Fact #117224
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Dec Hickey (audience) : Skiving off school was not something I did but on the day of the closest concert to me, The Royal Albert Hall gig in London, I was up and out the door, dressed for and supposedly heading to school. Instead I went straight to the train station and locked my school briefcase to my bike and padlocked the bike to the station wall; 'trust' you wouldn't entertain these days! Thankfully, one benefit (and it would be hard for me to find too many others) of being at my particular school was that our sober, blue blazer and long grey trousers uniform could have us blend fairly effortlessly into the outside world without looking too much like school kids so, without a change of clothes, I bought a day return ticket to London and headed into the unknown.
I got to the RAH at about 10.30am and soon learned that the gig was sold out but that there was, most importantly, something called 'returned tickets' which meant I might have a very slight chance of getting in. Having gotten something to eat and rung my Mum to explain that I wasn't quite where she thought I was and that I'd therefore be home very late (she understood what it meant to me) with approximately eight hours still to go I started queuing at the box office. It was gone 4pm before anyone else turned up and he, it transpired, was the first ticket tout of the day and one willing to sell me a £2.50 seat for... £15! You can maybe imagine how much of a 'no go' that would have seemed to a kid like me. By 6pm a queue began forming behind me and I got talking, for the first time in my life, to people who actually knew a bit about Jose and by the time the doors opened at 7.30, the trail of people was half way around the building. It was a bit gut-wrenching watching those with tickets flow effortlessly in and the box office played a slight waiting game but when a 'returned' £2.50 ticket finally came my way both they and the doormen seemed as happy for me as I was near-delirious.
Having bought a programme and gawped at the sheer wonderment of the place I rushed to my seat as strains of the London Symphony Orchestra had me panicking and thinking things had kicked off without me. Taking my seat and realising that wasn't the case I chatted with an Australian woman beside me and the first person I'd ever met who'd actually seen, back in her home country, Jose play live. She recounted what he played and even had a copy of the Star Spangled Banner'7" which, at the time, I didn't even know existed! I then looked around at the other 5,000 plus people in their seats and thought I really need to chat with everyone else in the building... the Jose stories they could tell - all those cool, intimate clubs he played on his first visit to the UK in '67, the London Palladium in '69, that Hollywood festival in '70 and subsequent dates in '72. It was all a bit too much to take in and when DJ, Alan Freeman had finished his neat intro and Jose took to the stage it was the greatest single moment of my life... no more, no less and so... I promptly burst into tears.
Back then I had no barometer on what to expect, performance-wise so from opener Satisfaction on to more obvious album and single material, when Jose then pulled out the likes of Shaft, Jesus Christ Superstar, Papa Was A Rolling Stone' and Ain't No Sunshine I was blown away. The most memorable sight, however, of the night was the standing ovation the whole audience, including the 90 plus members of the orchestra, gave after Malaguena.
(Source : http://josefeliciano.com/?page=memories)
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I got to the RAH at about 10.30am and soon learned that the gig was sold out but that there was, most importantly, something called 'returned tickets' which meant I might have a very slight chance of getting in. Having gotten something to eat and rung my Mum to explain that I wasn't quite where she thought I was and that I'd therefore be home very late (she understood what it meant to me) with approximately eight hours still to go I started queuing at the box office. It was gone 4pm before anyone else turned up and he, it transpired, was the first ticket tout of the day and one willing to sell me a £2.50 seat for... £15! You can maybe imagine how much of a 'no go' that would have seemed to a kid like me. By 6pm a queue began forming behind me and I got talking, for the first time in my life, to people who actually knew a bit about Jose and by the time the doors opened at 7.30, the trail of people was half way around the building. It was a bit gut-wrenching watching those with tickets flow effortlessly in and the box office played a slight waiting game but when a 'returned' £2.50 ticket finally came my way both they and the doormen seemed as happy for me as I was near-delirious.
Having bought a programme and gawped at the sheer wonderment of the place I rushed to my seat as strains of the London Symphony Orchestra had me panicking and thinking things had kicked off without me. Taking my seat and realising that wasn't the case I chatted with an Australian woman beside me and the first person I'd ever met who'd actually seen, back in her home country, Jose play live. She recounted what he played and even had a copy of the Star Spangled Banner'7" which, at the time, I didn't even know existed! I then looked around at the other 5,000 plus people in their seats and thought I really need to chat with everyone else in the building... the Jose stories they could tell - all those cool, intimate clubs he played on his first visit to the UK in '67, the London Palladium in '69, that Hollywood festival in '70 and subsequent dates in '72. It was all a bit too much to take in and when DJ, Alan Freeman had finished his neat intro and Jose took to the stage it was the greatest single moment of my life... no more, no less and so... I promptly burst into tears.
Back then I had no barometer on what to expect, performance-wise so from opener Satisfaction on to more obvious album and single material, when Jose then pulled out the likes of Shaft, Jesus Christ Superstar, Papa Was A Rolling Stone' and Ain't No Sunshine I was blown away. The most memorable sight, however, of the night was the standing ovation the whole audience, including the 90 plus members of the orchestra, gave after Malaguena.
(Source : http://josefeliciano.com/?page=memories)