November 2, 1972 Hofstra Playhouse, Hempstead, NY: ABC In Concert with Allman Brothers/Alice Cooper/others (A New World Beckons)

Gregg Allman and Berry Oakley on stage at Hofstra U, filming ABC In Concert, on November 3 1972

November 2, 1972 Hofstra Playhouse, Hempstead, NY: ABC In Concert with Allman Brothers Band/Alice Cooper/Poco/Seals and Crofts/Chuck Berry/Bo Diddley/Blood, Sweat & Tears/Curtis Mayfield
Back in 1972, television was a fixed landscape, pretty much the same throughout the entire country. There were three national television broadcast networks and one publicly funded "educational" network (PBS). Most cities or regions had an "independent" station, and a few larger cities had two. The networks broadcast the same shows to the entire country during the morning (usually game shows), afternoon (soap operas and talk shows) and "Prime Time" from 7:30-11:00. In between, the network broadcasts the local stations broadcast the news, local shows and syndicated re-runs. The local independent stations showed old movies and re-runs. That was it. Three networks, a local station and the "educational" network. Nothing else. Sure, there, were a few UHF stations on the fringes of some cities, but there were only 12 channels and less than half were in use in any given area. It had been like that since the 1950s.

Still, the landscape was starting to change in '72, however slowly. The networks were figuring out that there were some untapped markets late at night. It may seem obvious to us now, but it wasn't then. Some stations went off the air after the 11:00pm news. Some networks ran talk shows, like NBC's Tonight Show, and a few stations showed "late movies." But all stations were off the air by 1:00am, if not before.  The channel would display a static design, usually called a "Test Pattern", until early morning broadcasting began at 5:00 or 6:00am.  

Yet the Networks were starting to figure something out. There were people up after 11:30, particularly on weekends. Younger people, single people, couples without kids, married people who'd put their toddlers to bed--the Tonight Show wasn't really for them, and you could only watch the late night monster movie so many times. By the late 70s, we would be on to Fernwood Tonight, SCTV, Saturday Night Live, Late Night With David Letterman, the Tomorrow Show and some other innovative shows. But it took a while for the networks to get there. Somewhat unexpectedly, the first sign of a change in network weather was live rock and roll, and the instigator was ABC In Concert, a 90-minute show of live rock and roll broadcast almost every other every Friday night.

ABC In Concert debuted with two highly-promoted shows on November 24 and December 8, 1972. Both 90-minute episodes were selected from a 16-hour live event at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY, in Long Island. The Hofstra concert had been held on November 2, 1972, and featured eight acts. And guess what--the Grateful Dead were supposed to be on the bill, and would have been part of the of the In Concert debut in Fall '72, but they backed out at the last minute.  This post will review what happened at the concert recording, and the staggering yet forgotten importance of In Concert.

CSNY appeared on ABC's This Is Tom Jones in September '69 (Recorded Sep 6). Jones sang a verse of "Long Time Gone" (L-R: Stills [organ], Jones, Crosby, Nash)

Status Report: Live Rock and Roll on Network TV, ca 1972
In the late  1960s and early 1970s, most rock "performances" on TV were lip-synched, like on American Bandstand. Once FM radio became a force in 1968, a lot of bands would refuse to lip-synch for shows, so they never got on TV. Here and there bands would perform on public television shows, almost always taped, but even public TV wasn't very rock-friendly. All the networks had "variety shows" that featured mixtures of comedy, music and novelty acts, but they had a more Las Vegas-style orientation. The Ed Sullivan Show, Sunday Nights on CBS, was the most famous of these. Bands actually played live, but they would generally play a single song in a sparse stage set-up. Other variety shows, such as the Lawrence Welk Show, would have singers performing live, but with the house orchestra.

A few variety shows had genuine rock acts playing live, but actual rock performers didn't appear every week. We are familiar from YouTube with clips from the Smothers Brothers, This Is Tom Jones, the Johnny Cash Show and the Glenn Campbell Goodtime Hour. Some cool rock bands played those shows, but such appearances were rare and brief. There were also syndicated and regional talk shows (like Mike Douglas or Dinah Shore), and occasionally rock bands played on them, but that too was rare.

By 1972, however, even the networks must have realized there was an under-served market. NBC, CBS and ABC all had national radio networks, all AM, and FM rock radio was dominating the ratings in major cities. Any sensible executive could see that there had to be a TV market for rock fans, and it could be a lucrative one. The doors started to open. On weeknights at 11:30, after the local news, most ABC affiliates broadcast the Dick Cavett Show. Cavett was an erudite New Yorker, and was conceived as "the thinking man's talk show host," in contrast to the more casual, Hollywood-oriented Johnny Carson. For the debut of In Concert, ABC replaced the Cavett show with the two 90 minute In Concert Specials. Their ratings would more than double the average rating of The Dick Cavett Show and even topped NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in some markets and among viewers under the age of 35.

