Aerosmith Encounters The Numbers Band in Kent on an Unplanned 1978 Night Off

Back in late October of 1978, Aerosmith found themselves in Northeast Ohio with an unplanned night off and spent it at JB's Up in Kent; it was there that they encountered The Numbers Band.

By Jason Prufer

Robert Kidney of The Numbers Band and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith
backstage at the Richfield Coliseum on Sunday, October 22, 1978.
Photo by Anastasia Pantsios.

As many folks know, I work for The Numbers Band and have since 2011. I do all of their social media, I design all of their flyers and I have been working on a documentary film about them. To do this work, I occasionally have to spend some time with their vast archives, which have been compiled and preserved by Bob Kidney since the band's inception back in 1970.

A few years ago, Bob Kidney and I were working on a project that required us to go through his dense photo archive. At one point I watched him pass by a few photos showing him with Steven Tyler of Aerosmith -- and they both looked pretty young. I stopped him. "What are those?" I asked. "Oh that's some night out at the old Richfield Coliseum where I was backstage at an Aerosmith show," he indifferently stated before quickly trying to move us back on task. "Wait," I said "How did that come about?" "Oh, they came to Kent one night and stopped in at JBs to see the band -- they gave us tickets and backstage passes to their show at the coliseum the following night" I wanted to know more but we were on a different mission -- before I could get any additional information about the photos we were back to our initial task.

For several years after this, I never forgot about those photos and a few weeks ago I had the chance to go back into The Numbers Band's archives and retrieve them to find out more. I had so many questions: When did this happen? Who took the photos? How did Aerosmith end up in Kent? What did they think of The Numbers Band? What was going on with The Numbers Band during this period? What was going on with Aerosmith during this period?

When I went to the different band members to ask when specifically this happened they were all over the place on the date. One placed the event happening as late as 1984 and another saying it was probably 1977. After I looked online for a list of Aerosmith performance dates at the Richfield Coliseum, it looked as if they had played that place for every single major tour they did till the venue closed in 1994.

One of my first missions in trying to find out more about what happened during these couple nights was to track down Anastasia Pantsios since she was the one who took the photos and she had done some work for the band back in the 1970s. When I contacted Anastasia, she, at first didn't remember the show or taking the pics. She told me that there were times in the late 1970s and early-mid 1980s when she was at a major concert every night -- and backstage for at least some of these shows -- so I can understand the events from 30-40 years ago being a kind of giant blur for her. After inquiring further, she did a little digging and actually found the original negatives from that night concluding that she must have taken the photos. Additionally, she told me the date on her negatives was October 22, 1978.

So from there I started researching what Aerosmith was doing on that date. It turns out they were in the midst of their tour for their album Live! Bootleg, which you can hear in its entirety by clicking right here. Furthermore, that date Anastasia provided me with matched up with a known Aerosmith performance at the Richfield Coliseum.

One thing about this date of October 22, 1978 though --- and this made me CRAZY -- there is a wiki page for the Live! Bootleg Tour, and on that page you can see that it lists a show for Aerosmith at Richfield on the aforementioned night; however, it also shows that the band was at Freedom Hall in Louisville, KY the night before (October 21) and a show two days before that (October 19) in Roanoke, VA. The story that I got from the members of The Numbers Band put Aerosmith at JBs the night before that Richfield date, but when you look at that list of tour dates on Wikipedia, that made this scenario virtually impossible. I couldn't get over this detail, so I started re-asking all of my sources what they thought the date of that Aerosmith show at Richfield was, and everything still kept pointing back to October 22, 1978.

After exhausting every single source I had -- including contacting The Numbers Band's manager from the late 70s -- I couldn't figure out why my dates weren't lining up and this particular inconsistency nearly derailed this entire story. As a last ditch effort I decided to take a look at Louisville, KY's newspaper of record The Courier Journal to see if I could find anything there. While Wikipedia is a great springboard for research its facts should never be taken as gospel.

