Today in Pop Culture: Who’s Still Alive?

By Jeffery X Martin

Around noon, on this date in 1979, a small crowd of music lovers gathered outside the doors of Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati, Ohio. They were smart fans. There was a concert that night. The ticket-holders had gotten there early because of a practice called “festival seating,” which laid out the promise of excellent seats on the floor, if you could get them. First come, first served. Think of it as fighting over a baseball which has popped up into the stands, except on a larger level.

The band playing that night was a small British outfit called The Who.

It was their first tour of the States since the death of their drummer, Keith Moon. They were still relying heavily on material from their last album, Who’s Next?, while working in some new stuff from the Face Dances album, which wouldn’t be released until 1981.

The crowd outside the doors had grown by 3:00 p.m., and the police were called in for crowd control. Coliseum management informed the officers that they couldn’t open the doors yet. They didn’t have enough ticket-takers, and the union wouldn’t allow scab workers to take over those positions. Yes, there is a union for ticket-takers. It was a seething recipe for disaster.

The show was due to start at 8:00 that night. By the time 7:00 rolled around, the doors to the Coliseum still weren’t open. There were over 8,000 people outside. Around 7:30, the crowd had reached critical mass. A rush and a push and one of the sets of glass doors shattered. The crowd poured in through the two broken doors, The police were outnumbered and powerless for approximately 15 minutes as thousands of fans swarmed the Coliseum, jockeying for position, looking for the best seats from which to see the rock show.

It took around 15 more minutes for the crowd to become somewhat manageable. By the time, police officers were able to take a look around, 11 people were dead, trampled in the mad rush. Authorities were worried about what would happen if they cancelled the show; police certainly weren’t prepared for a riot. So the show went on. The band was not told about the loss of life in the crowd until after the final encore.

Cincinnati ended up banning festival seating for almost 24 years after the stampede at The Who’s show. The show’s promoter was sued by the families of the victims and paid out $150,000 in damages to each one.

Why does rock and roll engender violence? Hear Popshifter Managing Editor Less Lee Moore and featured contributor Jeffery X Martin discuss this subject on The Official Popshifter Podcast.