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Jeff, my childhood friend from the suburbs, showed up at my inner-city apartment as I was finishing dinner. He said, “Wanna go to the Journey concert tonight?”
“You got tickets?” I asked.
“No.”
“I heard it’s sold out, and even if you can find a scalper this late it’ll be expensive.”
“I don’t want to pay to get in. I want to get in backstage.”
“What!?”
“Yeah, you just go to the backstage door and say you have a pass.”
“But you don’t have one, right?”
“No, but I hear about people doing it all the time.”
“I dunno, they’re not gonna let just anybody in.”
“Oh come on, man; let’s just give it a try. What’ve we got to lose?”
Jeff Needed a Wingman
His enthusiasm was infectious, yet I was getting the sense that he didn’t quite have the courage to try this stunt completely on his own; he needed me along for moral support if nothing else. In many ways, Jeff was like my little brother. We had grown up on the same street five doors apart. We played together, hung out, made each other laugh, double-dated, and shared secrets. We were very close, and he was one of my best friends.
I laughed, but I also admired his audacity for wanting to try. I decided that I was curious enough to see if it would work. “Okay, what the heck, let’s go; the Fox Theatre is only six blocks away, at worst I’ll have a nice after-dinner walk.”
Twenty minutes later, we arrived at the theater. It was April 23, 1978. I was 21 years old and Jeff was 19. Our hair was long, and we wore the popular clothes of the day: bellbottom pants, shiny multi-color print acetate long-sleeve shirts, and platform shoes. There were no crowds, everyone was already inside, and so we walked around the back and found what appeared to be a likely backstage door. Jeff knocked loudly, and we waited. Almost immediately, the door was opened by a big burly bearded man in overalls.
“Whadda ya want?” he demanded.
Jeff replied, “We have backstage passes.”
“Yeah, what name?” he looked down at a clipboard.
I piped in at the point, “Wilson.”
He ran his finger down a list, paused, and then said, “Okay, come on in.”
We walked into the dark backstage area and followed the sound of music.
Jeff whispered to me, “I can’t believe we got in.”
I whispered back, “Benefit of having a top-ten most common last name, there’s always a Wilson.”
Best Seats in the House
We found our way to the stage right wing. We’d missed the two opening acts, and Journey was just beginning to play. We stood behind a curtain that blocked us from the audience, but the band could see us quite well. Each member of the band glanced at us once, but then paid us no further attention, except for Steve Perry the lead singer. As we stood there through the first two songs, he kept looking over at us.
After the second song ended, Jeff spotted two empty seats in the front row in the center. He looked at me and said, “Let’s take those two seats.”
“Are you sure? What if somebody shows up with tickets for those seats?”
Jeff replied, “If nobody is sitting there now, they’re not coming. Let’s go!”
We quickly walked out onto the stage as discreetly as possible, turned right, down some side steps, and then over to the empty seats. And there we sat for the rest of the concert. During the concert, Steve Perry frequently stared at us. I’m sure he was wondering who we were based on the way we showed up in the wings, and then took the two best seats in the house.
An Amazing Manifester
When the concert ended, I turned to Jeff and said, “You did it, man; you got us into a Journey concert for free! And, front row center at that. I didn’t think it was possible.
I started to get up, but Jeff said, “Wait until everyone leaves, and the lights are up.”
“Why?”
“I want to get some free pot.”
I’d tried marijuana, but I didn’t like it. My default personality type is introverted, and I have to work hard emotionally to get out and mix and mingle with people, and smoking pot just intensifies my introversion, which is the opposite of what I want in a social setting. I was afraid that he wanted to go backstage again and see if he could get some from the band, and that made me nervous. I asked, “How?”
He replied, “During the concert, in the dark, stoned people lose lots of it on the floor. When the lights come back up, I’ll go look for it, but I want to wait until everyone is gone so no one knows what I’m doing.”
“Jeff, you’re a genius!”
After a while, Jeff started working his way back and forth along the rows of seats. He found a paper bag and started filling it up with small baggies of pot and rolled joints. By the time the cleaning crew arrived, Jeff was finished; he’d gathered more than an ounce of marijuana.
I looked at Jeff and said, “A free concert and free pot; you’ve had quite a night.”
“I have. I got everything I wanted tonight.”
It was a magically fun evening, but more than anything I was impressed with Jeff’s confidence and belief to manifest exactly what he set out to achieve.
Grief Denial Is a Real Thing
Seven years later, Jeff died in an automobile collision. I was devastated when his mother told me. I'd always heard that denial was one of the stages of grief, and I became stuck in that stage for years. Intellectually, I understood that Jeff was gone, but emotionally I couldn't accept it. I convinced myself that his mother must have lied to me for some unfathomable reason and that one day he'd show up at my door unexpectedly just like he did the night of the Journey concert. Eventually, I saw a newspaper clipping about Jeff's car wreck, and reality settled heavily into my chest. I sobbed wantonly in that moment as I finally accepted that Jeff was indeed gone.
The world lost a bright light; Jeff was a beacon of positivity with a powerful sense of life. These days I honor his memory whenever I think that something I want to accomplish is too difficult. I think back to that day and how everything he wanted had come true.
