5. The show doesn’t go on — twice In the summer of 1970, with the University on the edge of bankruptcy and following a year of campus protests that culminated in student strikes that effectively shut down the spring semester in early April, two quixotic and credulous fundraising campaigns were launched, their aim to finance a theater building. The first effort, promoted by local rock impressario Robert “Skip” Chernov and supported by the University administration, pinned hopes on a “Boston College Eagle Rock Festival,” scheduled for August 14 in Alumni Stadium and featuring 13 hours of Led Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Buddy Guy & Junior Wells, Mitch Ryder, and others. Neighbors, however, fearing “possible incidents, drug abuse, rioting, and hippies sleeping on the lawn,” according to the Globe, complained to Boston’s mayor Kevin White, who pulled the concert permit. (The Boston Phoenix reported that, according to Chernov, “Boston
photograph: Boston Public Library clipping: Heights Sept. 15, 1970
College had already made plans to open its dormitories to anyone with no place to stay in Friday night.”) With time running out, University President Seavey Joyce, SJ, asked Harvard administrators for the use of their stadium as a venue. Harvard declined, having incurred the wrath of its neighbors due to concert mishaps earlier in the summer. Eagle Rock organizers refunded some 10,000 tickets, and a few hippies who didn’t get the word—or comprehend it or care about it—did indeed show up and disported themselves on campus lawns. (The Harvard Crimson reported that Mayor White’s executive assistant and future Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank said “The city will offer B.C. a chance to recoup its losses with free use of the John B. Hynes Auditorium for a rock event later in the year . . . when things have cooled down.”) At around the same time, the genial Globe music critic Ernest Santosuosso ‘43 was interviewing Paul McCartney and asked the former Beatle if he’d perform a benefit concert that would support a University theater. McCartney tentatively agreed, and so plans were laid for “some sort of bubble structure, being either permanent or semi-permanent” that would be named for the musician, according to the Heights. Joe Maher ’71, JD’75, chairman of the University’s social committee, which was sponsoring the event, and Skip Chernov, who had a hand in this event as well, travelled to London to pin down the details with McCartney’s manager, but again the idea foundered due to unresolved security concerns. One skeptical city official who opposed the concert told the Globe that the University should decide if it is “going to continue as a tax-exempt educational institution or become a rock arena where spectators try to throw police to the lions.” Boston College would not have a theater building until Robsham —Thomas Cooper opened in 1981. f a l l 2013 v b c m
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