I’m referring, of course, to Memorial Day weekend, 1983, when close to 30,000 Southern Rock fans jammed the Fredericksburg Agricultural Fairgrounds to hear Molly Hatchet, the Outlaws and Blackfoot.
Hatchet, purveyor of such redneck anthems as "Flirtin’ With Disaster," "Son of the South" and "Gator Country," will be back in town June 12 at Celebrate Virginia Live, after more than two decades—and untold bottles of beer and whiskey under the bridge.
I covered the ’83 concert for The Free Lance-Star, with then-reporter Steve Giegerich. At that time, the small-town feel of Fredericksburg was palpable. Swinging by Carl’s Frozen Custard for a milkshake was about as lively as it got on spring weekends.
A few weeks before the event, when promoters announced the bands were booked at the privately owned fairgrounds, city and Spotsylvania County fathers were aghast at the prospect of thousands of wild, young, tattooed, Confederate-flag-waving youth converging on our fair ‘burg.
Neighbors weighed in, for and against—mostly against. What about traffic, drinking, vandalism, etc?
I grabbed my notebook and headed out early because the roads were gridlocked. Cars were backed up well north of the Falmouth Bridge and traffic was so bad at some spots downtown there were impromptu parties in the streets.
It was sunny, with a crisp blue sky. Most of those clutching tickets ($10 in advance, $15 at the gate) were high-schoolers and men and women in their early 20s, ready to party, though some were older. But more frightening for Fredericksburgers: Motorcycles were everywhere. And Confederate flags, on T-shirts, bandanas and flapping from vehicles, didn’t sit well with folks in the mostly black Mayfield neighborhood nearby.
Hilariously, some Spotsylvania County officials stood guard at the entrance of the former FMC plant - now the Spotsylvania Industrial Park across the the fairgrounds - to keep out would-be trespassers. The county had denied a request to open the property to cars from the concert.
By the 2 p.m. show time, some in the crowd were already drunk or well on the way. The 7-Eleven nearby hired extra people for the day, knowing it would be selling more beer, cigarettes and refreshments than it had ever imagined.
When the warm-up band cranked up, I was standing near the front row under a towering bank of speakers. The bass was so intense that each note rumbled in my gut and rhythmically poofed back my hair and clothes. “Cool,” I thought . I could picture such a scene at VCU in Richmond where I was a student not too long before, but not here.
After a couple songs, I moved away from the stage to talk to some people, realizing that I could barely hear. I made my way through the crowd to a spot where a big circle had formed and people were cheering. In the middle were several bikers wrestling—fighting?—in a muddy, boozy puddle.
Farther back, shirtless men were furtively making trips to the fence, where their buddies were handing over beer-laden coolers.
Not wanting to miss an opportunity, Mayfield entrepreneurs were selling beer over the fence for as much as $15 a six-pack—about three times the going price - "the ultimate black market," one man told me, smiling.
The raucous crowd roared when Hatchet front man Danny Joe Brown finally took the stage around 8:45.
Around 10, the promoter announced it was time to go home. “If we do it cool, we can do it again,” he said.
Only no one thought it would be 26 years.
Rusty Dennen covers military affairs and the environment for The Free Lance-Star. He joined the newspaper in 1977.