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Fact #104370

When:

Short story:

The three-day-long Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival continues into its second day on Bull Island in the Wabash River, Illinois, USA. The event was billed as featuring major bands including Black Sabbath, Santana, Joe Cocker, Fleetwood Mac, Canned Heat, The Allman Brothers, The Eagles and many more. In the end, over 200,000 people will arrive instead of the 30,000 expected, and the event becomes a disaster, with most of the bands pulling out because of the chaos. Bands who actually do play include Canned Heat, Brownsville Station, Black Oak Arkansas and Pure Prairie League.

Full article:

ERIE CANAL SODA POP FESTIVAL 2 - 4 SEPTEMBER 1972

by Johnny Black

INTRO

It was going to be, claimed the promoters, "bigger than Woodstock".

The advertised line-up for the Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival promised - to name just a few - Rod Stewart and the Faces, Joe Cocker, Black Sabbath, The Doors, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, The Allman Brothers Band, The Amboy Dukes (including Ted Nugent), Black Oak Arkansas.

Over thirty acts were promised but less than half would actually appear.
Having made the biggest financial killing of their careers by pulling off The Bosse Field music festival in Evansville, Indiana, headlined by Ike And Tina Turner, on July 2 - ambitious young local music promoters Bob Alexander and Tom Duncan, decided to do it again, only bigger.

The venue chosen was Chandler Raceway in Evansville, Indiana. Unfortunately, their Bosse Field event had resulted in several arrests and damage to local property, so Evansville Mayor Russell Lloyd banned any further festivals from his town.

Alexander and Duncan, however, had already booked the acts, taken a $2,800 full page ad in Rolling Stone and sold thousands of tickets. Determined not to back down, they secretly started preparing a new site on Bull Island, a peninsula jutting out into the Wabash River.
By keeping the new location secret, they hoped to avoid further injunctions which might impede their progress and the strategy worked.

One day before the event was set to open, with tens of thousands of fans already pouring into the Evansville area, Alexander and Duncan made the new location public. The news spread like wildfire, and the fans swarmed towards tiny Bull Island.

Alexander and Duncan hoped for about 50,000 attendees, but over 200,000 showed up - a vast horde that local police and a small event security team had no hope of coping with. As the only road onto the peninsula became blocked with abandoned cars, Bull Island became a no-go zone and three days of rage, riot and death began.
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THE BUILD-UP
Bob Alexander (co-promoter) : All we ever set out to do was to have a great show and make a lot of money, or so we hoped.

Fito De La Parra (drummer, Canned Heat) : Although it was unquestionably the biggest disaster we ever played, I still have a certain sympathy for the promoters. They were just trying to create another Woodstock, as so many people have done since the original.

Bob Alexander : Tom and I had it planned at Chandler Raceway, but then the injunctions came. We couldn't stop the people from coming to town.

We weren't sleeping at night. We thought everything was going to just go down the drain. But we'd spent over $700,000, so our position was that we had to do this festival some way. Come hell or high water, the people were going to have an event.

Randy Foley (audience) : With the line-up that was advertised, me and my friend Helm just had to go. A mutual friend, Skip, had a 1965 Volkswagen Beetle, and was up for the 450 mile trip from Toledo, Ohio, to rural southwest Indiana. We loaded up with food and water and the usual rock fest "comfort" materials, and set off a day before the concert was to start.

Chuck Pulin (promoter, Nazareth) : The talk among groups in the east the weekend before the show was, 'Will Soda Pop happen?' We didn't know. We were entirely in the dark.

Bob Alexander : They were on WLS (Chicago radio station) about every fifteen minutes talking about the festival. So they started spreading the word nationwide, and we knew people were coming because of all the phone calls we received. They just kept talking about it - 'Where's it going to be?'

So, inadvertently, all of the injunctions, and all of the negative press from the police and the state, that's what really drew the crowds.

Randy Foley : As we approached the festival site along Interstate 65, the road started to clog up, but we could still move.

Dick Kay (NBC news reporter) : The road had been built only a week before to haul timber from the island.

Every shoulder of every road leading to the festival site, including a four mile stretch of interstate highway, was jammed with parked cars. Rock bands decided to walk rather than wait out the traffic jams.

