“Life was just a bet on a race, between the lights.”
- Dire Straits/Telegraph Road
They were the halcyon days of youth. Life was wide open with possibilities and the next good time could show up at any moment. It was July 30, 1978, a Sunday. I was home on leave after 13-weeks of Marine Corps bootcamp, happy as could be.
I was sitting with my girlfriend on her front porch, lazing away the afternoon when my buddy, Jeff (creator of this website), wheeled up alongside the curb. He's in his family's maroon sedan, not his yellow Barracuda. This detail is not important to the story, it's just a visual in my head that makes me smile. He yells to us from his rolled down window, “Hey, The Eagles are playing at Arrowhead, you wanna go?” Kansas City was three hours away, we had no tickets, and it was getting late in the afternoon. “Yes!” we say, and pile in. Jeff's girlfriend is elsewhere so it's just the three of us, heading carefree down Missouri Highway 11.
We arrived to a sold out stadium. Do not ask me how we got tickets. I haven't the slightest recollection. But we got in. Dan Fogelberg and Jackson Browne had already played and Linda Ronstadt was in the middle of her set. As things were in those days, life at a concert was general admission. You got where you got. How determined and tenacious you were is where you saw the show. We wormed our way down onto the field and steadily worked ourselves to about 40 yards from the stage. Triumph!
When we halted, satisfied with our spot, Ronstadt was in the last song of her encore, Warren Zevon's Poor, Poor Pitiful Me. At that moment in time, in real life, Linda Ronstadt was every bit the rock-n-roll goddess that we imagined she was. I will forever have the image of her at the mic and Waddy Wachtel, her guitar player (everybody's guitar player) with his head of wild curly blond hair, playing that wicked solo, the stage backlit by the setting sun. I've attached below something very close.
And then, The Eagles. This was between the Hotel California and The Long Run albums. They were at the pinnacle of their talents and power. I count myself sanctified to have witnessed what I did. It was like seeing the Pope riding Haley's Comet, something you don't ever forget.
An then, in the early morning Monday hours, three lucky kids made their way out of Kansas City. My girl and I fell asleep in the backseat and Jeff, ever the mensch, soldiered us home.