Concert and Video Production Saved by FDNY

Here’s a harrowing tale of concert and

video production,

an excerpt from my love story volume Waiting for Elizabeth. This happened in June of 1989. It’s the night before the first of two concerts Elizabeth gave on our terrace from which I created a concert video production.

“We called the event – and the subsequent composite video – Concert in the Sky I and for us it was a really big deal. We planned for months, sent out announcements and enrolled several friends to create a [production] support team …

“A week or so before the first gig I bought a 4 X 8 sheet of ¾” plywood and nine cinderblocks which would become Elizabeth’s stage. We rented sixty white plastic folding chairs, rearranged some of the large planters on the terrace, made innumerable other long forgotten arrangements and, of course, Elizabeth and Richard Shulman rehearsed and rehearsed. …

“When the Chinese food arrived Friday night we were exhausted but ready. The gear [borrowed high-end video and lighting equipment] was piled all over the living and dining rooms and chairs filled the other spaces so we could barely navigate to the kitchen.

“Our fortune cookies were not properly prescient because as we were reading their wisdom there came a frantic pounding on our front door. It was our penthouse neighbor’s thirteen year old nephew. He was home alone and there was a fire in his bedroom. I told him to grab his terrace hose. I ran out and got ours, running with it to his terrace as Elizabeth called the fire department. When I got to their window, squirting hose in hand, it was obvious that professional help was needed and it wasn’t long in coming. I could already hear hear sirens.

“FDNY is amazing. It seemed only a couple of minutes until there was a host of Firefighters swarming the roof. By that time Penthouse-2 was pretty much engulfed in flames.

“The way the apartments are laid out, our bedroom and bathroom windows open onto the neighbors’ terrace. This confused the firefighters in that, as they were on the north terrace where the fire was, they assumed that our bedroom windows were in that apartment so one of the first things they did was to break our windows. I was in the bedroom at the time and I very loudly and clearly explained the geography, so no further incursions or destruction occurred.

“All this was taking place with a raging inferno going on with at least a dozen very large, very strong, very loud men crashing about in all directions. The fact is that there probably was profound organization to what they were doing but this was invisible to the untrained eye. To me it looked like absolute chaos.

“One of these guys ordered, in no uncertain terms, that Elizabeth and I not only vacate our place but go down at least two floors and await the conclusion of the event. There was over $100,000 worth of  borrowed equipment in the apartment so you may well imagine that I was not happy with this instruction and resisted it to the point where threats were made upon my physical person should I persist in my lack of cooperation. We reluctantly complied with the order to withdraw.

“It didn’t take long for them to get the fire out but John and Joe’s apartment was gutted and all their stuff was burned to ashes. No one ever gave a conclusive answer to what started the conflagration.

“When it was all over the only damage we sustained was the broken bedroom windows and loss of electricity in our bathroom because it shared a circuit with Ph-2. Both were fixed the next day. One of the firefighters told me that the thick, solid walls of this pre-WW II building was what saved our apartment.

“I don’t know how we did it but we both had a good sleep that night and got up on Saturday ready to rock and roll.”

Many more tales of concerts and other adventures when you Click here to get Waiting for Elizabeth

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