Don't Get Cocky!

Stub for Woodstock in Europe, September 21, 1979, Turin, Italy

No matter who wins, this is the dawning of the Age of Austerity

Madonna's Woes and Tramping Abroad

Madonna got into a bit of trouble overseas in France. link  I'm mostly bored with the details and won't go into them. The crowd's reaction reminded me of a Patti Smith concert I saw in Florence, Italy, back in 1979.  Smith really riled the crowd and retired from performing afterwards.

My mother salvaged an old diary I kept on that trip and returned it to me last month. Here's what I said about that concert then.

Martedì 10 settembre [1979]
Rome, Villa Borghese 

Wow what a night last night. I went to the Patti Smith concert at the stadium in Florence. The stadium looked like a huge bathtub. I couldn't believe it when I arrived. It was as if Led Zeppelin were playing. There were people all over 5 hours before the concert began. We waited away from the noisy mob collecting near the gates. I caught some sleep. Then there was a shout--the gates were opening. We made for the nearest gate.
After waiting in the hot noisy crowd (like so many grains of sand all trying to get through the neck of an hourglass) we broke through to the inside and picked ourselves some good seats.
Below it was like pigs to a feeding trough, pushing shoving, shouting, etc. I remember laughing as we watched people scaling the fence around the field track. At the top there was 3 wires of barbwire and some people would get their shirts or pants caught.
Well after some length of time the music began. First it was tapes. Lynyrd Skynyrd "Street Survivors" and then Dire Straits--"Down By The Waterfront."
When the equipment was tested, I thought at first it was just the roadies tuning up stuff, but then they played songs, rock like "You Really Got Me" and then quit--the tapes continued. But when the real band began I realized it was the same musicians.
Patti Smith had a hard time with the audience. First of all she barely knew a word of Italian, only "ti capisc" which she pronounced like "ti capeach."  Secondly the audience couldn't understand a word of English.
She had a problem with people climbing up on the stage--the crowd was absolutely unruly.
"Hey man, you wanna climb the stage, get your own stage, man."
The last song they played was "My Generation."  Before this though the guitarist played the first few notes of the Star Spangled Banner (like Hendrix at Woodstock) and a big American flag came up behind them. Then all the Italians gave it the finger. Then the Who song--then a finale and then chaos; people surged up onto the stage like the pressure of being pushed forward reached a breaking point.
Then "Hey man, get the fuck off the stage" but there was nothing that could be done.
Patti tried to talk with them. "Hey you know" she said to one, "you light up my life." She tried to get him to sit down at the piano "fucking sit down, asshole....how do you say sit down in Italian" she said through 80,000 pairs of ears--but to no avail.
The chaos ended when the road crew swept the undesirables off the stage and then, like a giant bathtub, the moment came when the plug was pulled and it started to drain, not without leaving a residue of paper, cans, and bottles though. So went the concert in Italy.

My own recollection of the same concert, written a year and a half ago from memory is here.
It's interesting for me to compare the two accounts--one fresh and the other filtered by 30 years of  experience and memory.

Breaking Away

My mother found and saved an old diary I kept when I went to Italy in 1979 to meet an Italian exchange student I had known in high school. It's mostly the sort of stuff people write when they're 19, but I found two interesting entries. The first is the very first entry--written when I flew alone to Europe via on Icelandic Air to Luxembourg. I caught a train south to Milan and then another to Turin. Despite all my random punctuation and thoughts, I captured the moment when I first set off on my own. This was also my first time on a jet airliner.

21 luglio
Chicago O'Hare 

I'm looking at the jet, which turn- excuse, I had to get on it.*
I'm sitting in a window seat, just abreast of the starboard wing. I'm very excited. The seating is very comfortable. I'm alone in my seat--I've got 3 seats to myself and the armrests come up out of the way so that could actually stretch my legs out sideways or sit indian style.
We'll be served dinner in an hour. They just stepped on the gas and we're moving forward--I'm writing so fast I want to look out the window--Oh, I never thought this dream would come true. We're taxiing now, picking up speed now, there's no getting off now. Step on it! roller coaster! thunder rumble! bouncing on the ground then a firmness under me. I can see Chicago out there, a city of lights as far as I can see, lines and triangles of light, squares like luminous patchwork quilts, lots of red, orange, green. The pilot just banked the jet away from the city and we're off to Iceland.
Just had dinner--pretty good considering where I am. They served chicken breast in rice, a salad, a stuffed tuna tomato, and after dinner coffee and cognac. It's about 10:50 CST and I think I'll shut my light out. I'm really fortunate to have these seats to myself. 

