The recent summer concert season announcements have me pretty psyched (hey, you had me at Hall and Oates). It reminds me of an incident I was involved in at a rock concert a few years ago, If you were at the show, you’ll remember it.
It went down like this.
A coworker and I managed to scam first row tickets to Heart at Darien Lake. Unbelievable! My favorite band, Heart, and favorite singer of all time, Ann Wilson? It wasn’t “Almost Paradise.” It WAS Paradise!
It all started innocently enough. The first part of the show was one of the highlights of my life. Ann was out on the catwalk most of the time, and I clung to that catwalk like I was duct taped to it, in absolute heaven. Especially because Ann and I ended up many times singing sort of “to” each other, as most of the other fans were waiting for the next act, Def Leppard, and there weren’t many Heart fans up front. It seemed she could clearly see I was the person most into it, and I knew all the words to every song, so we had a lot of amazing eye contact.
So far, it was the best day of my life. Like, better than having my kids. Sorry, kids.
As we sang along, I fantasized that Ann would leave the concert telling her bandmates, “I cannot believe that girl knew all the words to all my songs! I’ll never forget her!”
But as it turned out, Ann Wilson would likely go on to remember me, as would a lot of other people–but for an entirely different reason.
As Nancy Wilson launched into the guitar intro solo for “Crazy On You,” one of Heart’s signature songs, the crowd went wild. Ann was rocking it out, waiting for her cue to launch into song.
I then noticed that a huge beach ball ended up in our area of the crowd, bopping around. Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw that my coworker was next to me and had caught the ball. He was suspiciously holding onto it during the song intro, looking at Ann patiently with a little smile on his face. Uh oh.
Everything began happening in slow motion. I shouted “NOOOOOOOOOO!”–as he gleefully launched the massive beach ball at Ann.
Now, there might be quite a few rock stars who would think it was awesome if the crowd hit a beach ball to them while they were performing.
But not Ann Wilson of Heart.
What made it the worst, is she didn’t see the ball coming. It hit her smack in the face. She batted it away, and glared at us. The show continued, but her eyes kept coming back to rest on us. If looks could kill.
We had embarrassed a rock icon in front of more than 20,000 people. I just wanted to die. After killing my coworker first, that is.
The kicker was–the next day at work, a guy came up to us who knew we’d gone to the Heart show.
He said, “Did you see that stupid jerk slam Ann Wilson in the face with the beach ball?”
My coworker beamed. “Hey! That stupid jerk was ME!”
I’M SORRY AND I LOVE YOU, ANN WILSON!
