by Jay Skolnick, Concert Photographer
Throughout this month, we’re celebrating the legendary July 28th, 1973 Watkins Glen “Summer Jam”. There’s a documentary on the way, stirring up all the old memories. Looking back, it’s amazing how that festival swelled—600,000 people, making even Woodstock seem small. Only three bands that day—The Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers, and The Band—but they drew crowds no one thought possible.
Most years, I write about Woodstock. It’s a thread in my life too vivid to ignore. But this time around, with so many people remembering Summer Jam, I’m drawn instead to an older, quieter truth: the story of my brother and me.
We spent the summers working with Uncle Stanley at the family resort in Monticello, a restaurant and bungalow colony in the Catskills. The rest of the year, we lived in Newburgh with our grandparents. During the summer, Grandpa Moe stayed behind in Newburgh to run his own business. Occasionally, we would have to run back to help him “get rid of” a bunch of papers from his office by burning them in the backyard. This was after being notified there would be a visit by an arm of law enforcement the next day, not on Grandpa’s payroll. But that’s another story.
Gary’s “Woodstock wound” was never just about missing a concert. He was still young then—and not only did I go without him, but the way he missed it left a mark.
The summer leading up to Woodstock, Uncle Stanley’s warning about smoking wasn’t idle. “If I ever catch you again, I’ll punch you right in the face!” he warned Gary, who was always so proud and stubborn. Sure enough, days before Woodstock, Uncle Stanley burst into the garage—the door flying open, Gary sitting there with his friends and a cigarette. Gary caught one square in the jaw, knocked from his chair. Gary’s face burned with embarrassment, but he wouldn’t back down. I remember him standing back up, shouting, refusing to show weakness.
He didn’t just complain. He ran. “That’s it—I’m out of here!” he yelled, storming down the hill, the rest of us and a trail of aunts chasing after him. He gave the family the finger, thumbed a ride on Route 17, and hitchhiked back to Newburgh—before anyone could figure out how to stop him.
Most of us panicked. “Should we call the police? Start a search?” But there was Gary, pounding on Grandpa’s door, only an hour later, alone.
Aunt Kay, always decisive, made the call: Gary was to be sent down to Florida to stay with our mother—put on a plane the next morning, before the mud and music of Woodstock even started. That was his punishment? He missed out, and he carried that emptiness for years. He’d listen quietly as I told stories: the rain, the madness, the bands. I’d catch him looking away, and every time it hurt a little to see—to know I’d been there without him.
Things weren’t always easy for us. Our mother and father sent us to our grandparents’ house when things fell apart during the divorce. “I’ll come back for you,” they said, but still, it always felt like Gary and I were on our own, figuring it out as we went. Mom tried once, it “wasn’t the right time.” Dad tried once as well. It didn’t work out either. At least Gary and I had each other.
A few years passed.
Trouble found me in Newburgh, and I made the decision. “I’m leaving for good this time,” I told Gary. He was still too young. This wasn’t the first time I’d run, but this time felt permanent. He stood there, quiet, as I packed my things. I remember handing him my record collection—our treasure trove after all the concerts and late nights—saying, “I’ll come back for you.” At the time, I believed it was a promise only I could keep.
Now, looking back, I see how those words echoed what our parents had said to us—”We’ll come back,” they’d promise, each time they disappeared or sent us to someone else. You have to be careful what you say to your kids, especially when you’re leaving them behind.
After six months on the South side of Chicago and barely surviving the coldest winter I could remember, I made the call to go home. Aunt Kay still called the shots, but this time I was the one sent to Florida to live with Mom. I went, but I was older and on my own then, so I did my own thing, which meant music, concerts, no rules, no responsibility.
Florida was wild–I lived for the next show, the next night out. But even as I tried to leave New York behind, the distance from my brother gnawed at me, a low ache every night the music faded.
I was spiraling out of control, and my mother eventually put a stop to it. “You’re going back,” she insisted, shipping me off to New York with a one-way ticket. Only now, I was sent not to Newburgh, but to my father’s mother in Brooklyn—a place I loved, where I spent my early years, with a grandmother who made everything a little better. I sank back into old habits: chasing concerts, getting high, still not sure where I belonged. But there was one thing new—Gary was old enough to join me.
We started a tradition. “You coming down for the show?” I’d ask, and he would, sometimes bringing friends, sometimes just himself. We were that duo from Newburgh who made the pilgrimage to Madison Square Garden, the Nassau Coliseum—all the big venues. Gary started bringing friends. The reward was always the same: after the show, hungry, we’d come home to Grandma and Aunt Angie, waiting in the kitchen. No matter how many were with us, they’d set out huge bowls of pasta, feeding a crowd of kids who’d just seen legends on stage.
