The five greatest prison gigs of all time
Prisons, jails, correctional facilities and mental institutes for the criminally insane are places that lurk in the shadows of society, out of our view but ever in our minds as the haunting places that house pure evil. This is, of course partly correct, but as films such as ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ and ‘The Green Mile’ have told us, not everyone who finds themselves in a prison is evil and some, albeit a small and incalculable figure, are indeed innocent but just find themselves on the wrong side of lady luck.
I grew up afraid of prisons and prisoners, naively assuming that they were all murderers who were constantly plotting their Alcatraz style escapes so they could track me down and bludgeon me in my sleep. I recall one day in the aforementioned childhood when my father came home from a rugby game; upon asking him who he played, he said he played the county prison’s team. I was naturally gobsmacked and, had I known prior to his departure that morning, I would have been dragged along holding my father’s ankle begging him not to go. However, as my father continued to explain, not all criminals are evil and some find themselves in prison as a result of a horrifying mistake or misjudgement while others may have turned a corner over their years incarcerated and want to make a fresh start in life – after all, they are called correctional facilities for a reason.
With this in mind, I imagined the poor bored inhabitants of prisons who aren’t evil at all and are in search of bettering themselves. My father explained that prisoners who show good behaviour over time are granted liberties such as sports, day release, and live performers coming to visit.
A number of years later I was introduced to the rock legend Johnny Cash and heard the version of ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ recorded at San Quentin prison at one of his shows there and I imagined myself as a prisoner just for that moment to feel the excitement of having such an iconic performer grace my bored and lonely existence with his presence. It was a lightbulb realisation that has warmed my hopeful heart ever since.
Throughout history, there have been a number of iconic gigs at prisons across the globe, we list the five most memorable performances.
The 5 best prison gigs of all time:
Johnny Cash – San Quentin State Prison
The ‘Man in Black’ presented the image of an outlaw country musician in the themes of much of his music, and I have always wondered how much truth there is behind this persona. As it transpires, he did have a few brushes with the law over his time, running up a total of seven arrests between 1959 and 1968. The charges ranged from public drinking in excess, reckless driving and possession of illicit drugs. The most comical arrest took place when, after a small drinking binge in Starkville, Mississippi, Cash was found picking flowers in someone’s private garden in the dead of night. The most famous and likely the most serious of his offences was in El Paso, Texas in 1965 when he was caught attempting to smuggle amphetamines, to which he had become addicted in the 1960s, over the border from Juarez, Mexico.
Despite this bad-boy demeanour, Johnny Cash was never in any serious trouble, and no he didn’t shoot a man in Reno even if just to watch him die. However, Cash did find himself in prison on numerous occasions, but as a performer. Famously, he wrote ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ after becoming inspired by the film ‘Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison’ while he was serving in the US Air Force in 1953. After hearing the song, inmates at San Quentin State Prison frequently wrote to Cash begging him to perform at the prison. On February 24th, 1969 Cash did just that and played in front of an overjoyed congregation of prisoners while recording the set for the famous album Johnny Cash at San Quentin.
The performance has gone down in history as one of the most famous prison performances.
B.B. King – Cook County Jail
Mississippi blues legend B.B. King is known as one of the godfathers of the blues tradition, having innovated his own style to electric guitar blues that inspired countless rock giants in the latter half of the 20th century. He can easily count Jimi Hendrix and The Rolling Stones as disciples.
In 1970, King was at a crossroads in his career and when asked by jail warden Winston Moore if he and his band would play a live show at Cook County Jail in Chicago, he jumped at the opportunity and decided that he would record the performance for his next album. On September 10th, 1970 King and his band performed a blinding set at the jail in front of 2,117 joyous and wholly satisfied inmates.
The album Live in Cook County Jail was released the following year and became one of King’s most successful albums, his only album to reach number one on the US Top R&B chart.
The Cramps – Napa State Mental Institution
New York punk rockers The Cramps were regularly in search of depravity, horror and excess, as are often the expectations of being a successful punk group. Their songs’ subject matter often touched on the bizarre and gruesome imagery from nightmares and horror movies. As leaders of all things macabre in music, they decided that it would be fitting for them to play a concert in a mental hospital.
On June 13th, 1978, they found themselves doing just that. On arrival in California with fellow punk band The Mutants, they travelled up to Napa State Mental Institution to play one of the most strange and controversial gigs in history. Using a platform of raised patio in the courtyard of the institute, the bands played their sets as passionately as ever in the disturbing setting. The gig was only played to a small crowd of a dozen devoted punks who travelled with them from San Francisco, perhaps 100 or 200 patients and a handful of staff.
The gig might have therefore been lost to the winds of time, but fortunately, a small reel of footage exists from the strange affair in a fittingly pixelated black and white picture. Patients meander the courtyard, some engaged and enthusiastic about the show, while others seem almost oblivious to their surroundings, at times wandering onto the stage area. The band play as they would at any other show with full enthusiasm and guitarist Bryan Gregory sporting a slight grin through the entire set with a cigarette stuck to the close of his lips. During the set, frontman Lux Interior can be heard yelling: “We’re The Cramps, and we drove 3,000 miles from New York City to play for you.”
“Somebody told me you people are crazy… but you seem alright to me.”
The Sex Pistols – Chelmsford Top Security Prison
The most iconic band of the UK punk movement of the 1970s was undeniably the Sex Pistols. Their devil-may-care loutish demeanour mixed with their angered political stance as anarchists and anti-royalists made them the perfect fuel to inspire a generation of musicians. The lacking precision of musicianship shown by the Pistols was made up for by their incalculable impact on music from the late 1970s onwards.
The bad boys got a lot done in their two-year existence with a near-constant run of shows around the UK riling up a youth born to a country almost settled in its social inequality. One of these shows was quite fittingly held at Chelmsford Top Security Prison in 1977. Two versions of the recording of this concert exist in album form. The original 1990 release features a compromised tale of events as Dave Goodman, the band’s sound engineer decided to overdub the recording with sounds of a riot erupting amongst the inmates and used a mimicking voice actor to falsify an extension to Johnny Rotten’s already over the top taunting of the audience even worse. Thankfully there was a later re-release that came with none of the overdubs which reflects the true magic of the momentous occasion.
Frank Sinatra and the Count Basie Orchestra – San Quentin and Lorton Correctional
King of swing and seductive crooner Frank Sinatra had an illustrious career that put him amongst the most successful musicians of his generation and to this day he is one of the highest-selling artists of all time. Sinatra is well known for his songs that have been locked to immortal history having become staples of the festive season and film soundtracks, and his albums staples of any record collection worth it’s salt.
Less known is Ol’ Blue Eyes’ strange penchant for playing shows at prisons. Indeed, he played countless shows to groups of elated inmates throughout his career. It was in fact Sinatra who had the idea of singing for the inmates at San Quentin and recording the performance for a live album first, four years before Johnny Cash’s famous concert. Unfortunately, Sinatra’s live album never came to fruition, but rare footage from a 1965 show at Lorton Correctional Complex in Virginia exists showing Sinatra giving a vocal display as if he were at one of his famed Las vegas shows.
The satisfied smiles seen on the faces of the most hardened looking inmates is testament to the positive impact such performances can have.
