WYAB talk show host and resident bomb-thrower Clay Edwards relates on Facebook how David Allen Coe kept Billy Idol from appearing at the Coliseum in the 1980's. Enjoy the storytelling. KF.
A Friday night show with outlaw country legend **David Allan Coe** and The Burrito Brothers had been locked in. But ticket sales were catastrophic. When the promoter called coliseum director Billy Orr that Friday morning, only 450 to 500 tickets had moved for a 10,000-seat arena. It was, Orr later said, the lowest sales he could remember for any paid event there. The show was canceled immediately.
The next day, the Clarion Ledger ran the headline “Coe concert canceled.” In the article, Orr didn’t hold back: cancellations didn’t just cost the venue money—they blocked potentially bigger shows. “We could have booked something better,” he said. “We had a contact for **Billy Idol**, but we already had a contract out.”
That “something better” was the *Rebel Yell Tour*—Billy Idol at the absolute peak of his fame, riding hits like “Rebel Yell,” “Eyes Without a Face,” and “Flesh for Fantasy.”
Just two days earlier, on Wednesday, August 22, 1984, Billy Idol had delivered a fiery show at the MS Coast Coliseum and Convention Center in Biloxi. The Gulf Coast got its full-throated Rebel Yell. Jackson got silence.
What happened next is the most Jackson, Mississippi thing ever & one of the biggest "what if" in Mississippi music history.
Billy Idol’s next date was Sunday, August 26 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis. That left Thursday the 23rd, Friday the 24th, and Saturday the 25th as off days. The tour buses headed north on I-55 — the same highway that runs straight through Jackson.
The band drove right past the Mississippi Coliseum in Jackson on Thursday, August 23 and/or Friday, August 24 — the latter being the very night the David Allan Coe show had been scheduled and then scrapped.
Urban legend has it that Billy Idol’s band might have stopped, partied, and possibly even jammed at the legendary 1980s South Jackson nightclub, The Embers Club, located at the McDowell Road exit off I-55. (The building is no longer standing. It sat right at the railroad tracks near what is now a UPS facility and later became an adult bookstore and XXX video store—if that helps paint a clearer picture of the location.
Okay, I made that part up… but admit it — you believed it for a second, didn’t you?
Hell, it might have happened. NASCAR legend Darrell Waltrip has told stories about stopping at The Embers Club after racing at the Jackson International Speedway in Clinton and getting into a barroom brawl one Saturday night. Charlie Daniels Band also sang about getting into a fight at a bar in Jackson, Mississippi on a Saturday night in their hit song “Uneasy Rider,” and many locals assume the song was talking about The Embers Club, which became legendary during the peak Urban Cowboy era of the early 1980s.
It’s unknown exactly why they couldn’t (or didn’t) play Jackson on Thursday night, or why the tour didn’t route through the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis or the coliseum in Tupelo as they made their way toward St. Louis. In 1984, the Mississippi State Fairgrounds Coliseum and similar venues were heavily booked year-round with fairs, sports, and other events — something that’s hard to imagine in 2026 given how quiet many of those buildings are today compared to 1984.
They most likely skipped Saturday night in Jackson because the drive from Jackson to St. Louis is long enough that playing a show would have left the crew with almost no time to load out, travel, and set up the massive 1980s rock production in time for Sunday’s load-in.
And missing a Friday night on a major tour is especially painful. You still have to pay the entire crew, the buses, the trucks, the sound, lights, and hotels whether you play or not. Fridays are traditionally the biggest draw of the week — it’s payday, the weekend has just started, and people are off work and school the next day. Losing one because of a conflicting contract and another act’s dismal sales is the kind of financial and momentum hit that lingers.
So that's got to be one of the more frustrating missed opportunities in Jackson concert history, I just happened to stumble across the clipping in an old Clarion Ledger while I was looking up on wrestling & concert dates at the coliseum in the 1980's. I wish Drake Elder was still alive for so many different reasons, but getting him to tell me stories like this is one of the things I miss the most about him being gone. For those that don't know, Drake owned Be-Bop Record Shops & Be-Bop Productions which brought the majority of the concerts to Jackson in the 70's, 80's, 90's before Beaver Productions became the primary promoter and prior to Live Nation Alabama & Mississippi pretending Jackson didn't exist for 20+ years before the Brandon Amphitheater got built.
The coliseum kept its $1,250 deposit.
Jackson kept its quiet Friday night.
And the Rebel Yell rolled on — just not through the capital city.
Kingfish note: The Kingfish is very familiar with the antics of David Allen Coe. I first saw him at Hal & Mal's around 2000. He put on a great show before a packed house. I saw him again when he came through Jackson and enjoyed the show. Unfortunately, those were the last two decent David Allen Coe concerts I ever saw.
I went to four more of his shows in the early 2000's and it was always the same story whether it was Rodeos, Fire, or the Texas Club. DAC would show up late, drunk off his ass. Hell, sometimes he would still be in Vicksburg gambling at the boats when it was showtime. Coe would play anywhere from a couple to half a dozen songs before he would get mad about who knows what and just storm off the stage. Show over. No refund.
