1982 (12 page)

sandwich bag of mixed nuts

You may be wondering why I didn’t bring any bottles of water along. I would have brought bottles of water if the Police Picnic were being held now. That’s what you bring to outdoor concerts these days. That would seem like a natural inclusion amongst the items in the Adidas bag. But water didn’t come in bottles in the 1980s. It came from taps. And things seemed just fine that way. Paying for a plastic bottle of water would’ve seemed like something a comedian would dream up. So I didn’t have any bottles of water.

I met Wendy at Finch subway station and we got to the CNE Grandstand downtown at about 3 p.m. The subway ride was about thirty minutes long. Between the Sheppard and Rosedale subway stops I let Wendy listen to my new Walkman and to my mix tape with the Beat. I had purchased general admission tickets on the “floor,” so when Wendy and I arrived at the Grandstand, we headed to the field and pushed our way forward. We reached a point about fifty rows from the stage, and I told Wendy we should push even closer. She said, “Okay!” and smiled. It turned out Wendy was actually very nice. Even though she was cool, she wasn’t very much like Siouxsie from Siouxsie and the Banshees, who had told us to fuck off at her show. I was suddenly feeling a new sense of confidence. There were around forty-five thousand punters attending the Police Picnic in 1982, and most of them were bigger and older than me. But I had Wendy. Who else could claim to be there with the female Bowie? Soon, we were almost twenty rows from the stage.

The Police Picnic show started with a local New Wave band called the Spoons. They were dressed in white and they played an admirable set, even though they had some sound trouble. We
were close enough to get a good look at their faces, and I could tell that the guys in the band were all wearing makeup and eyeliner. The Spoons had started as more of a progressive rock band, but they were now fully New Romantic. They looked and sounded like they were from the UK. They were actually from an industrial suburb of Toronto called Burlington. But that didn’t matter. They had gelled hair and cosmetics and angular shirts and drum machines. The Spoons had a single called “Nova Heart.” The video for the song featured a glowing egg. Eggs were still cool at this point. Many years later, I would become friends with a couple of former members of the Spoons. They no longer seem to wear eyeliner.

There was no alcohol sold at the Grandstand in those days, and quite a few people around us had snuck some in. The floor was getting really crowded, and I was having trouble figuring out where to place my red-and-blue Adidas bag when I wasn’t holding it. I had decided to put it safely on the ground between my feet. Wendy was getting offers from some of the older New Wave guys to our right to share drinks with them. They had stubble and they were smoking, and one of them had a cut-off English Beat T-shirt. I could tell they thought Wendy was pretty. Wendy declined their offers, although she did let one of them light her cigarette. I think she was being considerate of my feelings by passing on the drinking part. I wished I had snuck in some booze so I could offer it to Wendy too. I hadn’t really thought of that. I didn’t have a lot of experience with alcohol, except for the vodka coolers I had drunk a few times at John Ruttle’s house. One night, I had vomited in the bathroom near John Ruttle’s parents’ bedroom. I had had one too many Rockaberry coolers, and I had single-handedly
consumed two bags of corn chips as well. I learned that vodka coolers didn’t agree with me. But I wished I had some alcohol to offer Wendy.

A Flock of Seagulls were next up, featuring front man Mike Score. He had that “seagull” hairdo that would soon become a 1980s punch line. Flock of Seagulls played a relatively proficient half-hour gig that included their hit song “I Ran.” Midway through their set, my sightline to the stage became slightly obscured in the jostle of the crowd. A very large punk guy decided to position himself directly in front of Wendy and me. His name was Forbes. At least, I think his name was Forbes. I learned this through deduction. A voice from a few rows behind us yelled, “You’re an asshole, Forbes!” during a break in the Flock of Seagulls music, and the large punk guy turned around and grinned and gave the finger to the voice a few rows back. So we learned that the large punk guy was Forbes. I’m not sure if that was his first name or his last name.

