The following text is an excerpt (chapter 12) from the book: Bond of the Brotherhood
It was a perfect warm, sunny Friday to bring something special to enjoy in the afternoon with friends at school. I chose the bourbon from my remaining cache of locker room proceeds. It had a fancy-looking bottle and label, which I’d never seen before. It was near the end of the school year, and on nice days people ate lunch on the hill behind the smoking area. After grabbing a pizza slice with Craig and Gary, I bought some styrofoam cups, and we went to the hill. There were about fifteen people there, some I knew a little and others not much at all. Then I poured three nice sized cups of bourbon for Gary, Craig, and myself, and asked if anybody wanted a drink. Everyone turned and looked at me. “Kentucky bourbon,” I said while taking a sip.
“Yeah!” a couple guys replied, and I passed them my tote bag with the bottle and cups. Then a couple girls said they would “Have a little sippy”, so I passed them the bag next.
“Hey, what’s your name again? I remember seeing you at a few parties,” one of the guys enjoying the bourbon asked me.
“David is my name.”
“I’m Rick and this is Todd,” said my new acquaintance.
Some other guys filed out of the school lighting cigarettes and Rick called out, “Hey Louie, David here has some Kentucky bourbon he’s sharing.” This Louie guy came over had a look in the bag and said, “Wow. Hey, this is the good stuff from the south, not the garbage that you usually find in liquor stores up here. I love bourbon” he said as he poured himself a drink. “Well thank you, David” he then added. It went like that until the bottle was empty. I provided refreshment to about a dozen people that day, and everyone became more social as the lunch hour passed.
“Hey, are you guys going to the Iron Maiden show tomorrow night?” Todd asked us as he was finishing his drink. I looked at Gary and Craig and they looked interested, so I said, “We don’t have tickets but maybe we should go check the box-office or get tickets from a scalper. “Yeah, you should. It’s gonna be an awesome show, man. Then he started singing “Runnn to the hiiilllls,” with his hand up like he was gripping a microphone and Rick came up beside him mocking an intense air-guitar solo.
Some of the people started talking about blowing off the rest of the day as lunch was about to end. Gary and I agreed that it was too nice outside to go back into school. The sun felt so good on my face and arms. Craig, however, finished his drink and said, “I’m going back for math class.”
“Are you for real, man?” I asked.
“Yeah, I like math,” he replied smiling as he got up and went back into the school.
The next day I called Craig and Gary to see if they wanted to go to the show. They did, so I called Tommy and told him we were going. He said he wasn’t a huge fan of the band but thought it would be a good time since it was a warm Saturday night, and he hadn’t seen a concert in a while.
We met at Craig’s place around six o’clock in the evening and mixed dark rum into four large plastic Coke bottles, one for each of us. Then we made our way to the bus stop. When the bus arrived, we set up comfortably in the back end, close to one another. Other people on the bus were obviously going to the show and at every stop more fans got on. Soon the bus was full of people, all talking loudly over each other.
The drink I made myself was going down very well, it tasted amazing. I wanted it to last, so I planned to only drink half by the time the bus arrived at the subway station, and I’d have the other half on the subway.
Tommy leaned into Craig, Gary, and I and asked, “Are we going to make an attempt for the front rows?”
“Yeah, I think we should,” I said. Craig agreed as well.
“Huh, what do you mean? We don’t even have tickets yet,” said Gary.
Craig, Tommy, and I just grinned. “That doesn’t matter,” Tommy replied.
“As long as we can get in the front doors, we can make an attempt for the front rows,” I stated.
“What? How?” asked Gary.
“You just need to get into the floor section and make a run for the front rows,” I said. “There are only four gates to the floor section. Each has two ushers checking tickets. The best way is to wait until a group of people approach the ushers, then slide in between people to get passed the usher. They’ll probably see you, and they might tell you to stop, but they usually won’t leave their post and chase you. In fact, if they do chase you that’s better because it will create a bit of chaos and everyone else will get through. If you don’t get through the first-floor entrance, you just keep trying different entrances. It’s much easier when the lights are off and the show has started.
The other way to get onto the floor section,” Craig added, “is to go up a level from floors and run down the section stairs to the bottom, jump for the hockey boards that enclose the floor, and leap over the barricade. Again, ushers won’t chase you once you’re on the floor. They need to stay at their post.”
