Mr. Zander Needs to Use the Phone: Encounters with Hall of Famers

Now that we’re well into nomination season, I thought I’d revisit something I brought up on Twitter a while back: How many Hall Of Fame acts have you seen live? Since that tweet, I’ve got some friends so into it that now they’re a little competitive about it: whenever one of them goes to a show, the others are checking the relevant HOF status and keeping score.

I’ve seen more than 80 artists thus far in life; a good percentage of them are now Hall of Famers and more will be soon, with the Cure, Todd Rundgren and Def Leppard on the ballot right now.

The running tally:

1. The Allman Brothers
2. Jeff Beck
3. David Bowie
4. Bon Jovi
5. Cheap Trick
6. Fleetwood Mac
7. Aretha Franklin
8. The Grateful Dead
9. Daryl Hall & John Oates
10. Billy Joel
11. Elton John
12. Journey
13. KISS
14. Jerry Lee Lewis
15. John Mellencamp
16. Metallica
17. Van Morrison
18. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
19. Pink Floyd
20. Prince
21. Queen
22. The Rolling Stones
23. Santana
24. U2
25. Stevie Ray Vaughn
26. Neil Young

(This only counts shows by bands with at least the majority of their HOF lineup present at the time I saw them – solo shows by the Davies brothers don’t count, nor the time I slipped into the back of the house at the Omni and jumped up and down to catch a glimpse of Paul McCartney).

Among the more memorable moments, more or less chronologically:

Cheap Trick: As far as the HOF goes, I started my actual rock concert-going career off right. (My first-ever concert was the Captain and Tennille with Kenny Rogers, but enough about that).

After the show, we met Pete Comita (this was March of ’81, so no Tom Petersson) and Bun E. Carlos in the lobby and got their autographs–hey, this concert stuff is pretty cool! In those tender days, none of us could drive, so evening over, I went to the payphone to call my mom for a ride. In the space between the dime (yes, dime) dropping into the slot and the first ring, the crowd parted. A guy pushed through with none other than Robin Zander in tow, bellowing, “Mr. Zander needs to use the phone! Mr. Zander needs to use the PHONE!” (Maybe the tour manager, but given the hysteria and the name-dropping, more likely a really embarrassed house manager).

Now, I’m pretty easily cowed, and not immune to being star struck (and certainly not to hot blond rock stars), but I’d only be a second, and it was on the first ring. “Hey, Mr. Zander needs to use the phone,” the guy said again, in case I’d missed it. Second ring. Mom picked up.

“HiMomshow’sovercomegetusnowkthanksbye.” I hung up. The tour/house manager was giving me a dirty look. Robin Zander had the bored, flat look of a rock star who’d basked in the screams of thousands of ecstatic Japanese girls at Budokan and now was at Palmer Alumni Auditorium in Davenport, Iowa, waiting for a little twerp in the lobby because the backstage phone doesn’t work. I walked away. If I ever meet Robin Zander, I’m going to ask if that call went through.

Good old Palmer Auditorium…a lot of bands coming up through the ranks played here. Now it’s a chiropractic college gym. Photos: left, blogs.palmer.edu; right, qctimes.com)

Journey: Queen was my band; Journey was my sister’s. When the Frontiers tour hit Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines (the place where Ozzy bit the head off a bat), I was asked to chaperone. Yeah, cool, whatever. By the end of the show, I was standing on my seat, screaming while my sister cried. Good times.

Stevie Ray Vaughan: This was back at Palmer Auditorium; Huey Lewis & The News were headlining. (There weren’t that many places to see a show in Davenport then. Now it’s the home of Paste magazine’s Daytrotter Studio, tons of clubs, and the Tax Slayer Center is right across the river). Thanks to working at a record store with a manager who also wrote for the paper, this was my first time on the front row.

From the moment he stepped onstage, Vaughan was drenched in sweat stepped onstage, and even with that hat pulled down you could see the pallor. The man was green. (The Quad City Times write-up the next day said he had the flu). I was right in front of him, and I looked into his eyes and gave him a wide-eyed anxious “Are you OK?” look. He caught it and managed a grimace that said, “No, but what the hell” and proceeded to tear the place up.

I got pulled a few rows off the rail to a spot on what was apparently the only route for security to lift out the inert drunken girls; after getting kicked in the head four times I was so pissed off that Mario Cipollina noticed and was giving me side eye from the stage. Meanwhile, my sister was down front chatting with the guitar player.

You might not think it, but Huey and the boys live were 1.) Harmonica-driven and bluesy; and 2.) Freaking loud – maybe why Huey has hearing problems that, sadly, may have ended his career. I couldn’t hear for four days. Second only to Judas Priest, who were well over the pain threshold.

I later saw Stevie Ray with Jeff Beck at the Omni and spent the entire show dodging groups of guys who thought I should be dancing. I don’t remember a damn thing else about it and it bugs me to this day.

