Forty Three Years Ago! That’s just something so hard to comprehend when I can remember it all detail for detail as if it happened yesterday! Yeah, forty three years ago, I went to my first gig, KISS at VFL Park.
I wasn’t alone. 45,000 people attended too that day, making it for the time – the biggest Rock concert in Australia for a single group in Rock And Roll history!
KISS broke big in Australia in 1979 with the Dynasty album and the breakthrough hit, “I Was Made For Lovin’ You”. Although that is the year that KISSteria began in this country, there was a select few of us totally hardcore KISS fans that were into the band way before 1979.
My first foray into KISS began several years earlier. In 1975 my older cousin was having a party at her house. All her friends brought records along. Piles of them. At the top sat a record by band called KISS. It was the first album. All black with four painted faces on the cover. What the hell is this? I was transfixed without even hearing a note. I asked if I could borrow the album. When I listened to it… I got it. I totally got it. The faces and the glitter and the sparkling logo just matched the music oh so perfectly. It was a complete package. Visceral and clandestine! 😉 Just the absolute epitome of what REAL Rock N Roll was all about.
I became a fan on the spot. I remain so 48 years later. (Dear God!)
I digress a little.
By the time I first saw KISS in 1980, they were the biggest thing to happen to Australia since the Beatles. Maybe even bigger than the Fab Four.
The night of the concert actually began the night before for some of us. We camped overnight outside VFL Park as all the tickets were GA so that if you wanted a good vantage point, you had to be there early. Just that experience alone added to the entire surreal magic of the day and what was to come.
There was no sleep the night before. It was one big party outside the venue with hundreds if not thousands having the same idea and camping outside the venue 24 hours in advance. There was music, KISS of course, partying, and alcohol running rampant. As a young teen at the time, it was all very eye opening and teaching me about a whole new world of true Rock N Roll spirit let’s say. Goddamn I felt so cool that my parents had allowed me to do this but then again, they pretty much let me do whatever I wanted my entire life. They trusted me.
I don’t know how many times we walked around the ground trying to see if we could break in and be inside the inner sanctum of KISS!
Night turns into day. Day turns out to be a hot stinker. With thousands of restless KISS fans outside the venue hours and hours before the band was scheduled to take the stage… it did get all volatile at certain points during the day. This has been well documented and I’ll post some YouTube clips below.
From memory, the doors opened at about 4pm. Most of us were burnt by the sun by then but one by one we’d be let in through the doors. Quickly searched before the mad scramble to run as close to the stage as possible. I was elated I managed to smuggle in a small camera so I could take pics of the show! (Yeah right, you can imagine what those turned out like!) I do wish I still had those shots, as lousy as they were they were the first gig I shot! LOL!
Our entourage was scattered but my cousin and I managed to get close to the right light tower which was directly in front of Paul Stanley’s side of the stage. Not as close as we’d like to be, but you could see everything you needed to and a helluva lot better than the rest of our friends who were back in the stands of the hallowed football ground.
Now, it seemed like hours before the band took the stage. The infamous food fights have become a thing of legend. Who can forget looking up to the sky and seeing a plethora of food and garbage flying through the air. It was insanity and it got even worse when opening band ‘The Eyes’ (WHO???) took the stage. They copped the brunt of it to the point where the crowd was warned if it continued there would be no show. Yeah right!
8pm under a dark sky the lights switched off throughout the ground, the roar of the crowd was like nothing I have ever heard. The rumble of the hydraulics that brought the band to the stage were amplified for effect. Thousands and thousands of flashes from disposable cameras lit the entire arena and stage. Blinding flashes everywhere.
And then as if by magic… KISS. I had waited 5 years to see them. 5 years to a kid who discovered KISS at 10 felt like a lifetime.
I was finally at a KISS concert.
My life from that point changed forever.
That gig still defines who I am and what I do.
And I am totally fine with that!
Rock and Roll!
