US Festival '83 was held at the Glen Helen Regional Park (Google map link, sat image), very near to San Bernardino in southern California. This was the same site used for the previous year's US Fest. In fact, virtually nothing had changed between US Festival 82, which had lost well over $6,000,000, and US Festival 83, which went on to lost just under $6,000,000. That's right, kids, Steve Wozniak ponied up about TWELVE MILLION dollars just to hold two parties. Oh... but what parties they were. While the US83 show was 3 days long (spread over Memorial Day weekend) I was only going to be attending one day... METAL DAY! AKA "HEAVY METAL SUNDAY"! :) The crew was an interesting one; my mother (who was I believe 34 at the time, and recently switched from Barry Manilow and Lou Rawls to Iron Maiden and Judas Preist) and my friend David (18). For those slow at math US83 puts me at 16.
The drive from Santa Barbara to Glen Helen is roughly a couple of hours. We left Santa Barbara when it was still dark outside. We entered the US83 traffic grid around 7AM, and spent the next couple hours trying to crawl forward just a couple of miles to the parking areas. Once we got in we thought the worst was behind us... until we found out we were about 3-4 _miles_ from the entrance, and you had to walk. Not what you want to hear, but so be it. We got going. Once we cleared a particular hill and bend on the steep climb up the ratty fireroad we could see the gate structure, so we knew we were close. As we walked on and looked up the hill towards the entrance we saw the EPIC, BIBLICAL line. To call it a "line" is a misnomer, more like a "cattle queue" about 150-300 feet wide and about half a mile long. After a nice agonizing hike in the merciless San Bernardino sun and up a steep friggin' fire road we finally hit the entrance. You cannot possibly image the horror that so many of the ticketholders must have faced when they got to the gate and saw the big signs that said "no coolers or food allowed"! OMFG! I do not recall carrying anything in, but as I entered I saw the MASSIVE piles of discarded gear; coolers of all shapes and sizes, food of all kinds, beverages of all colors, even cameras, chairs, towels... you name it. Jesus Christ. A sign down in the parking area would have been fucking nice!! "WARNING!! WE WILL MAKE YOU THROW ALL YOUR SHIT AWAY AT THE GATE!! PUT YOUR SHIT BACK IN YOUR CAR!!". And yet eventually we made it in. I was tired and fucking baking in the sun, and we missed all of Quiet Riot (the opening act) but we were finally in so I was fairly happy. As we walked in to the show my mom went her way and David and I went ours, with the plan that we would meet back at the car at closing.
Strange side note: Quiet Riot was not originally scheduled to play US83. The originally scheduled US83 line-up for Sunday (Metal Day) was mostly obvious; metal, metal, and more metal. However, the original show bill showed Joe Walsh as the opening act! Joe fucking Walsh! Now, I love Joe Walsh, don't get me wrong... but opening act of Metal Day?!? Joe Walsh as opening act is hard enough to swallow, Joe Walsh as heavy metal thunder god is just ridiculous. Now, IIRC, there was a scheduling fuckup on Monday's show and some fairly big name dropped out at the last second. Some clever person working the show schedule probably said "uh, why not move Joe Walsh to a crowd that will really appreciate him, and just get some Pasadena glam band to open Metal Day?" and so was born Quiet Riot's rather lucky shot at opening up Metal Day.
Side note to the side note: I would like to have told you what the original line-ups were supposed to be, and I should be able to because I had an US shirt I bought on site which I kept for a few years. Now, I have other concert shirts from the same time period and they are in surprisingly decent shape, so why don't I have my friggin' precious US shirt? Because of my best friend's girlfriend. We fucked. It sucked. I mean, total waste of your time kind of sucked. We're talking about having more fun fucking a mannequin you drilled a hole into and shoved 3 pounds of ground beef into. 20 minutes of surprising boredom, screwing the single driest and least motivated female on the planet. I gave the fuck up once it seemed clear neither of us was getting off. Heh. Gave the fuck up. That was almost clever. Aaaaanyway, once we started getting dressed she just picked up my US shirt and said "can I wear this?" to which I warily responded "uhhh, I guess". I was still feeling kinda bad about the whole useless fuck thing, and she nailed me at the ONLY POSSIBLE moment where I might allow such a thing. Any other time, if someone asked to wear my US shirt they could fuck off! That shirt was precious to me from the day I got it, no nostalgia required. And ONLY because her tits were out! If she was already wearing a shirt, or at least a damn bra, I could have avoided caving in. Unfortunately, dry and unfriendly though she may have been, she had pretty nice small tits. We got dressed and drove over to my best friend / her boyfriend's house, who was waiting for us to get back (yep, he knew... he set it up! Hell of a guy...) and I left soon after. That was the last time I saw my shirt. I asked and asked, but never got it back and of course eventually they broke up and all hope was lost.
