This is a three-part remembrance of one of New York City’s greatest concert series, The Schaefer Music Festival. Part one looks at the history of the festival, which started in 1966 and ran until 1980, part two examines some of my own experiences attending shows there in 1972 and 1973, and part three is about Todd Rundgren’s “unofficial” free concert on the Schaefer stage in August of ‘73.
I first became aware of the Schaefer Music Festival in 1972, at which point I was fifteen years old and starting to make my own summer job money and undertake the one-hour train trip into NYC on a regular basis for concerts, record shopping and just hanging out. In the spring of that year I picked up one of the handy pocket schedules for the season and checked off a handful of shows I was interested in seeing (below). Finances and logistics limited me to only two concerts that summer, but they were both great experiences and convinced me to increase my attendance considerably the following year.
My first Schaefer Festival concert in July of ’72 was also my first J. Geils Band show, several months before the December gig I attended at the Academy of Music where they performed the Full House album in full. I had recently picked up their second LP The Morning After and was totally in love with it, and the Central Park setlist included much of that material. The boys from Boston were in typically blistering form and ecstatically received by the New York crowd. British band Heads, Hands & Feet opened the show and I recall being impressed by their guitar player, a then-unknown Albert Lee.
My next visit to Wollman Rink was in August ’72 to see The James Gang, who had long been a favorite – James Gang Rides Again was among the most-played treasures in my small record collection. In 1972 the band was post-Joe Walsh and pre-Tommy Bolin, instead featuring Canadian guitarist Dominic Troiano and new lead vocalist Roy Kenner. Without being fully aware of these changes, my friend Mike and I had gone to see them at Carnegie Hall in May of ’72 and somehow scored second row seats for the show. It was the first time I had ever witnessed a professional rock band from that close, and it absolutely blew me away. The James Gang’s albums from this era were not particularly strong but as a live act they still brought it, and this informed my decision to see them again at the Schaefer fest in August.
That decision was reinforced by David Bromberg also being on the bill. Despite my mainly hard rock tastes I had been turned on to Bromberg seeing him perform solo at a folk festival in Tarrytown, NY benefiting Pete Seeger’s Hudson River Sloop conservation project a year or so prior. At the Central Park show he had a full band in tow and they performed songs from his killer second album Demon In Disguise, most memorably “Sharon” – “She walks, she talks, she crawls on her belly like a reptile. . . Oh Sharon, what do you do to these men?” I loved every minute of it (though I admit to having no recollection at all of opener Ruth Copland), and resolved to save my pennies for the 1973 Schaefer Festival right then and there.
By the spring of ’73 I had achieved even more autonomy and a bit more discretionary spending money, and I checked off eight Schaefer Music Festival shows on the schedule (above, stored in my wallet for months. Don’t recall what the names & addresses were about), all but one of which I managed to attend (Poco). I remember going into the Korvettes at Herald Square as soon as the tickets went on sale and forking over what seemed like a lot of cash to procure $1.50 bleacher seats for concerts by Blue Oyster Cult, B.B. King, Focus, James Gang, The Everly Brothers, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Buffy Ste. Marie and Poco.
I have spotty recollections of these concerts, in some cases remembering the support acts better than the headliners and in others being so blown away by the headliners – BOC and Mahavishnu Orchestra in particular – that I can’t even envision what the openers looked like on stage, much less remember their music.
Blue Oyster Cult’s eponymous debut album was a huge record for me when it came out in 1972, and to this day I regard it as an underrated classic. By the summer of ’73 I had read of their explosive live shows and was more than psyched to see them play, and they did not disappoint.
The setlist favored their second LP Tyranny and Mutation which I was not as familiar with, however opening the show with that album’s “The Red and The Black” played at maximum intensity was enough to pull me in immediately. They also played some of the best stuff from the first album, delivering a spooky rendition of “Screams” and closing the show with a second encore of my favorite track, “Before The Kiss A Redcap.” Buck Dharma’s showpiece “Buck’s Boogie” segued memorably into their proto-metal classic “Cities On Flame with Rock and Roll,” and the image of their big finale schtick with four guitarists and the bassist all lined up at the front of the stage - illuminated by bright stage lights with the towering buildings lining Central Park looming out of the dark in the background - is forever burned into my mind’s eye.