My mystery was solved when I went to the original Louisville paper. I found that Aerosmith's October 21, 1978 show in Louisville had been postponed at the last minute and was rescheduled for December 14 of that year. This means that Aerosmith had two nights off -- one of them unscheduled -- before their October 22, 1978 show and that easily could have placed them at JB's in Kent on either that Friday or Saturday night before their show at the Richfield Coliseum, which was less than 20 miles from Kent.

No reason was given in the newspaper as to why the October 21 concert in Louisville was canceled, and I couldn't find anything online that made any reference to that event not happening. If this piece makes it to the eyeballs of a serious Aerosmith scholar I'd love to hear from you as to why this concert was cancelled at the last minute.

With that mystery solved I moved on to try and find some decent audio or video of Aerosmith from this tour and while I couldn't find anything of really good quality from that specific time period I did find some great footage of the band from earlier that summer of 1978 at the Texxas Jam. Their show at The Richfield Coliseum that October must have been a lot like this:


^^ that video is set up as a YouTube playlist, so if you just let it roll, you'll get 11 full songs from that concert.

In late October of 1978, The Numbers Band were playing 4 nights a week at JB's Upstairs and had been playing with their new bass player Bart Johnson, for about 8 months. I compiled an archive of photos and newspaper articles about the band from this time period -- and you can check those all out by clicking here. I suspect the band that Aerosmith walked in on looked closest to how they did in this promo photo from that time period.

I searched and searched for live recordings of The Numbers Band from 1978 and I didn't come up with much though there are three "studio" tracks on 15 60 75 20 that were recorded in April of 1978. There is however a dynamite 30 minute recording of The Numbers Band live at the Cleveland Agora from April of 1980, featuring the exact lineup of the band that the members of Aerosmith would have seen at JB's. It's very likely that the band Aerosmith saw on that night sounded just like this:

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When I really started digging in and asking questions about this story, Bob Kidney told me I first needed to talk to Michael Stacey. Michael was The Numbers Band's lead guitarist from 1974 to 1989 and appears in two of the backstage photos with Steven Tyler. Bob told me Michael will have some unique insight into the events that unfolded over those two nights.

When I got a hold of Michael he was more than happy to tell me about what he remembered about The Numbers Band from this era and about those couple nights with Aerosmith.

Michael Stacey:

"By 1978 we were mostly playing four nights a week and 3 sets a night at JB's. We also played in Akron during that period at The Bank. That would have usually been on an off night though -- like a weeknight. They had bands there like Hammer Damage and Unit 5. 1978 was that new wave era.

"On the night that Aerosmith showed up at JB's I didn't even realize the band was in the room till we were done playing. I don't know how long they were there. I do remember that I did notice there was a limo parked outside earlier that evening but I didn't know what it was for.

"It wasn't the whole band that came to the club. It was Steven Tyler, Joey Kramer and Brad Whitford. They were sitting in that little alcove on the side of the stage that was against the street side of JB's. If you were facing the band it was the seating area off to the right. I mostly remember sitting down with them talking at the end of the night and I remember there were people standing around finally realizing that these guys were famous -- but if you show up in a limo it's not like you are trying to hide this fact.

"I remember this one guy standing around their table going 'you're Steven Tyler' and Steven was responding 'no no we are in a band called the cockroaches' or something like that -- and then the guy kept pressing it saying 'no you're Steven Tyler' and then finally Steven says 'yeah ok I'm Steven Tyler' and then the guy says 'scream' -- he wanted Steven to do one of his screams and then Steven wouldn't do it and then the guy was going back like 'you're not Steven Tyler you can't scream' It was pretty funny.

"It was while we were up there talking to them that they invited us to the coliseum to see them the next night. The only other distinct memory I have from the night at JB's is that back in that era I used to wear white shoes and red socks on stage and Joey Kramer had the exact same thing on.  

"I think they ended up at JB's because the people who were doing security on that tour were from Kent. They had an off night before they played the Coliseum. They were in Ohio with nothing to do and their security people were like 'I know where we can go see a band' and they brought them to hear us.

