No. 237 – Steamer Lane Breakdown

Performer: The Doobie Brothers

Songwriter: Patrick Simmons

Original Release: Minute By Minute

Year: 1978

Definitive Version: Farewell Tour, 1983. I joined Steamer Lane Breakdown and Slat Key Soquel Rag on my iTunes. I love how they roll into each other, and to me, they’re inseparable. For the purposes of this here list, however, they’re separate songs.

Like a lot of people, I had been something of a fan of The Doobie Brothers in the mid-Seventies. I bought Stampede, Takin’ It to the Streets and Best of the Doobies and listened to them all fairly regularly. However, we parted company at Livin’ on the Fault Line, which had nothing to which I could connect.

After that, they descended into middle-of-the-road pablum. But when I head that the Doobies were going to break up and embark on a farewell tour in 1982, I had to go. Mike decided to tag along. The concert was scheduled for August, about a week before I was about to head off to college, and it would be the first concert I attended without adult supervision.

The concert was held at Blossom Music Center, which was Cleveland’s outdoor amphitheater in Cuyahoga Falls. Mike and I could afford only the $10 general-admission tickets, so we had to get there early to get a decent spot on the lawn. Mike drove his mom’s Dart, and I think we arrived at least an hour before the show started.

We got a good spot, midway up the hill and just left of center stage, but we ended up in the middle of the makeout section of the lawn, apparently. We had couples all around us in various positions of gropage, which was a little tough for this 18-year-old who was there with his friend and not his hot, new girlfriend.

Actually, it wouldn’t have made any difference, because Beth, who didn’t like the Doobies, wouldn’t have let me go at it as hot and heavy as a few of these folks. She certainly wouldn’t have let me put my hand down her pants, like this one very hot blonde was letting her boyfriend do almost right in front of us. Man, what a lucky guy.

Aside from the visual stimulation, it was an excellent concert, by far the best I’d seen up to that point and still possibly in my top 10. The Doobies played as though it really was their final hurrah. (It wasn’t, of course, although, they never rekindled the magic from the Seventies.)

They played for three-and-a-half hours and did everything off Best of the Doobies I & II. They played a rollicking version of Steamer Lane Breakdown, which I had come to know from the bumpers to NFL games on CBS, that featured a wild pedal steel guitar by John McFee. The ONLY thing they didn’t play, as it turned out, was my favorite Doobies song, which is still to come.

After the final notes of China Grove, Mike and I got involved in what we later called the World’s Largest Traffic Jam. Memory being what it is, the details might be off, but my recollection is that it took us nearly two hours just to get out of the Blossom parking lot. It was a ceaseless line of unmoving red taillights. Further experiences at outdoor amphitheaters where the parking crews head home after everyone gets into the lot, led me to conclude that I might be exaggerating the time we spent idling on the gravel of Blossom’s parking lot only marginally.

The horrendous exit didn’t damper the evening though. We had a great time—I really felt free of parental restraint and on my own for the first time—and after I got to Wabash and saw that the final Doobies show was going to be aired on cable TV, I had to tape it. And this time, I wasn’t surrounded by couples in various throes of passion.