Side note to the side note to the side note: Ladies, what have we learned today, if nothing else? Show me a decent set of tits and my brain shuts off and I become a willing slave (yessss, it wears my shirt! yyeeesss, it takes my money! Now show me the Precioususus again!).
Motley Crue was next up and were already playing when we walked in. We were concerned they might be a song away from closing, but it turned out they ran through most of the songs we expected to hear. I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure I missed the very end of their set. It starts getting fuzzy here. You see, I began to feel sick and dizzy less than halfway through Crue, and it wasn't even because the mix sucked and Vince Neil used to be a remarkably whiny singer! No, I was actually unwell. I wasn't really sure what they could do for me, but I convinced my friend (the same one who's girl I would lose the shirt to) to check out the field first-aid tents they had set up all around the area. They didn't like the look of my symptoms at all and told me I needed to go to the field hospital. I figured they were going to get a golf cart of something to haul me in, but NOOOO, they said "all" I had to do was walk a few blocked up the road in the blazing heat! Fuck me. I exit the tent and look for my friend, but he was nowhere to bee seen. I looked around the immediate area, but no dice. I gave up and went back to the tent. Myself and about a half-dozen other walking dead went shambling up the road to the field hospital. They gave me a bed in a central room with about 30-40 other beds, all occupied. They were BUSY. Some people appeared to by outright dying, while others were clearly having a baaaaad trip. Anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of the people were unconscious. Only a few were hooked up to anything, like oxygen or an IV drip. I started losing consciousness myself about then, so all I remember is about 4 different yet identical conversations with staff. It went like this:
Nurse Guy: "So, what did you take?"
Me: "Take?"
Nurse Guy: "Yeah, what are you on?"
Me: "On? I... I'm not on anything (eyes roll back in sockets)"
Nurse Guy: "No, really, what are you on?"
Me: "Nothing man, really (head rolls around like a bobble-toy)"
Nurse Guy: "No... really, what are you on? I can't help you if I don't know what's wrong."
Me: "I don't know what's wrong either! I'm not on anything! Really!"
Nurse Guy: "... , OK, I'm not a narc or a cop or anything like that..."
Me: "Cool... neither am I" (arms buckle and flap like a fruit rollup holding up a cinder block)
Nurse Guy: "... really... what did you take?"
Me: "NOTHING! Figure out what's wrong with me!"
[Nurse Guy walks off]
[Nurse Chick walks up]
Nurse Chick: "So, what did you take?"
Repeat this with a tag-team of two nurses and then finally a doctor. Thank god I passed out shortly thereafter. It seemed frustrating and I don't think I was having any fun. ;)
I had no idea how long I was passed out in the field hospital, but I can sort of figure it out based on the fact that Crue was over by the time I first started walking to the field hospital, and Ozzy was playing by the time I got out. That means I was likely at the field hospital for about an hour, no more. When I woke up the hospital had gotten a lot quieter; maybe 25% of the beds were open again, most people were asleep, and no show medical staff could be seen. I hung around for maybe 10 minutes and then lacking any guidance simply walked out.
