Will Millar and Irish Rovers Scrapbook

The 1970s - "let's take a look behind"

I liked the Unicorn the first time I heard it, and saw the Irish Rovers on TV a few times, but 1970 was when I first saw them in concert, and that started a lifelong infatuation!

Here's when and where I saw the Irish Rovers in concert in the 1970s:

November 10, 1970 -- Coliseum -- Spokane, Washington
September 4, 1971 -- PNE -- Vancouver, British Columbia
February 7, 1972 -- Fox Theater -- Spokane, Washington
May 13, 1972 -- Trail High School -- Trail, British Columbia
April 17, 1973 -- Fox Theater -- Spokane, Washington
August 30,1974 -- Opera House --Spokane, Washington
October 17, 1975 -- Opera House -- Spokane, Washington
April 17, 1977 -- Opera House -- Spokane, Washington
October 28, 1978 -- Opera House -- Spokane, Washington

In 1970 I saw an ad saying the Irish Rovers were going to be at the Spokane Coliseum. My parents agreed that it would be a good show so we bought tickets. By then we had been to enough things at the Coliseum to know better than to get the really cheap seats, as those are up in the rafters! But my father didn’t want to pay for the expensive seats either, since we had no idea what the show was going to be like, so we settled for the mid-priced seats. They were $4.

Note: There will be some newspaper clippings on here and I know you can't read them - there is a link at the bottom of the page to a page where the clippings are large enough to read.

November 10, 1970, we found our seats in the Spokane Coliseum. At that time Spokane didn’t really have a good mid-size venue – shows were either in a high school auditorium or in the Coliseum. Now we have nice in between sized places like The Met and the Opera House. So when the promoters figured the show wouldn’t sell out the full Coliseum they had a portable stage, which they moved to the center of the floor and only sold tickets to half the auditorium, which is what they did for the Irish Rovers. Since we had waited a while to buy tickets our seats were on the side of the horseshoe, up high, and kind of near the stage so we had to crick our necks to really see the stage good. We had a great view down behind the stage though. The Coliseum was also used for hockey games, and even then the freezing equipment was starting to break down, so once the floor was frozen for hockey it stayed frozen. For high school basketball games they would put down a temporary wooden floor over the ice, but not for the concert. Just prior to showtime we saw five men come gingerly walking across the ice from the side of the auditorium and go up on stage. Then the lights went down, the show started, and I was captivated!! Of course they sang The Unicorn, and Black Velvet Band, and I remember they did the one about the Gypsy Rover, and just all the fun songs. Back then I didn’t write down the songs after the concert – I do now. Some performers would have been really upset about having to pick their way across the ice to get onstage, but the only reference they made was that Will said something about being “here in the Spokane Mausoleum.”

After that when they performed in Spokane they were at the Fox Theater for a couple of times, and we bought the “expensive” seats since we now knew this was a show worth spending the money on. They always seemed to get to Spokane either in the spring or late fall.

In September 1971 we found out they were going to be performing at the PNE (Pacific National Exhibition) in Vancouver, B.C., so my parents and I drove up over what must have been Labor Day weekend and saw them on September 4. We went to the 2:30 show. There were some fountains behind them and when Will flipped his tin whistle back over his shoulder like he used to he gave a quick glance behind him to see if it landed in the water.
February 1972 they were at the Fox Theater in Spokane. It was still a movie theater then so I don’t know how they managed to rent it out for a live show but they did. Main floor tickets in row G were $5. They sold a songbook called “Songs that are Perfectly Dacent” (which is falling apart but I still have), and in the back was information on how to order a book of Will’s poems called “Tales to Warm Your Mind.” I bought that and it’s still around too.

In 1972 we heard they were going to be in Trail, B.C., so we drove up to see them and caught the afternoon show. Those tickets were $4 (Canadian) general admission

In 1974 Spokane was the host of a World’s Fair, Expo ’74. One of the things that was built for the fair was the Opera House. The Opera House is still there and is a lot better than the Coliseum for shows! The seats are more comfortable, there’s more leg room, and much better acoustics. Since Expo only ran May through October, the Irish Rovers did a show in August instead of waiting until later in the year. Actually they did two shows, 7 and 10 pm, and I went to both. My excuse was that my father was working until 9 and couldn’t make the early show, so my mother and I went to the 7 pm show and we all went to the 10 pm one. And they weren’t exactly the same either. The first show the Irish Rovers did more kids songs, and the later show they did more adult songs. But what I remember the best is a moth that took a great liking to George and wouldn’t leave him alone. I can still see him shaking his shirt – the moth must have started to go down the front of it. I don’t remember the ticket prices.

The Irish Rovers had a TV show in Canada, and we went up to Vancouver one time and found the studio – but taping had finished for the season the week before. I took a picture of the photos in the window of the studio. (OK, you’re going “This girl is a total nut case.”) I was going to post them on here but somehow the quality of a snapshot taken through a glass window then scanned just didn’t turn out well so I’ll spare you the eyestrain.

A Spokane TV station, KHQ, started showing the Irish Rovers TV show on Wednesdays at 7:30 pm. This was in the days before VCRs. SO – I set up a cassette tape recorder as close to the TV as the cord would allow and taped the sound from the TV on tapes that I bought three for $1.00 at K Mart. I still have those tapes and while I admit the sound quality leaves a lot to be desired, those are fun tapes to listen to. The only problem is, the Irish Rovers used to do a segment where Will, George, and Jimmy were leprechauns named Willie, Twerp, and Bun, and those were really heavy on sight gags so on the tapes you hear us and the studio audience laughing without any clue what the skit was about. And I thought I would never, ever forget the details. But I did. We used to try to remember to stop the cuckoo clock in the living room because it was about 5 minutes fast and would cuckoo right during the last song but sometimes we forgot. My mother told my Aunt Julia in Connecticut not to call during that half hour unless it was an emergency. Sometimes she would call anyway. This was pre answering machine and pre unpluggable phones too, so some of the tapes have the phone ringing on them. Now, just so that you’ll be SURE I’m certifiable, here’s another thing I did. I took a cheap little point and shoot camera that used 126 film and took pictures of the TV screen during the show. I have actually managed to get some halfway decent copies to put on here by taking a picture of the old picture with my inexpensive digital camera, so here goes:

1975 they were back at the Opera House in October. Tickets for row B were $6.00.

1977 found them at the Opera House again in April. Ticket prices had jumped way up to $6.50 for the good seats.

Sometime between April 1977 and October 1978 on a trip to Vancouver I bought Will’s book Children of the Unicorn. (Good book – check Amazon or e-bay – it sometimes shows up for sale there.) In October 1978 they were at the Opera House again. Ticket prices for the good seats were now $7.00. We were right in the orchestra pit – row BBB, which is the second row back from the stage. Trouble with sitting that close is you get a crick in your neck looking up at the stage for two hours!

After the show I stood in line for autographs and had them autograph the book Children of the Unicorn. Will drew the prettiest unicorn head! And signed it “love” which I know didn’t mean anything but sure sparked a lot of fantasies!

Readable sized newspaper clippings for the 1970s Back to the main scrapbook page 1980s scrapbook page 1990s scrapbook page 2000s scrapbook page