Were you at Three Rivers Stadium for these 10 iconic concerts?
Greatest concert stories from Three Rivers Stadium
If you grew up in Western Pennsylvania in the 1970s and ’80s, chances are you had one of the wildest nights of your life at Three Rivers Stadium.
We don’t know exactly what you did — what happened at Three Rivers Stadium blew up with Three Rivers Stadium — but let’s just say in the course of a concert day you may have swam across the Allegheny, climbed into the stadium on a rope, knocked over an elderly usher to get on the field, shared your buddy’s case of beer, smoked pot, taken ’ludes, gotten into a fight and threw fireworks at the stage. That was a rock concert, circa 1976. Three Rivers Stadium, while being the proud home of such big hitters as Willie Stargell and Mean Joe Greene, was also stomping grounds for the likes of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, ZZ Top and Bachman Turner Overdrive in what is now considered the heyday for “classic rock.”
Between its opening in 1970 and its demolition in 2001, Three Rivers played host to more than three dozen members of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
The era of stadium rock had its origins in the historic hysterical 1965 Beatles show at Shea Stadium in New York. But the trend didn’t take off from there. As that decade wore on, festivals such as Monterey Pop, Woodstock and Altamont were more the rule. Then, in July 1971, Grand Funk Railroad shook up the concert world with a wild night at Shea, playing to 55,000.
Three Rivers Stadium management didn’t want all that insanity on their turf, as legendary promoter Pat DiCesare describes in his book “Hard Days Hard Nights.” So, they played it safe, testing the waters in August 1970 with a Three Rivers New Orleans Jazz Festival, featuring trumpeter Al Hirt. Crowd size: 6,300.
Eventually, as Jack Black might say, there was no stopping the rock, beginning with Three Dog Night in 1971. Things would get a lot crazier — what’s up, ZZ Top — before some order was restored.
In honor of the 50th anniversary of Three Rivers’ opening, here are the greatest stories, in chronological order:
1. Rock you like a hurricane
Having done the Three Dog Night show in ’71, DiCesare was ready to take things up a notch and produce “the greatest rock concert that Pittsburgh had ever seen.” He set a June 23, 1972, date for shockrocker Alice Cooper, who had a little hit called “School’s Out.” In the days leading up to the concert, DiCesare went through his own personal hell overseeing crews erecting a 40-by-40-foot covered stage without putting any holes in the field. The plan was “rain or shine.” They got a hurricane!
While Alice was on his way to Pittsburgh, so was Agnes. It hit Pittsburgh the day before the concert, bringing water levels up to the bottom of bridges. Cooper had a perfect view of this from his hotel room at the Hilton, where he and DiCesare gave up on the show at 11 that morning. Happily, the weather cooperated for the new date of July 11, but Humble Pie’s management didn’t. They wanted the band, which featured future superstar Peter Frampton on guitar, to have the benefit of stage lights and didn’t put them on until well after 8 p.m. The crowd didn’t cooperate either, rushing out of the bleachers to storm the field, which would have to be cleared before Alice finally hit the stage after 11 p.m.
2. Fifth of July fireworks
“Not all fireworks around here will be on July 4, friends. There will be plenty at the
Three Rivers Stadium the next day when Eric Clapton, the Band and Todd Rundgren headline a monster concert there.” That was the announcement in The Pittsburgh Press in May 1974. Fans obviously took that literally, bringing their leftovers to the stadium that day. The July 5th show — the first stadium concert under the new DiCesare-Engler Productions banner — was a huge deal, marking Clapton’s return with “461 Ocean Boulevard” after a three-year bout with heroin addiction, post-Derek and the Dominos.
During the mellow first half of his set,
with songs like “Let it Grow” and “Can’t Find My Way Home,” the Pittsburgh crowd managed to keep Clapton jumpy, tossing fireworks, Frisbees and things toward the stage, at one point catching the canvas roof on fire. Clapton reacted to the display by unleashing perhaps the biggest torrent of fwords ever directed at a Pittsburgh concert crowd. According to reviews, The Band, on Robbie Robertson’s birthday, stole the show.
3. Pink Floyd’s Pyramid scheme
Pink Floyd blew people’s minds with an open-air Civic Arena show in ’73 performing its new album “Dark Side of the Moon” and returned on June 20, 1975, for what was one of only six North American stadium shows that summer. It drew fans from neighboring states — 50,000 with tickets and thousands more who crashed the gates or slipped the ticket takers cash. “Thievery was a major problem at Three Rivers,” promoter Rich Engler says.
