20 STORIES FOR 20 YEARS

Steve Schwartz

During the final days of running his 30 year-old business, Steve’s Music, before retiring, Steve Schwartz reflected on his shop’s unique role during Bethel Woods’ early seasons, and helping out the occasional touring musician in a pinch. 

 

“Before Bethel Woods opened, I had gotten a call from Denise Frangipane, asking if we would be interested in selling tickets for Bethel Woods, because they didn't have a box office yet.

 

My brother Cliff and I ran the business at the time. This was obviously before he passed away. We got together with her and with people from Ticketmaster. And initially to do this, they said we'd have to become Ticketmaster vendors, which didn't exactly thrill me because that meant putting up $20,000 for ticket stock, and we just weren't set up for that kind of thing. But luckily I said, what if we just sell tickets for Bethel Woods and nobody else? They said that that wouldn't be a problem. And with that, they set us up as a ticket vendor for Bethel Woods. 

 

My brother, who is a big train enthusiast, asked our neighbor, Vince Lisanti, who's a carpenter, to create an old style train ticket window, which is still here at the store. Because it's a small shop, we wanted to make sure that it didn't conflict with the flow of people coming in who were just there to buy instruments. So, in our foyer, we cut out the wall and made this beautiful ticket window. 

 

It did turn out to be quite an undertaking, with my brother managing to learn the system, and he could do what the others couldn't do. So if somebody said, ‘I'd love these seats.’ And they were available, he'd actually be able to get them the seats that they wanted.

 

And on the big ticket days, we'd have people lined up around the building. So there could be 100 to 200 people waiting for tickets to a good show. We were the only place where you could physically go to get the tickets, unless you wanted to do it online, and we did this for two years. I was getting literally 50, 60 phone calls a day from people asking what the shows were, and if tickets were still available. On the one hand, it kind of was a burden. On the other hand, it made us feel that we were part of something really big and special. 

 

We had to call Bethel Woods CEO Bruce Weinstein once and ask for security to come down, and he came down with the security guy. There were people just lined up around the building and then some. It was really affecting parking and traffic. I don't think they understood until that moment the enormity of, of what was going on with our little location here. 

 

For the Boston Pops concert in 2007, the trombone player James Nova’s instrument didn't make it off the airplane, and it was on a Sunday, no less. I was away, but my brother was here, and he thought to ask one of the teachers in Monticello, who was a trombone player, to see if Nova could borrow his horn to play the show, which he did. So he ran over to the teacher's house, got the trombone, delivered it up to Bethel Woods. The guy had a mouthpiece at least. It was good enough to get him through the night, and he was a soloist as well. So they really needed him to be part of the whole thing, and he was, because of my brother's efforts in making that happen. 

 

I sold a symbol to the drummer and Earth, Wind, and Fire. A few years ago, Joe Perry was looking for a slide, again on a Sunday. I came into the store and gave the tech a bunch of slides. I don't know if he ever used any of them, but at least he had something. 

 

Boston's drum tech came in for something. Joe Bonamassa stopped through here on his first concert at Bethel Woods and he bought a couple of neon signs that I had in the window and a clock. So that was pretty cool. Dan “Bee” Speers from Willie Nelson's band came in and we chatted for a little bit. Some of them used to stay at the motel which was across the street. 

 

What were the best concerts...the Arlo Guthrie and Richie Havens (2007 Woodstock anniversary) concert was phenomenal beyond my expectations. I didn't know that I’d feel so moved. They were both such amazing performers with such great stories to tell. And it was acoustic on top of that in a big place, so you wouldn’t expect it to feel as warm and inviting as it did.

 

I try to get to the Event Gallery shows. I just like the intimacy of those a lot more. I saw Colin Hay, who was Men at Work’s lead singer and guitar player, and he put on probably one of the top five shows I've ever seen. And it's not really my style of music that I normally go to, but he was such an engaging performer and he was still in great voice and the stories that he told were as good as the songs that he sang. You know, usually you get where the songs are great and they have no banter, or you get where the banter is pretty good, but they don't sound as good as they used to. He just had the whole package, the audience was just mesmerized, I think. I know I was. The Event Gallery shows to me are the special shows now. They're not as loud.  Somehow I turned into my parents: ‘Get off my lawn.’ 

 

Another early memory: Since we were selling the tickets, we didn't even know what we were looking at. You know, we had a floor plan, but we took a ride out there, and we were able to get on the grounds. We saw Alan Gerry, and he was very particular about the grass. I almost stepped on the grass to shake his hand and he and his entourage, everybody put their hands up like, No. ‘We bought the ground. It's freshly seeded.’ I was like, ‘Oh, okay, sorry.’  But it was good to see. Just seeing it on paper didn't give you the real sense of the enormity of the venue and just how nicely laid out it is. So it was good that we got to see that and we could tell people who were buying tickets what to expect.

 

I think we kind of all looked at Bethel Woods like this is going to hopefully spark a renaissance. It has, to some degree. Even in the short 20 years, it's had to survive the 2008, 2009 real estate bomb. It's had to survive COVID. It's had to survive a lot of things.

 

I always say you could go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where there was a war for three days and the whole town still thrives on that three-day piece of history. But if you went to Russia and said ‘Gettysburg,’ nobody would have any idea what you were talking about. Woodstock was a real cultural impact, of three days, and nobody really, I don't want to say monetized it because to some, it was an embarrassment, to others, It was a complete pain and they didn't ever want to have to go through that again. But you don't realize the importance of it until you look back on it. So it's nice that somebody realized the importance of it and has marked it as such. It definitely needed something more than a blue sign to commemorate that this happened here.”