Hartland — Which community has had the most epic decade in Michigan history?
Ann Arbor in the 1960s had hippies running wild. Detroit and the auto industry boomed in the 1920s. Grand Rapids officially became “Beer City USA” in the 1990s.
But the title of “Most Epic Decade in Michigan History” belongs to Hartland in the 1970s.
Hartland? Where’s that?
Hartland is a sleepy suburb in Livingston County that’s best known these days for the bad traffic at US-23 and M-59, but in the 1970s it was far and away the coolest place in the entire state. Consider all that happened in this tiny bedroom community back then:
The rock band KISS held one of its most memorable and disastrous concerts ever at an ice rink in Hartland, attracting 5,000 fans to a venue that held at most 1,500 people, resulting in both the cops and fire department showing up and hundreds of people peeing in the parking lot at the grocery store next door because the ice rink wouldn’t let them in.
Having been kicked out of their normal home at Olympia Stadium, the Detroit Red Wings were forced to hold training camp at that same ice rink, and two of the Hanson Brothers from the movie “Slap Shot” showed up and raised hell.
Just up the road, another famous rock band, Grand Funk Railroad, recorded one of its most memorable albums ever in a barn, produced by none other than Frank Zappa, who learned to shoot a gun while he was there and loved it.
And to top it all off, a campground and summer retreat called Waldenwoods hosted a poor man’s version of Woodstock—an event that not only featured the rock bands MC-5 and Brownsville Station, but also a poor dude who got attacked by two other dudes with a tire iron and screwdriver, and then when the ambulance showed up to help him, the overwhelmingly drunk and high crowd responded by trying to tip the ambulance over with the poor man inside it.
KISS fans peeing in parking lots, the Hanson Brothers getting into fights, Frank Zappa gleefully shooting a pistol at beer cans. What more do you want?
Hartland in the 1970s had it all. So let’s delve a little deeper.
Hartland, again, is a township in eastern Livingston County just north of Brighton that’s mostly known these days as a place that features a lot of nice subdivisions surrounded by traffic. It has every fast-food restaurant known to man at the intersection of U.S. 23 and M-59.
The most exciting thing that’s happened in Hartland in recent times took place in September 2024, when Shaquille O’Neal showed up in person to help open a branch of his Big Chicken restaurant chain, and three patrons celebrated the occasion by getting into a brawl in the parking lot with some deputies from the Livingston County Sheriff’s Department.
Aside from that, it’s been mostly quiet in Hartland in recent decades. Heck, in the 1970s, a brawl with the cops in a fast-food parking lot while a gigantic NBA star stood by would have barely registered on the radar.
Because man, oh man. The ’70s in Hartland were a trip.
The epic KISS concert took place on Friday, April 4, 1975, at the Nordic Ice Rink in Hartland. This was less than a month after the band released its album “Dressed to Kill,” which included its most famous song ever, “Rock and Roll All Nite.” The Hartland show was the fifth stop on its 1975 tour.
KISS was just starting to explode in the music world, so it was something of a miracle that an ice rink in little old Hartland was able to land a concert stop.
The Nordic Ice Arena had just opened in 1974 on the south side of M-59, right where the Rural King store is located today. It was torn down in 1982, but back then, it was owned by a quirky guy named Harry Demas and managed by his son Allen Demas, and they both had big dreams for their little ice rink.
So naturally, when the opportunity came up to book a red-hot rock band for a concert, they jumped at it. The told the promoters they could sell 5,000 tickets, even though the arena held 1,500 people at most. Tickets were $4.50 in advance, and they sold out almost immediately.
The event was a fiasco in every way possible. When the cars started showing up well in advance of the 8 p.m. concert, they flooded the parking lot of not only the ice arena, but also the nearby Food Town supermarket. Allen Demas wouldn’t let anyone inside the ice arena to use the bathroom and there were no woods nearby, so hundreds of people just started peeing in the Food Town parking lot.
They finally let the crowd in and KISS took the stage, but guitarist Paul Stanley was battling a bad eye infection, so he wore sunglasses instead of his trademark star makeup. In the crowd, numerous people were overdosing on whatever drugs they were taking, and the fire department had to tow 18 vehicles in the parking lot just to clear the way. Dozens more people were passed out drunk inside.
Then word got out in the community about what all had happened, and citizens were outraged. A public meeting took place the next night in Hartland Township, and dozens of angry residents packed the township hall to talk about it. The township ended up filing a lawsuit against Harry Demas, demanding that no more concerts take place at the Nordic Ice Arena. This was an issue, since REO Speedwagon was scheduled to perform there in a couple weeks.