In Concert became a bi-weekly series in January 1973. "Right now, we have more artists than we know what to do with," producer Don Kirshner's music director Wally Gold told The Washington Post late in 1972. "We pay them scale to appear, which is way below what they usually get for a concert, but they know that the publicity is well worth it. So everyone wants to be on. We're getting hundreds of calls. At first, we had to beg the artists to appear. Now they're begging us."

Back on Saturday, August 19, 1972 NBC had broadcast the pilot of a show called The Midnight Special. It was presented as a 90-minute special encouraging young people to vote in the upcoming Presidential election. It had a variety show presentation, not like a concert, and it was only rock oriented compared to network variety shows. John Denver was the host, singing three songs (one a duet with Cass Elliott) and introducing the acts. The only real rock act was the English band Argent ("Hold Your Head Up,' "Tragedy"). The Isley Brothers ("Pop That Thang") and War ("Slipping Into Darkness") kept the show from being exclusively white. Linda Ronstadt sang two ("Long Long Time," and "The Fast One"), but photogenic Linda, through no fault of her own, was what you expected from network television. There was a lot of AM radio schlock, too: Harry Chapin, Helen Reddy, David Clayton-Thomas (ex Blood, Sweat & Tears).

Writer Robert Christgau wrote about the 1972 In Concert filming in some detail in the Newsday Nassau County edition on Friday, November 3

November 2, 1972 Hofstra Playhouse, Hempstead, NY: ABC In Concert Filming with Allman Brothers Band/Alice Cooper/Poco/Seals and Crofts/Chuck Berry/Bo Diddley/Blood, Sweat & Tears/Curtis Mayfield/ (Thursday)
The innovation of ABC In Concert was to film an actual rock concert, instead of merely presenting a rock group on a sound stage. Of course, the budget didn't really allow them to film numerous rock concerts and edit them down, so the producers chose to present 8 groups in a single day, playing limited sets, and film them all. It was an ambitious idea. It sort of worked. The show was booked for a Thursday night at the 1105 seat Hofstra University Playhouse, on the Hofstra campus in Hempstead, NY. Hofstra is a private college that was founded in 1935. It currently has about 10,000 students, although I don't know if it had that many in 1972. Since the school was located in Long Island, it was near enough to network facilities in Manhattan to be convenient for TV production.

Robert Christgau wrote about the concert in some detail in the Friday Nassau County edition of Newsday (thanks to fellow scholar Jesse Jarnow for the heads-up on Christgau). The concert had been planned for at least a month, apparently, but no official word had been given. On Wednesday, November 1, flyers started to appear around campus. Tickets seem to have been sold at a nominal rate (and scalped for $6, per Christgau). Initially it seems that there was going to be an early and a late show, although Christgau is a bit unclear if the event was really divided into two. 

Needless to say, things did not exactly go as planned. For one thing, since it was television, the stage had to be brightly lit. Secondly, since concert recording was still in its infancy, there were issues syncing up the sound between the the stage and the recording equipment. This led to numerous delays. On top of that, with eight acts, there had to have been numerous set changes, after relatively brief sets. The first concert was supposed to begin at noon, but did not begin until 12:30. After two half hour sets of music, the concert was already three hours behind. The delays were also mentioned in Rolling Stone, and the concert did not end until far later than originally anticipated. Apparently, the event ended around 4am, so that made for a 16-hour concert, much of which was apparently spent resolving technical issues, not bands performing.

Another issue that Christgau alludes to is the breadth of the acts. Eight acts sounds like a great idea, unless you're the one actually sitting through them. Allman Brothers fans, at the time, did not like Blood, Sweat & Tears (who were decidedly unhip), and I doubt those who looked forward to Seals & Crofts were eager to hear the Allmans or Alice Cooper. Still, all eight acts eventually performed and were filmed, and they all appeared on the first two 90-minute episodes of In Concert. 

Curtis Mayfield's soundtrack to the movie Superfly had been released on his own Curtom label in July 1972. The album had numerous hit singles and was a huge influence on popular music as well.

In The Suburbs
When ABC In Concert was broadcast, I took a little TV and probably my FM radio out to the garage, where I could be as noisy as I wanted. In Concert was simulcast on some FM station, itself remarkable for a network broadcast, so the sound was better than on the little black and white TV. I watched the entire 90 minutes of both shows raptly. I had not yet been to a live rock concert. My debut would be just days later (December 12, 1972, seeing the Grateful Dead at Winterland), but at least I had some hint of what it would be like and how I was supposed to act. These things matter when you are 14.

