The Story of How Two Guys Forced Their Way into One of the Most Epic Phish Shows Ever

Halloween 1994 – Glens Falls, NY

By Deek Speredelozzi

In the late 80s and early 90s I went to a lot of concerts; and I even paid for a few of them. To a substantial number of the shows I went to in those days, however, I gained admittance by either vaulting myself over a wall, crashing through a fence, hacking my way through a swampy forest like a Sandinista guerilla warrior in sandals and shorts, or climbing through a hatch in the ceiling of a venue (more on that in a bit).

I spent a significant portion of the years 1991 through 1995 fucking off at UMASS Amherst, and spent the rest of that time working hilariously dead-end jobs in and around Boston while living intermittently at my childhood home in a nearby suburb. Aside from partying, working on my guitar skills, staying up late, waking up late, and exploring the main streets, back roads, and dirt tracks of northwestern New England, my primary activity (or at least the one by which I identified myself most readily at the time) throughout these years was following the band Phish all around the northeastern U.S. During this time, my friends and I attended virtually every Phish show that occurred within a 300 mile radius of our college town of Amherst, MA; and in those days, those geographical parameters encompassed the bulk of the band’s live shows. From Long Island, New York, to Montreal, Quebec; Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to Bangor, Maine; and Syracuse, New York to Mansfield, Mass, my face, and that of my best friend Jeff, were near-constant presences in the front row of shows- always directly in front of Trey Anastasio, the band’s ridiculously sick and creative guitarist/songwriter/frontman.

For all the shows my friends and I used to sneak into, however, we always paid for the Phish shows. For one thing, we were rabid fans of the band and wanted to support them; and for another, even though we were always broke as fuck, it was much more of a priority for us to be up there in the front row, directly in front of Trey, at every possible show, than it was to try to save money getting into shows for free. Plus, by trying to sneak into shows, you ran the risk of missing the show entirely if you didn’t make it in; and that option was totally unacceptable to us. It was a risk I could afford to take for, say, a Doobie Brothers or Tom Petty show; but not Phish. Every Phish show was different from every other Phish show; so if you missed one, you missed something uniquely special; whereas if you missed a Doobies or Petty show, if it was that important to you you could just go to the next one and see the same exact concert as the one you’d missed.

Fall ‘94

Sometime late in the summer of 1994, Phish, who had at this point been playing Halloween shows for years, announced that they would be donning a “musical costume” (defined as: a cover performance of a complete album by another band) at their upcoming Halloween show in Glens Falls, NY. Around this time, the band was ascendant, and gaining momentum; and so the venues they were playing were getting bigger all the time, and the acquisition of tickets was becoming ever more competitive and cut-throat with each successive tour. For years we had been able to pretty much just show up at any Phish show we wanted, without even necessarily having acquired tickets yet, and always get in. There was never any fear of the venue selling out and us being left out in the cold.

The Fall of ’94 was when it started becoming necessary to really be on the ball if you wanted to assure yourself tickets to Phish shows. In some cases it was even necessary to literally spend an entire night, from 10 or 11 PM until 10 AM, sitting and shivering in the freezing cold outside the ticket office of the venue, in order to be first (or near first) in line to get tickets when they went on sale the next day, lest they all sell out before you could even get your shot. This was before the internet and the out-of-control Ticketmaster monopoly and all that bullshit. In those days you had to do all this stuff in “actual reality”, that is, the real, 3-D world, where the imagery is not pixelated, and the color palette is infinite.

I Saw You, With No Ticket Stub in Your Hand

When the show went on sale, Jeff was on top of things, and got tickets for himself and his younger brother and sister. My friend Dennis and I were not so proactive about it; and we soon paid for our inaction. We were completely taken aback by the swiftness with which the available Halloween tickets seemed to evaporate almost instantaneously upon release. The music had stopped abruptly, and we were the ones left standing without chairs. We’d snoozed and lost. And the few people we knew of who had extra tickets for sale were pricing them prohibitively far beyond any reasonable spending limit, at least for a couple of broke-ass college fuck-ups like us. We had failed, for the first time ever, to get Phish tickets. And what a big fail it was. We knew that this show stood a very good chance of going down in Phishtory as one of the all-time most epic classics; and the thought of missing it simply could not be entertained.

On the Way Upwards, the Colors Come Back

As the fall wore on towards Halloween, excitement for the Glens Falls show was mounting sharply throughout the Phish community, as folks speculated with increasing excitement on what classic album the band might cover. And Dennis and I were by no means immune to the rising tide of anticipation building around the show, though our excitement was tempered with the nagging awareness that we still had no way to actually get into the show.

Broken Young Men in a World Unkind

Alas, no miracles came our way; and when the week of the show arrived, we still desperately needed a plan. In no way had we conceded defeat- we refused to accept not going as an option. On the other hand, we knew that no amount of mere stubbornness was going to get us through those doors; vague insistences, weightless declarations, and futile appeals to fate were no longer going to cut it. Measures had to be taken.

