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The show started around 8:00 PM, with many excellent blues groups. The young couple in the seats behind us kept saying ‘Can’t wait to see John Lee, can’t wait to see John Lee’, on and off most of the night. Each had a bottle of Jack Daniels. By the time JLH came out to perform, around 1:00 AM, the couple had finished both bottles and were sound asleep. I couldn’t wake them up, it was lights out for them!

"By the time JLH came out to perform, around 1:00 AM, the couple had finished both bottles and were sound asleep. I couldn’t wake them up, it was lights out for them!"

I knew a guy who was a professional stage hand, and one time he worked a Jerry Lee Lewis concert. Lewis's contract specified that a bottle of a certain brand of whisky be on his piano, and that there be a shot ready to drink during the show.

Two hours before the show, they realized that they didn't have the required whiskey, so my friend was dispatched to the area bars to try to find a bottle. At the third or fourth bar, he finally bribed the bartender to let him buy a bottle and illegally remove it from the premises. He got back to the venue just before showtime, filled the glass with whiskey, and put the bottle on the piano.

Jerry Lee put on a good show, and afterwards the stage hands realized he hadn't even touched the whisky; it apparently served only as a prop and/or security blanket. So the stage hands drank the whisky themselves.

A similar thing happened to me at a Bruce Springsteen concert in Denver in the 80s. I shouldn’t say happened because I brought it on myself. I was awake but didnt remember much afterwards. It was at Mile High stadium and he had cancelled the night before because of the weather. So the second night they put on long underwear and toughed it out.It was September. I do have a snapshot of a snowman in downtown Casper I saw on the way down.