Detroit Rock City by Steve Miller Page A

house; I liked to check things out. But there I was that day, looking around through the telescope, and the next thing I know, the National Guard are at my door. They thought I was working for snipers. The only snipers I saw were the National Guard troops on the rooftops, but they took me in, beat me up a little, and then realized that they had no room in the jail for me. So they let me go.
    Dennis Thompson: I was at my parent’s house. It looked pretty scary on TV, what with the tanks and whatnot, and I was in touch with Wayne, and he said, “There’s a tank parked in the corner of our house of the Artist’s Workshop”—where they lived and we practiced. We lived above the Artist’s Workshop in an old dentist’s office. The whole band was there, and they said, “Yeah, there’s a tank right across the corner from us, and there’s guys floatin’ around here with guns, and if you want to come down here, it’s cool. If you don’t, that’s cool too.” I chose to stay away from it because, you know, with my hair and everything, I was obviously a prime target. Anybody that had long hair and colorful clothes was lumped in with the black people automatically. There was National Guard around—not on every street—but their presence was strongly felt. There really wasn’t that much damage, and what there was was limited to a few areas, with the looting and the broken glass. That riot didn’t last that long.
    Dan Carlisle: I was downtown and parked my car and the police pulled up. The riots must have been just starting up. Police were different then than they are today. They harassed me and ran my plate, and I had some outstanding parking tickets. So they took me to this jail over by Cass, and once I was in, they started filling the cell with angry black men. There I am. And the cop came and said, “You, come out.” Out I came, and he said, “You better sit out there because it’s getting bad out there.” Hal Youngblood was producer of JP McCarthy, and I called him to come down and bail me out. That was no place to be.
    Russ Gibb: The rioters came right down Grand River and never fucked with the Grande Ballroom because we were all cool with the neighborhood people. I think the neighborhood was a little scared of us. We had our regular schedule that week, even as the neighborhood burned.
    Rick Stevers: The Grande didn’t get hurt at all. They canceled Tom Rush, but we came by after it was over and saw Russ. We’re out looking around, and we were all shocked the place didn’t get hurt. Russ said to this young black kid, “Why didn’t this get touched?” and the kid told him, “Because you got music in there.”
    Shaun Murphy: The night before it all happened we went and saw Tim Buckley at the Grande with the Up. No one had any idea what was coming.
    Gary Rasmussen: From our house you could almost see the Lodge Expressway, and you could see the tanks and the National Guard going down there.
    Robin Sommers: The Boulevard had become the main street to run the fire trucks down, and by 2 a.m. it was a parade, and by 3:30 there was National Guard on the trucks with their weapons out. I had this big front window in my room, so we put two layers of blankets over the windows in hopes of stopping a stray bullet if that happened. There was this telephone building five blocks north, and I watched tracer bullets bouncing off all the way to the top. This lady got shot and killed in a motel after she opened a window and stuck her head out. The National Guard opened up on her. I was working at Mixed Media, a head shop where we sold records, books, candles, papers, pipes. The Wayne State Police opened up with a couple of rounds of shotgun into our front windows at Mixed Media. So we boarded it up and wrote, “soul brother” over it. There was a drug store that was burned down near my house, and there was a safe they had