Bill and Debbie Beebe Interview

Interview with Bill Beebe and Debbie Beebe

April 1, 2023

Memorial Stadium

Champaign, IL

Transcription

I:Interviewer

BB:Bill Beebe

DB:Debbie Beebe

It is 4:19 on April 1st. I'm here with...

BB:

Bill Beebe April 1st 4:19

DB:

Debbie Beebe 4:20. April 1st.

Thanks so much. Guys and I appreciate you guys being here with me today. So you want to just talk about your experience at this farm aid concert, your involvement, how it feels to you as a person and overall anything you'd like to tell?

BB:

I'll start with. I was involved with the production, probably started working on it a week before the actual show on the stage and the material started coming in and then she was at the actual show itself.

BB:

So she has more of an audience perspective. Some of the things I worked on at the time were. The actual setup with the big towers, the scaffolding that went up some 60 feet or so, and I was one of the climbers that actually built the tower and climbed the scaffolding and hoisted it up and put the whole skeleton of the thing together. The tires seem to have the big farm aid to scrim on the front of them. And then during the actual day of the show, then I worked with the sound crew show Co productions out of Dallas, TX and I was on the C stage, which was the front apron. They had an A&B stage on rotation. Platform to keep one act following right after the other, and then there's always some down time to get those two acts set up, and so then they ran out some smaller performers. Carol King and some of the just one person sort of acts and replay that C stage apron. I was in charge of all the microphones and monitors and stuff. On that, that C stage apron. I was the guy that every time it would rain, they would close down the show for just a little while and I would have to run out and put towels over all the microphones and the speakers and like 70,000 people would Boo me because they knew the show. Was going to stop at. That point, but then at the same token, when they quit raining. About ready for the show to get started again. It sent me out to pull that covering off and saw the same 70,000 people will all scream and give me a bunch of applause for being out there. So that's kind of cool.

Wow, that's incredible. And did you boo at him?

DB:

I'm sorry.

Did you boo at him? Did you applaud him?

DB:

Neither I dealt with all the issues prior to that, him complaining and about certain food and things like that that they were being served.

BB:

Tyson Chicken was one of the sponsors and they provided chicken Nuggets morning, noon and night.

Right here on 1st Street, right?

BB:

Yeah, they had tents up, almost kind of where the parking was today. And the crew were there from 7:00 o'clock in the morning till eight or nine, O'clock, 10:00, o'clock every night for the entire week. So we just basically lived here on the side. In fact, some of the people, they had some sleeping areas and people just lived. Right here, you sleep under the stage and things just get a little rest in between the next set of duties to do so. But anyway, I would go to that Tyson chicken tent and we finally got really fed up with it. They promised, next morning, we're going to have biscuits and gravy and it's going to be a really nice meal till we got there and the gravy was chicken Nuggets chopped up and just a white gravy. It wasn't even good pork sausage. And so the crew just virtually revolted and they said we are not working anymore. Unless we get it. Some different foods. And so they were able to strike a deal. Ron Stern, who was the producer of the show for Jam Productions. He arranged for local Garcia's on a promotional deal to bring in a bunch of pizza, then, at least for lunch that day.

That's incredible.

BB:

That was the last day right before the show started. Of set up. We started getting better food closer to the show because performers and their road crews started showing up just the day before.

BB:

And so they had to take better care of them. So there's better catering around for the talent. And so some of that washed over to the rest of us.

Is there anyone who helped you get to this point? Do you feel like the farm aid concert was something like a great pinnacle or champion of abandoned history and we're actually coming close to two years away from the 40th anniversary and we're actually going to create an exhibit at the Spurlock Museum, which is just a street down.

Is there anything you would like to see there that you feel that your thought that farm aid is not being completely shown, anything, any comments and thoughts?

BB:

You're probably looking more for the philosophical reasons and the funding and the things. I was very focused on just the technical production side of things and producing a show for that many people in this small community was a big challenge.

Anything is welcome.

BB:

One of the things that was really important, the local state TransUnion were the ones that were responsible for providing most of the labor, but at times there were probably close to 150 people working during the day, getting set up and during the show and things, so they had to recruit all manner of different labor organizations. Some volunteer. They also tapped all of the trade unions, said carpenters and ironworkers working out there. But it was much below their normal wage scale, but they donated some of their time basically and worked for a much lower wage than the Union scale to come and be part of the production. And they work as stage hands. But there was a lot of carpentry work and steel work to be done. They were a big asset so it was nice to have all the different labor groups to be able to come together and do something, you know, in the spirit of the farm aid.

Yeah, that's incredible. Illinois actually has the most farmland, both now and at the time of the farm aid concert. Do you have any connections to farmers here today or then?

BB:

At the time, well…

DB:

Well, some of the Wrights we knew.

