It was the largest gathering of people in the United States ever, they said. 600,000 people came. It was only a one-day event, but they came a week early. There were 50 mile traffic jams to get there. Only three bands played. There was a huge storm. And yet it was a commercial success that changed the way rock festivals were put on – and maybe a landmark in the way rock and roll saw itself and its potential.
The 1973 Summer Jam at Watkins Glen in Upstate New York was the brainchild of Shelly Finkel and Jim Koplik, promoters who worked mainly out of nearby Connecticut. They had put on a successful concert with the Grateful Dead the year before where, by a happy accident, some of the Allman Brothers Band had been backstage. They came onstage in Hartford for an impromptu jam, to the mutual satisfaction of the two bands – and the Deadheads.
Finkel and Koplik mooted a possible joint outdoor gig the following summer and both bands were keen – especially when the promoters started talking the big numbers. The Dead would earn $117,000 for Watkins Glen, then their biggest career paydate.
They needed a third act and signed up The Band – who were ready to play out again after an 18-month layoff for studio work. And as they were living in the New York State area it all added up.
The Watkins Glen Raceway provided the venue. Because the race track was well-used to handling large numbers of visitors, and it was only a one-day event and the slick promoters convinced the powers-that-be this wasn’t going to be one of those goddamn hippy things with mindfreaked longhairs wandering around for a week and going on about Vietnam, there was relatively little local opposition and bureaucratic hassle.
Two weeks prior to the Saturday 28 July date, 100,000 tickets had been sold at ten bucks a piece and the promoters sought and gained permission to sell another 25,000 on the day. Problem was, people started arriving early. Really early. Some were turning up a full week before; by the Wednesday, police reckoned there were 50,000 already camping. Double by the next day.
Come the Friday afternoon there were maybe 250,000 people there, and the traffic was queuing back 50 miles! The cops started turning back people without tickets, and even some who did have them. Harsh.
When the Dead came to soundcheck on Friday afternoon, there were 100,000 people in front of the stage. What you gonna do? Well, it turned into an impromptu gig and, The Dead being The Dead, they played for two hours, occasionally stopping to sort out sound but basically playing a bonus gig. Not to be outdone, the Allman Brothers and The Band also played for an hour or two each.
Awesome, but the main event, of course, was the next day. The Dead played first, a beautiful, mesmeric five-hour performance of two sets, opening with ‘Bertha’ Their Wall Of Sound was simply immense, Jerry’s guitar smooth as silk. ‘Truckin’’… ‘China Cat Sunflower’… ‘Stella Blue’… ‘Sugar Magnolia’. It was a good day to be a Deadhead.
The Band played next but were interrupted an hour into their set by a storm. As it cleared, a tragic accident marred the day, when a skydiver, carrying flares (like incendiary devices, not trousers) got into trouble while parachuting. The flares combusted in the air, engulfing him in flames, rendering him unable to operate his parachute and causing him to fall to his death.
The Band came back on, but it was hard for them to get going. Nevertheless, it was an accomplished performance, sleek and hard, some of which is captured on the ‘Band Live At Watkins Glen’ – although the provenance of some tracks on that is questionable. It saw them premiere ‘Endless Highway’, play Dylan’s ‘Don’t Ya Tell Henry’ and Chuck Berry’s ‘Back To Memphis’. Garth Hudson’s organ-playing is mighty fine.
The Allman Brothers played last and turned in a superb performance, the highlight of which was ‘In Memory Of Elizabeth Reid’. Afterwards, Robbie Robertson, Jerry Garcia and others joined for a jam featuring ‘Not Fade Away’ and ending in a barnstorming version of ‘Johnny B. Goode’.
It’s said that the event was so big that 1 in 350 Americans was at the gig that weekend! But Watkins Glen does not have the same place in rock folklore as Woodstock. The 1969 gig was, among other things, a political act, in a way that Watkins Glen was not. The withdrawal from Vietnam was well underway, there seemed to be fewer battles to fight, maybe. The politicisation of pop music was not high on the agenda of so many bands. By all accounts, there was less LSD and hard drugs, more pot and booze at Watkins Glen. The overall vibe – peaceful and inclusive though it might have been – was more that of a great party than a social movement or era-defining experience.
Yet it certainly changed rock, if not society. Promoters across the US saw that there was serious money to be made from one-day festivals and soon, the ABC television network were getting in on the act. California Jam the following year attracted 200,000 and was a slick, well-organised, profitable success – and a definite staging post on the journey to rock corporatisation. It ushered in the era of rock stars arriving by private helicopter and big bucks, and in its own way, Watkins Glen was one of the precursors to that. Still, none of that is what anyone there, or anyone listening on record, is thinking about when Jerry Garcia is doing ‘Playing In The Band’.
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I was there, with my boyfriend...we came from New Haven, CT. We didn't have tickets, but put down a blanket in the field. It was hot, and we slept part of the day (some townspeople were nice enough to hose us down as we walked through the small town to the long hill leading to the festival.) We saw Mr. Smith catch on fire as he fell from the plane...it was chilling...later we found out he had died. The Allman's music meandered through the night like the campfire smoke (and other smoke...) fireworks exploded, rain drizzled, and we were in heaven!
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