An hour later, I noted the date change. Pretentious me also thought it cool to mark the calendar dates in Italian:

22 luglio 

It's about 12:54 CST and I still can't sleep I'm so excited. The sun no sooner vanished to the west when it rose in the east. It's getting light out now and looking out the window I can see a foamy sea of clouds, a bluish white blanket covering what must be the sea beneath. I tell you, from this point of view the earth verges on unreality.
The plane ride feels much in the way of a bus ride, except for the view out the window--the light of the sun is now on the plane.
I just set my watch ahead 5 hours; we're descending to Iceland for a stay of 45 minutes. We're going to drop through the thick of these clouds now--it's like fog--I can't see past the tip of the wing; my ears are popping like crazy it's getting rough now--the world below, the sea, just came into view. I can see Iceland, a lighthouse, the land looks barren, very rocky no trees, steam is rising from a point in the distance.

After a brief stopover at the Reykjavik Airport, the flight continued on to Luxembourg:

I believe I'm flying above the Scottish countryside. The clouds are dense but scattered. It's a patchwork of green and gold fields. I can see also winding rivers.
Upon taking off from Iceland (that wretched, barren wasteland), I was joined by a middle aged French couple who speak no English. Had lunch. I ate every calorie--I don't know when I'll eat next. 

The next entry is fragmentary but describes the landing:

like plunging into a gaseous sea and then the land reappearing. 

__________________
* "which turn- excuse, I had to get on it" makes no grammatical sense. I can't tell if a word is missing or  if I just meant to be cryptic. I was aware at the time of the inevitability, but I don't recall exactly what I was thinking 33 years ago. I had left behind a serious girlfriend who was upset that I was leaving for a month (which turned into 8 weeks).  I had no regrets at the time.

Remember To Remember

Leaving Paris, the train to Luxembourg tracked the Marne River valley, rolling eastwards through the Champagne region and then veered north to Reims. I recall glimpsing the famous cathedral -- not at night but in harsh daylight. But what I remembered the most (and hadn't foreseen) were the haunted place names along that ride. The names confronted me through the train window one-by-one as stops along the way: place names like Verdun-sur-Meuse. This map shows how the train's route between Paris and Luxembourg crossed the Western Front of the First World War:

Link To Original

The French paid a costly human price at Verdun but prevailed. The British mostly fought further north in Flanders, but they also fought around the world. Around a million or so British and Commonwealth men died in the First World War, or about 2% of her population. Other nations lost more and others lost fewer--but all were lost.

Britain was unprepared for land war in 1914. Her traditional military policy had been to have the strongest navy and to field an army just large enough to police the empire and to protect the home islands from invasion. The Royal Navy had adequate manpower, but her army was a different story. Britain had not fought a war on the continent since the Napoleonic Wars. And unlike the Continental armies, her troops were volunteers. They were highly trained and disciplined, and were commanded by a well qualified and highly educated officer corps. Yale historian J. M. Winter explains:

Social class position determined military rank in the early days of the war. Men from the upper and upper middle classes were likely to enlist earlier than men of more modest means; elites passed the rudimentary medical examinations at greater rates and joined the officer corps largely because they were deemed the right sort of people to do so. Since the officer casualty rates as a whole were about twice as high as those of men in the ranks, it follows that the higher a man was in the social scale in 1914 Britain, the greater his chances of joining the 'Lost Generation.' 

~ J. M. Winter, War Letters of Fallen Englishmen 

Years later, around 1997, my wife and I visited London together. We parted ways the first day with different agenda. She went to an art museum while I went straight away to the Imperial War Museum. I walked there from Chelsea, up and along the Thames and past the Houses of Parliament (perfectly timed with noontime chimes from Big Ben). I spent the entire afternoon there alone, viewing the machinery and materiels and remembering the men and the horrors that I read about as a boy. I remembered that haunted train ride. I still think about it around this time every year.