Forbes was probably about six feet tall, but he seemed even taller because he had a spiked mohawk hairdo atop his six feet. He had army pants on and a white tank top. In later years, this kind of shirt would be referred to as a “wife beater.” But at the time it was just a tank top. Or “white shirt with no sleeves.” The tank top allowed Forbes to showcase his muscles and his underarm hair. Forbes also had very impressive combat boots on. They were impossible to miss. They were huge and they went up almost to his knees. I checked that my Adidas bag between my feet was secured safely away from Forbes’s combat boots.

Next onstage were the Beat. This was the first big musical highlight of the day. The Beat were called the English Beat
in North America. They were a multi-racial ska/New Wave band that was unquestionably cool. They were big in alternative circles along with other 2 Tone label bands like Madness and the Specials. It probably worked out for the best that their name had become the English Beat, because in the Canadian New Wave world, anything “English” was coveted. At the house party at the end of Grade 9 at Rosanna Dray’s place, everybody had danced to the Beat for most of the night. Rosanna had long black curly hair that she teased and hairsprayed, and she was New Wave and everyone knew she was a good dancer. When she had a house party, all of her friends attended expecting to dance.

Throughout the party, Rosanna kept going back to her turntable and putting on “Mirror in the Bathroom.” No one complained at these repeats in programming. “Mirror in the Bathroom” had been the big Beat song at the beginning of the ’80s. Rosanna yelled at John Ruttle at one point during “Mirror in the Bathroom” because he was dancing too close to the stereo and making the needle skip. It was never easy negotiating enthusiastic dancing and a turntable at a party in 1982.

The English Beat had a profound effect on New Wave fashions. The Beat—along with the Specials—had made the wearing of little fedora hats and vests cool. Ranking Roger, one of the lead vocalists from the Beat, often seemed to have a hat and a vest on, and his energetic style and Jamaican-influenced vocals had become the enduring centre of the Beat’s image. Everyone wanted to be Ranking Roger. A lot of Beat fans had started wearing vests like Ranking Roger. A case in point was Wendy’s brother, Paul. Mind you, Paul wore his vest over a pirate shirt, because he was demonstrating that he was
theatrical. Beat fans didn’t wear pirate shirts. But it was still a similar vest. And in your vest you would do a ska dance by swinging your arms in the air one at a time and moving your feet in the same direction. This dance looked even better with a fedora. Or you could pogo. Lots of mods liked to pogo as well. The point is, the English Beat were about dancing. And most important, the Beat had groove. It was infectious. It seemed like everyone loved the Beat.

The Beat only ever released three studio albums. By the mid-’80s, two of the main members had moved on to form General Public, and two others had gone on to form Fine Young Cannibals. But neither of these bands would ever trump the Beat. And only the Beat had a senior Jamaican saxophone player named Saxa. You might think it was silly that the sax player was named Saxa. But it wasn’t. He was cool, even though he was old. Black musicians with beards and hats were already cool, and they looked even cooler when they were old. They got better. Not like Mr. Margison in the Thornhill Community Band, with his balding head that became red when he was angry. Saxa was still performing with the Beat in 1982. And ’82 was probably the best year for the English Beat. It was that year that the Beat released their third and final album,
Special Beat Service
, featuring the song “I Confess.” It was also that summer that they were playing for the last time with their original lineup.

The Beat were dazzling fun at the Police Picnic. Lead singer Dave Wakeling caught a Frisbee during “I Confess” and threw it back without missing a lyric. Ranking Roger was hopping around the stage, and Saxa was waving his arms between sax lines. Wendy really liked the Beat. We were dancing and
pogo-ing with our hands in the air. Forbes the punk was jumping around like a madman with his arms in the air, too. His flailing had the effect of exposing his hairy armpits. His armpits came very close to my head at times. He was tall. He was giving the finger to people in what seemed like a form of affection or appreciation, much like the way the punters had cheered for Siouxsie when she told us to fuck off. The fun was widespread and the mood in the stadium was undeniably unified. For a little while during the English Beat’s set at the Police Picnic, with the sun shining brightly and Wendy at my side, it really seemed like things couldn’t get much better. But events were about to take an unfortunate turn.

