You Really Got Me: The Kinks, a girlfriend and a shady character

It was 1972, I was 23, teaching on Long Island. My adventurous girlfriend had rented a small apartment in New York. The kind of neighborhood where if you left your second-story window open, a burglar crawled through.

The night that happened, Deirdre was alone, but she knew how to take care of herself. She offered the guy a cigarette, talked him out of attempted robbery and sent him on his way.

“Weren’t you scared?” I asked. “No, I’m from Chicago,” she shrugged.

Now she was inviting me into the city for a rock concert. The Kinks at Madison Square Garden.

This was a big deal for me, a Kinks fan since the age 15 when the raw, insistent sound of  “You Really Got Me” really got me. But I’d never seen them live. They’d been missing in action for much of the Sixties, banned from performing in the United States. The reasons were murky. Something about their rowdy on stage behavior and an irate musicians union. But somehow the problem had gone away.  Now they were back with a new album, “Everybody’s in Show Biz,” and a US tour. All we needed were tickets.

We set out into a cold November night, elated, more than a little high.

But by the time we reached the Garden, a place I’d never been before, I was worried. What if it was sold out? As I headed to the box office, a young guy intercepted me, offering cut-rate tickets. I’d never bought tickets from a scalper before. Were they legit? They looked real. The date was right. Deirdre gave me the nod. She liked beating the system.

The moment he handed over the tickets, the scalper bolted. My exhilaration at scoring seats was diminished by the sight of him racing off, pursued by a uniformed cop who had witnessed the illegal transaction.

I held my breath, expecting the worst. Perhaps handcuffs and a night in jail for all of us. But the scalper was fast, he had good moves. He escaped into the night. Relieved, Deirdre and I made it to the escalator before the cop returned. As we rose, we could hear the crowd inside the arena. But once inside I froze.

Down below was a brightly lit ice rink. Large guys with sticks were skating on it. I felt a clammy chill.

“Can I help you?” asked an usher. In a daze, I managed to stutter, “I was expecting the Kinks.”

The usher did what any self-respecting New Yorker would have done: He laughed in my face and betrayed my pathetic ignorance to the boisterous crowd. “This kid thinks he’s at a rock concert!”

The jeers were deafening.

Slinking back to the lobby, we sorted out what had gone wrong. Turns out there were two venues at Madison Square Garden. The main arena hosting the New York Rangers vs. the Philadelphia Flyers, and the smaller Felt Forum featuring the Kinks. The scalper had sold us hockey tickets. By this time, I was kind of wishing he hadn’t evaded arrest.

Defeated, I turned to leave. But Deirdre was not giving up. She was from Chicago.

At first, her scheme didn’t work. The “I’ve heard it all before” woman in the ticket booth wasn’t buying Deirdre’s story, but she persisted and eventually, a supervisor intervened. “We came to see the Kinks and you sold us these ice hockey tickets instead,” Deirdre pleaded, in just the right tone of injured innocence.

To my astonishment, the supervisor relented. He even began apologizing. “Look, we’ve been having a little trouble here at the box office. You know, some mix ups. Lot going on. So tell you what I’m gonna do, you kids keep this to yourselves, don’t tell anybody about this, and I’m gonna comp you. Follow me.”

This was getting weird.

He unlocked a door and led us into a tunnel maze. After what seemed like an endless journey — think of Spinal Tap lost backstage  — we came to another locked door. The man who answered looked like his name should be “Vinnie.” I didn’t know much about mobsters, but I’d seen “The Godfather” that year and this gentleman struck me as someone likely to be acquainted with gangsters.   

“We’ve got a little problem,” the supervisor explained. It appeared as if we’d entered some private high stakes poker game with men wearing visors seated around a table under glaring lights. It took me awhile, but it finally dawned on me. They were counting the take. In this concert era when cash still took precedence over credit cards, there were large piles of tickets and abundant green stacks of money.

“Vinnie” listened to our story, contemplatively chewing on a cigar. He eyed Deirdre and me up and down, mostly Deirdre. The guys at the table kept counting, but slower. They were listening, too. I thought, “We’re doomed.”

Instead, Vinnie shrugged, and said, “Hey, mistakes happen. Sorry to inconvenience you kids. Don’t worry, I’m gonna take care of you.”

And with that Vinnie escorted us out the door, through the tunnel, past slouching security guards who snapped straight when they saw him, and up some stairs to a door that led us out, abruptly, into face-slapping cold. I suddenly wised up: “This guy is throwing us out. The game’s up.”

There was a throng of swirling long-haired kids who looked like Deirdre and me, jostling to get inside to see the Kinks, but apparently ticketless and agitated. I was ready to disappear into the crowd. These folks would protect us. But Vinnie pulled us along, muscling his way through the crowd, shoving people aside. My generation glared at me. What the hell was I — one of them — doing with this thug in a suit? 

Embarrassed, I kept my head down. I also began to fear the worst — that Vinnie was about to turn us over to the cops, or worse, to associates who might take us for a ride.

But when we came to a stop at the locked glass doors, Vinnie pounded until a guard let us in and then slammed it shut as the crowd pressed in behind us. We followed Vinnie across the lobby and through the auditorium doors, right down the aisle to something like third row center seats.

“There you go!” he shouted over the piped-in warmup music. “Enjoy the show!” Then drawing me close to him and looking directly into my eyes, he said, “Just remember, kid, don’t tell anybody about this.”

And until now, I never have.

In concert, the Kinks were so good that by the time they sang “Lola,” I’d stopped looking over my shoulder to see if security was headed our way. 

But you know what? I’ve never bought another ticket from a scalper. Whenever I’m tempted outside a baseball stadium or a rock concert, I have visions of Vinnie. He’d never let me get away with this twice.

Stephen Talbot has been making documentaries for public TV since the Clash released “London Calling.” Starting at KQED in San Francisco, Talbot became a longtime producer for the PBS series FRONTLINE. He is executive producer of the music show, “Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders.'' He's writing a series of personal essays, including this on the home birth of his daughter, Caitlin.