PORTLAND, Maine — In 1977 Aerosmith rolled into town for a concert on the Portland campus of what was then the University of Maine at Portland-Gorham, now the University of Southern Maine.
“The band showed up in five cars with five women,” Rick Scala, a student volunteer who helped promote the show said. “Two Corvettes, two Porsches, and Steven Tyler in a limo. They all parked on the lawn right in front of the brand-new college gym named after my girlfriend’s father. I had to deal with that situation.”
Art Piteau was another volunteer who helped organize the concert. “The contract rider required a full turkey dinner for the band in their dressing room. I was just a college student at the time and did not have the money or the know-how to conjure up a feast like that,” he recalled. “So I met this contractual obligation by running up to the Kentucky Fried Chicken at Woodfords Corner.”
Those are just two of the stories from a new work of popular history by Ford Reiche called "A Long, Long Time Ago: Major Rock and Roll Concerts in Southern Maine, 1955-1977." Filled with anecdotes and photos as well as hundreds of images of concert posters and tickets, the book presents, year by year, the stories of the national acts (and some local ones) who played Portland, Lewiston, and Old Orchard Beach, entertaining the huge baby boomer generation that embraced rock and roll with a near-religious fervor.
Reiche, who graduated from Falmouth High School—the first big concert he ever attended, at the State Theatre in 1969, featured the Youngbloods—now lives in Freeport, has done a remarkable job of digging up information about venues, DJs, performers, and promoters from the last era before tours morphed into corporate extravaganzas.
Don’t believe that times have changed? Consider: in 1975, at the Lewiston Armory, you could have seen three bands—Mahogany Rush, Kansas, and Queen—for the princely sum of $5.00.
“A Long, Long Time Ago” was written, produced, and printed in Maine, and Reiche said simply, “Putting this book together was a blast.”
Although he spent countless hours on the project, he won’t profit from it. All the proceeds from the sale of the book are being donated to the Maine Historical Society.