I could hear Ozzy from the field hospital, so I figured I'd wander back and try to catch as much of his show as possible. Not knowing how long Ozzy had already been on I was pretty bummed out that I had potentially missed one of the most important acts to me, but it turned out I caught enough that it must have been only halfway through at most so I got really lucky with that. I sort of hung around the stage-left area where David and I had originally been hanging out when we came in, but I guess it was pretty unlikely that I would spot him in a crowd of 300,000 and it was blazing hot so I figured I better find some sort of cover and try to chill out for a while. I was still feeling like shit, and I really wanted to lay down again but the facility wasn't really designed for napping and I had a lot of trouble finding a place I could even sit down. I tried to hang out in the shady areas cast by food tents and trailers, but I got run off by at least three motherfuckers. WTF? Was I lowering property values? I wasn't in the way at all, but I guess some of the vendors were hyper about having minimal loitering. I finally found a supply trailer off to the side of a food booth that was casting a nice shadow on the side facing away from the food area, and because it was off to the side and facing away from the vendor he probably never knew I was there so I got to stretch out a little. I watched the end of Ozzy from this vantage point, with a clear view of the left DiamondVision display. Ozzy finished up, and 30 minutes late Judas Preist took the stage.
At some point early during Preist's set a surfer dude came up to me and said "Dude, d'ya think me and my dudes could hang out in your shadow area here?" to which I said sure. He and his friends sat down and began eating, when after a little while the dude looks over at me between bites of burger, turns to me and appraisingly said "Duuuuude, you look like shit, dude! Are you OK?" and I explained I had gone wonky earlier and had to go to the field hospital and lost my people in the process. He thought about this for a second, clearly in a thoughtful frame of mind, and after pondering it for a moment he shoves his styrofoam container at me and says "Dude... eat some of my fries, man!". I eat a few of his fries and he then realized I needed a refreshing beverage to wash it down so he shoves his 20oz Sprite in my face and says "Dude, have some of my soda!". We all chill for a few, and he and his friends get ready to leave and he says "Dude, you can have my fries and stuff, but you should go get something else to eat, or at least hang on to a soda. You gonna be OK?" and I said I would be fine and as soon as I was a little more rested I'd go get some food, and I thanked his for sharing his. He shot me a big smile and said "Later on, dude!" and was reabsorbed by the crowd. This experience may be one of the best exemplifications of the late 70's / early 80's southern California rock surfer scene; there was a surprising amount of caring and sharing, even with total strangers, because the mere fact that you were in the scene meant you belonged to the "larger community of likeminded individuals". I assume in this post 20th century era this kind of community doesn't exist in any form, because everyone assumed everyone else is out to get them, out to hurt them, out to fuck them, out to rob them, or whatever else. Now I see why the Hippies were so wistful over the loss of an open community spirit in the early 70's.
One part of the US Festival that I can be very brief about is the whole tent expo city. During the show there was what would ultimately be the major precursor to a mainstay of Lalapalooza; shit to do that didn't involve the show! US had some of the best technology demos you would have even seen at the time, with participation by dozens of companies and all cornerstoned by Apple. In fact, all of the graphics during the show that was seen on the DiamondVision diplays was created ON THE FLY by a Macintosh. While this is jack-shit today, it was a MAJOR feat in 1983. The reason I can be so brief is that I never saw any of it. Not a bit. Not one single thing. I saw the edge of the tent city, and I saw all the people coming and going, but I personally never went there. I was feeling so bad and so unstable I just couldn't force myself to go fight through all the crowd for what I perceived as an ill-defined reason... see, I didn't even know how cool all the shit was until years and years later, when I would come across mention of such-and-such company that had showed cutting-edge stuff at the US Festivals. Piss me off. Oh well, I wasn't in any condition to enjoy anything. But still... fuck.
I finally started to feel a bit better, thanks to the cooling effect of the sun going down behind the mountain and the rejuvenation of the surfer's food. I strolled around the food vendors in my area and found something to eat and drink, and even found a T-shirt stand where I got the shirt I would lose years later to David's girlfriend. I went back to my little spot by the food trailer and hung out. By the time the Scorpions were over it was dark, and cooling rapidly.