Judge Paul Mahinske told Demas to clean up his act, letting him know he couldn’t sell as many tickets and that he had to open his bathrooms so that people wouldn’t have to relieve themselves outdoors. The REO Speedwagon concert went off without a hitch and that was the last concert they ever held there.
A few months earlier at the same ice arena, the Detroit Red Wings making news in Hartland. The Wings wanted to hold their fall training camp on their home ice at Olympia Stadium in Detroit, but in September 1974, Olympia was all booked up with a “Disney on Parade” show. They were forced to look for a new home (and were very pissed about that), so the Demases offered up the Nordic Ice Arena.
The Wings didn’t have any better options, so they came to Hartland. All the practices were open to the public and Livingston County hockey fans were in heaven.
The biggest news that came out of training camp that year was that star center Marcel Dionne showed up fat and out of shape, and Coach Alex Delvecchio was none too happy. “He looks a little content … a little plump,” Delvecchio told reporters. “I’d like to get him to lose a few pounds because I think he could play better hockey.”
The other big news was that two minor leaguers looking to make the Wings kept getting into fights during practice—brothers Jack and Jeff Carlson, who had been playing for the Marquette Iron Rangers. “If Detroit is looking for hard-hitting, rough-tumble hockey, these boys could provide it,” wrote the Livingston County Press.
Three years later, the two enforcers who had been getting into fights in Hartland hit it big in the cult classic “Slap Shot” as two of the famed Hanson Brothers, the most beloved fictional hockey players of all time.
Fast-forward to the Bicentennial Summer of 1976 and Hartland welcomed another legend, Frank Zappa. He spent the summer there producing an album for the Flint-based rock band Grand Funk Railroad.
Grand Funk’s leader, Mark Farner, owned a huge farm in the Parshallville area of Hartland, and he turned his barn into a recording studio, known affectionately to the band as “The Swamp.” In 1976, the band gathered at the Swamp to record their 11th studio album, “Good Singin’, Good Playin’.” They talked the legendary Frank Zappa into producing it for them.
Farner was and is a good-old-boy conservative who loved his guns, and the tale goes that while they were recording the album in Hartland that summer, he taught Zappa how to shoot a pistol.
Farner himself told the story in an interview: “There’s a song on the album called ‘Don’t Let ‘Em Take Your Gun.’ He wanted to know, ‘Why you singin’ this?’ I said, ‘Because of the Second Amendment, the Bill of Rights, dude!’ The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
“I said, ‘If we didn’t have guns, you’d be licking the boots of your master.’ He said, ‘Ah, bulls—.’ And I explained it to him, because he was kind of anti-gun. So I said, ‘Have you ever shot a gun?’ and he said no, so I said, ‘I’ll be right back.’
“I went over to the farmhouse and I got a .44 magnum. All he wanted to do was shoot a can like they did in the movies. So we put some beer cans out there, and I talked him through how to do that first shot. How to squeeze and not jerk the trigger, let it be a surprise, and he hit the can. He freaked out. He just wanted to stay out all day shooting the gun.”
Two years later, in 1978, Hartland closed out its epic decade by hosting a music festival at the Waldenwoods Resort called Chip Mann’s Fantasy Festival, better known as “Waldenstock.” The headline bands were MC-5 (“Kick Out the Jams”) and Brownsville Station (“Smokin’ in the Boys Room”). It was two days of rock music, drug use, naked swimming, parking nightmares, and at least one stabbing.
That happened when a 20-year-old Milford man was attacked by two other men with a tire iron and a chain, and they ended up stabbing the poor guy in the back with a screwdriver. An ambulance showed up to take him to the hospital, but as the ambulance was on its way out, the crowd of course blocked its path and then rocked it back and forth, trying to tip it over. Because that’s how they rolled in Hartland in the 1970s. The man reportedly survived.
Then the 1980s arrived and Hartland’s stretch of awesomeness came to an end, aside from the occasional police brawl in Shaq’s parking lot.
Hartland is little more than traffic and fast food these days, but if you want to re-live some of the awesomeness, just pull into the Rural King parking lot some evening and crank up “Rock and Roll All Nite” on your car stereo. A great KISStory lesson, to be sure.
Buddy Moorehouse teaches documentary filmmaking at Hillsdale College.