BB:

We did know a bunch of farmers.

DB:

Some farmers up north and Paxton, and actually we knew them through…

DB:

A band. So they were all band members, but they were farmers, normally.

DB:

So that was their real job, you know. And they just played in a band, you know? So some of them, well, I don't know if they all came down, but a few of them did, and we attended it with them. At the concert we sat out in the rain and the cold. I don't know, we probably got there about mid morning and we stayed pretty close to the end.

Can you tell us your experience? How was traffic going? Was there parking like?

DB:

That I wouldn't even remember. I think we all came as a group, so I don't really remember any of the parking lots.

Who'd you come with? You know, are there any names?

DB:

Charlie was one.

BB:

Charlie Brown.

DB:

Charlie Brown? Yeah, his name was Charlie Brown. I'm not sure who else came. I don't remember everyone else.

That's totally OK.

BB:

The 80s are a fun time but if you can remember the 80s then you weren't really living.

Yeah, that's what we've been told. And so it's actually really great to have a participant experience. You want to just tell us anything you remember from your home, the entire day of being there and being like our participant, we've actually had so many people coming in like from AT&T, a woman who has been like one of the 1st 10 people to work in AT&T and actually worked the stadium. But we actually haven't had people participate, so anything is appreciated.

DB:

Yeah, I'm, you know, just listening, you know, and just knowing that certain bands were

going to be playing, I mean other than that it was just a long day.

Was there a line coming in? Where did you come in? Do you remember coming into memorial stadium? What was it like?

DB:

Well, we came in, (unintelligible)

What did you eat?

DB:

I don't even know if we really even ate. You know, because if you move, you may not get back to where you were going to be. So you just stayed. You know where you were sitting and you took turns, I guess going, but I don't really remember a lot of that.

BB:

I got a unique perspective on some crowd people from being on the stage because it was a general admission show. So the first people in got all right up front and there was a group of girls, four or five of them that were so excited. They're right dead center. They were against the barricade and they thought they had the best seat and they were so excited in the morning. And then as the day wore on, they started getting tired. There's people crushing against them and things. They also realized that they couldn't move, they couldn't get to the bathroom, they couldn't get any water. And later on the day they're slumped over the barricade. And then they would be sitting down and they were just absolutely miserable for the whole. They thought they had the best arrangement, the best seat ever, but it proved to be difficult to hold.

Yeah, that's the case even today. The rain, the everything that's happened, you know, nobody expected 70,000 people to show up. What were your expectations? Do you think it was more community support?

BB:

I think it's just community support. It grew by word of mouth. There was so much press and media involved with the governor promoting it and Willie Nelson, it started with Willie and playing the State Fair. And Governor Thompson was a big fan and he went backstage and met Willie and talked to him. They got to talk about the farm crisis and Bob Dylan had been involved, kind of putting the seed in everybody's mind. A day at Live Aid, he made a comment about stuff, saying all our aid to Africa, maybe we should do something here for our farmers. So Willie had that talk to Governor Thompson and then the governor made it known to the university that you're going to participate in this and so that's how it kind of all got started. They then got together with the assembly hall staff, which was Tom Parkinson and John Graham, who were used to doing rock'n'roll productions but not at this scale. Rock'n'roll crowds and the kind of security you have to have and what took to do the production and things. So it was kind of a group effort to get the whole thing produced.

And do you feel like you have anything you would change, anything you thought was amazing throughout the whole time?

BB:

Oh, it was all very amazing getting back to the governor. He was such a fan. He spent a good part of the day on stage. He was staged. Right where I was. And one of my jobs was just he kept sitting on the stage cross legged, just like a big groupie, you know. And he didn't want any special attention. He didn't have security around him or anything. He kept getting in the way. And like, come on, jump. You got to move. I kind of had to kick him in the ****, and he'd shuffle over a little bit because we had to bring equipment and stuff. Back and forth. And he he was, he was just paying the **** the whole time. But he was just a great guy.

Well, I appreciate you guys being here and telling your stories..

BB:

All right. very good. I got a million of them, but throughout the whole performance, all the different talents and everything, it was really a lot of fun.

Yeah, and this is not this is not the last time you can tell your story.

We'll probably contact you for more information, anything you have come up from now till then, don't be afraid to reach out as. Like anything is appreciated at all. You know, like if memories come back there and if you talk to anybody and you feel like, you know, one day you see a random photo anywhere, don't be afraid to bring that in and anything is appreciated.

DB:

Right.

BB:

We're hoping to see more of the old timers show up here that we might know and be able to kind of jog some memories.

The information will be public, all the interviews, maybe you see someone you know who was here before you.. So yeah, I'm excited. Thanks so much, guys.

BB:

No, thank you.