Put Your Wingsuits On

So early in the afternoon of October 31st, Dennis and I jumped in my little piece of shit Toyota Tercel, stopped by the package store in Amherst Center to pick up a twelver of Oregon Raspberry Wheat Ale, and hit the road for Glens Falls, NY. We had decided to just wing it and see what would happen. We had no idea how; but somehow we both just knew that we would not be kept out of that concert.

Slaves to the Traffic Lights

Pounding our way through the beers as we went, we carved a path across the northwestern corner of Massachusetts, bound for New York’s Upper Hudson River Valley, and our appointment with destiny. For several hours we swerved our way through the Berkshire Mountains against a backdrop of electrified foliage, of an intensity and spectrum only found in the undulating hills of rural New England, and only in the fleeting weeks of mid-autumn. The highway beneath our tires had been sprinkled liberally with a layer of large red, orange, and yellow maple leaves. The peak brightness of their colors had passed; and they had begun to fade and fall off of the trees; and this infused everything with a late-fall Halloween vibe, which only served to ramp up the anticipation we were feeling.

Our End is the Road

By the time we crossed the New York state line, I was feeling great: a solid beer buzz well underway, and a nice hash and sativa glaze on top of that to properly round off the head trip. I was really getting in the zone. We both were. We were getting psyched for the show.

It Was Late One Fall Night at a Venue Near Town

In and around the Fall of 1994, there were a lot worse places you could be stuck than outside a Phish show without a ticket. Once you put aside, if you could, the fact that you were out here, and the show was happening in there, you could actually have a great time interfacing with the many other like-minded people sharing your fate.

Yeah, you could do that, sure. But we had bigger plans.

Ingest

We arrived at the Glens Falls Civic Center just as it was getting dark. We split an eighth of powerful mushrooms, parked the car, and set off on foot to peruse the environs. For a while we tooled around the parking lot scene, talking to people, waiting for the shrooms to take hold, and keeping an ear to the ground for anyone with extra tickets. This was useless, though; and we knew it. There were so many people wandering around with their fingers in the air (that’s “I need a miracle”, in show-speak) that even if somebody had walked up waving a bunch of scalped tickets, the feeding frenzy of interested parties would have instantly driven the ticket price even further through the roof than it already was. We needed a better plan.

I Drifted Where the Current Chose

We walked away from the parking lot crowd just as the initial sparks of our psilocybin ride began to flare and pop. We quickly fell in and started drifting along with the prevailing current of humanity, which was carrying us towards the doors of the venue, where ticket-holders were streaming into the arena in droves. But as soon as we reached the ticket-takers, we were stopped in our tracks like pasta in a strainer. We’d have to do better than this if we expected to get anywhere. We retreated for a moment to re-assess.

Suddenly we heard the muffled roar of more than 6,000 screaming people, emanating from inside the building. This was followed a few seconds later by an indistinct and muddy cacophony that soon congealed in my pulsating consciousness as “Frankenstein”, by the Edgar Winter Group. Phish had taken the stage.

The Kids Storm the Hallway

Suddenly the crowd’s collective need to be inside the venue watching the show became palpable, and a kind of group mind-think set upon those there assembled. No one person was calling the shots; but nevertheless, moving as one cohesive organism, like a school of fish or a flock of birds- greater than the sum of its parts, the crowd swelled like a tidal wave and then hurled itself at the plexi-glass doors of the building’s main entrance, and the terrified staff members charged with defending it.

Soon to Let Me Drown Beneath the Undertow

The wave broke apart on impact like a schooner thrown against the rocky coastline of Vancouver Island, casting tripping hippie stoners this way and that, and knocking over several of the door wardens in the process. As the wave of humanity began to ebb, a portion of those on the offensive (and a handful of those trying to stop them) were unexpectedly pulled back to their feet by the insidious undertow of undulating bodies. For a few moments everyone was bumbling around out of control, thrown by the motion of the surging crowd, and knocking each other over in the chaos; but as the probing tendrils of the wave receded further back from the doors of the Civic Center, the crowd began to regroup.

We Didn’t Mean to Be Impolite, But We Just Couldn’t Wait

A few more undulating assaults of the front doors were made, during which we very nearly succeeded in steamrolling over everybody and laying the doors flat. But not quite. And soon security reinforcements arrived from another quarter; and in one fell swoop the wall of security had more than doubled its strength, as several new large dudes joined the defensive line. The jig was up.

You Can Trespass Anywhere

But there is always another jig. Dennis and I abandoned the front gate assault and made our way around to the back of the building, seeking for I don’t know what.

By now our heads were buzzing in an ungovernable frenzy of psychedelic electricity, brains humming as if we were laying in a field of cicadas on a hot mid-summer day. Visual images trailed behind my mental projection screen, lazily trying to keep pace with my geometrically expanding thoughts and sensations.

