PORTLAND, OR (1975) “First Concert: Aerosmith”

The new hot-shit band from Boston . . .

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I was turned onto Aerosmith when I was 14, at a Dude Ranch in Eastern Oregon. 

Riding out there on the Greyhound bus, I met another Dude Rancher kid from Portland.  Andrew [not his real name] appeared to be a “stoner” type of person and then confirmed it by showing me his weed stash, hidden in the battery compartment of his RadioShack portable cassette player. 

It was on this same cassette player, that we listened to Aerosmith’s second album Get Your Wings in the Dude Ranch bunkhouse every night.  

After just a couple listens, I grasped Aerosmith’s greatness.  They had great riffs, a great singer and they rocked.  They were Zeppelin-level. 

Six months later, back in Portland, Andrew and his slightly older friend Kevin [not his real name], invited me to come to the Aerosmith Concert with them, at the Memorial Coliseum in Portland.  This was the winter of 1975.  The bill was:  Aerosmith, Ted Nugent and Kansas. 

I was 15 by then, a sophomore in high school, and had not yet attended an arena rock concert.  This would be my first.  For a young person in the 70s, your first major rock concert was a big deal.  It was like losing your virginity.

After that, if you were serious about music, you began to accumulate concerts that you’d been to. Your list gave you bragging rights with your friends. And could also be used to impress girls.

During my high school years, the most prestigious concert to have attended was Led Zeppelin in Seattle in ‘77 (I missed that).  But I did see AC/DC in ‘78.  And Peter Frampton in ‘76, (doing Frampton Comes Alive, note for note).  And Santana in ’79.  And Springsteen—the critic’s darling—doing one of his famous Christmas shows in 1978.

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But back to that formative, all-important first concert, Aerosmith. At first, I didn’t know if my parents would let me go.  By 1975, rock concerts were notoriously full of sex, drugs and alcohol.  

By some miracle I got permission and it was arranged that my dad would drop me off on a corner near Andrew’s house, on the night of the concert.  Then he’d come pick me up at that same corner, at some wildly late hour.  (1am?  2am?)

I wonder what my dad was thinking as he drove me there.  He was a musician himself. He’d played piano in cocktail lounges to make extra money for college.  This was in Iowa.  He played Gershwin and Rachmaninov and “The Autumn Leaves” in tasteful hotel bars. 

And here was his son going to see some sleazy, clownish (to him) rock band in a giant cement stadium that would be no doubt be engulfed in marijuana smoke. 

But music had meant a lot to him.  And it meant a lot to me.  Aerosmith was the music of my day and I really wanted to see them.  So he let me go.