When Van Halen finally took the stage I got up and started wandering over to the forward left, where one of the Diamond Vision displays was located. As I got to the right side of it I saw the left edge of the stage, so I started to cross through the crowd to see the front Diamond Vision display and the edges of the stage. Van Halen themselves SEEMED to be doing a great show to me at the time, but years later I got the change to see the entire Van Halen set from US83 and, well, Diamond Dave was so wasted he could barely stand much less run around a stage and sing, assuming you could call what Roth does to be "singing". Love him, love Van Halen right up through the 1984 album, fuck Van Hagar, etc... but he was really wasted and useless. I am still having troubles reconciling my memories of an awe-inspiring performance by Van Halen with the video evidence that shows it mostly sucked and even Triumph wiped the floor with them from a competence standpoint. Anyway, I got towards the left front of the stage, and started to feel the tidal effect of the crowd behind me. I knew from watching the earlier sets that people right at the front of the stage were being crushed into it and had to be hauled out and over the wall by security guys, so I tried to keep my ground. As the night wore on I got close enough to see Dave sitting on his stool doing "Ice Cream Man" on his acoustic and could see Eddie in front of his mike on stage right, but I decided to press on. I got closer to the front and center, when I decided the crush wasn't worth it and slipped out sideways. I got back to the closest point I could see Eddie and not have to fight the tide, and hung there until they closed the show down.
During the show there was some sort of really shitty UFO being towed by helicopter, and the first time I even remember seeing a stage show with green lasers. And while we are talking tech, bear in mind those giant color displays you see at every sports venue and concert were absolutely unheard of in 1983. It looked it too, you could damn near count the RGB pixels and if you got close you could see the red, green and blue bulbs double the size of Christman tree lights and twice as dim. Still, it was incredible at the time, and the only way I could have watched half the show.
When the show was over the crowds were surprisingly slow to leave. Oh, there were a few hundred people walking along with me away from the front of the stage and out the gate, down the fireroad and out to the parking lots. But it wasn't the manic crush you would have expected of 300,000 people all leaving at once. Really, even easier than getting in. At this point it is like 12:30AM, and for those unfamiliar with the climate around there suffice to say it gets awfully friggin cold at nights. It's a desert "bake all day, freeze all night" thing. There were no lights of any kind for most of the hike, until you got to the edges of the tent town set up by the people who were camping there for the long weekend. There was just enough moonlight and lantern light to see a bit of the makeshift KOA and it sure as hell looked like it has absolutely zero planning, just a bunch of people with bedrolls and crappy pup tents staking out the exact square footage needed to put their shit down. Not long after the campers was the beginning of the parking lots. Most of them were exactly identical in nearly every detail, having been carved out of brush and wilderness and then given a bed of oily dirt just days before. I had not remotely considered what a problem it would be to locate the car in the dark. I think I might have been able to find some distinguishing characteristics about our area and committed them to memory if I had any freaking clue what a problem it would be later.
Once I got past the first couple parking areas, quite certain we had not parked so close to the tentland, I moved in to the middle of one lot around the "row depth" I thought we had parked +/- 2 rows, and proceeded to walk along all the cars for parking lot after parking lot after parking lot. When I got to the point that I believed I must have overshot, I repositioned myself in the rows a bit deeper in and went back the way I came, trying to overlap a little of the "search pattern". Couldn't find it. At the time I made my first pass there were still over 95% of all cars still in the lots, so it was very hard to search. By the time I made my retrace pass it was down to 80% and falling as more people made it down the hill. I still couldn't find the car. I made my way back again, and could not find the car. It takes far less time to write that than it did to live it; by now it was well after 2AM. Given the fun I had with being sick and going to the field hospital I am very much not in the mood for this, and even more annoying not in any kind of physical shape to be doing this shit.
After enjoying wandering around the parking areas for hours, and given the fun I had earlier in the day, I was about ready to just plain fall over. I approached a cop who was directing part of the traffic flow coming out from a lot, and asked him if he knew of a "missing persons" building or something so I could try to find my people. He was initially quite brusk and said he didn't work at the show and couldn't help me. I tried to explain that I had gotten sick during the show and was separated from my people, and had spent hours trying to find the car in the various lots, and I didn't think I could go much further. He made some mumbles and I said "Look, I can always just collapse right here and now and you can call for an ambulance". He finally said he would take me to get some help from show administration after he had moved this traffic, and suggested I sit in the ditch until he was ready to go. I sit down, and the next thing I know I am sitting up to find there is NO TRAFFIC, most of the cars are GONE from the lot in front of me, and the cop is LOOOONG gone. The motherfucker! You are a credit to your badge, Kojak! I hope you don't kill some hypoglycemic kid at some concert sometime because you are too fucking important to bother assisting them.