Robert Kidney and Michael Stacey of The Numbers Band with
Steven Tyler at the Richfield Coliseum on October 22, 1978
Photo by Anastasia Pantsios

"What I remember about seeing Aerosmith the following night at the coliseum was that they gave us really good seats plus backstage passes. We were like in the 4th or 5th row right in front of the stage. I think Bob and I spent most of the night hunched down with our fingers in our ears while everyone else was standing on their seats. It was like the loudest event I had ever attended. I was thinking we were gonna be deaf by the end of this. It was a standard Aerosmith show. I remember Steven Tyler played drums a little bit. 

"I remember the backstage area was like most backstage areas. There's the regular backstage and then there's the room where everyone gets to go to be important and that's where we went after the show. I remember radio people being back there -- a couple of women from Kent, your standard groupies, the Scene Magazine people were back there. I remember Anastasia was there. I'm never very comfortable in those situations. I just don't -- it's a lot of people milling around trying to be seen. I never considered myself that cool (laughs.)

"Backstage Steven Tyler was very gracious. He came out and spent lots of time talking to Bob and I. This was before they cleaned up. I remember I saw Joe Perry walk through with a girl and he looked like he was just totally lit. I don't know what he was on but he was just -- the Keith Richards thing ya know?  We didn't exchange any words -- he was off by himself.

"I don't remember specifically what Steven Tyler talked to Bob and I about but I remember Bob got a kick out of the advice Steven gave to him. He told Bob if he wanted The Numbers Band to be successful that the band 'should all play the same thing at the same time.' Which of course is a total misunderstanding of what we were trying to do. Playing everything at the same time is what Aerosmith does. That's pop music.

"They were very nice. They were very cordial. I don't get the impression that they were trying to pull a star thing by coming down to see us at JB's. I got the impression that they were looking for something to do and that they appreciated the professionalism of the band even if they didn't quite get the music. They didn't think we were a bunch of dorks."

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After I talked to Michael I knew that I had to get the full story from Bob Kidney next. Bob is the one who appears in all of the photos backstage at the coliseum and Bob is the founder and principal songwriter for The Numbers Band. This is what he told me about this particular period for The Numbers Band and about his two night encounter with Aerosmith:

Robert Kidney:

"1978 was a tough time for the band. We had a hard time keeping a bass player as Chris Butler had recently departed for The Waitresses and his replacement Kenny Grear only lasted about 6 weeks. We finally got Bart Johnson in that slot around April of that year -- he was a great bass player and he ended up staying with us until about 1983. 

"For part of 1978 we were forced into the basement of JB's. I don't remember whether it was a permanent thing where we worked in the basement or if it was just on some evenings because at that time they would have shows upstairs like Tin Huey or Pere Ubu and the place would be full of people. We couldn't bring in a crowd like they were able to because we were already playing there four nights a week -- but then Tin Huey would come in to play like once every 3 months and it was made into a big event. And then David Thomas would bring his crowd from Cleveland down to JB's to play and it would be wall-to-wall people. So because of all this the club owner and the club manager would just piss all over us -- because we were losers. This was the time when the new wave thing was beginning to peak and we were done. The Numbers Band was over with -- that's what we were hearing from everybody.

"I didn't think we were over with but I knew things were looking bad. We were being threatened. We were receiving nothing but negativity. The fucking bar manager that we were working for didn't like us -- and it was all about egos. He was running this club in the middle of fucking nowhere with a bunch of people that were local artists who were drawing local people to see them and we were playing there 4 nights a week and drawing a crowd of people that were just in one city. On Saturdays the crowd would boost but during the week we would play to nobody. The music scene was walking away from us. Our crowds everything. It was the new wave. 

"I don't remember there being a lot of people in the room the night that Aerosmith showed up. As I remember -- it was the band minus Joe Perry and one other. I met the drummer, I think I met the bass player and I met Steven Tyler.

