Nick had already been to a couple of concerts -- yes ,this boy was advanced for his age -- Gary Glitter and Slade, if memory serves. But I was yet to pop that cherry. So, in the spring of ‘74, the two of us lined up outside Birmingham Town Hall on Saturday morning and got a pair of seats to see Ronson’s first solo tour that coming April. We got our tickets in Row J, for one pound thirty-five each, about two dollars. It was the first time my parents allowed me into the city at night. Their approval was conditional on Nick’s mom, Sylvia, agreeing to drive us in and pick us up afterward. No need for the night bus.
What do I remember most about the concert? Not so much what was happening onstage, but off, a foreshadowing, maybe of the experience I would have in the Brighton Dome just a few years later. The violence of it all; seats getting smashed, all this pushing and shoving, girls screaming, standing on top of each other. I had expected it to be like going to the movies -- that we’d be able to sit back in our velvet seats in Row J and soak up the experience -- but this was no passive activity. It was visceral.
- John Taylor, In The Pleasure Grooove, Chapter 9