The British prog pioneers took a daring approach to the show, opening with a threesong first set consisting of two long unreleased tracks — “Raving and Drooling” (later “Sheep”) and “You’ve Got to be Crazy” (later “Dog”) — from future album “Animals” and “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” from the current “Wish You Were Here.” A percentage of the crowd was there just to party, hear the hit “Money” and trip out on the visuals: a large round video screen, a crashing plane on a wire, pyrotechnics and a floating pyramid with a 60-foot base that had malfunctioned in Atlanta three weeks prior. Pittsburgh was a second go for the pyramid, which, with a gust of wind, came apart, sending its helium balloon and the top of the pyramid out of the stadium, crashing into cars in the parking lot.
Roger Waters would tell Nick Sedgwick later that year, “I cast myself back into how [expletive] dreadful I felt on the last American tour, with all those thousands and thousands and thousands of drunken kids smashing each other to pieces. I felt dreadful because it had nothing to do with us — I didn’t think there was any contact between us and them.”
Surely, someone in that crowd of 50-towhatever-thousand said, “Which one’s Pink?” Consider that show Pittsburgh’s contribution to “The Wall.”
Side note: There’s a mention on a fan site that Pink Floyd’s limo did not show up, and the band walked to the hotel, unrecognized by fans. It seems unlikely, and Engler has no memory of that.
4. Bachman Turner Slip-And-Slide
Sandcastle Waterpark opened in Homestead in 1989. Fourteen years before that, there was the World Series of Rock.
The all-day lineup on July 19, 1975, was pretty killer: Bachman Turner Overdrive, Johnny Winter, Foghat, Styx, Kansas and Dave Mason. When the rains came, the plastic tarp on the field turned into a “slip and slide,” Engler says. For more splashy fun, fans dumped out the water barrels used as a barricade to the stage.
When they started pushing on the stage, it was rockin’. Recalls Engler, “Dirt Dinardo [head of the grounds crew] comes over and tells me, ‘Hey, they’re moving the stage. It’s moved about 2 feet.’ I said, ‘Oh my God, what can we do?’ He said, ‘Let me get this forklift, and I’ll push back.’ I said, ‘Great idea!’ So, I go up on stage and BTO is on at this point, and Randy Bachman comes over to me and says, ‘Is the stage moving or is that my imagination?’ I said, ‘It’s your imagination!’ ”
In the promotion game, that’s called takin’ care of business.
5. Single. Craziest. Pittsburgh. Concert. Ever.
With a massive stage in the shape of Texas, a herd of cattle, rattlesnakes, a hot sun and hombres in cowboy hats, Three Rivers Stadium was like a Wild West showdown on June 12, 1976.
The concert pitted two diverging brands of hell-raisers: the beer-drinking, Harleyriding, Southern-rock rebels of ZZ Top and the druggy, glammy, androgynous fans of Aerosmith. Paid attendance was 54,000, but it was estimated that 70,000 packed into Three Rivers. During Aerosmith’s set, a fan actually climbed into the danger-highvoltage area and shut off the power to the delight of ZZ fans. The urban legend is that fans rode some of the cattle that got loose. Throughout the day, hundreds of people were jumping into the rivers, and when two bodies showed up, officials attributed it to the concert.
The front page headline the next day in The Pittsburgh Press was “250 Fans Injured at Rock Concert,” many of them cut by broken glass “when bottle-throwing erupted.” Pittsburgh Pirates physician Joseph Finegold told the paper, “[It] was the most horrible thing I have ever seen since World War II.”
The only remedy to a ban on stadium concerts was the more pleasant Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Boz Scaggs affair on July 14, 1976, for 37,000 fans. “You had one bad concert
here this summer, and let’s not have another one,” an Eagle said. More than 100 guards were hired to confiscate alcohol coming into the stadium. It went smoothly enough that the Stadium Authority approved a Beach Boys/Peter Frampton concert for the following month. Again, bottles and cans would be banned, but drugs were harder to confiscate. In a Press story, the executive director of the Stadium Authority actually noted that “if the young people are in a drug stupor, they are less likely to engage in fighting.”