You went to the record store, picked your seat from a floor diagram on the counter, and the clerk pulled your tickets out of a rubber-banded stack. If I’d seen Priest here, I wouldn’t have heard anything ever again. (Photo: songkick.com)

Queen: I’d loved them since I was 12, but growing up in Davenport, Iowa, it might as well have been the moon. But in 1982, my mom gave me one of the biggest, best surprises of my life: tickets for the Hot Space tour at Poplar Creek Music Theatre outside Chicago. Price? $10.

I remember being so excited that it’s a wonder I didn’t spontaneously self-combust; Freddie’s wry comment that the place was “Glamorous, like Vegas…”; going full volume every time for Freddie’s “Ay-Oh” as if I hadn’t seen and heard it umpteen times before on TV; the bonkers insanity when they came back onstage after the operatic section of Bo Rap; the two hours it took to get out of the parking lot.

Looking back, being at this show was more of a gift than any of us could have known. Queen—this incarnation, the real one—never played the U.S. again.

“Glam, like Vegas.” (Photos: top left, Jerrysbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com; top right, ; bottom: dailyherald.com

Thanks, Mom. (Photo: queenconcerts.com

In February of ’93, Brian May was the opening act for Guns n’ Roses, with the tour scheduled to start at in Atlanta at the Omni. GnR canceled (big surprise there), but with plenty of warning for a change, and May was rescheduled for his first solo show in North America at the Roxy Theatre. I worked for TicketMaster at the time, and when I heard there was to be a meet-and-greet, for the first and only time there, I asked—no, demanded—to be on that list.

So I was lucky enough to be on the front row (and to stay there the entire time) and see Brian do his thing on his own. Needless to say, it was pretty overwhelming. I grew up in an era before social media, when rock stars were still cultural royalty, with the glamour that movie stars held before them. All of them, Queen especially, moved in a distant universe light years away from mine in every sense.

And incidentally, I’m not a natural hugger.

Which makes my response to meeting him kind of weird.

I don’t remember what transpired immediately before, just having my arms wrapped tightly around him and not being aware of anything until being jolted back to reality when I heard somebody behind me snicker. No idea what his response was that I didn’t’ see, but if it annoyed him he didn’t let me know: he was kind and sweet and friendly and signed my Back to the Light CD sleeve and was, for real and up close, my hero. Still is. Always will be.

Haven’t seen them with Adam Lambert, but I did catch them with Paul Rodgers. Good, but not quite the same. It couldn’t be.

The scene of THE GREATEST MOMENT OF MY ENTIRE LIFE. (Photo: phishthoughts.com)

David Bowie: The first time I saw him was the Glass Spider tour, and the last was in ’97 in Doraville, Georgia in a converted warehouse with egg cartons nailed to the wall, on a stretch of Buford Highway surrounded by Mexican and Vietnamese greasy spoons. I still can’t quite believe that happened. In between I saw him with NIN, and the image burned into my mind is that of Reznor spastically careening across the stage like a whistling chaser, with Bowie stepping neatly aside just the perfect distance, still singing and never turning a hair or missing a word. Even in that moment, I thought it a perfect metaphor.

U2: The Joshua Tree tour played two consecutive nights at the Omni. The second show went down in Atlanta concert history as one of the greatest shows played there. The first, not so much. I was at the first.

Prince: Saw him four times starting with the Lovesexy tour at the Omni, and the last time, the Musicology tour at Philips (has it really been 14 years?), was absolutely transcendent, one of the three best shows I’ve ever seen. This was 2004, and he was already switching out his heels for sneakers on some nights. We joked about it at the time. Little did we know.

RIP, Omni. I used to work in the basement, for the pre-Ticketmaster ticket agency that printed tickets like the one on the right. Priest again, but not the show I was at; this one’s for the floor, much closer than I was so someone else is undoubtedly deaf right now. (Photos: left, AP Photo/Ric Feld via myajc.com; right, collectors.com)

The Rolling Stones: Steel Wheels, Georgia Tech’s Bobby Dodd stadium. The best show I’ve ever seen. Went in in a bad mood and came away elated, transported, exhausted and truly, completely alive.

It’s frightening to think how many years have passed since I saw them again on the Voodoo Lounge tour. The little kids in front of us were scared by the sight of old people dancing. Now they’re probably in college.

Van Morrison: Saw him once, on a balmy night at Lakewood Amphitheater in September of 1990. It was a good night to do it, because on this particular occasion, Van the notoriously curmudgeonly Man was in a downright cheery mood, going so far (so the Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted the next day), as to SMILE.

A few songs into the set, my friend leaned over and whispered, “When is he going to stand up?”

“He is standing up,” I whispered back.