“Yeah, that way is a little harder,” Tommy cautioned. “The ‘front rows’ really means the section of about four or five feet in front of the first row of seats from the stage. Anyone that can get there is home free, and it gets packed in with fans fast. Security and ushers won’t even attempt to push into that area.”
We shuffled with the rowdy crowd onto a near-full subway car once we reached the subway station, again making ourselves comfortable, finding a small cluster of seats.
“Okay, so how do we get to the front rows once we get past the security for the floor section?” asked Gary.
“Well, there’s a couple ways,” Craig said, “but mostly it boils down to run fast, dodge, and jump seats if needed. It’s a good idea once in a section on the floor to just grab any seat or find a safe place to stand and strategize where, and when, you’re going to run up. Look at the ushers, target any that look weak, old, or fat. You can wait for a pack of people and try to slide through or just walk up to them and then bolt past when you’re close.”
“Floors in Maple Leaf Gardens have six sub-sections with major aisles in between,” I added. “I like to jump over the last row of chairs in a section, between major cross-aisles, then every few minutes jump another row forward. Then once I’m passed the ushers, I walk out to the aisle fast and make a run for it.”
“So, what if they catch you?” inquired Gary.
“The worst that can happen is you’ll get kicked out of the show,” Tommy replied.
Gary looked at me and asked, “Have you gotten to the front rows before?”
“I’m getting closer each time,” I responded. “Tonight, I’m all in.”
When we got to the arena, we made a quick plan. My three companions were going to go behind the parking lot maintenance shed and get high. My task was to get tickets and then meet up with the guys. They each gave me twenty bucks. When I got to the box office there was a sign on the closed window that said ‘Tonight’s Show is Sold Out’ so I started looking for scalpers. It wasn’t hard to find people selling tickets on the street, I walked passed a few and heard that the gold section was going for thirty bucks and the red and green sections for twenty-five bucks. Finally, I found a scalper with grey section tickets, top of the arena, for twenty bucks each, and I bought four from him. Having finished my mission, I went to the back of the parking lot and joined the guys, handing out the tickets.
“Twenty bucks for seats in the grey section?” Gary asked looking disappointed.
“This gets us in the show. Remember the game plan, front rows,” Craig said.
We then made our way to the arena entrance and got in line to pass through the turnstiles and have our tickets torn by the gate staff, who were all very old, likely into their seventies. “Hey, you see that ticket taker over there?” Tommy asked me, pointing at the furthest gate minder. “He’s my grandmother’s neighbor. He’s been working at Maple Leaf Gardens for forty-five years. He’s in the union. They get double-time to work concerts. He let my uncle Tony and me in for The Who.”
“Wow, that’s awesome,” I responded.
Other than the old buzzards at the turnstiles, there was only one policeman posted to the entrance. Everything seemed to be running smoothly, but he kept a close watch on the crowd. We walked around the first-floor corridor once we got passed the gate minders, looking through the entrance ways to the floors each time we passed one.
“What are we doing?” Gary asked.
“Just waiting for the lights to drop, then people will scramble to get to their seats, and we can slide through into the floor section,” Tommy replied. The lights dropped inside the seating area of the arena, the crowd roared, and people started piling into the entrance ways to get to their seats. “Okay, let’s go,” Tommy said and the four of us interspersed with the crowd of people excited to get to their floor section seats and see the show.
Tommy was ahead of me and slid through two guys having their tickets checked by ushers with flashlights. One of the ushers saw him and made a few steps towards him to grab him. That’s when Craig and I bolted through. Looking back, I saw that the other usher was trying to grab Craig, but we went in different directions, and I lost sight of him. I went away from the stage while Craig was going towards it. I ducked into some seats halfway back on the floors that were open and stood on the seat to see. It was hard to see, but it looked like an usher had Craig by the back of his jean jacket and was walking him to the front barricade. He was probably going to be passed off to security get booted from the show.
The band came on and the crowd went wild as I looked for my next position. Then I saw it, an open seat in the middle of the last row of the section in front of the stage. From there I could watch the ushers in the area and wait for a good time to make my attempt for the front rows. I waited until the perfect time. The stage lights went out after a couple of songs, and it was very dark as the band prepared for their next song. I bolted to the empty seat in the last row and put one leg over the top, planted my foot firmly on the seat, and stepped into the row. No one around me cared, everyone was standing, yelling, and whistling. I stayed there for another few songs, my next move would be making a run for it up the middle aisle. Again, I waited until all the lights were out for a few seconds. I hunched down and moved toward the end of the row where the ushers stood. Neither was looking backward at the stage, so I slipped out of the row and ran up to the front, unseen.