It gave Gary a taste of what I’d lived in Florida, live music at its finest, what I’d always tried to bring home in stories and records, but better, thanks to the two little old Italian ladies who would do anything to make me and my brother happy.
Then one night in July of ’73, I was huddled over the radio listening for the next big thing on WNEW FM when Alison Steele, “The Nightbird”—the DJ who always gave you the inside scoop
about concerts—announced that Led Zeppelin tickets at Madison Square Garden were going on sale at 6 am. No internet back then, no attacking a website with a million others for seats gone in 30 seconds. No, you went down there in person, early, and stood in line. And so I did. I got to the box office, bought 10 tickets in the 10th row—an impossible feat today. I told Gary how big a show it would be, how lucky we were. “We will have a blast,” I promised.
But then the rumors started, first quietly, then in the newspapers and everywhere you listened: Watkins Glen. The Summer Jam. The next Woodstock. “More bands might show up! If you regret missing Woodstock, you’ll regret this one more,” the news buzzed.
Gary caught the excitement and looked at me with that old hunger. “I’m not missing this one,” he said, and I heard in his voice the weight of all those years he’d been left behind.
That’s when I made the choice. I sold those Zeppelin tickets. “We’re going to Watkins Glen,” I told Gary. “We’re doing this together.” I knew it was the right thing, knew it was a chance to give him what he’d lost.
So we went.
Unlike Woodstock, where I’d had only a garbage bag for the rain and lost even that after the first downpour, this time we prepared—a tent, sleeping bags, extra gear. We set up just outside the gates, but by the time we made our way in, the fence was down: free concert. I remember security guys perched above the entrance with rifles, a weird vibe, but never any violence that I saw. The crazy rain was the same, though, relentless, just like it had been at Woodstock.
The thing is, even before the official show, so many people were already there that the bands launched into a “soundcheck” for the masses—a full-scale, hours-long concert that alone would have been worth the trip. Had it ended there, I’d have been satisfied. But it was just the beginning. Three more days of everything that made these festivals mythic—music, rain, mud, strangers sharing food, towns marking their territory with signs and flags, and, naturally, drugs. What’s a festival at that time without them?
Gary and I probably slept through the third or fourth set of each band, but it didn’t matter. The crowd was a sea of people—some asleep in the mud, some dancing, everyone buzzing.
The Dead sounded different live, their jams stretching deep into the night—longer than I’d ever heard them sustain before. I’ve told people since: after Summer Jam, I couldn’t listen to the Dead for years. Later, working as the house photographer at the Funky Biscuit, I finally rediscovered them thanks to the tributes and Dead cover bands. Now, when I want to lose myself playing guitar, I’ll put on “Fire on the Mountain” or “Morning Dew” and improvise to the Dead for half an hour or more—I’ve come a long way.
The Allman Brothers, I loved before and after. It was bittersweet not to have Duane Allman or Berry Oakley, both gone by then. We could feel the loss even in the music—the band soldiered on, but everyone in the crowd was aware something was missing. Seeing them play, we could sense the strength it took to get through those sets. They were brilliant.
The Band… they moved me even more after this show than before.
There was, too, that wild moment everyone remembers—a skydiver, smoke flares trailing, coming in for the crowd. It looked like part of the show, but word spread: he’d landed badly and it was a real tragedy, not a spectacle. For a while, a heaviness hung over everyone, Gary and me included, until the spirit of the weekend slowly returned. People began handing out sandwiches, strangers sharing whatever they had, helping each other through wind, weather, or the logistical chaos of a truly massive crowd. The connection became as powerful as the music.
The festival grew in stature in the tales of everyone who was there—though at the time, honestly, I kept wondering about those Zeppelin tickets. But I wouldn’t trade what I gained that weekend: sharing something unforgettable with my brother, finally helping fill that old emptiness, holding fast to the promise I’d made.
Watkins Glen may never be Woodstock, but for Gary, for both of us, as brothers, it was everything. This time, Gary was beside me, the unspoken promise between us finally kept.
I remember watching Gary while we were there, and for the first time, I saw that old emptiness begin to fade. The regret over Woodstock softened, replaced by the joy of the music we had now, together.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” I said, as we swayed beside the tent one night.
Gary looked around at the swirling crowd, a grin finally breaking through old shadows. “I finally get it,” he replied. “Thanks for coming back.”
Years later, I realize that’s what this was all about. Not just the festival, but the bond that survived through all the leaving and coming back. Watkins Glen wasn’t just another concert or the largest crowd I’d ever seen. It was our moment—a chance for Gary to belong, to fill that hollow left by old regrets. For once, the music brought us together, unstuck from the past.
We will always have “Summer Jam 1973”—the memory of brothers finally sharing the show of a lifetime.
