The First One - Madison Square Garden - 19 March, 1984

If you've ever watched 'Sing Blue Silver' and wondered if it really was THAT loud let me tell you straight off.....YES, it really was THAT loud.
Maybe even louder...and it was glorious.

and this is how it began.


One morning upon my arrival at school Eileen happens to mention:
”Oh by the way, Duran Duran tickets are going on sale at 10:00 this morning”
She was so calm and casual about it I wanted to smack her. I didn’t. Instead I grabbed her arm and started screaming
”Oh my God! We MUST get tickets!”
”How can we do that? We’re stuck in school”
”Follow me!”
I grabbed her arm, and I pulled her upstairs to the main office. I slapped my hands down on the Secretary’s desk and yelled
”I have to call my mother at work!”
The Secretary looked at us, and she asks me
”Is this an emergency?”
Eileen and I look at each other and scream,
”YES!”
(I am laughing as I type this, it was so funny)
”Well, ok”
says the Secretary, and she hands me the phone.
My mother was working in New York City at the time, and I figured that she could call Ticketron for us. I wasn’t exactly sure, but I knew that we HAD to get tickets. And I knew that my mother would help us.
”Mom! It’s me!”
I shouted into the phone
”Are you OK, why are you calling me? You sound funny”
”MOM! Duran Duran tickets go on sale today in an hour and you HAVE to get tickets for us!”
My mother was silent, and then the Secretary frowned at me.
My mom didn’t ask me any annoying questions. She didn’t ask, ‘Do you really need to go?’ or ‘Is it on a school night’, nothing like that. She only asked me,
”How many should I get?”
”Get as many as you can, I know at least eight people that want to go”
”And they’ll pay me back?”
”Of course!”
”Ok, I’ll try. I can’t promise, but I will try”
”Thanks, Mom…you’re the BEST!
”OK, I’ll call you back later”
I hung up the phone and the Secretary frowned at me again.
”THAT was the big emergency?”
”YES!”
Eileen and I shouted in unison at her, and we ran down the stairs and back to the Commons to try and calm down. I was so distracted for the rest of the day. Around lunchtime, I was paged to come up to the main office because I had a phone call. When I got to the main office the Secretary tells me that my mother called, and that she’ll be calling me back in two minutes. So I waited. Then, the phone rang, it was my Mom.
”Ok, I got the tickets”
”All right how many? Where are they? How much were they?”
”I don’t remember all that but I could only get six tickets, which was the maximum. I couldn’t get through on the phone, and I was just about to call a messenger service and have them go to the box office at Madison Square Garden, but then I finally got through”
I started getting the evil eye from the Secretary and I told my Mom that I had to go.
”Thanks Mom, you are the best, I love you”
”I love you, too. See you later”

I hung up the phone, and thanked the Secretary
”Thanks so much. I really appreciate this”
She smiled at me and said,
”You’re welcome”

Finally the day of the concert arrived. School that day was practically unbearable. After school Eileen, Traci and Colleen came over, and Mickie walked over from across the street. We piled into my Dad’s Nissan Station wagon, and we drove onto New York City. We were listening to WLIR and they mentioned the concert. We started screaming, and my poor Dad had to cover his ears.
When we got to New York City, we parked the car and headed over to the McDonalds that is across the street from the Garden. The dining area is upstairs, and I’ll never forget the sight of that dining room packed full of Duranies. They were everywhere, and most of them (including myself) had grey fedoras on.

After that, we walked over to the Garden, and it was crazy. There were girls everywhere and they (like us) were all hyped up and crazy. We hit the souvenir stand first. I got the grey tour shirt, the program, the set of buttons and the set of posters. My dad got the blue tour shirt, and a program as well.
”Do you really want the shirt with their picture on it?” my Dad asked,
”Of course!”
”Well, I don’t think I can get away with that, so I got the blue one instead”
I laughed, and we walked to our seats. When we got there, I could barely sit. I was so antsy and excited. I couldn’t believe that I was finally going to get to see Simon in person. About twenty minutes before the opening act came on all the girls started screaming. Over in one of the luxury boxes there were five guys who looked kind of like the Duran guys. They were probably just look-alikes, or decoys or something but MAN the Garden went nuts. We all started screaming. I knew it wasn’t really them but it just made me realize how crazy it would get once the real Duran Duran came onstage. As the minutes went on, I got even more impatient.
The opening band was totally lame. They were called ‘Prince Charles’ or something like that and they were pretty crappy. The only thing I remember about their performance was that they had a song that went “Pennies, nickels, dimes quarters, dollar bills’ and that they kept repeating that line over and over. It was awful, and we were all so relieved when they finally left the stage.
There was music playing in between the sets (I don’t remember anything in particular) and then all of a sudden, in the middle of a song, the lights went out, and Madison Square Garden turned into complete and utter chaos.
The instant the lights went out, and the first strains of ‘Tiger Tiger’ came over on the PA system we all started screaming. 20,000 (mostly) girls screaming like crazy. My heart was racing, and Eileen and I grabbed each other’s arms. As ‘Tiger Tiger’ was ending, the anticipation was almost too much to handle. The curtain (which looked like the Coca Cola logo) twitched, and the volume of us all screaming went up by about a hundred decibels.
”Please, please tell me NOW!!”
 sang Simon and Andy together as the curtain finally opened.
The volume of the screaming went up again, and my poor Dad began stuffing tissue in his ears.
The show had finally begun, and I only hope that I can accurately describe the joy of it.
I couldn’t believe it. Simon was right THERE. He was not on television, he was right there and I just couldn’t control myself. We were in the 300 section, and on the side so I wasn’t really that close, but it was close enough and even though there was the video screen above them, I hardly ever looked at it. For years, I had only ever seen them on TV so I didn’t want to look at the screen because it wasn’t as good as watching Simon on the stage. There he was. He was dancing and singing and just being…well…Simon LeBon.
There’s really no other way to describe him. He seems totally unique to me. He doesn’t move like anyone else (for better or worse) and he doesn’t sound like anyone else. I was enthralled.
Meanwhile, Eileen (who began that night as Nick girl, BTW) kept pointing out to me how hot John Taylor was.
”I know, but Simon is STILL hotter!”
I screamed back
”No he isn’t!”
”Yes he is!”
”Can we argue about this later?”
”OK!” said Eileen and we went back to screaming.
There were some quiet spots in the concert (relatively speaking) and we used those times to rest ourselves. ‘The Seventh Stranger” and “Save a Prayer’ were particularly amazing.
By the end of the show, I had no voice left. Eileen had no voice left, and we were all exhausted. You should have seen the faces of all the girls as they left the building. It was hard to imagine that this was the same group of girls that had been so hyper only hours before. As we emptied out of the Garden we all had this kind of glow. It sounds silly, I know but it’s true. It seemed as if we all had nothing left, but we didn’t care.
Duran Duran had debuted at Madison Square Garden to a sold out crowd, and they had given us everything they had.
So we gave it back to them.
If you don’t believe me, just anyone else who was there. It was truly historic, and I’ll never forget it.