You’ll Never Get out of This Maze

The Glens Falls Civic Center is built into the side of a hill; and so at its northern corner, the distance from the ground to the roof is considerably less than the 70 vertical feet seen at the opposite corner, where two city streets intersect. Here it is more like 40 vertical feet. Of course, this seemingly mundane detail would be of no practical use were it not for the fact that the building’s air vents and excess heating ducts all protrude from the walls on this side, right at the spot where the ground-to-roof height is at its lowest.

We stared up at the grey, twisting, angular shapes of the metal ducts. Now, maybe it was the boomers talking; but damned if it didn’t look to me as if it might just be possible, with great effort and no small amount of risk, for a determined 21-year-old dude and his cohort to climb their way up to the roof from here, with the help of this hanging puzzle of stapled sheet metal.

Exactly what, if any, purpose would be served by our getting up onto the roof was not the least bit clear; but irrespective of that, this opportunity was here before us; and we must take it, whatever might befall.

And They Climbed, So Slowly

And so it was that, driven it seemed by some unseen guiding hand of fate, we climbed, leaped, and pulled our way up the overhanging ducts until we had gotten as high as we could get, which was unfortunately still about 15 feet short of the rim of the roof- not high enough for it to be within reach.

Damn. Now what? We stood there on the surface of the topmost metal duct, scratching our heads, tripping our faces off, and wondering what the hell our next move should be. Seeing my own breath billowing out before my eyes, like mist evaporating off the surface of a lake at the touch of direct morning sun, I noticed for the first time that it was getting pretty cold out.

The sound from inside the arena wafted through the air ducts, allowing us to hear more clearly what was going on inside. The band was in the middle of the triumphant guitar solo jam that leads into the coda of “Divided Sky”, one of my very favorite pieces of Phish music.

Damn, we’ve gotta get in there, I thought. The show is going on, with or without us.

And They Rose Above the People, and the Houses, and the Chimneys

Suddenly I looked down and saw the most improbably fortuitous thing ever: tucked behind one of the lower air ducts, out of sight from below, stood a wooden ladder, leaning against the wall of the building, and just barely within reach! Holy shit! The thing must have been stashed there by maintenance personnel, for when they need to access the roof and upper air ducts! We managed to get our hands on the ladder, hauled it up onto the duct, and leaned it against the side of the building.

The Darkness is Cold and Perception Goes Wrong…

As I heaved myself up onto the surface of the roof from the top of the ladder, my eyes were swimming with floating amoeba, and my head ringing with a throbbing array of noises, some of them randomly amplified to a great intensity, like a conversation picked up from across a crowded square by a long-range microphone.

As Dennis joined me on the roof, I noticed that there were people streaming up the ladder behind him- not event staff, just other would-be concert attendees. Soon there were some fifteen or twenty people standing around on the rooftop; but nobody had any clue what to do next.

… And the Night Seems to Go on Incredibly Long

The chilly evening air of late October had begun to grab our attention; but for the most part we just ignored it by sheer force of will. Some others, however, opted to wriggle awkwardly under the metal awnings of the protruding roof ducts, because there one could achieve a measure of warmth from the hot air spilling out of the vents, and also hear the concert better than they could from anywhere else on the roof.

For our own part, though, this wasn’t gonna work. Contorting our bodies to try to squeeze them into a giant metal birdcage was just not what we’d had in mind for our evening.

I’m Talking ‘Bout Shaft

Perusing the roof for any kind of lifeline to the inside of the venue, we came upon a closed hatch, about 3 ft x 3 ft. Kneeling on the roof for balance, we tugged at the hatch; and amazingly…it flipped right open! Boo-yah!

Peering over the edge of the open hatchway, we stared down into utter blackness. There was no way to tell what was even down there. The only clue was a slight draft blowing up through the hatch, the circular quality of which seemed to suggest a vast empty space (as opposed to, say, a darkened stairwell).

Suddenly the impenetrable blackness was partially broken by a thin band of yellowish-white light, which appeared to just spontaneously come into being far below. Then the band of light seemed to flicker a bit, then abruptly disappeared. Then it happened again. Suddenly I had it: we were looking down an elevator shaft. The strip of light we’d just seen was the elevator’s interior light, which, spilling up through the opening between the inner and outer doors, infused the otherwise pitch-black shaft with a tiny sliver of visibility for a few fleeting moments every time the elevator door opened.

Clips the Handle, Grasps the Cable

As our eyes began to adjust to the near-total darkness of the void below, indistinct shapes began slowly to take visible form, albeit very dimly. Suddenly we realized that we were looking at the upper mounting and counterweight pulley mechanism of the elevator that continued to rise and fall in the vertical tunnel below.

The cable wound around the pulley at a spot that was more or less within reach of the hatch opening; and, noticing this, some dude who had been peering down the shaft with us promptly declared “I’m going for it!”, and then without delay proceeded to climb down through the hatch opening and into the upper airs of the elevator shaft. Holding onto the lip of the hatch with one hand, and dangling over the black abyss, the dude swung his body hard in the direction of the hanging cable, and, in a stunning leap of faith, grabbed the cable out of the mid-air darkness and clamped his limbs tightly around it, like Donkey Kong Jr. on crack.

