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By Scott Miner (written 5/28/2015)                                                   (my story is on page 209)        

 

April 29,1965:
     I was 15 years old, a sophomore at Niskayuna High School. It was afternoon, I was home from school, but we hadn’t had dinner yet, that was usually around six o’clock. The phone rang, it was my best friend Jeff.

     “Hey Scott, you wanna go see the Rolling Stones?”

     “What? Are you kidding? Hell yeah!”

 

That was my first reaction, quickly followed by the thought that my mother would never let me go. Jeff and I had managed to get into enough trouble together during our freshman year to last ten lifetimes, at one point I was forbidden to hang around him, which only made it more inevitable that I would.

 

     “Hang on man, let me ask.”

 

I turned with the phone in my hand to ask my mother who was standing at the kitchen sink washing vegetables for dinner. To my shock, she agreed with a minimum of explaining, just wanting to be sure that Jeff’s mother would be driving us to the Palace Theater in Albany. I quickly told Jeff I could go, and within minutes was streaking down the street to his house three blocks away.

 

This was during the wave of English bands in the early sixties that would be known as the British Invasion. After the Beatles had played on the Ed Sullivan show, it seemed like everybody was washing the Brylcreem out of their hair and forming rock bands. Anything and everything English was totally cool, and the Rolling Stones were right behind the Beatles in popularity.

 

As I would find out later, I wasn’t Jeff’s first choice to go. He had asked a girl named Denise to go with him, but (as I found out just a few months ago when I spoke to Denise for the first time in 50+ years) she was grounded. Her loss, my gain, I could hardly contain my excitement on the ride to the Palace. Jeff’s  mother dropped us off at the entrance with instructions to call her when the concert was over. We bolted out of the car into a loud animated crowd of teenagers hanging around the closed doors waiting admittance. We must have made it to the ticket window to buy tickets, my memory is hazy about that detail, but looking online the other day, saw a ticket stub with a price of $2.50(!)

 

The doors soon opened, and the crowd surged inside, we managed not to get trampled as we fought our way up to the balcony. We had just gotten settled in our seats when the emcee announced the first of the opening acts, a local band called The Sundowners. They opened with a cover of the Beatles “Ticket To Ride” and the screaming began! Everywhere were girls with teased black bouffant hairdos that resembled the Ronnettes. Girls didn’t look like that in our high school,wow! This was heady stuff for a couple of suburban kids from Niskayuna.

 

The Sundowners played several excellent cover songs popular on the radio before giving way to the second opening act, another local band called Buddy Randell and the Knickerbockers. They had a radio hit called “Lies” that sounded a lot like the Beatles, which didn’t hurt airplay at all. They played several songs, all to screaming girls, before the emcee came back onstage to announce “The Rolling Stones!” , and it was nonstop shrieking after that. The Stones were dressed similar to their photo on the cover of a greatest hits LP called “High Tide and Green Grass”. The screaming was so loud, I could barely hear Mick Jagger’s vocals, it was only by listening to the guitars that I knew what songs were being played. It didn’t matter though, there onstage were my long haired heroes, the Rolling Stones! I noticed that many of the guys in the audience were throwing pennies at the stage. Not knowing why, (this was my first concert after all) I found a few in my pockets and threw them as well, but I’m sure that with my weak arm strength and the distance to the stage, I didn’t put Mick’s eye out.

Jeff and I couldn’t stop grinning at each other. It would be years before I’d attend another rock concert, but in 1965, I saw The Rolling Stones!

 

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Alias Baby Girl: A Casey Stone Mystery  Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Robert Godwin (Author), Scott Miner (Narrator), Stephanie A. Reilly (Publisher)

Bullets, Booze and Babes: The Casey Stone P.I. Mystery Series, Book 2   Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Robert W. Godwin (Author), Scott Miner (Narrator), Hilliard & Harris (Publisher)