Randy Foley : We landed in a parking area near the festival grounds on the shore of the Wabash River, parked and set up camp. A lot of freaks were already there, perhaps 100,000.

Ed Lunkenheimer (Indiana State Police Trooper) : It was like an invasion. They were bound for Bull Island, come hell or high water. We’d never seen that mass of humanity in one spot. Ever.

Carrie Jane Roper : (audience) : Some of the cars started overheating... so with all these cars stopped on the interstate, lots of drug deals were going on. There were people selling hash, LSD, anything, just having a big party out on the interstate.

Ed Lunkenheimer : We couldn’t really control all the drugs. We just hoped we didn’t have too many overdoses.

Dick Kay (NBC news reporter) : The sponsors were still building the bandstand Friday evening. Three doctors and eighteen medical volunteers worked around the clock treating overdoses and bad doses. Some of the dope was said to be laced with Strychnine.

Mike Glab (audience) : The festival lacked water, food, medical supplies, and toilets. A downpour of biblical proportions soaked the 900-acre site on Friday night.

FIRST DAY : SATURDAY SEPT 2, 1972
Kevin Swank (audience) : As you walked into the festival, there was a fence with a gate. The gate was open, and on the outside of that fence there were all kinds of police. But once you walked through that gate, not ten feet in, there were people with all kinds of drugs for sale.
They had all kinds of pills. It was spread out on the hoods of cars, it was laid out on blankets on the ground, it was everywhere.

John Neidig (Indiana State Trooper) :Every place you turned, everywhere you went, every vehicle you visited, it was just all over the place. Anything from marijuana to heroin. It was a mess.

Dick Kay : Tickets were supposed to be twenty dollars a person; many were charged twenty five dollars. Since there is only one road leading onto the island, most had to pay whatever was asked.

Shirley Becker (gate keeper) : We only collected money on the first day. There was no hope of getting money after that. I think the promoters knew they lost control of the whole event. People were just giving me whatever they had to get in. I was pretty laid back about it. One guy didn’t have any money, so he gave me a beer. I was delighted.

Randy Foley : The bands we witnessed were hardly the superstars advertised. A forgettable all-female band called Birtha was the first, followed by an equally forgettable Philadelphia group called Bang. Flash was on the bill that evening. Former Yes guitarist Peter Banks was amongst the players. I'd like to say I remember their performance, but I don't.

Brownsville Station was the first good act we witnessed, and as many times as I had seen them, I still truly enjoyed their wild ride through 1950s rock with their 1970s Motor City bent. Frontman and guitarist Cub Koda was a show-off, but in a humble, fun-loving, almost self-parody way.
Irish guitarist Rory Gallagher played, one of the greatest guitar players I've ever seen. He had Alvin Lee's speed, Johnny Winter's flash, and the earthiness of any number of American blues guitarists like Hubert Sumlin or BB King.

Foghat followed with their brand of British dual guitar boogie. Another crowd pleaser.
Mike Glab (audience) : I took a hit of Orange Sunshine that Saturday night, my first acid trip.
As Foghat played I Just Wanna Make Love to You, I looked down at my hands and discovered that I’d gashed them wide open. The gaping wound was big enough that I could have sworn I saw the tendons and bones inside of me. “Oh God,” I shrieked, “I need bandages, quick!”

My plea was so desperate that people leaped up and ran for First Aid supplies, but when I came down, I realised all I had was a nasty paper cut from a guy who had been passing out flyers.

Lydia Woltag (Gibson and Stromberg, artist representation) : They (Black Sabbath) were willing to work but it was simply impossible. It took me over four hours to drive out to the site on Saturday night. The stage was protected by a leaky tarp and exposed electrical outlets were on the stage which, at that time, was about an inch deep in water. It was simply too hazardous to play.

Randy Foley : It was quite late that evening, and the waits between bands quite long. And it was getting quite chilly. Canned Heat took the stage next, and they warmed things up, and they boogied for a long time.