His Clumsy End Was Perilously Near

Nevertheless, my insides were in knots as I watched this wasted kid tripping on god knows what begin to shimmy and climb down the elevator cable. Meanwhile the elevator just continued to go about its business, drifting up and down from floor to floor. Down-climbing the cable, the crazy fuck soon disappeared into the darkness of the elevator shaft. I was terrified that he would get ripped in two by the elevator’s counterweight as it went whizzing on by. I wondered if he had even considered that. At any rate, I remember kneeling there with my head sticking through the hatch and thinking: “This is the kind of shit that turns festive occasions into the scenes of morbid tragedies. This is stupid. It’s just a fucking concert, for god’s sake. I don’t know if I can watch this any longer.” The cable creaked and rocked as it passed over the pulley. I had no idea how this guy was managing this feat- if in fact he even still was. For all any of us knew he was sprawled out flat as a pancake on the roof of the elevator with his vitals spilling out, like that guy in “Silence of the Lambs”- victim of his own overzealousness and poor judgment.

As these thoughts were rolling around in my head, I noticed once again that I could hear the show pretty clearly, this time through the elevator shaft. The band were in the middle of “Harpua”, another classic tune that only Phish could have conceived of, when suddenly they busted into “War Pigs”, by Black Sabbath, which immediately fueled speculation that the cover album of the night might in fact be Paranoid, the album from which this song hails. After a few moments, though, the band segued back into “Harpua”; and that was the last you heard of Black Sabbath all night.

He’s Sure Got Some Powerful Pills

Suddenly a square of bright white light blasted up through the shaft from some distance below, seizing our attention anew. As we gazed down at it, the light flickered momentarily, was briefly obscured by some intervening dark mass, and then returned to its previous intensity. A couple of seconds later the square of light was suddenly gone- vanished without a trace, as if it had never even been there at all; and total darkness once again enveloped the elevator shaft. I pondered this for a moment, and then was amazed.

Trying to Live a Life That’s Completely Free

He did it. The crazy lucky fuck actually did it. This little trick of the light that we had just witnessed was indeed the cable-shimmying psychopath flipping open the escape hatch in the top of the elevator car, jumping down into the elevator, and yanking the hatch shut behind himself to cover his tracks. Whatever became of him after that we never discovered; but after having watched him execute that unbelievable (and unbelievably stupid) feat of physical prowess and determination, I would like to imagine that he somehow made it all the way to the main room of the arena unseen, and there disappeared into the crowd, victorious.

We Struggled With Destiny Up on the Ledge

As soon as the escape hatch on top of the elevator slammed shut, we immediately became aware of a commotion growing behind us. We turned around to find the rooftop being bum-rushed by security personnel, who were streaming up onto the roof by way of the very same ladder that we had used to get up here.

I’m not sure exactly where we thought we were going; but we immediately jumped up and made for the far corner of the roof- away from the approaching venue personnel, as if they were likely to stop their pursuit if we simply moved far enough across the roof.

But actually, it kinda worked. When a small group of security folk more or less checkmated us in the south corner of the roof- the corner where it was a 70-foot drop to the concrete sidewalk below, Dennis shocked me and everyone else by suddenly taking things to a new level. “Keep back, or I’ll jump!!” he yelled at our pursuers, with googly, dilated eyes unblinking, that nobody was willing to risk calling a bluff on. “I swear I’ll do it! Get back!!” Holy shit. The icy stare in Dennis’s eyes made me wonder if he might be serious. Nahh.

Bouncing Gently ‘Round the Roof

At any rate, that did the trick. Maybe the security folk felt some measure of human compassion; or maybe it was simply that they were operating under some kind of mandate to avoid engaging in any behavior that might lead to a lawsuit against the venue. “Alright, alright, alright!! We’re moving back!! Just don’t jump!” shouted one of them, cautiously, gesticulating wildly for his cohorts to keep back as well. Whatever their underlying reasons, the security guys all pulled back and drew closer together, leaving us a path of escape from the sheer edge of the roof.

Tear the Roof off the Sucka

As we circled around them in a wide arc, we saw that some of the other would-be concertgoers on the roof had found a second hatch and flipped it open. Considering the fact that folks were simply streaming into the opening of the hatch one after the other, like a clown car in reverse, we surmised that the hatch must lead to something other than just a cavernous void of blackness, as the other one had. And noticing that the security personnel on the roof were not intervening in any way with the parade of wasted youths heading down the hatch, we decided to make for it ourselves.

There was no time to stop and consider the move- there was only one option. We hadn’t come this far just to give ourselves up to a bunch of glorified bouncers- that much was for sure.

