Jammed into the railing, Simpson felt the breath being squeezed out of him. Then saw a yellow jacket-clad coliseum employee approach the door he was standing in front of, unlock it and walk away. ![]() "(It looked like) if they opened too many doors, they thought they were going to get trampled or something." "It was almost like the (staff) inside looked panicked, like they didn't know what to do," Ellen says. show passed, restless fans, some of whom could hear the band's sound check inside, began pounding on the glass doors. the scheduled time for doors to open for the 8 p.m. As the time for the doors to open approached, the crowd grew more and more impatient.Īs 7 p.m. And when the doors did open, not enough were opened to relieve the crush of the crowd pressing to get up close and personal with the Who.Īt the front of the crowd, the concert-goers were feeling the press of people behind them. One eyewitness reported a group of males who were charging into the perimeter of the crowd and amusing themselves with the waves they sent rippling through it.īut it is also clear that the venue was understaffed and security - 25 security people outnumbered over 700-to-one by the crowd outside - was inadequate, and that, given the size of the gathering crowd, waiting until the last minute to open the doors represented poor judgment at best. It seems likely that the Dirty Fucking Hippies™ in the crowd were, as accused later, consuming alcohol and other less-legal commodities. Reports of exactly what happened are confused and sometimes contradictory. By 2:00 pm, the first of the eager crowd was already starting to gather on the plaza outside the Coliseum.Īs concert time approached, the crowd swelled to near the sold-out capacity of the venue. The doors were to open at 7:00 pm for the 8:00 concert. Only about 3,500 tickets were for reserved seats everyone else was in land-rush mode. More than 14,000 of those were for either festival admission to the open floor or unreserved seats. Things looked pretty much as they had in 1976.ġ8,348 tickets were sold for the December 3 concert. In December, 1979, over three years after the Committee's report, the "orderly process" was still underway, apparently, though to an outside observer, it was difficult to detect anything that might be identified as 'in process'. The Committee further recommends that the Riverfront Coliseum management be granted the necessary time to reduce "Festival Seating" events through an orderly process, rather than through some type of official control or regulation.Ĭincinnati Enquirer, '76 Study Recommended Coliseum Reduce 'Festival Seating' In 1976, barely a year after the Coliseum opened, they issued their report, with a decidedly "free market" conclusion: To that end, the city of Cincinnati appointed a task force to study the problem. Riverfront Coliseum utilized both types.īut in either form, it could also be dangerous injuries were common, and it seemed obvious that something very bad was going to happen if steps weren't taken to mitigate the danger. The former, especially, became popular with concert promoters due to the ability to pack more people into a venue (and at the same time, make it difficult to get accurate crowd counts to enforce occupancy restrictions), and to get more of the most exuberant fans closest to the stage to gin up the excitement level. Alternatively, it can also mean simply no assigned seating, with the seats available on a first-come-first-served basis. A tragedy seemed inevitable.Įntertainment Weekly EW.com: The Who's Nightmare Concertįestival, or open, seating can mean an arrangement in which there are no seats, where concert goers stand for the performance. The first-come, first-sit scheme was used at other rock arenas with relative safety, but in the Coliseum it seemed to bring on stampedes at the entrances. The following year, a violent seat-seeking mob rushed a locked entrance before a performance by Led Zeppelin, resulting in 60 arrests and numerous injuries.īlame for these incidents fell on the Coliseum's general-admission ticket policy, known as festival seating. ![]() Fans threw fireworks during a 1976 Yes concert there. They needed the concerts and other non-sport activities to pay the bills.Īnd so, however reluctantly, they became concert promoters.īy the late '70s, Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati had built a reputation for allowing crowds to run way out of control. But the harsh reality was that minor league hockey and Cincinnati Bearcat basketball was not going to be able to cover the nut on the multi-million-dollar facility. The last thing they wanted was a bunch of Dirty Fucking Hippies™ contaminating their nice, clean arena. They were sports people, and the coliseum, opened in September, 1975, was intended as a sports venue. The people running Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati didn't really want to be in the concert business.
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