Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.Â
Those were the first words on MTV when it hit the air in 1981, ushering in a new era of music.Â
Welcome to the 1980s in our Timeless Tickets series, a time in music history defined by the rise of synth-pop, punk rock and a future Goliath known as hip-hop. Music videos reigned supreme and glitz and glam floated to the surface.Â
Michael Jackson and Madonna — neither of whom ever came to the Quad-Cities — achieved unheard of levels of pop stardom and dominated the charts.
It was also an era of musical fragmentation. Subgenres on subgenres. Counterculture became culture and then back again. There was a clear line between heavy metal and arena metal, synth-pop and new wave. The early mechanisms of what we now call indie rock took shape.Â
People are also reading…
It was also loud, much like the tail end of the 1970s in the Quad-Cities, when massive outdoor music festivals were all the craze. But don't worry, we got one more of those in 1980. More on that later.
First, let's take a moment to enjoy the quiet.
Too quiet.
Eerily silent, like the power's gone out and the room is full of echoes. Because on one night in Davenport, on Aug. 20, 1980, that was the scene.Â
'It was just like magic'
Harry Chapin came to the Quad-Cities twice in 1980.
For the second visit, in September, he appeared at Augustana's Centennial Hall as part of a benefit concert for world hunger. He donated his entire fee to the cause, and let any volunteers working toward the cause into the show for free.Â
That was Chapin. By the late 1970s, he'd made raising money to fight poverty and hunger as important a piece of his identity as his folksy hit songs.Â
A month before that benefit show in Rock Island, Chapin came to Davenport to play at a different college venue, Palmer Auditorium. At the time, he was six years removed from his biggest Billboard hit, "Cat's in The Cradle," a still-iconic ballad about parenthood and aging.Â
It was a stormy day when Chapin came to Davenport. Gale Francione, then in her early 20s, had tickets to see the show with a bunch of friends. She remembers seeing the sky build all day long before the 8 p.m. concert.
Tickets cost between $6 and $9, and the show was presented by local theater Circa '21.Â
By the time the show started, there was still some late-summer daylight. Francione remembers hearing thunder crack outside. She looked through the glass door to see the sky — dark and threatening.Â
Minutes before Chapin was scheduled to go on stage, the power cut out. The lights went dark, the venue illuminated only by emergency lights sneaking in from the foyer.Â
Still, Chapin took the stage. He beckoned fans in the distant bleachers to come near. The hundreds of fans moved inward, much to Francione's chagrin, she jokes, as she'd paid to be up close.
Any frustration quickly waned when Chapin and his band started to play their set, entirely acoustic.
"For me, it was just like magic," Francione said. "Because we don't need all that noise. We don't need all that sound. It was a quiet, lovely concert. It could have been in a coffee house."
Sherm Sweeney, a Quad-Citian who was 24 at the time of the show, remembers the booming voice of backing vocalist "Big" John Wallace.
"He had probably the most vocal range of anyone I've ever heard," he said.
Sweeney also remembers Chapin playing "Dancin' Boy," and bringing out his then 9-year-old son Joshua, the cat himself. After about a half hour, the power came back and the show went on as planned.Â
Still, those in the crowd never forgot the quiet.Â
Less than a year later, in July 1981, Chapin died in a car accident in Long Island. Of course, he was on his way to a benefit concert.
His headstone in New York carries lyrics from his song "I Wonder What Would Happen To This World":Â "Oh if a man tried / to take his time on Earth / and prove before he died / what one man's life could be worth / I wonder what would happen / to this world."
Credit Island rocks for final time
Just five days after Chapin's quiet and affecting show in Davenport, it was loud again. Rock and roll returned to Credit Island for the first time since Mississippi River Jam in 1978.Â
This time, the bill was a bit tamer, led by Sammy Hagar and REO Speedwagon. The show itself was far from a sure thing, even a week before the fest.
The Rock Island Argus reported on Aug. 20, 1980, that the concert's promoter Celebration Productions had doubled their advertising budget. They branded the rock fest with their expected 28,000 in attendance, but had only sold 8,000 tickets. The Argus cited the bursting prevalence of outdoor festivals across the Midwest as a hindrance to demand.Â
Still, the show went on. Around 17,000 attended, the Argus estimated. There were few arrests. The crowd was content. The Davenport Firefighters Association left with a donation of $12,500 from the ticket sales revenue. It was a success.
Surely, Credit Island would rock and roll again. But they didn't. Parking remained an issue, as did environmental concerns.Â
Things got even more complicated when less than a month after the show, Celebration Productions' president Bruce Kapp was indicted in Chicago on 12 counts of mail and wire fraud for underreporting attendances at a series of Soldier Field concerts Celebration promoted in 1977.Â
In many ways, this arrest was tangential to local music.
But it also coincided with the end of an era. Credit Island never got a major rock festival again. Instead, focus turned to a different outlet for local outdoor music: the Mississippi Valley Fair, which attracted Quiet Riot, Joan Jett and Willie Nelson in the early half of the decade alone.Â
Kapp's career, on the other hand, shouldered on. He pleaded guilty in 1981 and received a $1,000 fine and a six month prison-work release sentence. As of his death in 2008, he was the senior vice president of Live Nation, the largest live entertainment company in the world.
This story is part of a series called "Timeless Tickets," where we're aiming to find the most notable concert in the Quad-Cities, every year from 1960 to today. Do you have a story or photo to share from an iconic local show? Send it to entertainment reporter Gannon Hanevold at ghanevold@qctimes.com.Â
To read more "Timeless Tickets" stories, click here.Â