At 1:30 Tuesday afternoon I talk my way past the guard in front of the Bruin's main offices at 150 Causeway Street (next door to the Garden, and the only way anybody could get into the building before the doors would open at 6:30) and walk up the urine-stained loading platform and into the Garden. It's empty except for the union crews helping the Stones road crew set up the stage, and the Garden's assortment of janitorial personnel. The noises are functional, moving equipment, the distant sounds of machinery, the shouted questions of the cleaning women in the first balcony, the steady cross-Garden shouts from house manager Harold Neal ("He can be a real prick," I'm told) to the crew chiefs.

I've just missed a catch: five kids are being escorted out the loading dock by seven of Don's people. Which is the reason some of us have arrived in mid-afternoon. There are many entrances to the Garden; it's not impossible for some enterprising people to get into the Garden, then into the second balcony, and hole up in the air shafts for five or six hours until showtimy. And it's being done, despite precautions that include police patrols--with dogs--on the roof, and a head security man who knows as much about entrance points as any kid.

I volunteer to cruise the second balcony for the afternoon, expecting, and getting, relative quiet. The doors are securely locked, and the only duty is a periodic check in the washrooms. I suspect that nobody hides in washrooms anymore because it's so simple. They know that we know that it's the first place to look. In the spirit of investigation, though, I checked the rest rooms every half hour or so, very smoothly; creeping up on the rest rooms, a quick trip through, peering under the stall doors, and then out. After a moment's hesitation, the same process in the ladies' room.

The second balcony affords many small advantages. If you open up five seats, you can sleep up there. And from the first row, you've got one of the finest views in the Garden. From there, I was able to appreciate the size and complexity of the stage and the work being done by the Stones' road crew on it; the camaraderie between the union crews and the freaks setting up the sound and the lights for the concerts.

An awful lot of time is going into the setting up of the stage for the concert. The tour carries a stage, and a complete set of lights, a complete sound system and crew, and a forts foot mirror. The stage had been up Monday night. The lights and the sound came in early Tuesday. Union regulations require the presence of the crews, so there are always twice as many people onstage as were needed.

There is a single trap door open to the roof, so Jon and I take a complete tour of the roof to see whether the open door would be dangerous. We have begun to get caught up in the adventure of the affair. The roof, on this Tuesday afternoon, is primarily melting tar, but a tour around the narrow ledge gives us no trouble at all. The Garden roof is bereft of good hiding places save the fire escapes, and the dogs are guarding them. But we are very thorough, checking the ventilator shafts, and the doors. There's no place to hide, and it occurs to me that I am doing things I wouldn't dream of doing if this wasn't for the Rolling Stones.

Meanwhile, Roger has more or less captured Bill Morrison, and assigned me to guard him. He is a model prisoner, primarily because he is barely aware he has done anything wrong. In hushed tones, and between calls to the corporation's lawyer. Roger tells us that Morrison may have been involved in selling fake backstage passes. Whether we could have him arrested or not was not clear, so it is finally decided that I guard him until we can further identify him, which means waiting for Peter Rudge.

We settle ourselves on the nearest equipment trunk, and start to talk. With roadies, with union people, with anybody. Hockey with the crew, superstars with the roadies. The stage is up, the lights and the mirror are in, the sound system trucks have been places by the stage, and the Garden has begun to settle into a pre-show mood. We learn that the crew is staying in the Madison. "Yeah, we had a lousy hotel in Montreal too," and that the way to get back at these hotels is to cut a slit in the mattress, take a shit into the slit, and leave. One of the crew had only been home two weeks in a year of touring--he was talking about "backpacking in Nova Scotia," after this tour was over.

Meanwhile, the food has arrived, and the Stones dressing room is being set up by two people from HSA for a buffet. You'd never have known it was a locker room. Fabric looking like tapestry on the walls, sprays of flowers on top of the benches, and a long, covered table, to hold cold cuts, bread, cheese, fruit, and assorted imported beer, and champagne. It is all written into their contract. HSA has also provided a tuxedoed bartender to mix drinks.

Out front, the police have arrived simultaneously with Don, and as he begins to scan and sort problems, which included breaking up an altercation between Roger and one of the union people, they line up for rough roll call. It looks to me as though some of those officers with hair curling from under their caps could possibly have volunteered. The flaring tempers are to be expected, considering the importance attached to the show, and the general problems in relations of a group of freaks and union people.

Bill has turned out to be such a fine prisoner that I decide he can go pretty much where ever he wants, as long as I go with him, which allows for some very fine notes for a piece I am writing for the Crimson on the whole affair. We tour the outer lobby, and make one or two forays past the dogs and into the street for cigarettes and food, and have many chances to talk. My impulse is to believe him totally, but I've become hardened against any kind of stories by past experience. He seems genuine.

Wednesday we would find Bill exonerated. Someone had used his name to sell 2000 backstage passes at $20 each. Since no one could have known the passes unless he had been on the tour, this set was obviously phony. No one could get into the press elevator from the lobby with them. Bill spends part of the evening searching for his namesake, but makes sure he sees the show. We've all made good friends with him, such good friends that he spends his backstage time with us, instead of the more important people. It's only fair: I'd gotten to like him.

Events begin to melt into impressions as the show's beginning nears. Describable happenings become images jotted into a notebook. Before the trend of continuity is lost, a few facts should be noted. I watched Stevie Wonder's set in the company of Bill Morrison. I have volunteered to help stand in front of the stage when the Stones come on, mostly out of a desire to be near whatever action the evening held.

Bill gets tired after the first set, and at an instant when I am cornered by Chip Monck, he simply leaves. He had wandered off twice before, but he'd always come back, and each time he'd only gone to the bathroom. But this time he seems to have made his escape. There are other things to worry about.

I am handed $30 by Chip Monck and told to go to Haymarket's wholesale flower shop and come back with "six or eight dozen carnations or something, any kind of corn flower, that we can crush and make into throwable petals, and at least four dozen roses, I don't care where they've been, just any four dozen roses." I have half an hour; it's 9:30.