Best of VHS: 15 Minutes on the American Rock Festival [Video]

This Canadian TV report will take you back to 1984, when Ozzy Osbourne, Motley Crue, Quiet Riot and four other rock bands played Kalamazoo's biggest concert.

Those of us who were there on May 27, 1984 will never forget. More than 40,000 fans packed Timber Ridge ski resort, some leaving cars abandoned in a hopeless traffic jam on US 131, as Ratt, Accept, Quiet Riot, Night Ranger, Motley Crue, Ozzy Osbourne and Triumph rocked the crowd all day long at a show for the ages.

This was long before music festivals like Lollapalooza and Coachella went mainstream. It was four years before Metallica, Van Halen, Scorpions, Dokken and Kingdom Come stormed across the country on the Monsters of Rock tour. This was Ozzfest before Ozzfest. This was the American Rock Festival.

A Canadian television station sent a reporter and a cameraman south to Kalamazoo to cover the festival as Toronto's Triumph were the headliners. (I'd guess the TV crew was lucky to make it here as the host puts Timber Ridge on the map “some 60 miles west of Kalamazoo.”) Take a look as the biggest bands of the day are interviewed backstage, then rock it out on the open air stage in front of the massive crowd at the American Rock Festival.

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