What the roadies saw at the Castle Farms Poison concert

Faithful SooToday.com readers will recall us telling you earlier this year about Duane Roy from Wawa writing a book about the rock-and-roll years at Castle Farms in Charlevoix, Michigan.

Well, today, we're happy to tell you that Castle Stories: A Rock and Roll Scrapbook is now published and available for Christmas giving.

Printed by Alloways in Blind River, it's available for $25 Canadian or US$28 (includes shipping & handling) from www.duaneroy.com   ISBN - 978-0-9811629-0-4

The following is a copyrighted excerpt, published with permission of the author.

SooToday.com cautions that rock and roll fans get a little, er, crazy at times and portions of this article may offend readers who don't get out much.

*************************** Whitesnake 1987

Since we had been at the Castle for roughly ten hours, it was time to try and track down my Mother and the rental car so that we could rest and relax. 

Wandering around looking for a specific car was decidedly difficult as thousands of people and vehicles clogged every possible space in the area. 

To the uninitiated the place looked like a war zone with all the lights, mounted police, and screaming people. 

We witnessed a real spectacle in the parking lot, a story that was never relayed to my mother until now. 

A guy in a car (the reports vary from a Grand Prix to a Monte Carlo) decided for whatever reason - be it alcohol, drugs, impatience or maybe he was just an a$$hole (that’s what I would agree on) - decided that the crowd wasn’t moving fast enough. 

He proceeded to run into some people, this number also varies from one to as many as 10; the fact being there was some issue that was important enough to this driver that he felt compelled to run people over. 

Needless to say this didn’t impress the throngs of pumped-up fans and they took their collective aggression out on this vehicle. 

I believe the car ended up getting seriously damaged and during the research stage of this book I got a few e-mails about this very incident. 

Every story conflicted as to the end of the ordeal but everyone was in agreement that the car was in rough shape and may have been resting on its roof. 

We wisely decided this was a story for the schoolmates and not for the parents to pontificate on. 

It would be a hard sell for a return Castle visit if this story ever got out. 

In the end we did locate our ride home and I’m sure we were just a jabbering mess of teenaged excitement for the first telling of our concert adventures. 

AC-DC 1988

During this time, another Wawa guy decided that his girlfriend, for whatever reason, had wronged him. 

She had said something or talked to the wrong person and figured that he should show his never-ending devotion to her by driving his pickup truck rather erratically in a circular fashion. 

This truck was equipped with wide "mag" tires, and with the morning dew already on the grass, the truck was difficult to control, especially when combined with the large amount of alcohol he had consumed. 

These factors caused the truck and its occupant to careen into the very cottage that he had rented. 

We were standing out of harm's way but heard a commotion that sounded like all hell had broke loose. 

The wall the truck had driven through was a wall that had a couch against it, and luckily the occupant of this couch was not harmed. 

The couch was driven across the entire cottage and the occupant didn’t even wake up. 

More than likely he was sleeping with his buddy Jack, Jim, or the Captain, someone like that. 

The events are a little confusing after that.

The police arrived.

The owner of the campground was very irate.

The gas company, the electric company, the phone company, and the Army Corp of Engineers also arrived. 

Well, maybe not all of those agencies, but there were a lot of flashing lights there. 

Judas Priest 1988

We all departed at roughly the same hour, and for a few moments on the interstate with the wind blowing in my face, I felt pretty good. 

That sensation lasted until my old truck reached about 75 miles per hour.

That’s when the vomit “was on deck.” 

Vomiting while travelling down a highway isn’t good and I tried to pull over as quickly and safely as possible. 

I jumped out of the truck oblivious to the traffic and ran to the side of the road leaving the truck door wide open. 

All the while being beeped at by other concert-goers travelling north and I may have “flown the bird” a few times to salute the other people. 

I vomited up gum I swallowed when I was seven and the quarters I swallowed when I was four. 

After a few apocalyptic hurls, I noticed I was bleeding from the nose.

I had vomited with such intensity that I ended up with a bloody nose. 

No matter what circles you travel in, that is some serious puking. 

That hangover still scares me to this day.

Drinking isn’t worth a hangover like that and I vowed to never drink again as we all have promised to ourselves in those situations. 

There was still one more concert left this summer and in only seven days we would return to Charlevoix again and that hangover was fresh in my mind for a long, long while.

Poison 1989

The concert was a sea of acid wash, Day-Glo and spandex; those fashions have luckily died, but back then it was the usual attire. 

Since the previous month’s Metallica show, we wore jeans, black shirts, or skater shorts all around. 

I remember watching the crowd and thinking that there were thousands of girls there and it should be pretty easy to get laid. 

Around that time I spotted an interesting sight - boobs, and big ones at that. 

Far be it for me to indulge in such sights alone, and I quickly elbowed the boys and we were lucky enough to see not only breasts but the complete range of female genitalia. 

There were four girls who were showing their collective goods to the roadies who were setting up the stage. 

These girls had seats near the mixing board and I think the roadies on stage and the sound guys were talking back and forth on radios and relaying messages. 

These girls who were of the large-breasted, short-skirt-wearing variety were quickly worked their way into backstage passes.

I think the final shot of them showing their baby makers convinced everyone that they were serious. 

It had really convinced us and since my buddy’s girlfriend labelled them as sluts, well we couldn’t argue. 

Backstage passes were handed over to these girls and the rest is history. 

I’m sure there were some interesting activities backstage, and I would wager that those acid-wash skirts were on the floor of a tour bus later on that night. 

Ozzy 1989

The hotel across the street had an interior courtyard where all the vehicles parked and we walked across it when I spotted a familiar face. 

It wasn’t Keith the alcoholic roadie, it was Ozzy frickin’ Osbourne himself!

I remember saying to Jason, “Holy f*ck, there’s Ozzy!”

And of course utterly dumbfounded by that statement, he muttered, “Where?” 

It was pretty obvious - black pants, black shirt, lots of tattoos and gold jewellery, and little four-year-old Jack Osbourne held his father’s hand. 

Luckily for us, we had grabbed a camera and a few scraps of paper from the hotel and ran over to Ozzy like idiots and asked for his autograph and picture.

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