… And View the Ritual From Within…

The ladder was one of those caged-in jobbies, like you see on the sides of huge industrial oil and water tanks, or at those huge, insidious factories of nebulous purpose, where the climaxes of Terminator-type movies always seem to take place. As soon as my head passed below the rim of the hatch, the world was instantly transformed, as if I had just stepped through a closet door into Narnia.

Am I Inside?

Suddenly I was looking straight down into the lights, sounds, and full-tilt commotion of the show. It was all happening far below my lofty position up amid the ceiling rafters (but hey, at least I was technically in the room– that felt like progress.) The band was in the middle of “Julius”, another tune that always gets the crowd totally jacked.

Were we really inside? Could we really have won? The room was swimming with blue and green lights, blending back and forth from one to the other, and rising and falling with the dynamics of the music.

Stuck in a Game of Dipstick Perfume

There was no time to stop and look around, though- there were still a few more people coming down the ladder from above my head, foremost of whom was Dennis. As I descended progressively deeper into the heart of the concert hall, the madness and euphoria infecting the room became increasingly palpable; and my own excitement increased in direct proportion to this. The ladder seemed to go on forever; but at some point in the descent I was able to see that it did indeed end, where it landed on a catwalk some feet below.

Police in the Corner, Gunning For You

Reaching the bottom of the ladder, I was immediately “greeted” by security and ushered, along with everybody else who had come down that ladder, along the catwalk towards the outer wall of the concert hall. As I walked across the catwalk, I noticed that the seats below, teeming with joyous revelers all going off as hard as they possibly could, were not really all that far beneath my feet. I also noticed that the closer we got to the outer wall, the more this divide between seats and catwalk closed. This was due to the fact that the stadium seating increases in height as you get further out from the stage, yet the catwalk maintains a consistent height off of the arena floor.

Just before being hustled out of the arena through a door in the wall, I looked up and back, and noticed that the last of the guards from the roof were now heading down the ladder, behind the last of the foiled revelers.

It’s Gonna Be Cold, Cold, Cold, Cold, Cold

Before you could say “Wash Uffizi drive me to Firenze”, we were once again back out in the cold darkness beyond the outermost wall of the party room, having just been ushered out the very same doors that we had participated in trying to crash through earlier on. It made sense now that the personnel on the roof had deemed it preferable to just channel the rogue concertgoers down a caged ladder into the arms of waiting security guards than to chase people around the roof and risk some shit-head falling (or jumping!) in his attempt to elude his pursuers.

As the foiled roof-folk were led out the doors, most dispersed into the night, some feeling satisfied that they had at least made a go of trying to penetrate the venue, and others, finally convinced of the utter hopelessness of the prospect of getting into the show- whether by force or guile- accepting that they had been bested by the security apparatus, and calling it a night.

Our Time is Near, The Mission’s Clear

But not me and Dennis- not even close. An impromptu huddle of two was quickly organized to plan our next move. Dennis observed aloud that there had been no repercussions for trying to break into the show- other than being escorted back outside. I noted that the personnel on the roof seemed to have all followed the last of the rogues down the ladder to the catwalk, and also that the uppermost seats in the hall were close enough to the bottom of the catwalk that it might just be possible to jump from the catwalk down into the crowd, and lose oneself immediately in the party- if we could just get back to that catwalk. The wheels were turning. This was not over.

We agreed that if by some odd chance one of us made it in successfully and the other one did not, the one who made it in could stay and enjoy the rest of the show, and deal with trying to track down the other one when it was over.

Sink a Boulder in the Water

It had been downright decent of security to leave the wooden ladder propped up on that air duct for us, leaning against the lip of the roof where we had left it on our first ascent.

We stepped back up onto the roof to find that we were now the only ones up there. Brilliant! It was as I had surmised: everybody on the roof must have come down the interior ladder during that mass eviction we had just been a part of. And most likely the event staff had considered that particular security breach to have been sufficiently neutralized as soon as we had all been channeled along the catwalk and out the doors of the building. With this in mind, Dennis and I now made straight for that very same hatch- the one with the ladder leading down from it, down into the very beating heart of the Glens Falls Civic Center.

And Through the Ceiling Door Intrude…

As we approached the roof hatch, I was half expecting that the last of the Civic Center personnel to come down the ladder had probably locked the hatch behind himself; but when we grabbed it and pulled, it flipped right open! Staring down the shaft of the ladder, we could see that there appeared to no longer be anybody on either the ladder or the catwalk. We looked at each other like soldiers about to storm into a hostile warzone, and gave a mutual nod of respect and understanding, which basically said: “You know what to do, man. See you on the other side.” With that I climbed into the hatch and started down the ladder for the second time, with Dennis hot on my tail.

Invaded Through What Was an Unguarded Seam

I touched down onto the catwalk and made for the outer wall straightaway; though I had no intention of actually reaching the wall. Rather, the objective was to get to the nearest spot along the catwalk from which I could jump down into the seating area without breaking a leg or killing anybody. The fact that doing this would require us to initially proceed directly towards the posted watchman standing at the doorway where the catwalk met the wall of the concert hall was most definitely not ideal; but there was no other way; and anyway, I was ready to chew off the arm of anyone who seized or in any other way attempted to stop me.

