I’ve never been one to go to rock concerts anyone would assume would get wild, even when I was a young adult. My musical tastes have led me to events where you’d be more likely to see giant beach balls being batted around than folks headbanging or crowd surfing.
Yet, when I watched the frightening cellphone footage from within the crowd at the Astroworld Festival in Houston, where several people died after the crowd surged toward the stage while rapper Travis Scott was performing on Nov. 5, I had a powerful reaction. As I saw people record their friends unable to move or breathe, and their muffled screams for help, I realized I could identify with a bit of what they were going through.
Watching those videos of desperation, I was viscerally transported back to a Saturday evening in December a few years ago, when I got caught in a tightly packed crowd of tourists on the streets of Manhattan, watching the annual musical holiday light show that’s projected on the facade of the Saks Fifth Avenue department store.
That evening, as I stood in the crowd to catch the show before heading to a daytrip bus that would take me back to Lancaster, I found myself in a situation that turned from jolly to dangerous in the space of a couple of minutes. With barricades erected along the sidewalk, a crowd of hundreds had packed itself into a block of restricted viewing space to enjoy the holiday spectacle.
Suddenly, neither I nor anyone around me could move even a limb for several minutes. People trying to exit the crowd were thwarted, and some people got downright pushy and nasty in their attempt to extricate themselves. Little children in strollers, packed in among adult legs, started to scream as the adults around them yelled and wriggled.
I was terrified. The air was thin amid that crowd. I feared I might get injured, and beyond that, that I’d never make it back to my bus before it was to leave for home.
When I was finally able to pull myself free and walk a few yards onto a side street, I found myself huddling with two women tourists from Britain who expressed shock that we’d all just found ourselves in that situation while in search of a little holiday entertainment.
A crowd at an entertainment or sporting event exists in two states at once: It’s both a collection of individuals and a singular, living organism that can easily take on its own persona — be it benign or sinister.
When you’ve been in a crowd that turns dangerous, you never forget the experience.
Nearly 40 years ago, while working for a newspaper in Stroudsburg, I was accompanying and reporting on a group of nuclear-disarmament activists who had traveled to New York for a massive demonstration in Central Park — a rally that included a concert component, featuring the likes of Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor. Miraculously, our group found itself relatively near the stage, at the front of a crowd police estimated at well over a half-million people.
The vibe turned tense for a few minutes, however, when Bruce Springsteen made a surprise appearance on stage.
The crowd whooped, then surged forward to get a better look at The Boss. I allowed myself to be carried along, in order to avoid being knocked to the ground and, perhaps, I feared, stepped upon. Fortunately, the situation quickly diffused itself, and the crowd settled down to be enveloped in the music and the spirit of the day.
The crowd watches as Travis Scott performs at Astroworld Festival at NRG park on Friday, Nov. 5, 2021 in Houston.
Watching the Astroworld footage, I also remembered being glued to the December 1979 TV news reports of the music fans who died amid a surging crowd at the entrance to a concert by The Who in Cincinnati, Ohio. That incident resulted in that city’s ban on unassigned “festival seating,” which had turned the quest for the best seats into a deadly free-for-all.
I could understand how it happened.
When waiting for the doors to open at a late-1970s concert by the Top-40 band America, in Penn State’s Rec Hall, I was anticipating that the craziest thing that might happen that night would be the crowd singing along to “Ventura Highway.” But first, I was caught up in a mob of students running to grab unassigned seats on the gym floor. I saw a few people stumble and fall, but, fortunately, no one got hurt.
While at the entrance to an auditorium at Penn State in the early 1980s to hear Jesse Jackson and former independent presidential candidate John Anderson speak, the crowd behind me inexplicably surged toward the entry doors. My body was pushed inside the lobby, while my arm remained outside, being pressed on by the crowd until I thought it would break. My yelps of pain alerted some fellow citizens who pushed the crowd back so I could pull my arm inside.
If a scary moment like that can happen at the entrance to a lecture series, for gosh sakes, it’s not a stretch to imagine a tragedy happening at a concert with a large, overly enthusiastic crowd.
It may be awhile till we know what the investigation will uncover about the causes of the Astroworld disaster. And I don’t pretend to have the logistical answers as to how to quell that crowd-organism once it takes on a terrifying persona.
I only know that, if I want to watch the Saks Fifth Avenue light show in New York, I will never again attempt it at peak viewing time on a busy tourist Saturday.
Mary Ellen Wright is deputy team leader for life and culture for LNP | LancasterOnline. “Unscripted” is a weekly entertainment column produced by a rotating team of writers.
