From early on in the set, Craig Petty was up front taking photos of Ten Years After. As the set was coming to an end, something went seriously wrong. “I was five feet away from it happening,” said Craig. “I was in the back of the orchestra pit. It was five or six people deep in front of the stage and people put a table upon the stage. They were getting pushed and crushed against this table that was about waist high. They didn’t do anything wrong, they just picked it up and pushed it off to the side, and these security guys came out and grabbed the table and threw it on top of the crowd. It hurt people and they went nuts. We crawled out of that thing and headed to the back of the auditorium. We sat in the mezzanine seats and watched it all go down. We saw people busting chairs up and throwing shit, and I think they broke some windows around the exit ramps.”
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“One of the things I remember most about that night was my Aunt Mame called me from an old folks home down in St. Louis. She was my grandfather’s sister, really a sweet lady. She called me and wanted to come to the show. She read in the paper that Steely Dan was playing and she heard from somebody that I was playing with them. She was about 90 years old. She said, ‘I’m going to take a cab. I’m going to come down.’ And I said, ‘I don’t want you to do that. It’s late at night and its really loud.’ And suddenly I realized when talking to her something loud was a door slamming. ‘Oh, I don’t care,’ she said. She didn’t know what I meant. And opening for us was Montrose. I’m thinking ‘Oh my God.’
Michael McDonald, Page 57
