Fact #116865

Margaret English (reviewer, Look magazine) : Students made up less than half the audience. The rest were local people with nothing else to do on a Saturday night in Houlton. While Melanie sang, you could hear beer cans being popped open in the bleachers. They hooted, wolf-whistled and shouted insults. The kids, who had voted among themselves to have Melanie come and sing, simmered with anger. When she finally sang Peace Will Come, the students rose and cheered for almost five minutes, waving the "V" sign and stamping for more. They wanted the townies and Melanie to see whose side they were on. Yes, a demonstration.

They gathered onstage for her encore. Like the couple the night before, the boy in front of her was having visions. But his were different. His eyes were closed; his face was screwed into an agony of concentration. He knelt in front of her and beat the floor with his hands -all to a rhythm only he could feel. The pounding bore no relation to the song. Somehow Melanie and whatever chemical he'd been poisoning himself with had sent him off on some wild inner journey of his own.

After the performance, we hurried downstairs to a locker room to wait for the crowd to clear. The college social chairman came in to ask if he could let in some of the kids - the ones who had liked her, who had voted to have her come all this way. Sure.

"Melanie, Melanie, I love you!" It was the crazy kid who had been pounding the stage. He ran down the steps and across the locker room, chasing her. He grabbed her around the waist and swung her. She was laughing, but it was an embarrassed, scared laugh. Other kids took the boy by the shoulders and jollied him away. "Take it easy, man. You want to kill her with love?"

He sat down on a bench and played her guitar, singing to himself while she talked to the others. After a few minutes, he rose and thrust a slip of paper into her hand. He had written, "Me, I am one Mike . . . " and his name and address. We finally gathered up coats, guitar cases, hairbrush, and piled into a car to go back to the motel.

"Melanie, take me with you!" It was Mike again. He might have climbed into the car if someone hadn't thrown a friendly block. Instead, he knelt down next to her window and pressed his face against the glass, staring in at her, his nose twisted to one side. We rolled away slowly so as to not hurt him.

Back at the motel, Melanie, Alan (her road manager) and I were slumped in front of the TV when the door burst open, and Mike lurched into the room. Incoherent and staggering, he lunged across the bed clutching for Melanie. A companion followed him repeating, "I didn't want to come. It was all his idea."

After a moment's paralysis, Alan and the companion were able to disengage Mike and hustle him out of the room. We could hear him yelling in the hall : "I want Melanie, I want her." Then the outer door slammed, and Alan returned pale and shaky.

"Listen, I don't want to upset you, but I'm worried about that guy. He took a couple of swings at me. If that other kid hadn't been here, I don't think I could have gotten rid of him.

Ivey's Motel in Houlton has no telephone service from 11 p.m. to 8 a.m., and no one on the front desk at night. All we could do was lock our doors and jump every time the radiator creaked. A lot of rock stars travel with bodyguards, which sounds pretentious until you spend a night in a phoneless motel with nobody but a road manager and a lady journalist between you and a strung-out freak who's decided he wants you.