The first episode didn't really feature acts I cared about, but it didn't matter. I was so happy to see anything resembling live rock and roll in my sleepy suburb, so it was still the highlight of my week. Sure, I was already too old for Alice Cooper, and Seals & Crofts were too saccharine. I understood that Bo Diddley was "historic" but I didn't care. I was struck by how Curtis Mayfield and his bands were funky players, not just guys dancing in suits--which was what a lot of soul acts were like at the time--but I wasn't ready for him yet.

Oh but the second episode, in that little garage: I know I wasn't the only teenager in the suburbs saying, "yeah, I know where I need to be." The Allman Brothers Band played a brand new song--"Ramblin' Man"--that hadn't even been released yet. On the crawl, they dedicated the show to Berry Oakley, who had just died. Hofstra had been his last performance. I still remember Poco performing during the credits, and absolutely ripping through "Go And Say Goodbye," and thinking "I want some more of that!" I had seen what was to come, however faintly, on network TV on a Friday night. 

The Grateful Dead--Almost
According to Christgau, the Dead were originally booked for the Hofstra show. They were just ending the leg of a tour (October 30 in Detroit), and could have fit it in. The Dead were also promoting their new album, Europe '72, and they were on Warner Brothers, as were most of the other acts. The Grateful Dead were my favorite band at this time (and, I should add, still are). I would have melted down to see them on TV in my garage (even though I was going to see them in person just two weeks later).

Per Christgau, the Dead ultimately refused the booking because they wouldn't have been allowed to mix their own music. ABC only allowed union engineers. Probably all for the best. The Dead would have played a 25-minute set, and they would barely have gotten warmed up. In any case, the show went 16 hours as it was, and if Owsley had been involved it would have been another 16 hours. Still, it nearly happened. The Grateful Dead would finally appear on Saturday Night Live in 1978, but they had almost appeared live on a Friday night several years earlier. 

Live Rock on Late Night Network TV
Midnight Special, on NBC back in August of '72, but it hadn't attracted a lot of notice. ABC's In Concert, however, was a huge success. In Concert was on the air at 11:30 on Friday nights every other week or so, for the next several years. The Midnight Special, meanwhile,  became a weekly series on February 4, 1973. The show's original time slot was Friday night from 1:00–2:30 a.m. in the Eastern and Pacific time zones (Midnight to 1:30 a.m. Central and Mountain), following the Tonight Show.  Within eight months of its premiere, The Midnight Special had proven that programming in the later time period was viable, and NBC would expand its programming in the time slot to five days a week with the addition of the talk show Tomorrow, hosted by Tom Snyder, the other four nights.

By September, 1973 In Concert producer Don Kirshner, who had created the Monkees and the Archies, among others, had split from the show and created his own syndicated competitor, Don Kirshner's Rock Concert. It too had the "Variety Show" format of Midnight Special, but with the uncharismatic Kirshner as the host. Thus for teenagers like me, from 1973 through 1975--conveniently when I was still in High School, and yet allowed to stay up late--there were three 90-minute rock concert shows each weekend. Sure, there were some blank weeks and some re-runs, but even I got invited to a party once in a while, so I was happy for the re-runs. As a result, although I had no car, no money and was stuck in the suburbs, I at least got a glimpse of all the bands touring the United States during that period. It was like an underground river in the desert, keeping me hydrated until I could get directly to the source.

Alice Cooper's School's Out had been released on Warner Brothers in June, 1972

Notes On The TV Broadcasts
ABC In Concert November 24, 1972 (Episode 1)
Alice Cooper - Eighteen/Gutter Cats vs. the Jets/School's Out
Curtis Mayfield - Freddie's Dead/Pusherman
Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley/Diddley-itis
Seals & Crofts - Hummingbird/Summer Breeze

[Wikipedia claims that the first episode was recorded at Hofstra on September 21, 1972, not November 2. No evidence supports this, but the error is repeated throughout the internet]

All of the acts listed played brief live sets. I believe the sets were broadcast in their entirety. Bands may have played a soundcheck number or two, but these aren't "excerpts" from the concerts, they are the complete videotapes to my knowledge.

Alice Cooper had just scored a big hit with "School's Out," from the June 1972 Warner Brothers album of the same name. 

    Alice Cooper – vocals
    Glen Buxton – lead guitar
    Michael Bruce – rhythm guitar, keyboards, backing vocals
    Dennis Dunaway – bass guitar, backing vocals
    Neal Smith – drums, backing vocals

Curtis Mayfield, the former leader of the hit Chicago soul group The Impressions, had released the soundtrack album to the movie Superfly. Mayfield played funky rhythm & blues, but they were a self-contained band wearing hip fashions, not a group of vocalists in suits with an unnamed backing band. I'm not sure who was in Mayfield's band.

