I got married in 1985. My wife still had to complete her senior year of college. She was studying communications at the University of Tennessee at Martin. We lived there while she was finishing up school and would occasionally participate in the school activities like the Cheap Trick/John Waite concert. I was not a big fan of Cheap Trick, but I appreciated Rick Nielsen guitar playing and thought they would put on a good show. John Waite had a hit at that time with the song Missing You. I didn’t care for the song and considered John Waite to be a one-hit wonder. Cheap Trick was in a lull in their career. Because Waite had the big hit at the time, he was the headliner with Cheap Trick being the opening act. We decided that we would go to the show and leave after Cheap Trick was done. This turned out to be the wrong thing to do.
Cheap Trick put on an outstanding show. Maybe they weren’t churning out new hits anymore, but they could definitely put on a good show. Their show was everything we had hoped it would be. We went home and never thought twice about John Waite. But the next day, we started hearing stories about his part of the show. From all accounts, it sounded like John Waite was impaired during his performance. They said he was so drunk, he fell of the stage. While I’m not one of his fans and I don’t like the song Missing You, I wish we had stayed long enough to get to see him fall of the stage. That would have been worth seeing.