Great thread.
I’m not sure I didn’t post this before, but in a lifetime of really good musical memories, one standout is four or five nights in a row of Sinatra at Radio City Music Hall. I had ’met’ him before at the Carnegie Hall stage entrance back in the early eighties. I was in school a block away during those years and I always watched his coming and going. One night during those years, we made eye to eye and he gave me a happy ’big guy’ pat on the shoulder, but by the time this Radio City run came around in 1994, he’d already collapsed on stage a few weeks before and I thought it would be best to take in as much Frank as I could because it doesn’t look like he’s going to be doing this much longer. Subsequently these were his very last New York shows IIRC.
As mentioned, there were four or five shows and I got tickets to all. I was second on line outside the box office the night before tickets went on sale at the Radio City box office I was between 3 & 7 rows center of the stage for every show. One night I sat a couple of seats away from Bennett and I was a few seats away from Barbara Sinatra twice (and she was lovely). He was sick for one of the shows and had to do a makeup show. I believe that show took place on a Sunday night and he wore a blue suit and tie. No tuxedos on Sundays. That was a particularly great show because he was really on the ball & didn’t trip too badly over any of the lyrics. He did a particularly nice intimate set with just a small band and a stool. I was able to move up to the front row about midway through the very last show. I had gotten his cigarette butts outside the venues a few times through the years and as mentioned, stood next to him outside Carnegie Hall a time or two in the ’80s, but on this night I got his ’Angel Eyes cigarette’ right off the stage and stood under him as he wept because he got emotional and didn’t want to leave the stage while Junior kept trying to shoo him off with ’all right pop, all right pop’ . He stood right above me taking it all in.
I can also go into seeing Elvis in July 1975 and getting up close for a couple of minutes. You haven’t seen anything till you’ve seen f’ing Elvis sparkling- but that- that would definitely be overkill.