Getting in Barely, Through Alternate Paths

I was driven in part by my time-tested conviction that my friend Jeff was down there on the concert floor, right in the front row, directly in front of Trey. He had to be, I reasoned, because he always was; and I knew that he was quite simply not up for not being in that spot; and I knew that he would stop at nothing to ensure that he got that spot, no matter who he had to go toe-to-toe with to get it. And I was damned if my march towards the stage was going to be foiled before I reached him.

Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run

Now that we were the only ones on it, the catwalk seemed a lot longer than it had earlier. The distance from the ladder to the wall seemed interminable. If the security dude standing by the door at the end of the catwalk so much as glanced in our direction, all of our tireless efforts would immediately come to utter ruin. We had until he did that, which was liable to happen at any moment, to get ourselves to a spot from which we could “safely” jump. The race was on.

With Dennis breathing down my neck, I raced across the catwalk at a full sprint, like I was running for my life. The lights, sounds, and electricity of the show were raging all around us, made that much more intense by a) the mushroom ride that we were on (which was experiencing a surge in intensity due to the adrenaline rush), and b) the fact that just beneath our feet close to 6,000 people were all going off-the-hook, screaming along with the row-row-row-your-boat-esque out-chorus to “Silent in the Morning”.

We Wasn’t Quite the Speed of Light

We were just a few feet from where we needed to get to, when the guy turned around and saw us. Hollering for backup, which materialized instantaneously, he sprang towards us. We stopped in our tracks. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck!!. There was a nano-moment of indecision, followed by reflexive action. Instinctively, we both hopped over the railings of the catwalk, on opposite sides. We were still on the catwalk- only now outside the railing, which meant we were still within easy grasp of any event staff trying to get a hand on us. The henchmen were bearing down on us. I climbed down the railing and swung myself out to the underside of the catwalk, holding on to the bottom of it with my hands. Dennis did the same, though we were each now beyond the other’s help. Our fates would be determined individually, whether or not were destined to be split up, throwing high-fives in a crowd of thousands, or sharing a paddy-wagon five minutes from now.

Swinging on the Lifeline

I looked down. Directly beneath me was an aisle of cement steps, like you see in the grandstands at a baseball game. But I was uncomfortable with how far down it was- there must have been a good eight to ten feet of open space separating the bottoms of my shoes from the stairs below. Clinging to the bottom of the catwalk with both hands, hanging there and swinging back and forth, I tried to gauge the likelihood of a non-catastrophic landing, were I to let go now. I’d been really hoping to make it a few more feet closer to the wall before jumping from the catwalk. The aisle below was jammed with Phish-heads- some on the move, others just spilling out of their rows and into the aisle, all raging their asses off like never before.

Suddenly my right forearm was seized by a large, very strong hand, which immediately started trying to haul me back up onto the catwalk. Holy fuck- it’s NOW! With my left hand, I let go of the catwalk.

Left Hanging by a Thread

For a few moments I was just dangling there, suspended by only my right forearm, above a floor full of screaming Phishheads who I was dead-bent on joining. The guy holding onto my arm had been caught at unawares by the sudden doubling of my bodyweight when I’d let go of the catwalk; and here he very nearly let me slip through his fingers. Attempting to capitalize on this mistake before the musclebound oaf could re-assert his grasp, I writhed violently, deliberately and desperately- even trying to push off of the bottom of the catwalk to release myself. But somehow the dude managed to retighten his hold on me, now holding on even more firmly than before. Fuck!! What- do these guys get cash bonuses for catching people trying to sneak in? Do they get a fingertip cut off every time somebody gets past them? I mean, I knew what the stakes were for me; but what did Foolio have invested in this? What was his incentive? I’ll tell you this much- something beyond an hourly wage was motivating this guy.

I squirmed and swung and did everything I could do to try and break free of his vice-like grip; but the man was on a mission to stop me.

Will I Plunge In and Join Them There?

But I was on a mission too: a mission to not be stopped by him. There would be no stalemate. The skin on my forearm was burning from the friction as the guy desperately tried to hold on and pull me back up onto the catwalk. I wriggled and twisted with everything I had, trying anything and everything I could think of to wrest myself from his grasp, or to cause him to fumble; but my options were pretty limited under the circumstances. The dude was frantically looking back and forth between me and his fellow security-meisters, screaming for additional support as he tried to get ahold of me with his other hand. If he succeeded, it was all over for me.

And He Began to Tumble Earthward…

Looking up, I saw a second security guy crouching down on the floor of the catwalk and reaching out for my arm. I looked down again. Nobody below seemed to be aware of me- which meant that nobody was getting out of the way. I looked up again. Just as the second guy brushed the skin of my arm with his fingers, the first guy ran out of steam. Unable to maintain his grasp any longer, his grip failed, and he released my arm. I was still looking up at him as the bottom of the catwalk began to fly up and away from me. I was in free fall.