6. In trouble with The Boss
You know how they do concerts now in the round? This wasn’t even that. Fans were simply willing to sit behind Bruce Springsteen, who broke the stadium record on Aug. 11, 1985, playing to 65,000 on the Born in the U.S.A. tour. It was the only Three Rivers Stadium concert for the bulked-up, bandanna-wearing Boss, who favored double-night arena stands. On this night, when the lights went down and the E Street Band rolled out, the Mighty Max Weinberg hit the snare for the primal beat of “Born in the U.S.A.” and … Nils Lofgren and Roy Bittan were still backstage playing pingpong. From that point on, according to Brucebase, E Street does a headcount before the first note. Ultimately, the whole band was out there long enough, topping 3½ hours with a 28song set that ended rapturously with “Twist and Shout,” “Do You Love Me” and “Sherry Darling.”
7. Johnny B. Gone
On Sept. 28, 1986, the Pirates learned the King of Rock ’n’ Roll doesn’t do extra innings. Chuck Berry was told the field would be his at 5 p.m., following the Pirates-Mets game. Unfortunately, the 11 game went into the 11th inning (ending with a Daryl Strawberry three-run homer off Bob Walk). “In Chuck Berry’s contract, it was very specific about what time he went on stage,” says promoter Henry DeLuca. “He comes into the airport, rents his Lincoln Town Car, and you have to have a band there ready to play his songs. He could see the game wasn’t going to end on time.” The King took his guitar and went home — “I think they tried to block his car,” DeLuca says. The Pirates sued and were able to recoup the $20,000 fee.
8. Munsters of Rock
For DiCesare-Engler Productions, then in its 15th year, Monsters of Rock was the ultimate horror show. Despite being on a Wednesday, the June 15, 1988, bill looked good on paper: Van Halen (Sammy not Dave), Scorpions, Dokken, Metallica and Kingdom Come. New metal! They needed 40,000-plus and got 28,000 on a scorching 90-plus-degree day, putting D-E a whopping $400k in the red. “We were going to have to go out of business,” Engler says. Van Halen, pondering its future, generously offered a $75,000 bailout, and some of the others chipped in to cushion the blow. The problem with the show? “The name,” Engler says. “A lot of parents didn’t want their kids going to Monsters of Rock. It just didn’t sound right.”
9. Angry Piano Man
When Engler slipped Billy Joel a copy of Pittsburgh City Paper to sign, he probably didn’t figure the Piano Man would read it. It contained two previews of this Aug. 2, 1994, blockbuster with Elton John: a review of the Philadelphia show by a freelancer and a more searing piece on runaway ticket prices, labeling the superstars “petty thieves.” Joel “started bouncing off the walls” when he read it, and during the second set, he took the tabloid on stage, ranted about the writer (and his comped seat) and stomped on City Paper as a segue into “Angry Young Man.” But Joel actually called out the wrong writer — the Philly freelancer. The guy who wrote the ticket story and was sitting in the comped seat was then-CP editor John Hayes, who is now the Post-Gazette’s outdoors writer. “It was the best publicity the relatively new City Paper had received at the time,” Hayes says. The Philly freelancer? None other than Eric Deggans, author and current TV critic for NPR.
10. If the rain comes ...
It’s known in Grateful Dead fandom as “The Rain Show.” June 30, 1995. After a rousing opening set by hometown heroes Rusted Root on an oppressively humid day, there was a long intermission during which dark clouds gathered behind the stage. Just as those clouds burst, The Dead was singing the first a cappella notes of The Beatles’ “Rain.” It felt like a little miracle, and it continued with “Box of Rain,” “Samba in the Rain” and “Looks Like Rain” while fans twirled and danced in that shower. In a final Grateful Dead tour that is not fondly remembered, musically — Jerry Garcia died 40 days later — the rain set is considered the apex.
More stories
• Opening act Leon Russell had trouble connecting with the Three Dog Night crowd, who were seated far off in the bleachers, on July 30, 1972, and cut his set short, according to Steve Mulligan’s book “Where You There? Over 300 Wonderful, Weird and Wacky Moments From Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium.” Russell hung around to see if Three Dog Night would fare better, and with a string of hits like “One,” “Joy to the World” and “Mama Told Me Not to Come,” they did. Moved by the music, Russell came dancing onto the field, at which point security, clearly not paying attention to the first set, grabbed this guy who looked like a long-haired freak and tussled with him until he convinced them he was the opening act.
