I paid for one concert. I got two.
I went to see Prince at the Worcester Centrum some years ago. After the show, we went to a local hotel to have a drink in the bar while traffic cleared out. As we were sipping our drinks, we heard a bit of a hubbub, we heard a guitar, and we stepped out of our corner booth to see: Prince and the Revolution onstage in the hotel bar. Prince felt that the concert had been sloppy and his band needed a rehearsal. And there we were, dozens of us, grooving to Prince at a hotel bar. It was the most glorious night I will ever see.
Julia Figueras, Rochester, N.Y.
Back before Ed Sheeran was a megastar, I got to see him in concert at Hollywood’s intimate Hotel Cafe. Standing two feet from the stage, I chatted with a couple of superfans who’d literally flown in to L.A. just for the show.
Eventually, Ed took the stage — it was just him, his guitar and his looping machine — and started his performance. When he got to the song “Lego House,” my new superfan friends were singing along, but in perfect harmony with Ed. As they were literally right in front of him, Ed heard them singing and called them up onstage to help him sing the song. They happily obliged, and Ed finished the song with his “backup singers” sharing the mic with him.
Ed was clearly enjoying the moment, but these women were literally having the time of their lives. To see that kind of spontaneous joy happen onstage was, as Marc Thiessen described in his column, truly “spine-tingling.”
Jeff Axelrod, Zhangjiagang, China
My dad learned to speak English in Cuba listening to two things on the radio: Yankees games and Frank Sinatra. When we came to this country, while my friends had rock at home, I had big band music. To this day, Frank Sinatra is my favorite.
In college I took a trip to New York City. I did all the great jazz bars, and I lucked out and got one ticket at the Uris Theatre to see Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald … and my idol, Frank Sinatra. I found myself sitting one row behind this strange, baldheaded guy in a huge sable coat and big — I mean really big — glasses: Elton John. He was eating the concert up.
We all saw Frank knock a woman out. Frank was singing the Beatles tune “Something,” one of the all-time classics. He was 57 or so then, and the audience was full of bobby-soxers from his Columbia Records days. In those days, it was not uncommon for those young ladies to stand through an entire performance and faint when “Ol’ Blue Eyes” started crooning.
So Sinatra hits the line, “Something in the way she mooooves … ” and, as he gets to the last word, he spins to the audience, locks in on one of the women, enraptured as she must have been 30 years earlier, and points to her. Bam! She dropped like a rock. Her friends caught her and eased her down into her seat, fanned her for a moment so she could get a little air, then returned their attention to the reason they were in attendance.
Alex Castellanos, Key Largo, Fla.
My wife and I have been married for over 45 years. She’s been a huge Rod Stewart fan since her teenage years, and we always went to his live shows when living (for most of our lives) in the D.C. area. However, my wife has battled recurring bouts of cancer the past nine years, and her last surgery left her permanently partially paralyzed and wheelchair-bound.
Before that last surgery, and some seven years ago, I actually won two tickets to see her beloved “Rod.” Unfortunately, my wife was still feeling the effects of chemo and turned them down. Believing that this may be the last time in her lifetime to see him, I kept urging her to attend the show, but she just wasn’t up to it.
Fast-forward seven years, and although my wife is cancer-free, she’s still paralyzed. I see that the 79-year-old Stewart is on tour and scheduled to appear in our retirement hometown of Tampa, and this time, I don’t give my wife the choice: I just buy the unbelievably expensive tickets and surprise her. I wheel her into the theater, we sit in the handicapped area, and we could not believe how great of a two-plus-hour show Stewart put on. He sang all the hits, had a fantastic band, and his energy level and voice were that of a 40-year-old! Stewart always had that distinctive gravely voice, and it serves him well as he approaches 80. That was most likely our last Stewart concert … but you never know. It was great to see how happy he made my wife.
