Cheech & Chong, Liza Minnelli, Peter Yarrow

Memorial Coliseum

November 16-17, 1973

By Phillip Rawls

The University Program Council worked with concert promoter Tony Ruffino to line up a Homecoming weekend schedule in 1973 that was sure to please students and alumni: Cheech & Chong on Friday, Nov. 16, and Liza Minnelli on Saturday, Nov. 17. The marijuana-laced humor of Cheech & Chong made them bit hits on college campuses, and Minnelli was at the height of her fame from starring in the 1972 movie “Cabaret.”For Cheech & Chong, UPC put the coliseum stage facing the stands on one side to provide a more intimate setting for the comedians. They drew a good audience and delivered a great show. Homecoming weekend was off to a strong start. For Liza Minnelli, the stage was going at one end of the basketball court to provide the same seating arrangement used for big rock acts. She sold well, with every seat gone before Homecoming Day except those behind the stage and those with blocked views on the side of the stage. On Saturday morning, I went with a UPC friend to see the homecoming football game, thinking the weekend was going perfectly. At the game, I got paged over the stadium’s public address system. In those days before cell phones, getting paged over the public address system meant something terrible had happened. I dashed to guest services, where someone gave me a phone number and pointed to an old-fashioned landline. I dialed the number, and a UPC member, probably Doug Casmus, answered. The news was bad: The truck carrying most of Minnelli’s sound and light equipment had crashed on its way to the concert. She and her orchestra were still flying into the Birmingham airport for a bus and limousine ride to Tuscaloosa, and we were going to try to piece together enough equipment to do the concert. People gathered at the UPC office and got assignments. I went to the music department and borrowed plain black music stands for her orchestra to use. Then some of us got a rental truck and went to the airport to pick up several large spotlights that her management had flown to Tuscaloosa on a small private plane. The spotlights went in the stands behind the stage to replace the lights that would have been over the stage. Other UPC members borrowed sound equipment from local bands. Minnelli’s crew patched the equipment together and even connected it to the Memorial Coliseum public address system so that the performance would play through PA speakers on the concourse and in the restrooms. UPC member Joe Perry was among the folks who worked with the emergency production team. “That group included Chip Monck, who was the master of ceremonies at Woodstock. He worked miracles …and used his lighting expertise to produce a truly impressive show. It was normal for some people on the Program Council to interact with the acts in the course of their work. But this time there were a few UPC members more excited about the possibility of meeting ‘the sound and lighting guy’ than anyone who took the stage that night. Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary opened the show with the hits everyone expected. Then came Minnelli with a show full of glamour and sass. The audience loved her. The Alabama football team won Homecoming Day with a 43-13 victory over Miami, and UPC won Homecoming Night with a concert that appeared normal to the paying audience.