22 comments:
He showed up and raised hell at the KA house at state in the early 90s when he came for a show in the (brand new at the time) amphitheater. I watched it all from the rocking chairs.
DAC played at the Sigma Chi house at Ole Miss around 1994. Was quite the event. Had to accommodate a bunch of biker groupies too.
Please ask your resident story-teller how in the hell they could have stretched the Coliseum into a 10,000 seat venue, when its fixed seating at the time was only 6,000 with a possible additional 1,100 on the floor. Or else acknowledge that your buddy Clay doesn't always deal with facts when he is telling stories or spewing his venom over the radio.
David Allan Coe & biker groupies at the Ole Miss Sigma Chi house?
That would have been worth the price of two tickets just to watch the interaction between those two groups.
Hell, I remember back in the 80's when the Charlie Daniels Band played the Ole Miss Tad Smith Coliseum. The CDB parked an equipment truck in a parking space "reserved" for the Alpha Tau Omega house.
A few ATOs were going to be tough guys about it ...
until the bad ass CDB roadies got out of the truck and said something like "make us move our truck".
The ATO boys did nothing except run back into the safety of their frat house.
I was at the Billy Idol show in Biloxi. Not a big crowd. Configured the arena for only half the be open, which was very unusual for concerts there in the 1980’s. BI was good, but not a huge draw.
I saw the Harlem Globetrotters there in the early 70's, Meadow Lark Lemon (sp?) and the Washington Generals(?). Saw short-track motorcycle races there, on the concrete, not dirt, hay bales against the wall, and several College Track Meets. The track looked fun to run since the turns were banked about 10 degrees or so. For the 60 yard dashes, they removed on of the turns and the sprinters would slow down running through the garage doors to the outside. More than a few of them would bust their ass going from the wooden track surface to the smooth concrete floor and pick one of two doors to use. It was a blast in the 70's.
Does Clay Edwards ever compose a complete sentence during his radio show?
A (now deceased) friend once tried to get me to listen to a David Allen Coe CD. He described it as “Outlaw Country” and “White man’s music” but when he started playing it Coe was singing about his wife cucking him with black men. I looked at the back of the record and it was produced by some noseberg. I don’t that friend Coe is garbage. Might as well listen to rap music!
FYI thats probably why he couldn’t sell tickets because he sucks! I guess OM frat boys are into that?
That “story” has no facts. Just made up redneck speculation decades later.
This isn’t even a story. It’s a big “what if”. The DAC and Billy Idol shows had zero connection and anything else is pure speculation. How dumb.
More BS that gets promoted here by Mississippi’s version of The Daily Mail.
10:17 must be too young to remember the general admission shows without any chairs on the colosseum floor. Yes, four thousand people would pack the floor. In ‘89 I was on the front rail for Metallica on the And Justice For All tour with all those thousands of people pressing to get closer. Everyone was soaking wet, drenched with sweat. My shirt collar was stretched over my shoulder from people fighting to get on the rail. I think paid attendance was around 10,500. The same was true for Def Leppard and Motley Crue. Other major acts were drawing 8,500 - 9,500
Everyone was soaking wet, drenched with sweat.
If you were unlucky you got drenched in beer and/or vomit.
If you were really unlucky you got hit in the head with an empty quart beer bottle someone had randomly launched into the air.
The exact quote from coliseum director Billy Orr in the Clarion Ledger was "The coliseum sits about 10,000 but only 450 - 500 tickets were pre-sold". Also you clearly know nothing about how to judge crowd sizes if you think you can only fit 1,100 people on the floor of the coliseum for a concert. This has to be one of the absolute dumbest comments I've ever read. Hell, you should at least try using Google before saying something the stupid. Here I did it for you, at the very top of the page it clearly states "The Mississippi Coliseum (located in Jackson) has a maximum capacity of approximately 6,500 to 10,000 for concerts, depending on the stage configuration and use of floor seating. The venue, often known as the "Big House," features 6,500 permanent seats, with capacity expanded for concerts using temporary floor seating". Idiot!!
Only when your mom listens
Only "made up redneck speculation" is you assuming this comment is half as funny as you thought it was when you hit post
I literally said in the story "this is a big WHAT IF", and there's zero speculation when the coliseum director confirmed there was a contract in place for the Billy Idol show if the DAC show promoter hadn't secured the date prior to the Idol tour promoter. Do you anonymous idiots just choose to read stuff and then make up your own version of what you read? Anything that I wrote that wasn't backed up by factual information was clearly sarcasm or written as opinion or speculation, I bet you're hoot in person.
Biggest loss here was the Burrito Brothers not performing. I’d rather see them than DAC or Billy Idol any day of the week.
Sneaky Pete was back with them IIRC.
Have not heard the name Mr. Orr in years. Is there a Coliseum Director now or does The Hat/Fire Marshal micromanage it?
Sorry, Clay. My mom wouldn't waste five minutes on your sloppy, disorganized mess
of a radio show (see 5:59 and 4:07 above). And your resort to insult instead of a reasoned, adult response is sadly typical for you.
By my count, it’s Clay Edward’s 4, Smartass commenters 0.
Post a Comment