I found this article on the Myrtle Beach paper, The SunNews. I live about 30 miles from MB, but in 1978 my 9 year old self could have cared less about this. I could not get over the fact that they were so close. Where is that bloody time machine when you need it?
Stones visited MB 30 years ago
Venue for concert now storage
By Robert Morris -
[email protected]The "Main Event" was 30 years ago today, but the chords have yet to fade from the Grand Strand.
In Myrtle Beach to relax on a weeklong break between shows on their "Some Girls" tour, the Rolling Stones were persuaded to play an impromptu date at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center.
The $10 tickets sold out within hours, and on June 22, 1978, "The World's Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band" played to an audience of about 2,000 fans, though they were used to playing crowds 10 times that size.
The man who made the concert happen was Cecil Corbett, a promoter who managed major acts around the Carolinas and Florida. His son, Allen Corbett, now is a promoter as well, filling his late father's shoes by booking shows such as the upcoming Springsteen concert in North Myrtle Beach, but he was then a 14-year-old runner just helping his dad.
"It was a busy day, to have them in such a small hall," Corbett said. "It was pretty much a blur."
The room where they played is no longer even an exhibit hall at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center but instead is a storage room, still crowded, but now with tables, chairs, plants, ladders and scaffolding instead of screaming teens. An orange-and-green stripe from a decidedly earlier era runs around the room.
"Can you feel Mick Jagger?" asked a broadly smiling Kevin Waymer, a crew leader too young to remember the show but old enough to remember the baseball-style bleachers and event offices that are now also gone from the storage room.
"They played in this?" asked Casey Church, the Convention Center events coordinator who was seeing the room and learning about the show for the first time. "This is cool."
Across town, at the corner of Kings Highway and Woodside Avenue, a two-story building housed for years Roma's Italian restaurant, where Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall ate dinner the next night. Now sold and being renovated into a house, all that remains of the restaurant are a few scattered coolers, sinks and plastic serving ramekins waiting to be hauled from the backyard.
Joe Diminich, whose family owned the restaurant, was working that night. It was late, and few people were there, Diminich recalled. At one point, the 22-year-old fan asked Jagger how the meal was.
Jagger's response - his British accent mimicked by Diminich as he retells it - was enshrined on the menu for years: 'Mah-velous fettucini,' Mick Jagger, 1978.
"We miss the old days," Diminich said.
Tales of other Stones' moments stood out, Corbett said - a meal at The Library restaurant after the show, a deep-sea fishing trip that ended with a barracuda in one band member's bed. But when called at his Bishopville home Saturday, Corbett didn't initially realize the show's anniversary is today - then noticed a sticker from it was right in front of him.
His 17-year-old daughter, Maggie - granddaughter of the man who brought the Stones to the Strand - had been rooting through old concert memorabilia.
"She saw it and said it was cool," Corbett said. "Next thing I know, it's on her wall."
Contact ROBERT MORRIS at 626-0294.
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Stones Visited Myrtle Beach, SC 30 years ago today (Read 1,750 times)