Photographer unknown
The other Schaefer show from 1973 that made the biggest impression on me was Mahavishnu Orchestra. At age sixteen I was starting to broaden my musical horizons, branching out from my penchant for hard rock like Zeppelin, Sabbath and BOC and developing an interest in rock’s progenitors in the blues and country realms. While ‘real’ jazz didn’t get on my radar until later in the ‘70s, the burgeoning fusion and progressive rock bands of the era caught my interest early on.
I first heard Mahavishnu Orchestra on one of CBS Record’s “Play:Back” samplers, a series of 7-inch EPs one could sign up to receive free in the mail, an opportunity I took full advantage of in my impoverished teenage quest for more records. One of the people employed in that brilliant promotional scheme was journalist Wayne Robins, who these days writes an excellent Substack called Critical Conditions. Wayne’s first job out of college was working for CBS on the team that created the Play:Back series, which lasted for about a year and half. During that time the series introduced its subscribers to tracks by Bruce Springsteen, Iggy and The Stooges, Mott The Hoople and a handful of other artists on Columbia, Epic and the other CBS affiliated labels.
Above: CBS Records “Play:Back” samplers from the early 1970s. At right the final edition, featuring the crew who put them together – Wayne’s in the middle (photo © Peter Cunningham).
The track on the Play:Back sampler that grabbed me was “Meeting Of The Spirits” from Mahavishnu’s stunning debut album The Inner Mounting Flame. I played that song over and over, eventually picking up the album which encouraged me to add their Schaefer Festival show to my summer ’73 checklist. It was a good call; while they played material mostly unfamiliar to me, their performance blew me away. It was a study in dynamics, loud and bombastic at times – Billy Cobham’s playing and his enormous drum set were mesmerizing – and gently contemplative at others. John McLaughlin cut a striking figure dressed all in white, brandishing a double neck guitar (just like Jimmy Page, thinks I!) and peeling off speedy, face-melting solos right and left. I had never seen anything like it, and the experience was key in opening my mind to music outside of my familiar realm. Apparently, McLaughlin and the band also felt that it was an exceptional performance, as portions of it became their 1973 live album Between Nothingness & Eternity.
Photographer unknown
Of the other Schaefer shows I attended that summer, B.B. King, Focus and Tim Buckley stand out in my memory. B.B. King had a charming stage presence and his clean, expressive guitar playing was another horizon-expanding experience for me. He had a large band with horns and introduced each member by describing how long they had been with him, much to the amusement of the reverent crowd. Dutch prog rockers Focus were riding high on the yodel-laden “Hocus Pocus,” seen in some quarters as kind of a joke, but their musicianship was incredible and their live presentation excellent.
Tim Buckley was the somewhat incongruous opening act for The James Gang, who remained a draw for me despite the declining quality of their records (the band was still pre-Tommy Bolin in August 1973). As it happened, Buckley’s performance made more of an impression on me than The James Gang’s. I was aware of him from the rock press but had only heard a few songs on WNEW FM, and my recollection of his performance is that it was challenging. His abrupt shifts in mood and tempo and his keening, high-pitched voice, though received appreciatively by most of the audience, were beyond my own limited hard rock tastes at the time. I’ve addressed his music in the years since then and would not consider myself a fan, but I’m very glad I got to see him perform.
For me, the high point of the 1973 Schaefer series was a show that wasn’t even on the schedule – Todd Rundgren’s free concert/recording session for “Sons Of 1984,” later to appear on his Todd album. Stay tuned for the delightful details, same Todd time, same Todd channel, next week!
Photo by Alen MacWeeney
Below: Schaefer Festival lineups for 1974, 1975 and 1976.
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