Fito De La Parra (drummer, Canned Heat) : The nature of our band, especially in those times, was that we always wanted to play, no matter what the circumstances. Bob Hite, who was our leader in those days, he just always wanted to party and to go for it, even if we didn't get paid. Actually, we were so high, I can't even remember if we did get paid. Bob wasn't a businessman. He was an idealist and a music lover.

Randy Foley : A helicopter appeared during Canned Heat's show, bringing Cheech And Chong. Onstage, they made some less than positive remarks about the festival, disguised as jokes. After about fifteen minutes it started to rain. The duo said their ta-tas, and left the stage.

SECOND DAY : SUNDAY SEPT 3, 1972
Sonny Brown (local photographer) : It was a mess. Personal hygiene was just non-existent because they didn't have any facilities out there. And for waste - human waste or whatever kind you had - they just had trenches.

Mike Glab (audience) : As we bathed in the Wabash River that morning, the sounds of Ravi Shankar’s sitar wafted over us. I’ll never forget that moment because it was the very first time I’d ever seen a nude chick.

Dan McCafferty (singer, Nazareth) : This was all happening during our first tour of America, and Erie Canal was our first major festival. We didn't know until we got there that the venue had changed, and that there was virtually no way to get from the hotel to the festival site.

Bob Alexander : As I recall, Rod Stewart And The Faces manager flew over the site in a helicopter and deemed that the site was not safe. We started to negotiate immediately, and nothing was concluded.

Dan McCafferty : I remember Joe Cocker turning up, and Rod Stewart, but neither of them went on. We were still young, though, and we were up for playing any gigs we could get, so we agreed to go on, even though things didn't look great.

Nigel Thomas (manager, Joe Cocker) : I did not discover until after I had arrived in Evansville that the site had been changed.

We found the performance side of the festival in absolute chaos. My road crew, which had driven our equipment to the site, found the stage unsatisfactory and unsafe and the security inadequate.

We never suggested more money for Cocker (as the organisers had claimed). The only mention of $30,000 came when they asked us how much we stood to lose if we couldn't play our next date.

Rickie Lee Reynolds (guitarist, Black Oak Arkansas) : The story we heard was that Joe and his band came in on different planes. The band did the soundcheck and everything, but ... and I don't know if he was drunk or what ... when Joe landed he grabbed a cab at the airport and it took him to the wrong hotel, but he just booked in anyway, went to sleep and when he woke up again, it was already too late for him to go onstage.

While we were at the hotel, some of the bands decided not to even go to the festival site. They were afraid of rioting.

Bob Alexander : It became an absolute nightmare. We were all stressed to the nines. Thank God we were young. We did not have a clue how many lawsuits were going to follow.

Randy Foley : Late in the night, Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes played a lengthy set. Though an impressive guitar player, Ted always over-compensated with his own brand of flash and patter and jive. I think he mounted his amplifier speaker cabinets making his guitar feedback scream through the chilly evening air.

Mike Glab : Trucks bringing food into the festival were looted and one was overturned and burned. A kid in a sleeping bag was run over by a car backing up on Sunday night.

THIRD DAY : MONDAY SEPT 4, 1972
Randy Foley : We ran into some friends from back home. They related tales of having gotten ripped off in a drug deal when they purchased what was being sold as THC in capsules. When one pal, Paul, snorted it up, it was powered bleach! A major bloody nose, super headache and general illness ensued. There were lots of such ripoff wheeling-and-dealings going on during this concert.

The crowds were getting restless, and taking things into their own hands. A couple a food vendors who were overcharging for their wares had their stands looted, and trucks burned.

Rickie Lee Reynolds (guitarist, Black Oak Arkansas) : Local people were getting nervous, and they were calling up the police because they thought the festival was bring a bad element to their area.

Dan McCafferty : Then the organisers said they would get us into the festival by helicopter, which sounded great to us. A free helicopter ride, yeah, why not? But when we got backstage, there were almost no facilities, no toilets, nothing.

Randy Foley : From the stage, announcers promised acts that would never appear, and attendees were getting pissed, out of hand and downright riotous. Debris started flying between the audience and those on the stage. I got plowed right in the upper lip by something hard. I was bleeding and hurting. We got away from the melee, headed towards a medical tent where some stoned guy in a white coat said that he would sew up my lip. One look at this freaky "doctor" convinced me to put a band aid on it and head back to the crowd. I still have the scar under my mustache.