• July 24, 1973, was the third big rock show at TRS and Led Zeppelin’s only Pittsburgh stadium show. It was delayed for an hour after people in the crowd of 38,000 rushed the stage. Once order was maintained, Led Zep crushed it for well over two hours. While in town, the band shot the dramatic Fort Pitt Tunnel entry that would become the opening of the concert film “Song Remains the Same.”
• How good was the Pittsburgh Jazz Festival back in the day? How ’bout a lineup of Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, B.B. King and Charles Mingus? According to reviews, Little Stevie was the one who really brought it that night. It only drew about 5,000 fans.
• The Jackson 5 came out for one song, and then left because of people pressing against the stage, on July 19, 1974. They returned after a 15-minute delay for a 45minute set that included a cover of “Papa Was a Rolling Stone.” When fans were injured after the show trying to get to the group, Doc Wilson, of Mandrill, a real doctor, treated one of the people.
• The Chicago-Doobie Brothers bill on Aug. 31, 1974, may have been a little rowdier, but Lynyrd Skynyrd canceled what would have been its Pittsburgh debut because of illness and was replaced by The Ozark Mountain Daredevils.
• In September 1981, a reunited Simon & Garfunkel played to 500,000 people in New York City’s Central Park. Two years later, on July 29, 1983, the duo played to 41,000 at Three Rivers Stadium. It was the first concert there since 1978, because, as Engler explains, “There was no one out there touring that could fill up a stadium.” Tensions were brewing between the two longtime friends — who stayed in opposing locker rooms — particularly around the reunion album in progress, which would become the Simon solo album “Hearts and Bones” two months later.
• The Explosion of Sound concert with Marshall Tucker Band and The Outlaws on May 25, 1985, was preceded by a demolition derby, motorcycle jumping and stunt shows.
• Engler was a longtime fan of Genesis and as an indie promoter had booked the band to open for Lou Reed at the Alpine Ice Arena in 1973. When its manager called to pitch a stadium show for Pittsburgh in 1987, Engler says, “I got a lump in my throat of fear.” An overnighted copy of the new single, “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight,” from the forthcoming “Invisible Touch,” changed things. Engler loved it and booked Genesis on May 24, 1987, for one of five stadium shows on that run. The show drew 60,000, and Genesis returned to play TRS again in 1992.
• U2 headlined Three Rivers the most times, and the three shows were very different. The 1987 Joshua Tree tour had Bono, in a sling from having taken a fall a few weeks before, doing the big anthems on a spare stage. The 1992 ZooTV Tour, on a stage set wallpapered with television screens, went for sensory overload, and the 1997 PopMart Tour was more in a discotheque mode. It was the only bust of the three.
• The Rolling Stones Steel Wheels tour on Sept. 6, 1989, was the band’s first Pittsburgh show since playing the Civic Arena in 1972. It was also the first Pittsburgh show for Ronnie Wood and the last for bassist Bill Wyman. It drew 63,000, and the band returned for a second time in 1994.
• The British Invasion hit the ‘Burgh in ‘89. Two months before the Stones, The
Who played its one Pittsburgh stadium show on a reunion tour that featured them opening with most of “Tommy.”
• Guns N’ Roses did a powerful set, but the hard-hitting July 26, 1992, bill is best remembered for the rain that pelted Metallica and its fans during the amazing middle set. What do you do as a promoter when you have to send a band out in a storm? “Um,” Engler says, “you try to call the local religious person to come and bless this stage, that it doesn’t get hit by lightning.”
• The George Strait Country Music
Festival, on June 6, 1999, with the thenDixie Chicks, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Jo Dee Messina, Mark Willis and Asleep at the Wheel set the stage for future stadium shows at Heinz Field. Oh, also on that bill: Kenny Chesney.
• When radio pioneer Porky Chedwick fell on hard times financially, friends rallied to stage Porkstock, a two-day tribute Aug. 15-16, 1998, with headliners Little Richard and Bo Diddley at one of the gates. The event wasn’t a major success, but DeLuca says they were able to provide Porky with $7,000 for a down payment on his house.
• Pittsburgh jazz legend Billy Eckstine sang the national anthem for the opening game at Three Rivers Stadium in 1970, and Sister Sledge sang it for the sendoff in 2000.
• For a sense of how much the concert landscape changed, from the days of Grand Funk and Led Zep, boy band sensation ‘N Sync not only played the final concert at Three Rivers Stadium (July 16, 2000) but also the first concert at Heinz Field (Aug. 18, 2001). Steelers fans thought for sure Heinz would be cursed.