Surrender to the Air

Though no such atmospheric phenomena had been forecast for the area by any local meteorologists, it nevertheless did in fact, for a few brief seconds on the night of October 31, 1994, rain human bodies inside the Glens Falls Civic Center in upstate New York. Even more bizarrely, the storm seems to have been hyper-localized to a very small region, specifically the stairway aisle separating stadium section U from stadium section V, and roughly between rows 7 and 12.

The brief downpour caught the affected folk completely at unawares, due to the lack of lightning, thunder, or any of the other typical atmospheric cues that usually portend the imminent arrival of a storm. It should be stated for the record, however, that according to authorities, in the moments immediately preceding the onset of the deluge, unaccountably, the air inside the auditorium had in fact been bristling with a highly-charged electricity, an electricity felt by all in attendance, even the security hench-folk who, grumbling bitterly at the chilling specter of young people having fun and enjoying music, tried to snuff out as much of the good times as they could- which wasn’t much.

We Come Unglued While in Midair, and Land to Reform…

According to witnesses, immediately following the end of the song “Silent in the Morning”, first one, and then another, full-grown male quite literally fell from the sky, landing awkwardly in the area specified above. Despite the fact that no precautionary measures had been taken, nor any advisories disseminated to the local population, there were, amazingly, no reported injuries of any kind, save for a mild case of friction burn on the arm of one of the men who had allegedly come raining down from on high.

Due to the virtually 100% non-absorptive properties of the concrete steps which bore the brunt of the storm, there was no subsequent flooding. Rather, the two men who splashed down were immediately washed down the stairs and over the railing into the general admission floor seating area. The case has never been solved.

Come Stumble, My Earth-Eating Lurkers

Due to the suddenness of my fall, as well as the fact that I had been looking up at the moment it began, I had been unable to properly brace myself for impact; and so I struck the concrete stairs hard, and at an odd angle, consequently falling off balance and collapsing violently into the arms of some burnt dude who was in the middle of going shit-house with euphoria in one of the adjacent aisle seats. We have to stop meeting like this. Although my arrival in his personal space was profoundly unexpected, and exceedingly unmellow (he couldn’t have been faulted for punching me in the face), rather than get angry or defensive, or shove me or anything like that, the guy, after overcoming his initial shock and grasping, all in one fluid moment, the reality of what had just happened in his lap, helped me to my feet and promptly reared back to throw me the mother of all high-fives.

At this exact moment, Phish busted into “Reba”, which has always been my favorite song of theirs. I took this as a positive sign.

It Was an Angry Mob of Bouncers, Coming Up to Knock Us Down

As this was happening, I looked up to see Dennis collecting and dusting himself off, just a few feet away, a couple of steps higher than where I stood. Against all reasonable expectations, we had both landed essentially unscathed. We were both so shocked and amazed, that we could barely figure out what to do next- standing in place and looking this way and that frantically, as if besieged by assailants on all sides. Just then a burst of vigorous applause and loud cheering erupted all around us, as the folks in the immediate vicinity came to grasp the finer points of just how our arrival on the scene had been affected.

That was pretty cool; but there was no time to stand around taking bows. We looked up to see a couple of burly men in uniforms barreling down the steps towards us, bent on capturing these two irreverent rogues who had just come rudely crashing through the ceiling of the arena, then evaded all attempts to apprehend them, and in so doing made a complete mockery of the security establishment.

I Begin My Descent Down the Cold Granite Steps

Seeing these two aspiring bullies bearing down on us snapped us both out of our temporary state of dumbfounded amazement and back to active consciousness- and just in time, too. The two of us immediately turned tail and took off at full speed down the stairs of the aisle, with the two security dudes hot on our heels. Upon reaching the bottommost row, rather than stop and give ourselves over to our chasers, we both just kept going, instinctively diving over the 4-foot-high hockey rink boards which separated the stadium seats from the general admission section. In hurling ourselves across this threshold, we in effect crossed the finish line of our race against non-ticketholder-hood.

The two security goons did not follow us over the barrier, but rather seemed to just kind of spin out in a cloud of proverbial dust, like Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane at the Hazzard County line. They seemed to pretty quickly lose sight of us amidst all of the scattering darkness, panning colored lights, and overall pandemonium whirling about the scene. Seizing the opportunity to end this once and for all, Dennis and I quickly disappeared into the thick of the crowd, losing ourselves to these uniformed fools- for good.

We’d made it. We were fucking in.