Tom Petty: Also Lakewood. This was the infamous Strange Behavior tour with the Replacements as the opening act. I like the Mats a lot (they should be nominated again!), so I was pretty excited, but the stories are true: it was painful. The Petty fans didn’t want the Mats, the Mats knew it, didn’t want to be there anyway and made no bones about it—at one point Tommy Stinson unstrapped, made a break for it and had to be shoved back onstage. You could feel the hate rolling down like a wave. Then when Petty came on, the yuppie in a pastel polo in front of me stood the entire night, wiggling his rear end on my eye level and yelling “MIIIIKE!!!” over and over and over. I’ll never unsee those seersucker shorts.

Bon Jovi: I saw part of their set after working the box office at Lakewood, in either ‘93 or ’95. It was one hit after another but I got bored and left early—hey, I didn’t pay. Didn’t even catch “Living on a Prayer.”

Jerry Lee Lewis, Aretha Franklin, Hall & Oates: The 1996 Atlanta Paralympics closing ceremony was a Hall of Fame bonanza: in one night I saw Jerry Lee Lewis do “Great Balls of Fire,” (even though he phoned it in), Aretha sing “Respect,” and even Liza Minnelli sing “Cabaret.” AND Hall & Oates, whom I’ve also seen open for Todd Rundgren. More on him later.

KISS: Never a fan, but they were so huge when I was growing up that I thought it’d be fun to catch the reunion/farewell tour in 2000 at what was then Philips Arena, now State Farm Arena (corporate naming sucks). Gene spit blood, and a girl flashed the big screen, while young parents strolled the concourse with toddlers on their shoulders. Remember the scene in “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” when the Abominable Snow Monster shows up without his teeth? It was kind of like that.

Bobby Womack: Never saw him live, but during the 90s I worked at Ticketmaster and was in on Saturdays. No receptionist was on duty that day, so we got the phones. Bobby Womack had a show at the Fox on one of these Saturdays, and around mid-morning I fielded a call from a woman asking, “Is Bobby Womack there?”

“No, ma’am. This is the administrative office for Ticketmaster. We’re not on site for the show.”

“Oh. OK.”

I thought it was just a lady fan looking to meet him, but a few minutes later, the phone rang again.

“Hey, this is (somebody) from the band. Is Bobby there?”

“No, this is just the ticket office.”

There was a bit of a gap, but eventually the phone rang again.

Wait for it….

“Hi, this is Bobby Womack. Did I have any calls?”

Speaking of Bobby Womack, he recorded a track with Todd Rundgren (“For the Want of a Nail” from one of my all-time favorite albums, “Nearly Human”). I don’t want to jinx it, but since he’s on the ballot and doing well in the fan poll, here goes:

I’ve seen Todd six times over the years, more than anybody else I’ve ever seen. How many years? Well, I still have a button from the first show advertising his Compuserve channel. The last time was his “White Knight” tour at Center Stage in Atlanta, a venue I hadn’t been to in probably 15 years or more. Walking in, it was clear that the place hadn’t been maintained in at least that long, and when I sat down, an ominous groan emanated from my seat. I’d was actually feeling good because I was wearing jeans I hadn’t worn in years, but so much for that. About two-thirds of the way through the show, the cushion of said seat dropped straight through the frame onto the floor so my chinwas level with the armrest. The great thing about Center Stage is that it’s pitched like a college lecture hall, so I was fine. Someone tapped on my shoulder a few songs later and pointed to an empty seat on the end of their row, so to be polite I sat there, only to find that the armrest was missing, leaving only the gigantic screw that had held it on. Note to Live Nation: Please fix Center Stage.

But the most memorable times I saw Todd were on his “With a Twist” tour in ’99, with the tiki bar stage set complete with patrons drawn from the crowd. I got to meet him after the Atlanta show at the Roxy, and remembered to ask before I hugged him. He’d noticed the flower I’d worn in my hair! Swoon!

A couple of months later, I met up with a friend (the one who introduced me to Todd’s music in the first place–thanks, Gord) in Cleveland for the show at the Odeon down in the Flats. I’d have never done it on my own, but when the crew came down the line to recruit volunteers for the tiki bar, he was on it in a heartbeat. So I got to watch an entire show from right behind Todd, who was gyrating in a sarong most of the time. Somewhere, I still have the little pink umbrella from my glass of water. I do not, ever, no way no how, sing in public, so when he came around with the mic getting us to join in on “The Individualist,” panic set in. I was praying he’d wrap the song before he got to me, and seriously thought about bolting the stage as a backup plan, but ran out of time. Nothing for it but to squawk out the six syllables of the title line, which is five more notes than I can carry, despite the fact that it’s not exactly a melodic line. Todd looked at me, looked at the audience, and gave a single emphatic nod of his head before moving on.

I’ll never know quite what that meant.

So if Todd does in fact get inducted this coming March, I can say I’ve performed with a Hall of Famer. I also have a scintillating story about the time I played a chime solo on the Grand Ole Opry stage, but I’ll leave that for another time.

The scene of my concert tour triumph. (Photo: downtowncleveland.com)