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Joe,
I was at the Centrum show in Worcester, MA on November 4 1968 that
was later played on FM radio and has since been widely
bootlegged/traded.
My friends and I began the evening by going to the local radio
station to meet Ian Gillan who was doing an interview there. We were
all wearing our favorite concert shirts: I had on my "Death Riders"
shirt and a denim vest adorned with Sabbath pins and patches. It had
the obligatory cross on the back with "BLACK" running vertically and
"SABBATH" running horizontally, the two words intersecting in the
letter "A".
The receptionist at the radio station naturally told us that the
singer was not there, that she didn't know what we are talking
about, and that we had to leave. We went downstairs and waited by
the elevator, the only way in or out of the radio station.. A few
minutes later the elevator doors open, and a tall dark-haired man
walks out. Despite the fact that his then long hair was in a loose
ponytail and tucked into the back of his shirt, I recognized him. I
showed him the circular banner I had made (the multi-pointed star
with the Black Sabbath written as it is on the back of the Born
Again album (yes, album). We all got his autograph and talked to him
for a few minutes about Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and rock in
general before he graciously thanked us for our support and reminded
us that he had a gig to prepare for. We were all too aware of that
fact, and we naturally excused him.
While it was still early, we walked the block and a half to the
Centrum and went in as the doors were already opened. The place was
empty, and we went down to our seats about 20 rows back from the
stage, right in front of where Tony Iommi would take the stage in a
few hours. This would be my second time seeing the band. AS we
waited by our seats talking excitedly, a man in black with long
black curly hair and a backstage pass walked from the light/sound
area on the back of the floor towards the stage. He had to pass us.
This is still the subject of great debate among my friends and me:
some of us thought he was Tony Iommi; others though the was not. We
stopped him, and started to praise him, and he responded in a think
English accent that was "not with the band." I reached out with my
right hand to shake his, and he reciprocated. None of as thought to
look at his right fingertips as we were all scrutinizing his face,
and we are still unsure if it was really him.
What seemed like an eternity later, the house lights dimmed and
Quiet Riot took the stage. They were all over the charts with a
number of pop-metal hits, and I hated them and what they claimed to
represent. While everyone else was standing up and going wild for
this lame-ass band, I laid myself down across the stead vacated by
the standers and took a nap.
As the dimmed a second time, the excitement rose. I expect that most
readers have the Worcester show, so I won't go too deeply into the
set list save a few comments. Including Suprnaut in the set was
astounding and exciting to me. I think I was one of the few who knew
it well. The same was true for Rock ' Roll Doctor, except that I was
not quite as happy to hear that one. I love the Technical Ecstasy
record, but if they wanted to pull something from their late Ozzy
years, I would have chosen any number of other songs of that disc or
off Never Say Die. When Sabbath begin taking requests from the
crowd, I'll be there. Smoke on the Water was an unwelcome surprise.
I had read so many interviews in Creem or Hit Parader that they
"couldn't see themselves playing Smoke on the Water" and that this
was Black Sabbath and not Deep Sabbath or Black Purple, that it
seemed hypocritical and just plain wrong. Further, they hadn't
played any cover tunes in years (since Evil Woman and Warning on the
record), and I did not want to see a cover band.
Ian Gillan yelped, screamed, and howled through the new and older
songs, adding his own personality tothe songs. He played bongos
towards the back of the stage during a few tunes. The set was
Stonehenge, but any issues with the size of the set were long since
resolved, and Stonehenge was truly just background.
I had this hobby of collecting Sabbath shirts so I spent every penny
I had saved on shirts and the tour book. I even bough a few rare
shirts off the backs of some of the older fans who hopefully used
the money to buy a new shirt. This was the second time in a row that
I saw Sabbath on their tour and was the beginning of a long
tradition of seeing Sabbath live that I still pursue to this day,
more than 22 years later. |