Rickie Lee Reynolds : The police were freaking out, trying to deal with all the intruders and stuff. Security got pretty heavy, because there were little riots going on at various spots around the crowd, people getting rambunctious.

Randy Foley : The Doobie Brothers drew mixed reactions from the massive crowd, but at least we were being entertained.

Scottish hard rock was next with Nazareth, who drew a more positive response.

Dan McCafferty : We were determined to put on a good show, and we did, but we could see that beyond the first few rows of kids who were enjoying the music, further out in the site, things were bad.

When our helicopter took us back to the hotel, we had a wee girl, a teenager, flying with us. She was completely out of it. Didn't know where she was, didn't know where her friends were. She had obviously taken something that didn't agree with her, and she was pitiful to see.

Randy Foley : The final band of the evening was Black Oak Arkansas.

Rickie Lee Reynolds : Our plan had originally been to get a flock of white doves which we would keep in crates under the stage, and then we would set them free just as we hit the last note of our set.

Unfortunately, when we arrived, there were no crates of white doves. The road crew had to search around for an alternative and they came back with three dozen pigeons.

Randy Foley : Their triple-guitar Southern boogie rock was most impressive, the kind of riot we all really wanted coming from the stage.

Rickie Lee Reynolds : So then we released the pigeons but, as God is my witness, we didn't know that pigeons wouldn't fly in the dark. The pigeons turned round and headed for the lights of the stage. They started walkin' around, lookin' like Charlie Chaplin, y'know? I had one on my guitar neck, Jim had one on his head, they were all over the drums. The crowd cracked up laughin'. I would shake that pigeon off my guitar neck and it would fly round and come back and land again. The crowd loved it. They thought it was part of the act.

Randy Foley : The crowd roared and roared. They wanted, demanded, more.

Tom Duncan : We were afraid to tell them it was over. We just couldn't be sure what would have happened.

Randy Foley : After a lull, the announcer said there was no more. None of the advertised big name groups had showed up, and the riot from earlier seemed to pick up where it left off. We got out of there pronto. Eventually, the stage was looted and burned to the ground!

Rickie Lee Reynolds : After our helicopter dropped us off back at the hotel, me and Tommy Aldridge, our drummer, were standing on the hotel balcony, and there were three or four helicopters shuttling people in and out so fast, that we noticed another helicopter coming down fixin' to land right on top of our helicopter, which still had its blades spinning. So we tried to attract his attention by shouting and throwing water bottles up at the canopy and pointing downwards. The pilot looked down, all angry and stuff, but then when he was about a foot and a half from the other helicopter blades, he realised what was happening and he swerved up. That could have been another disaster right there.

Randy Foley : As we headed back to our VW Beetle to crash, we saw people looting cars and vans, stealing gas and wheels off vehicles. We curled up in our car, and agreed to leave as early as possible after we'd slept.

Bob Alexander : We had a helicopter backstage, and we had them fly us back into Evansville. And we started dealing with the problems - paying people off and that kind of thing. Immediately, there were lawsuits filed. It became just an absolute ongoing situation of dealing with that.

Bob Alexander : As I look back, probably the biggest mistake that I made as a young man was that I didn't know how to manoeuver and work within the political system. And even if I had at that time, we would have not been given the necessary permits.

The mere fact that we're talking about this 40 years later says something about it as a major cultural event that happened in Middle America. You know, I'd love to try it again, in the same location.
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WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

Tragically, it later emerged that there had been two deaths - a 24-year-old man who drowned in the river and a 20-year-old who overdosed on heroin.

Alexander estimated that the event lost $200,000, with lawsuits continuing for nine years. One local farmer even sued them for "cattle lost due to marijuana inhalation".

Tom Duncan concluded that rock festivals were not "morally right" and retired to Arizona, while Alexander prospered and is currently President of the Motion Picture Hall Of Fame in Palm Springs.

An anniversary event (not promoted by Alexander), Soda Pop Revisited, failed to take place in 2012 and is currently scheduled for June 29, 2013, with no megastars.
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This feature by Johnny Black first appeared in Classic Rock magazine