Memory:Phil Merrigan

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This fan memory was written by Phil Merrigan.

My most powerful experience at a GG concert took place in an outdoor concert in a small town called Trois-Rivieres in Quebec at the local baseball stadium that would seat approximately 5,000 people. The stage was on second base and there were approximately 2,500 spectators. It was the summer of 1975, and the Tour was for the promotion of Free Hand. GG took the stage very late (around 11pm). The night was calm and the sky was clear. At the end of The Runaway, the band breaks into Experience. All the stage is black, except for a white spotlight,flashed on Kerry behind his white rustic keyboard. He had very long hair,a beard and was dressed in a white suit. The image was of a musician from another time, the renaissance or baroque period, emerging from the past. The music, also seemed to come from another time, and yet it was a music of our time and of our generation. This man had built a bridge between hundreds of year of music in a few seconds. The crowd was absolutely silent, in a state of reverence. Personnally, I felt lucky to have been born in the last half of the 20th century and to have been mature enough to appreciate the importance of those few poetic seconds created by one of the great artists of our time.