The Superfly soundtrack had been released on Mayfield's own label, Curtom Records, in July, 1972. The movie was a big hit, and the soundtrack was not only a big hit but influential as well. It still sounds great today.

Rock and roll pioneer Bo Diddley was back on Chess Records. His latest album was appropriately titled Where It All Began. 

Dash Seals and Jim Crofts were both long-time professional musicians from Texas. Both of them had been in The Champs, albeit touring some time after "Tequila" had been a smash hit in 1958. Both of them had also backed Glenn Campbell in Van Nuys nightclub, back in the early 60s, when Campbell was an established session musician but not yet a recording star. After various ins and outs, they ended up as a singer/songwriter duo signed to TA Records. Seals and Crofts self-titled debut came out in 1969, and their follow-up Down Home would come out in September 1970. They would not see big success until after they signed with Warner Brothers in 1971. By '72, they had huge hits with "Hummingbird" and "Summer Breeze," and the Summer Breeze album from September was equally giant. On In Concert, I think they were just backed by a bass player.

Of the four acts on the first episode of In Concert, two of them were on Warner Brothers Records (Alice Cooper plus Seals & Crofts), and the other two were on labels distributed by Warners (WEA, their distribution arm). This would not have been a coincidence.

ABC In Concert December 8, 1972 (Episode 2)
Allman Brothers - One Way Out/Ramblin' Man/Whipping Post
Blood Sweat and Tears - Snow Queen/And When I Die
Chuck Berry - My Ding-a-Ling/Roll Over Beethoven
Poco - Go and Say Goodbye/And Settlin' Down

The Allman Brothers Band had been breaking out just as their leader Duane Allman died in October, 1971. Their subsequent album Eat A Peach (released on Capricorn in February 1972) was a monster hit, and the Allmans were a bigger concert attraction than ever. The Allmans were the premier attraction of the second episode. Bassist Berry Oakley would die a few days after the Hofstra show, and I believe this was his last performance. One of the three songs performed had not yet been released yet, which is remarkable by modern standards. When "Ramblin' Man" finally came out on Brothers And Sisters in August 1973, I could smugly say "oh, yeah, I heard that a long time ago." Pianist Chuck Leavell had just joined the band, as the group understandably did not want to put another guitarist in the shadow of Duane.

Dickey Betts-guitar, vocals
Gregg Allman-organ, vocals
Chuck Leavell-piano
Berry Oakley-electric bass
Butch Trucks-drums
Jaimoe-drums

Blood, Sweat & Tears were a hugely popular, best-selling band, but they had gone from a hip synthesis of jazz and rock to a Middle-Of-The-Road schlock band. Whether this was a fair judgement or not, they were starting to play Las Vegas-type venues at a time when that was anathema to any cool rock band back then. Long-time lead singer David Clayton-Thomas, who had fronted all their hits, had left the band, replaced by Jerry Fisher. Their current Columbia album New Blood had the original rhythm section of Steve Katz (guitar), Jim Felder (bass) and Bobby Columby (drums), but the rest of the band were relatively recent arrivals.

Rock legend Chuck Berry was also back on Chess, after some years at Mercury. Remarkably, his June '72 album London Chuck Berry Sessions had given him a #1 hit. Berry had been performing "My Ding-A-Ling," a silly novelty song from 1952, since at least the mid-60s (possibly before), but he had only been able to release it in the more permissive 70s. Released as a single in July, it was a huge AM hit--I was already deathly tired of it. I don't know who backed Berry for this show. 

Poco had just released their fifth album on Epic, A Good Feelin' To Know, on November 25. Poco had always gotten great reviews, and had always been "just about" to hit it big. In fact, many members of Poco would go on to great success, but the first few iterations of the band never sold as many records as they should have. With great 4-part harmonies and  three guitars, including the unique sound of Rusty Young's pedal steel run through a Lesley amplifier (typically used for Hammond organs), Poco stood out on stage (I would see this lineup in August of 1973, and they were just fantastic). On In Concert, they played as the credits ran at nearly 1:00am. I stayed up, in any case, and was duly impressed.

Rusty Young-pedal steel guitar
Paul Cotton-guitar, vocals
Richie Furay-guitar, vocals
Tim Schmidt-bass, vocals
George Grantham-drums, vocals

For the second episode, two of the bands were distributed by WEA/Warners (the Allmans and Chuck Berry) and two distributed by Columbia (BS&T and Poco). Note that six of the eight acts on the first two weekends were distributed by Warners, a mark of the corporate institutions behind the music.  

 

The March 2, 1973 Stanford Daily advertised that night's In Concert broadcast on TV (KGO Channel 7) and simulcast on FM radio (KSFX 104)