La Mirella Mia

While on the topic of cobalt, I remembered my early fascination for another thing cobalt: the Campagnolo Gruppo Cobalto. If you don't know, Campagnolo SPA is the the name of an Italian high end bicycle component manufacturer. Campagnolo (Campy) parts dominated the high-end bike component markets for years until the Japanese moved in on them, offering more for less. But Campagnolo still led in form plus function.  Here is a photo of the Cobalto brake set I coveted but never owned.

In 1979, I bought a 10 speed bicycle called a Mirella. Here's a link showing what one used to look like.  Mine was gold and not blue. Same chrome lugs. Mafac brakes. I rode that bike 15 miles a day, weather permitting, commuting back and forth to campus. I also rode it around Dane County and around the lakes on weekends.

I crashed the bike once on University Avenue going over some railroad tracks. The front wheel came loose and I planted the fork in the asphalt. I cracked my forearm in the fall but managed to carry the bike back to State St. where I worked before seeking medical attention for myself (the bike was more important to me). The guys at the old Yellow Jersey Coop on State St. were able to straighten the fork for me and a month or so later I was at it again, biking all over Dane County.

Years later I had the original paint stripped and added braze-on fittings for the front derailleur, water bottle cages, and brake line guides across the top tube. I had it painted a bright Italian red. I also upgraded the components with Campy Super Record brakes and a gorgeous Campy Chorus aluminum crank (I still have the original three-pin Campy crank made of chrome-plated steel. I tried to sell it once on eBay but no takers). I also added front and rear Chorus derailliers. And a Cinelli stem. The only thing original (besides the frame) left on it are the high flange Campy hubs and the drop-outs which are part of the frame and thus non-negotiable.

Somebody vandalized my Mirella in Denver. They took the Campy Record quick release skewers, the Super Record brakes, and they were working on taking the seat post. Bastards. I suspected someone in the apartment building because the bike was in a security locked basement at the time.

Here's photo of it now, stowed up in the rafters in the garage. It still works fine:

THIS BIKE IS NOT FOR SALE

Real 10 speeds are so 70's.

Return to Florence

My Patti Smith Group concert ticket from their last performance in 1979

My best musical memory of 1979 was seeing the original Patti Smith Group play what turned out to be their last concert ever. Of course nobody knew that at the time. I didn't know for years after that it was their last concert. But after that show Smith went into semi-retirement, married Fred Smith and moved to Detroit to raise a family. And I was fortunately there that night.

The concert was in Florence and was just part of a glorious 1979 trip to Italy that summer. I could and should blog that whole summer experience because it was so defining and yet eye-opening for me. So much discovery. I came back and felt a little like il Marco Pollo, telling my Midwestern friends and family about good Italian coffee (which you could only get in fine restaurants in Madison then) and the food--OMG the food!  I even learned to love black olives.

The concert was, as the Italians might say, un disastro. The band's actual play list is recorded here and sounds vaguely familiar. There's a cache of photos here. Of course I look for myself in them. From my vantage point, a bit off to the right (stage left) and elevated in the stands just a bit, things look just as I remember them except that they're colored by my memories.

It's the chaos that happened at the end that I remember best. The crowd had been allowed right up to the stage's edge, which apparently was a mistake. But her real "mistake" was to raise an American flag during a penultimate song. The crowd went pazzo and took the stage. Patti Smith corroborates here. Unruly men surrounded her and cut her off from the other band members. Frightened and fearless, Smith improvised. She tried to humor them, playing them a piano rendition of You Light Up My Life. It became a real stand off and fortunately no real violence ensued. I felt helpless--as both a fan and as an American. She was surrounded by ostensibly adoring fans and yet she looked and acted like a hostage. That little concert stage scene foreshadowed the world stage because two months later Iranian students stormed our embassy in Tehran. It's all a bit surreal in retrospect.

I'll add another piece of material to the mix besides my concert ticket stub (above): a photo of a concert poster before the show:

Had people known what they had seen then they would have been tearing those posters off the walls after the show as souvenirs. I used to have a poster from the event--not the flimsy plaster-posters like in that photo but a gorgeous lithographed one, done on nice card stock with blue ink. A shopkeeper gave it to me before the show that day and I carried it to the show. When I search the photos from that historic concert, I'm always looking for my 19-year old self carrying that rolled-up poster. Sadly, I lost that poster somewhere along the long, long pathway from there to here but at least I still have the memories and thank God for that.

[Added: I augmented my memories with what I actually wrote at the time here]