‘Like rock-and-roll church’
Bruce Springsteen. Dec. 15, 1978. Winterland Ballroom. San Francisco. I went because one of my younger brothers had been talking so much about Springsteen. I was a jazz snob and went only because it was a last chance to step foot inside the legendary Winterland arena; it was to close forever later that month.
Three songs in, I was hooked. It was like rock-and-roll church: promise, hope and salvation delivered with such conviction even today I feel the magic. Many Springsteen shows later, there is still nothing like Winterland in ’78.
Felix Contreras, Silver Spring, Md.
One of my late husband’s favorite bands was Yes. My husband was an accomplished bass player himself. Yes was coming to D.C. at the Warner Theatre on July 15, 2014, so I got us tickets. What my husband didn’t know was I got us front-row seats and backstage passes to meet the band. He sat right in front of Chris Squire the entire show. The next year, Squire died in Phoenix. My husband was so grateful I got those tickets.
Brenda Lawhorn, Florence, S.C.
A guy, completely naked, with a circle of people around him, dancing to “Space/Fire on theMountain” at a Grateful Dead show at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia in the early ’80s.
Harry Freed, Philadelphia
Bob Marley with his acoustic guitar and a spotlight on a bare stage at the Stanley Theatre in Pittsburgh singing “Redemption Song” a little more than a week before he died in 1981. I was a young lawyer whose client had just paid her. I used the money to buy the ticket, and the performance was the best that I ever saw. It broke my heart that he died soon after; I didn’t know that he was even sick with cancer. The song was a blessing to me.
Charlene Newkirk, Pittsburgh
The Beatles, Cleveland Municipal Stadium, August 1966. “Revolver” had just come out — er, “dropped.” The crowd was so electrified that people knocked down the snow fences around the field and stormed the stage. I was caught up in the wave. And there they were, live, right up on the stage in front of me. Smiling, playing and thanking us! It was more than the music; it was the magic. For one brief shining musical moment, never to appear ever again.
George DeBolt, Pittsburgh
The National Symphony Orchestra was playing Respighi’s “Pines of Rome” at the Wolf Trap concert venue. Late in the third movement, “The Pines of the Janiculum,” the composer calls for a recording of a nightingale to be played over the orchestra’s quiet strings. On this magical evening, the taped nightingale song inspired the songbirds of Vienna, Va., to raise their own voices and join in the music. As dusk fell, the concert hall was surrounded with live birdsong. This was in the late-1980s.
Berlin seeing my favorite band, Cage the Elephant, in a small grungy club that held about 300 people as one of the first shows of their “Social Cues” tour. I was right at the stage, and Brad Shultz shared his beer with me, and his brother Matt, the frontman, sang part of “Tokyo Smoke” right into my phone while he was down on the floor in front of me. Most memorable concert moment ever!
I’ve seen him 48 times but never forgot the first.
The moment most burned into my memory was an artist that I saw on a whim on July 9, 1978. He and his band were broadcast on July 7 on my favorite local station. I was driving with a high school friend named Sherry, and I recall saying, “This guy sounds pretty good. You want to drive to San Diego on Sunday and see him?” She agreed, so Sunday afternoon, we made the 100-mile drive to the San Diego Sports Arena, bought tickets at the door for $5.75 each and settled in to our upper-view seats. It’s a rather small arena, so even up in the cheap seats, we had a good view.
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band hit the stage with no opening act, but played with an urgency and passion that I’d never seen from a performer or band before. Grabbing his microphone with a long, long cable, he jumped off the stage into the crowd. While the band played, he worked his way across the floor of the arena, occasionally stopping to trade choruses with random fans. The whole time, he never missed a beat, interacting and singing with the fans along the way.
I’d never seen anything like this. My other musical heroes performed from high up, above all the mortals in the crowd. But this guy broke that wall. He wasn’t speaking down to us — he was one of us. My jaw hit the floor. I was watching someone who understood living in uncertain times and trying to sort out who you are and what you aspire to be. Last week, I saw my 48th Springsteen concert in that same arena in San Diego.
Jon Trask, Garden Grove, Calif.
Two daughters. Two shows.
