There were two ways to see an event at Maple Leaf Gardens in the sixties. One was to pay the admission fee and the other was to sneak in. Being from the poor part of town, we usually chose the latter.
There were three ways to sneak in but I'll just mention one because it's long been eliminated thanks to what happened in this story. Who knows, the other two just might still work.
By using any one of the three we got in to see all kinds of things like boxing ( The Liston-Patterson Fights Etc. ) Maple Leaf Stanley Cup games, wrestling and concerts ( The Beatles, The Stones Etc. ) or anything else for that matter.
In 1965 Andy, Mike and myself went down to the Gardens to catch The Rolling Stones Concert. We used to be able to trip a fire door and run up to the top seats (greys) and hide out there for an hour or so till the show started. This time however we were spotted by an employee from across the street who started yelling and running towards us. We slammed the door in his face and took off up the stairs to hide.
We figured everything was cool so we just sat in the seats talking to a girl that we knew who worked in the concession stand there, but luck was not on our side. About twenty minutes later we saw this guy standing down by the stage with a cop and they were scanning the upper seats looking for us. Unfortunately, they spotted us because we saw the cop pointing up at us as they walked into a tunell. We took off again and ended up in a small room full of teletype machines. From this vantage point you could see the whole Gardens and we spotted them heading right for us.
We dived underneath the machines and Mike accidently turned one on. Clackety clack, tick tick tick tick, clackety clack, tick tick tick tick, what a racket this thing made. Mike couldn't figure out how to shut it off so I reached over and pulled the plug and we once again had silence. That is until our two persuers walked in.
The cop was saying to the other guy as they viewed the entire Gardens from this lofty perch, " When I catch those little bastards I'm gonna kick the shit outta them"
The other guy, "I know that was them, they must be hiding around here somewhere."
Cop, "Don't you worry, we'll get them and I'm gonna kick their God-damn asses."
Of course, they had no idea just how close they had come to actually catching us. As a matter of fact the cop's toe was digging into my ribs for a minute or so while he was explaning what tortures he was going to put us through.
After spewing this crap out for about ten minutes, they finally left and we started laughing our heads off, but very quietly I must admit.
We figured we better stay put until the concert started. It did and we made our way down through the screaming mass of kids to the floor in front of the stage.
It was a great concert and well worth the effort. The screaming was deafening but we were right in front of the speakers so we could actually hear the songs. Girls were fainting all over the place and the St. John Ambulance guys were hauling them out left, right and centre. One girl tried to climb down the curtain behind the stage from the seats above. A cop came on stage and told the crowd that if the kids caused any more problems they'd cancel the rest of the concert. It went on without another hitch.
Shortly after this the Gardens fixed the door that we used to enter through but the other two ways still worked very nicely thank you.