As I approached, I could see that the front row area was four heads deep, and tightly packed, a human mass of sweaty arms and heads. I quickly pushed into the crowd, and I was completely absorbed by it. Six feet from the stage, I could see everything, like how the guitarists communicated to each other with eye movements and mouthing words to each other while they were playing. When the lights were beaming at the crowd I looked around. I saw a couple guys from school that I recognized, and two heads over diagonally was Tommy. I reached for him and grabbed his shoulder. He turned and saw me, smiled, then grabbed my arm, pulling me up beside him. The night just kept getting better. Then Iron Maiden played one of their most popular songs, The Number of the Beast, and everyone became full of energy, arms flailing, fists pumping, jumping to the beat, and singing along as it was being played to us. What an amazing experience I was having, and I thought it couldn’t possibly get any better, but it did. About twenty minutes later when the lights were high again, I scanned the crowd for people I knew. There were about a dozen people I had seen at school or local parties. Rick and Todd were standing on chairs in the second row. Then, to my complete astonishment, I saw Craig, about ten heads over. I pointed to his head, indicating to Tommy it was Craig. Either he didn’t get kicked out, or he somehow made it back into the arena and up to the front. Tommy just grinned and we continued to watch the show.
There were lasers shooting all over the stage, rebounding from mirrors at sharp angles around the band, and dry ice smoke covering the stage, which I could taste and smell. About half-way through the show a ten-foot rendition of Eddy, the band’s mascot, which is some kind of mummified zombie, walked out from the side of the stage. He had a laser gun and was shooting it around the stage during a blistering three-guitarist super crescendo. I figured that there must’ve been a guy inside the costume on stilts, regardless it was a lot of fun to watch. When the song ended Eddy disappeared with the lights. The band played about a dozen more songs, then the lights went out for twenty seconds and the crowd howled. They came back out for their encore and played ‘Run to the Hills,’ but their singer, Bruce Dickenson, played mostly to the front rows. He got right down, off the stage and was standing on the floor behind the barricade singing, giving high fives, and shaking hands. For a brief second, getting a high five from the singer while he belted out lyrics, I felt like I was connected to the entire audience. It was electrifying.
After the show, Tommy and I made our way over to Craig. We looked around for Gary, but he was nowhere to be found in the floor sections. We went outside the arena and stood by the front entrance, had a smoke, talked, and waited.
“I thought I saw you get the boot?” I said to Craig.
“I did,” Craig responded. “I walked around outside for twenty minutes until the entrance died down. The cop left and the only people there were the old men at the turnstiles, so I made out like I was reaching for my ticket, passed through the turnstile, then I bolted. The old guy didn’t even care, he did this hand waving motion like ‘ah, go ahead’. It must’ve been between songs because it was dark in the tunnel to the floors. I ran like hell passed the ushers and kept right on going up the left aisle to the front.”
“Holy shit,” Tommy said. “One run from outside right up to the front rows?”
“Yeah!” said Craig smiling.
We finished our cigarettes and decided to call it a night. We agreed that we’d keep our eyes open for Gary at the subway stations and on the train back, but we didn’t see him.
On the following Monday at school Craig and I saw Gary in the smoking area. He wasn’t very happy to see us.
“Man, what happened to you?” I asked.
“You guys just took off on me. I couldn’t get through to the floors.”
“Well, it’s a chance and luck kind of thing. You gotta keep trying,” I remarked.
“Well, it didn’t seem to work out for me like it did you guys,” Gary responded.
“I got kicked out of the arena completely,” Craig said, “but I got back in, and up to the front.”
“Well, I watched the show by myself from shitty Grey seats,” Gary said sulking. “I could hardly even see the band, and the sound was crap.”
“Hey, man, we didn’t ditch you,” I said. “Once the show starts, it’s every man for himself. We all got separated but met up again in the front.”
“You know, I took all the risk when we took the car” Gary said. “It just doesn’t seem fair.” “You took all the risk? Shit, really?” Craig replied in an agitated tone. “I stole the car keys from my neighbor. I’m sorry you think we ditched you, man. It’s just the way things played that night.”
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