On this date in 1976, Dakota Jam in Fargo drew a crowd of over 17,000 for performances by Fleetwood Mac and Jeff Beck, marking a highly successful and well-managed rock festival.
Here’s the complete story as it appeared in the paper that day:
At 17,000 Dakota Jam was jammed
By Jim Baccus and Bill Turkula
“Welcome to the biggest rock festival crowd ever seen in North Dakota!” Henry Gross shouts as he opens Dakota Jam Sunday in Dacotah Field, Fargo. The crowd, estimated at 17,000, responds with a roar that lifts the pigeons off the old Bison Hotel.
“You can add maybe another couple of thousand that never got off the parking lot,” somebody amends. It’s a big crowd, all right, but remarkably well behaved and the North Dakota State University Athletic Department may underwrite a new set of bleachers with its percentage.
At 7 a.m. Sunday, a sleepy crowd, including one reporter and about 50 security personnel, hear about their duties to come later in the day.
James Crill, who has spent six weeks in Fargo, working with NDSU staffers, briefs the “rent-a-cops”, as someone calls them (off-duty officers), volunteer coeds and other students. Some of them are from a Waterloo, Iowa, campus.
Crill, an experienced producer with Biaz Productions of Chicago, the financial backers, assigns the guards and gives some a red stick-flare. It can intimidate trouble-makers or send up a signal from a guard in trouble.
Tru Kawaoka, who has his own security service, located in Atlanta, Ga., adds his advice. He says later he can provide rock festival services “anywhere in the world.”
The visitors have high praise for Gary Reinke, NDSU plant services director, who has built a massive stage in the NDSU stadium’s east end zone, put down another plastic cover on the playing field and erected a maze of fencing.
“Crews were late getting into town,” Crill says of the electricians and stagehands. “But thanks to Gary, we’ll start only 15 minutes late.”
At about 11 a.m.—when the crowd begins to pile into the campus parking lots, Crill says, “Look at that patient line wait—
At 1:50 p.m. the Henry Gross unit (“Shannon”) picks up where recorded music leaves off, bringing the grandstand and playing field mob to its feet.
“I’ve never been this crazy at noon,” Gross says at one point. Someone in the crowd throws a tomato and it hits Gross’ white slacks as he does an encore.
The concession stands, operated by NDSU food services; the sun visor and T-shirt sales, a neat rake-off by Fleetwood Mac, the star attraction, both do a big business. The crowd, which paid $8 in advance, and $10 Sunday to get in, pays $3 for the visors and $5 for the shirts. Crill says there was a 15,000 ticket advance sales.
Jeff Beck, the second attraction, is backed by the Jan Hammer Band. The band’s keyboard player was formerly with the Mahavishnu Orchestra.
Ernest Chapman, manager for the Beck ensemble, says Beck is a highly respected guitarist, with 12 years in the business.
“Last year his album Blow by Blow, was second on the national charts,” Chapman says. “His big hit today is Wired.”
By this time, Kawaoka is smiling. He’s wearing a black silken leisure suit, black leather gloves and carrying an intercom.
“I am relaxed now,” he says. “No problems. This wind keeps the temperature down.”
The sun is blazing but the air is cool. Trouble expected from the Grim Reapers, a motorcycle gang, doesn’t materialize.
In fact, the whole crowd of 17,000 kids has kept its cool. Now and then a bottle or a wine skin is flashed. But the sweetest smell of marijuana is only occasionally sniffed blowing in the wind. Everyone had been looked over carefully as they entered the gates, one by one.
Fleetwood Mac, the top attraction, which group has arrived by air about 2 p.m. comes on big. It’s what the sunburned crowd has been waiting for. It’s the culmination of what Dr. Ade Sponberg, athletic director at NDSU, and others, kicked off 18 months ago with what turned out to be dozens of long-distance phone calls before it all came down.
“See that trailer rig over there?” someone says. “It’s been full of soft drinks, cooling since Wednesday.”
But how many hot dogs, at 50 cents each?
“Thirty thousand hot dogs. And they’re about all gone.”
At 4:30 they open up the gates and those who have been outside all day join the crowd. Allen Spittler, the campus security officer, reports one ambulance run, to pick up a man down in the parking lot; five faintings, one Frisbee in the eye, and two firecracker burns. Dakota Jam has been a really successful bash.