At some point, the promoters behind the second annual Police Picnic had thought it a good idea to include Joan Jett and the Blackhearts on the bill. After all, Joan Jett had a hit song and had come from some cool musical roots. She might sell tickets. She was a legit rocker when she formed the Runaways as a teenager in the 1970s, and she had worked with members of the Sex Pistols and X. But what the promoters misjudged was that Joan Jett had become very popular in the mainstream. And that was not cool. Not with this crowd.

Let me try to explain. There was a strong divide at the time between those who fancied themselves alternative and those who followed mainstream music. The alternative music lovers were really into the innovation and changes that were happening in music. They were strongly influenced by what was coming out of England or New York. There were sometimes noisy and harsh sounds. This new music would at times also incorporate many non-rock sources and influences. The enemy was the mainstream, the corporate American acts. They were seen as
being stuck in the past, manufacturing airbrushed “meat and potatoes” commercial radio songs, albeit with electric guitars. Joan Jett had been an alternative original, but after her slick, radio-friendly “I Love Rock ’n Roll” became ubiquitous that year, she was regarded as part of the mainstream. The enemy.

When Joan Jett hit the stage, the reaction wasn’t pretty. From the moment she and her band emerged from the wings, the crowd was less than welcoming. The New Wave and punk audience started booing her mercilessly. And even before Joan Jett played the first chord on her guitar, a banana peel came shooting out of the crowd and just missed her head. The band tore into their opening song and Joan Jett began singing, but the crowd reaction just got worse. Wendy and I were laughing at first, but within minutes we stood silent and alarmed as we watched everything and anything get thrown at Joan Jett. T-shirts, paper cups, smuggled-in beer bottles, Frisbees … Apparently, nothing was off limits or too good to be thrown at Joan Jett.

Forbes was pushing anyone in his vicinity and acting like a madman. He clearly took it very personally that Joan Jett had been allowed to take the stage. He was cursing and spitting and jumping up and down with his middle finger in the air. He was not alone. There were punters loudly booing all around us. The stubble-faced older guys to the right of Wendy had lost their warm disposition from when the Beat were onstage and were now screaming uncomplimentary words at Joan Jett. One of the stubble-faced guys threw his lit cigarette at the stage. This was a problem, because lit cigarettes don’t travel very far, and we were at least fifty feet away from Joan Jett. The cigarette landed on a girl with dyed-green hair two rows
in front of us. She turned around and gave us all a dirty look. But the stubble-faced guy’s point was to express anger at Joan Jett. And that’s what the lit cigarette did. At the end of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts’ first song, it was clear that things might escalate. The audience was in a violent mood. Wendy looked at me and said, “This is crazy. She’s going to get hurt.” I agreed and felt scared inside. But I didn’t let Wendy know I was scared.

When Joan Jett launched into a second song, the crowd went berserk and a new shower of items was thrown at the stage. I promise you, I’m not exaggerating this. I’d never seen anything like it, except for when referee Bruce Hood called an outrageous penalty against the Toronto Maple Leafs in the playoffs against the Islanders in the late ’70s. My dad took me to Maple Leaf Gardens to see that game. When the crowd started throwing debris on the ice at Bruce Hood, I also threw some popcorn—much to the disappointment of my father— but I was actually afraid of people throwing things at the ref. And that was just a hockey game. This was real life, where things were getting much more aggressive with Joan Jett.

Given that Wendy and I were relatively close to the stage, things that were being tossed from behind us were now landing near us or on our heads. Forbes was grabbing anything he could find and throwing it at Joan Jett. A bottle landed close to us, and Forbes picked it up off the ground and threw it, almost hitting the Blackhearts’ second guitarist. I had a feeling that something bad was about to happen. I wasn’t wrong.