I will never forget sitting with my teen daughter at the Rolling Stones in the mid-1980s. Seeing their energy and hearing their music in person is a memory we talk about often. Then, in 2023, another daughter and I saw Adele in concert, satisfying a wish from first hearing her music.
Susan Bescher, Des Moines
Tattoos, tables and Tahoe
I am a huge Chris Isaak fan — I’ve seen him on average once a year since 1994. I even have his guitar tattooed on my arm. In the late-’90s, I saw one of his performances in a Lake Tahoe showroom. He enjoys doing crowd work, and his mom was in attendance, sitting in the banquette behind my table. After saying hello and introducing her to the audience, the ladies at the next table over asked him to pose for a picture. Chris proceeded to climb up and stand on my table (with his guitar!) and sing to me as part of posing for the picture. I felt so special!
I said hello to him the next year in Seattle — he recognized me and lamented that the venue didn’t have any tables to sing to me from. Such a gentleman, and absolutely priceless memories.
Jenn Alvin, Portland, Ore.
Many years ago, my wife and I went to see Kenny Rogers at the Westbury Music Fair in New York during his 1989 Christmas tour. His opening act was a young solo artist who sang, played the guitar and wore a cowboy hat. He serenaded the audience with a number of songs, but the one I remember was a cover of the Don McLean song, “Vincent.” It was simply amazing, and I remember it to this day. Tender and sweet. His voice rang clear and heartfelt. I turned to my wife and said, “Wow. This guy is awesome. I think he’s gonna make it.” Turns out that I was right: Garth Brooks did pretty well!
Dan Pechtol, Lakewood Ranch, Fla.
My musical tastes differ from Marc Thiessen’s, but I completely agree with the philosophy of concertgoing. I have always remembered seeing Joan Sutherland singing “Lucia di Lammermoor” in Cleveland when the Metropolitan Opera was on tour in spring 1961. I was 15, and my aunt took me to see “La Stupenda” featuring Sutherland’s spectacular leading role debut with the Met. I still see her gliding down an enormous staircase during “The Mad Scene.” She stopped the show right there. The applause was, well, stupendous. She became a legend. And I was hooked on opera forever. If it touches your heart, then follow your heart, and see your beloved performers live onstage as often as you can!
Jan Childress, McLean, Va.
His voice was ‘raw’ and ‘forever’
The best was Tony Bennett at the cavernous Winspear Opera House, April 26, 2018, in Dallas. It began with the minor spectacle of the chandelier disappearing into the ceiling and then the lights went out. Then, Tony and his daughter. His final song, he told us, was special. Then, he put his mic down on the piano his daughter was at and sang, raw, just him with no backup music and no electronic reinforcement. Just his own voice in the immensely quiet hall gently floating up to us in the ozone seating section. Whoa! That’s forever.
Stanley Olivarez, Santa Fe, N.M.
In another life, I had my 15 minutes of fame as a smooth jazz D.J. at a radio station in Orlando. So many incredible artists — Herbie Hancock, George Benson, Grover Washington Jr., Dave Brubeck (we both share the same birthday), Al Jarreau, Joni Mitchell — players who could really play and singers who could really sing. I was privileged to introduce a great many of them onstage or at least meet them backstage. While I’ll regret not meeting Miles Davis before he died, I did meet and shake the hand of Ella Fitzgerald. I’m telling you, it was like meeting the Queen of England — only without all the Order of the British Empire bowing nonsense. She performed her entire set singing from a wheelchair, but so what? The standing ovation she received was loud, sustained, enthusiastic and unforgettable.
It’s more than live music. It’s community.
I saw 34 concerts in 2023. I’m a Duran Duran superfan and follow them around on tour. My parents started taking me to live shows when I was 7. I won tickets to see the Bee Gees when I was 9 because I stuffed the raffle box at a local store without my mom knowing it.
I go alone, and I go with friends. I will make friends at every show I go to.
See the bands you love. The communal experience is fabulous.
