George Harrison and Ravi Shankar were booked to perform in Vancouver. The crowd had arrived and sat quietly in the seats of the Pacific Coliseum, a room famous for hockey and bad-sounding concerts. I’m sure the organizers had hoped this one would be different.
Half an hour after the advertised start time, after relentless clapping and chants of “why are we waiting” from the restless crowd, it was announced that the concert had been cancelled. This must be the most dreaded announcement by every promoter. Frustrated people were milling around on the concrete floor of the Coliseum. Everyone was disappointed and most filed out in silence after the announcement.
For many years, on many different stages and on many different occasions, I have played harmonica on the breaks for bands. I would typically ask the band beforehand if I could ‘sit in’ with them and occasionally they would let me. Most often, though, they would decline the offer. Harmonica players have a reputation for being ‘song wreckers’ because so many of them do not bother to learn even the bare essentials of the instrument they play. They do, however, have the craving to perform with a band and many are not shy to try.
On many occasions a frustrated band member, after hearing the harmonica player floundering in the wrong key, will lean over and yell the correct key that should be used. This doesn’t always work either and I have witnessed many who are told to get off the stage in mid-song. In order to avoid such prejudice by a band, I perfected my own ‘gorilla’ tactic. When the band left the stage on a break, I would jump up on the stage without permission, test the microphone to see if it was still on and ‘rip’ into a harmonica solo hoping that everyone liked my playing before I was thrown off the stage. Often the crowd reaction saved me from being unplugged by the outraged soundman. I used this gorilla tactic many times when I was growing up and eventually, when I was spotted at a function, I would be asked if I was going to get up there with the band. I suppose one could say that jumping up on the stage like this was the musical equivalent of ‘streaking’, and I loved the adrenalin rush it gave me. I studied and practiced the harmonica constantly and was rarely thrown off the stage. On a few occasions the band would even join in and play along with me in the background to start their next set.
On this night of the cancelled performance I decided to employ my gorilla streaking tactic again. With my heart pounding, I jumped up and rushed to the microphone at front center of the huge Coliseum stage and started playing wildly into the microphone. I played a train rhythm that I hoped would get everyone going and clapping along. When the crowd heard the sound of harmonica they turned on mass and started making their way back towards the stage. Before long there were hundreds of dancers doing a creative 70s ‘rampant abandon’ dance in front of me. The disappointment from the cancelled concert was dissipated for the 10 minutes or so that I played. I closed my eyes and felt as if I was flying out across the crowd. Few experiences have compared to this short performance on that night.
When I felt the time was right I ended the solo, took a little bow and hopped off the stage. Within seconds I was integrated back into the crowd, threading my way unnoticed out through the turnstiles at the gate. I was again just one of the many disappointed fans that never got to see the concert and I quickly forgot the whole episode. Little did I know that a friend from my high school was in the audience that night and over 25 years later I bumped into her at a party and listened as she recounted the whole incident in great detail to the people gathered around us. I was overwhelmed that she had remembered that performance so well after all these years.
One never knows the impact of one’s actions on other’s lives.
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