"The first thing I remember about knowing they were in the room was Michael Stacey walking across the stage and saying 'Aerosmith is here' -- they could have come in and left and talked to me and I wouldn't have known who the fuck they were. I didn't know who Aerosmith was. I knew the name. I didn't know what they looked like. I didn't know what they sounded like. I kind of remember seeing Steven Tyler sing and he looked like Mick Jagger with black hair -- to me at least.

"I really didn't know anything about them -- but there they are and they came over to the front of the stage after we were done playing and they were very nice to us and Steven Tyler was very nice to me. He said to me how very much he liked the band but he advised me that my music was too complicated and that everyone should play the same thing at the same time. The next thing I remember is that they invited us to their show for the following night and then they left. It was a short conversation. I think Aerosmith got a big kick out of us. I think they heard things in the music that they heard in themselves. They like the blues.

"I don't remember what I said to him when he said that 'my music was too complicated and that everyone should play the same thing at the same time.' I wasn't offended but I thought he was wrong. I mean it didn't change my mind. Ya know maybe he was right. That's what we needed to do but I wasn't interested in that because that's fucking boring. I don't want to be bored by the music.

"The whole thing that was going on in the culture right then was the dumbing down of everything -- and it still is. Taking it to the lowest common denominator. That's where the success quotient is. At that time there were signs all over Kent that said: FUCK ART LET'S DANCE. They were everywhere and that was the mentality. And there was this thing called art-rock which was a derogatory term and we were thrown in that category. Art rock -- who the fuck wants to listen to art? So ya know what am I supposed to do? I was not interested in writing music for 12 year olds. My music is about what I want to do with music. That's what it's about. It's not about the rest of this shit.

"And I consider 'playing everything at the same time' so that people can understand it, dumbing it down. I think people are perfectly capable of understanding things that are extremely complex like Beethoven, like Debussey, like John Coltrane if they care about it -- those are the people that I believe in. I don't believe in people that want to go hear bands that wear rubber hats or have the latest trend going and they all look like they work on a farm or whatever the fuck it is because I've seen it all come and go.

"As far as what I remember about going to see them at the coliseum, I remember sitting in about the 3rd or 4th row -- and I had to look up. It was really fucking loud. I couldn't understand or hear anything because it was so fucking loud. The sound was going over my head. I could hear the drums. I was watching them and they were like -- ya know doing the rock type thing. Almost like a dance type thing. Movements and moving their instruments. It was all very familiar from whatever else you see.

Robert Kidney of The Numbers Band and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith
backstage at Richfield Coliseum on Sunday, October 22, 1978.
photo by Anastasia Pantsios

"After it was over we went back behind the stage into this vast open cavernous place. It was like standing on the inside of Hoover Dam. And we had this discussion with the members of Aerosmith though Joe Perry was over sitting by himself -- separate from us. He didn't want to have anything to do with us.

"Then we all went into a room somewhere behind there and -- I do remember there was a lot of activity back there. I think they were packing up and leaving. It was like the packing up of the circus. Then we went to this room and that's where the photographs were taken.

"I remember Anastasia Panstios back there and I remember her taking the pictures and I talked to her because I knew her. She had taken pictures of The Numbers Band and I also knew that it was good that she was back there because she worked for The Scene.

"The other thing that I remember is that I talked to Jules Belken. That was big because this had potential because we were connected to this situation because since Aerosmith liked us maybe Jules Belken might take another look at us because by then I think if you check your history Michael Stanley was the band they (Belken Productions) were pushing.

Robert Kidney of The Numbers Band and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith

backstage at Richfield Coliseum on Sunday, October 22, 1978.
Photo by Anastastia Pantstios

"Steven Tyler was extremely nice to me. I am not sure what we were talking about backstage but look at the photos. Look at how nice. He was a gentle soul and I enjoyed talking to him. Simple as that. He's a good person and he was supportive and he knew he invited us there and he knew Belken would be there.

"Steven Tyler was a top of the line, professional musician. And he knew that that meant something and that he was helping us. He knew it and he did it and that's why he did it. He was trying to do something for us. Everyone in the band was looking at this as a potential big break though I saw it only as a possibility."

