysis was broken when the gym doors burst open again and Ray and the rest of the guys with the staging and equipment hustled in. I slowly regained my senses, just in time as several of the band members tossed balls at me as they headed downstairs to see their dressing rooms. 

We got the stage set up, went to dinner and then headed to our rooms for our usual pre-concert ritual of drinking and smoking. Although I cooled it because this was Linda! And my job was helping with security backstage. It wouldn’t have been good form to be completely loaded while trying to do that job.

Maybe if it was a wild rock band, they wouldn’t have noticed. Nils Lofgren certainly wouldn’t have noticed. The opening act for Linda was a band from Australia, Daddy Cool. They wouldn’t have noticed. They played a modern version of 50s rock, although they were originals. They were a loud, raucous band that had the crowd on its feet after the first song and kept it there. It got louder and wilder with each song.

This was not the opening act that I would have paired with Linda Ronstadt. For a singer who specialized in ballads with a bit of rock and country mixed in, an up-and-coming John Denver type would have been a better choice. Someone with a sense of humor to ingratiate him or herself into the crowd’s good wishes. But no. The gym was packed with guys with their dates who had already been drinking for at least an hour – probably much longer – and would continue smoking and drinking until the wee hours of the morning after. They were there for a party. They had never heard of Daddy Cool and very few had heard of Linda.

I began to sense disaster ahead. And, apparently, so could Linda. I was in the stairwell between the basement locker rooms and the gym, up on the steps so I could see the back of the stage, at least part of it. I had a good view of the crowd. It was like the Romans getting the crowd whipped up for the show at the coliseum. Suddenly I realized someone was standing next to me studying the crowd with even more intensity than I. It was Linda. I tried to be casual about it as I watched her watch her fate.

“Are they always like this?” she asked after determining a lot of them were loud, obnoxious rednecks whose favorite past time upon graduation would be traveling the country going from one wet T-shirt contest to another. At least when they weren’t going to strip clubs and pouring beer on themselves. In fact, many of them would become doctors, lawyers and pillars of their communities. But that would be a few years down the road.

I tried to think of a witty remark, but I knew how long it had taken me that afternoon to try to say something and I failed. I wasn’t going to let that happen tonight. So after about 5 seconds, I finally had my response: “Yeah.”

That was it.

I like to think I said it with tremendous feeling and thoughtfulness and even though it only had one syllable and 4 letters, I believed I was saying, “These guys weren’t going to appreciate you the way I do. Get rid of Daddy Cool as the opening act. And by the way, I am the one for you. Come back to my dorm room with me. And wait for me until I graduate.”

She didn’t interpret my utterance the way I hoped.

Linda soon turned and went back downstairs. I followed a bit later and I could see her in discussion with some of her band. One very tall, very thin guy pulled her into a hug and I think it helped calm her nerves.

She came out on stage and since Daddy Cool were the only ones backstage now and I didn’t care if they were overrun by the mob, I left my post and went out front to watch. It was the disaster I saw coming. Linda sang a couple of her songs, but the crowd was still whipped up from Daddy Cool. Linda’s big thing, especially at that time, was to have a pretty stripped-down arrangement that highlighted her voice.

She wasn’t very good at the witty repartee between songs that can win over a crowd. And she seemed nervous, facing this crowd. It was pretty much, “That was that song. Here’s another.”

When the band would stop so she could hit what was to become her signature, a big boom of her voice, the infidels in the crowd would yell that stupid Rebel Yell which was already fast becoming an unwanted staple of concerts. She lasted longer than Nils had, but not much. She sang about 6 songs and was gone. I couldn’t believe it. I was pissed, although not at her.

 I couldn’t really blame the audience, though. It was a crowd of young men in early spring, with their dates on a Friday night, whipped up by some pretty energetic, old-time rock and roll. Afterwards I bought a Daddy Cool album and I could see why the audience had been revved up. I placed the blame on the tour producers who had paired these two disparate acts.

We tore down the stage and cleaned up the gym and the rest of the guys headed down to fraternity circle to keep the party going. I, instead, trudged back to my room. I was disappointed because a night I had look forward to hadn’t turned out as I hoped. I wanted to be alone.

The disaster of that night didn’t stop Linda, though because after that, her career went in one direction – up – and Daddy Cool’s? They broke up four months later, shortly after they went home to Australia.

With the spring concert behind us, the seniors suddenly saw the semester end approaching. That meant starting adulthood: jobs, law school, med school, marriages, joining the family business. I didn’t have that worry because I had transferred and was coming back in the fall semester to finish up.

At least that’s what I thought was going to happen.

Next time: Going Out On a High Note