Since I was fux0rd pretty good at that point I figured I would try to find help back at the show's office compound. Not really sure WHAT, but if push comes to shove I'd resort to calling the cops and filing myself as a lost minor. They have no choice but to help you when you do that. Good advice for someone in similar circumstances. You think The Man would want to help a 16 year old with long stringy metal hair who got lost at a heavy metal show the size of Woodstock? Fuck no! I know people who have asked for help and been shined on because The Man thinks they are little sex-crazed drug addicts who will no doubt do time when they reach their 18th birthday. But I digress.
On the way back in to the show I checked all the parking lots, which was quite a bit easier at this point with only about 20% at most of the cars that had been there earlier in the evening. Unfortunately this also made it easier to determine that by now our car was not where I expected it to be. I continued to hike back into the main show area, and finally came upon a series of trailer buildings which were clearly important just because they were not tents like the vast majority of show structures.
The first building I came to had lights on, so I entered the front door. It was populated with maybe 6-8 staffers who were winding down after the show, and the facility looked to be some kind of advanced field hospital as it had only 2-3 beds but a lot of equipment like defibralators, respirators, EEG/EKG, all sorts of shit for the truly dying. By now it is about 4AM, and I ask them if there is a missing persons place I can go to but they say that everything is closed and won't open again until dawn. I asked them if I could please sit down in here for a while, and when they started in with the "no no, this is just for staff and you can't be in here" shit I started to explain the short version of feeling like shit, going to the field hospital, losing my people, not eating worth shit, being shafted by the traffic cop, and finally about ready to drop dead on their door stoop. They relented and said I could lay down in the back for a little while but then I would have to move on. I asked them where I would go at this hour and theyt said the best they could do is show me where the administration building was, and when it opened I should be able to find some kind of help. I went to the back room and laid down on an emergency table. I was a little surprised to find I had passed out, and now there was no conversation coming from the front room. I went up there and found only 1 staffer, doing some paperwork. I asked where everyone had gone and he vaguely replied "gone". I said that I thought someone was going to show me where the admin building was, and he got up, opened the door to the barest purple hint of morning dawn, and pointed up the road about a block to the great big admin building and said "can't miss it". Sigh.
As I exit the trailer hospital for the truly dying I stand for a moment at the edge of the road. I look down the mountain the way I came, back towards the parking area. I look up the road at the huge admin compound in the increasingly-bright dawn light. I finally turn to the admin building and start trudging up the road. I figured I could try to call Santa Barbara and see if they had returned or leave a message with someone in case they heard from them, or if they were total dicks and wouldn't let me call around long-distance I could just call the Devore sheriff or whatever and report myself as a lost minor. In the midst of my hiking and musing I heard a car coming up behind me, so I moved to the side of the road and kept going. Soon the car was on my heels, and then it honked. I start to turn around with one of those "how the much fucking further over do you think I can go?" look when it was replaced by a look of recognition. It was David and my mom. Trippy!! And home we went, with me relaying my entertaining story of my adventures and them relaying theirs. David was the smart one. Once he got in the show, he realized what a clusterfuck it would be when we all left in the dark. He says that during Triumph he got a bracelet pass to get back in the show and he walked all the way back and found the car, making much more careful mental notes about where it was. My mom was not so clever and would have been almost as fucked as I was, but David got to the car first, saw her and called out, so she found the car fairly easily. They drove around for a while looking for me, then took a nap, then resumed searching at the break of dawn just in time to drive up behind me.
Considering it all worked out, one of my fondest adventures.
Set list and run times for US Festival 1983, "Heavy Metal Sunday"
Sunday May 29th:
Quiet Riot [12:10 - 12:50 pm]
Motley Crue [1:20 - 2:20]
Ozzy Osbourne [2:50 - 4:00]
Judas Priest [4:30 - 5:40]
Triumph [6:10 - 7:20]
Scorpions [7:55 - 9:10]
Van Halen [10:00 - midnight]
