The title of this post is self explanatory. No catastrophic occurrences during these 3 gigs, just an overview of the events and a look back in time to the performances of these extremely successful bands at Maine Road, Manchester.
First up, Pink Floyd. The year was 1988 and Maine Road was now being used as a stadium concert venue. I attended my first football match here in 1975 and 13 years later it had changed very little, only perhaps more dilapidated. The facilities then compared to the 21st century all seater, no singing, no dancing football grounds were crude to say the least. What, no perfumed hand gels in the toilets? Well for the male toilets at the back of the Kippax Stand you had to wade through a river of urine and God knows what else just to reach the crumbling brick block.What, no Jamie Oliver cuisine? errr...no, have a horse-meat pie and like it! For football fans of my generation, we didn't know any different and for gigs the facilities were not much different from the match days.
Anyway, on to Pink Floyd. The stage was built at the Platt Lane end of the ground and the band had installed all their usual lights, props, big screens and so on. This was the Momentary Lapse of Reason tour. Roger Waters had departed acrimoniously a few years earlier and, for me, this diluted their set and performance. I hadn't seem them live before but knew that the 3 remaining original members were not the most demonstrative musicians in the world. This didn't concern me at all. However, the addition of 3 female backing singers and several other back up musicians was not to my taste at all. My only other vivid memory of the show itself was all the flying pig props etc flying over the audience and semi impressive lights but it all felt a bit weird and dislocating for me to be stood on the plastic covered hallowed turf in the middle of Moss Side watching what remained of this legendary band. I'd give it 6 out of 10.
Second, we have Fleetwood Mac. This concert was again staged at Maine Road and again in 1988. I quite liked Fleetwood Mac but was more of a fan of their earlier stuff and not so much the pop mainstream Tango in the Night glam 1980s era. Unusually, I attended this show with my sister, Marie. This was the first concert I had ever attended with her but would not quite be the last. I will digress slightly here as 12 months on from this show I went to see Transvision Vamp( I know, sorry) at the International 2, fronted by the blonde minx Wendy James, with some mates. The gig was packed to the rafters on a warm summer evening and I got very drunk indeed before the show. I joined the heaving throng near the stage and ended up ripping my shirt off and seeing out the performance bare chested (look I was 22 and playing football so my body can't have been that bad) and was convinced Wendy was impressed. Anyway, leaving with the packed crowd (still bare chested) I , incredibly, bumped into my sister (she'd left home and was living the student life so I didn't even know she was at the gig). In front of her and her mates I shouted incoherently towards her, undoubtedly looking the complete bare chested balloon. I could hear one of her mates say "who's that?!", to which she replied, "errr, that's my brother". I think I may have responded with "Whoooaaahhh, Go on! Get in! You know it makes sense!" or some such nonsense.
Anyway, back to Fleetwood Mac. Similarly to Pink Floyd, they were also missing a valuable member, Lindsay Buckingham. He had refused to tour their current album and again the show was diluted for me. The rest of the night was only memorable for the vocal performance of the delightful ex-cocaine enthusiast Stevie Nicks. 5 out of 10 for this one.
Finally, we move on to August 1991 and another live concert visit to the crumbling old ground to see the Scottish stadium rockers Simple Minds. The audience for this show was markedly different to the other 2 in this post. The Pink Floyd crowd was largely male and older than me at the time, blokes in their 30s and 40s. Fleetwood Mac was more of a mixed affair with men and women of all ages. SM, however, was largely an under 30s crowd of beery lads, of which I was definitely one at the time. I wasn't a massive fan of SM but was familiar with a few of their albums and was told they came into their own in a live show. This proved to be the case. Unlike the aforementioned static 1988 shows this was an audience who wanted to bounce...and bounce a lot. I scrambled down to the front with my associate and joined the heaving masses for the first hour. I have to admit, Jim Kerr and the band were very, very good. The atmosphere was rowdy but controlled and songs such as Waterfront, Don't You Forget About Me etc were made for performing in front of a stadium audience. Mid set my mate and I took a break and headed over to the Kippax Stand to sit on the terraces where I had stood countless times before. We later joined the masses again to see out the show. Unexpectedly, this had proved to be the most enjoyable night of the three I spent at Maine Road concerts. 9 out of 10 for this one.
I later turned down the chance to see Oasis here in 1996 .I had seen a rather shambolic performance by them pre-Noel Gallagher in 1993 (see post elsewhere on my blog site) and have never been a fan.
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