Sponsored by Shea Stadium Remembered
Late in the show, Sting told the crowd, “We’d like to thank the Beatles for lending us their stadium.” As I sat in the stagnant, sticky, back of the mezzanine with a side view of the spectacle, my thought was: “God, I wish this was a Mets game.” And the ’83 Mets were a last-place team—whose outfield was ruined by Police fans stomping on it.
I was in bassinet when the Beatles played Shea the first time and in a crib when they returned a year later. I was probably watching Get Smart re-runs when Grand Funk Railroad played Shea in 1971. I was cruising the neighborhood on my 10-speed when Jethro Tull arrived at Shea in 1976. In October 1982 I was in trouble with my mom and barred from seeing The Who—and The Clash—at Shea on a school night (I did see The Who—and David Jo-frigging-hansen?!?—at the Meadowlands the weekend before the Shea show, but that’s the rock equivalent of a few years later when I was at Shea for Mets-Red Sox Games 1 and 2, not Games 6 and 7).
So this was my concert. The Police were a big deal, everybody said. A couple of weeks later half of Long Island emptied out into the bottom end of Virginia in my freshman dorm. The Police were played so often and so loud in our cinder-blocked hothouse that I soon went from ambivalence to burning dislike for them.
The Police broke up after Shea, with Sting figuring they’d reached the pinnacle. I’d have traded his pinnacle for a Mets-Phillies doubleheader. With a rain delay.