Uriah Heep hit the Allen stage on Friday July 28, 1972. White Trash (the Apple Records group) were supposed to open. For weeks ahead of time people were calling and asking, “is that Edgar Winter’s White Trash?” “No, it’s not.” White Trash were in some sort of barroom brawl in Chicago, and drummer Bobby Ramirez was killed, so they were unable to appear. Damnation, the local group opened. For some reason the usual group we used as ushers were unavailable, so we scrounged up some people from everywhere, they were the worst, most of them quickly vanished into the crowd once the doors opened. At the end of the night only about 2-3 of the flashlights were returned. The Allen had no working air conditioning, and it was hotter than hell in there. It was also quite a rowdy night, one of the torchlights on the east mezzanine was smashed by some bozo. Smitty and I tackled some guy who was about to toss one of those big brass standee poles over the side of the mezzanine. The show was briefly stopped when a bunch of people climbed into one of the false boxes on the house right side. One of the more amusing incidents was a group of people climbing a vertical ladder alongside the stage that led to the roof, when the top guy peeked over the top and saw a policeman there, he jumped down a rung causing a chain reaction, along with a few bruised fingers. This was also the first show in Cleveland to ban bottles and cans, something I seriously claim credit for. I had read a few weeks earlier in Variety where they implemented a no bottle policy at the Kansas City Midland and said we should do the same. It would solve a lot of problems, people throwing bottles, plus the cost of having them hauled away afterwards.
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