We’re Bobbing on the Surface

For the next fifteen minutes, the jagged, disjointed awesomeness of what has since come to be widely hailed by Phish fans as the quintessential performance of “Reba” provided the soundtrack to our determined battle to make our way up to the front to join our friends. It was a pain in the ass to try to maneuver through a jam-packed crowd of over 1,000 standing, jumping, screaming concertgoers; but we were too jacked to get bogged down in any of that. Our grins were eight miles wide, and our eyes practically flying off of our heads, from the excitement we felt in those moments. Just as the Zappa-esque jam section in the latter half of the song wrapped up, we finally busted through the last of the crowd, plowing our way rudely through an incredibly dense, pulsating mob of wasted freaks, many of whom were dressed in bizarre and hilarious Halloween costumes, straight up to the front row right in front of Trey (my standard field position in that era), and there surprised the shit out of Jeff, his brother, and his sister, none of whom had given any serious consideration to the thought that Dennis and I might actually end up inside the arena that night, no less front and center.

Just to Check My Status

After “Reba”, the band issued a super-charged version of “Golgi Apparatus” to close their first set of the night. We had achieved our goal, and just in time for the second set, the featured set of the night (though, it must be said, in those days virtually every live Phish set was a momentous occasion, as well as a potential jumping off point for any imaginable innovative and ground-breaking on-stage live creations, and even some not imaginable). The band would play two more sets tonight; and the one coming up next was the one where they were expected to blow everybody away by covering an entire classic album, which still nobody knew for sure what would be.

We spent the break getting jacked for the upcoming set, and telling our crew the story of how we had gotten into the show.

A little less than a half an hour later, the lights went down; and the place went shit-house all over again. For a lot of people (myself and my gang included), this promised to be quite likely the most memorable Phish set we’d ever seen; and we’d seen a lot of them over the preceding few years.

Didn’t Get to Bed Last Night

When the band took the stage, the sound of those slowly-thumping heartbeat drums that open Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon came over the P.A. system; and so everyone started screaming in jubilation that they were gonna play Dark Side. But that was not to be. The Floyd thing was just a tease. I seem to also remember Trey baiting the crowd with the distinctive opening harmonics and guitar lick to Yes’s “Roundabout”, which opens that band’s epic 1972 album Fragile. But that was just a fleeting mind-fuck as well.

Then, one of music history’s most recognizable sound-bites was heard: Ed Sullivan introducing The Beatles to America for the first time, on February 9, 1964. A collective deep-breath raced through the crowd; and a moment later, Phish ripped into “Back in the U.S.S.R.”. The night’s musical costume would be The Beatles’ White Album, which was about as good a choice as they could have made; and for the next 90 or so minutes, Phish delivered the goods, plowing their way through one of the most classic and beloved records in rock history, and to an over-the-moon crowd. I got chewed out several times for screaming lyrics in people’s ears; but that’s just how you know it’s a party.

Confuse What You Can of the Ending

When they were done with their “musical costume”, the band left the stage for a second break, and came back a little while later to blaze through another set of their own music. With the third set, the band carved off another fat-ass slab of epic-ness; and after that they returned to the stage for an encore, which included a contest to determine which fan in attendance had the best Halloween costume. All eight finalists had costumes that referenced, in one way or another, songs from Phish’s catalog. First prize went to some guy dressed as a Mounds Candy Bar, a nod to the song “Mound”.

Time for the Last Rewind

After the show, the immediate vicinity of the Glens Falls Civic Center was ablaze with festive jubilation and extreme energy, as thousands of fans streamed out into the cold November night. Also, as if we needed another reason to celebrate, Dennis had turned twenty years old at the stroke of midnight; so it was a no-holds-barred rage-a-thon on a multitude of levels.

I don’t know how we got out of that town alive; but somehow we managed to dodge every last cop in the area; and in no time flat we were rolling down a rural highway with the upper Hudson River on our right, cheerfully reflecting back up at us the twinkling lights of the houses across the water. Cruising back to Amherst through the predawn hours, Dennis and I wondered if years down the line we would look back on this night as a standout among the peak moments of our lives, or if in the long run it would not seem all that significant to us.

Well I can tell you, sitting here at my computer twenty years later, that Halloween 1994 still stands out vividly and proudly as one of the most exciting nights of my life (thus far). The concert, and the epic lengths we went to to ensure that we did not miss it, are burned into my memory, and cannot be taken away. We were in our prime. We felt unstoppable; and in fact we were unstoppable, in our own way. And that feeling of being unstoppable is one that tends to be all too fleeting, and increasingly rare as one’s years go by. For all that, though, and even in a way because of it, over time, nights like that Halloween in Glens Falls, NY assume an increasingly valuable place in our minds; and hopefully never fade completely.

And So to Bed

We got back home to Amherst just as the dawn was closing in. With the sky in a slow fade from solid black to deep purple, I laid my head down and went to sleep. Diagonal in my bed.

About the author:

Deek Speredelozzi went to over 100 Phish shows between 1988 and 1998; and still goes to shows occasionally. Since 1997 he has lived in Northern California, most of that time in San Francisco, where he now lives with his wife, dog, and two cats. He is a student and a writer, and an outspoken critic of all things civilized. Nowadays, he usually uses the door.

Check out his blog at http://addicted2dirt.wordpress.com/