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After I got done talking to Bob he insisted that I talk to his brother Jack Kidney who he said (as a longtime member of The Numbers Band) would also have another unique perspective on these nights. When I got a hold of Jack he seemed surprised that I was interested and it seemed like he hadn't told this story in a very long time. Here's what he told me about those couple of nights with Aerosmith.

Jack Kidney:

"Herman Pirchner was the manager of JB's at the time and he was also the manager of The Numbers Band -- and Aerosmith’s tour manager was from Kent. Aerosmith got into Northeast Ohio a night early and they wanted to go out and hear some music and their road manager suggested that they come hear the Numbers Band at JB's. Herman Pirchner was then notified that Aerosmith was coming to JB's to hear The Numbers Band. So it was a big-ass deal – and you know me well enough to know how jaded I am and – it meant nothing to me because these guys are just gonna show up and then leave but Herman was all worked up about it.

Alcove on the east end of JB's Up where Aerosmith were seated while they
watched The Numbers Band in late October 1978

"So we played and sure enough he had reserved a table for them in the left wing of JB's – and they fucking showed up! I think it was a Friday or a Saturday night. My attitude was like whatever  -- Aerosmith shmaerosmith.

"So after the show I went in the back room and started counting the money we made at the door – counting the cash – figuring out how much I was going to make that night and blah blah blah -- and Bob comes into the back room and he goes 'They want to talk to you' and I went 'who wants to talk to me?' and he goes 'no man they want to talk to you – Steven Tyler and Brad Whitford want to talk to you' and I was like 'oh shit' because I had no intentions of speaking to them ya know? I don’t like dealing with that kind of ego and all of that.

"So I left the back room and went over and talked to them and Steven Tyler was very flattering of my harmonica playing. I don’t remember what he said specifically but both Brad and Steven were very complimentary and the only harmonica playing that they heard me play was 'Narrow Road.' I do remember that. That was the only harmonica song they would have heard during the time that they were there because when we were actually playing I was conscious of the fact that they were there. They were so nice and they asked Bob what he was doing the following night. The next night was Sunday so we didn’t have any plans so either Steven Tyler or Brad Whitford said 'well ya know we’ll give you free tickets to our show at the coliseum and backstage passes.'

"So we went to the coliseum – Bob and I were there with our perspective spouses. I remember Bob and our manager Herman were sitting in their chairs while everyone else on the floor was standing on their chairs. After the show we all went backstage where we were invited in their inner sanctum. So we’re backstage and Brad Whitford said to me 'I wish we would have had you up there for 'Milk Cow Blues.'

"Jules Belken was there as well and I went over to Jules and I said 'my name is Jack Kidney and I play in the Numbers Band and it’s very nice to meet you and blah blah blah' – and I could see behind him that Joe Perry was laying on the couch and looked all strung out."

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Aerosmith and The Numbers Band are both pretty different kinds of bands though both are blues/rock based and they both formed in 1970. It's interesting that almost 40 years after the two nights where Aerosmith and The Numbers Band would attend each other's shows that both bands are still very active. Aerosmith recently announced they were going on a "farewell tour" that according to Brad Whitford "could end anytime from 2017 to the next five years in 2021" while The Numbers Band have no retirement plans in sight. Click right here to see a really recent Aerosmith performance to get an idea of where these cats are today and then check the video below to see some clips from a really recent live performance from The Numbers Band...

The guys in The Numbers Band certainly remember the events surrounding these two nights but you have to wonder if the members of Aerosmith have any recollection. Maybe this piece will make it to their radar and maybe they could shed some light as to what they remember -- or don't remember.

Big thanks to everyone who helped me out with this piece including Robert Kidney, Jack Kidney, Terry Hynde, Bart Johnson, Michael Stacey, Herman Pirchner, Dylan Tyler and Anastasia Pantsios.

GO SEE AND SUPPORT THE NUMBERS BAND!! AUTHENTICITY OF THIS KIND IS SO RARE IN TODAY'S CULTURE!!