Northern Michigan’s Woodstock
Two Decades After The Party’s End, Nostalgia for Castle Farms’ Wild Years Still Grows
It’s been 20 years since armies of halter top- and mullet-clad heavy metal kids took over Charlevoix on summer weekends, jamming up roads and leaving beer cans, whiskey bottles and cigarette butts in their wake. For most locals, the era was a bad dream they hope will never return. For the revelers, it was a beautiful time; thousands of people follow a Facebook page dedicated to those long-gone days.
HEY! LOOK WHAT I BOUGHT TODAY!
Before 10-year-old Kimberly Reibel moved to Charlevoix in 1968, she toured Castle Farms when it was called Castle Van Haver, a tourist attraction that featured medieval armor and a blacksmith shop. Her father, Art, an attorney who left a successful practice in Royal Oak to open a law firm in Charlevoix, wound up the owner of the 1918 estate almost by accident.
The previous owner, John Van Haver, asked Art for bankruptcy advice.
"Basically, they went out and had a three- to five-martini lunch and my dad bought the Castle from him," said Reibel, who today lives in Sarasota, Fla. "He literally came home and he threw these papers on the table and he said, "˜Hey! Look at what I bought today!’" The family owned the Castle for several years before rock "˜n’ roll arrived.
"We had horses there. We had lots of activity there," Reibel said. "But it was one summer when my dad was out there mowing the lawn – he was kind of famous for being really low-key – he’d be out there mowing the lawn and people would say, "˜Oh!
What is this place?’ And he’d always act like he was the caretaker."
One day a couple guys from California told the caretaker they had a vision. They wanted to hold an outdoor rock concert at the Castle. Prog rock band Pavlov’s Dog was the first to perform in 1976.
BLEW CHARLEVOIX WIDE OPEN
After some underwhelming concerts, the California guys went home, but Bradley Parsons remained. He had worked for them and he had a vision for what the Castle could become.
"He and some investors from Lansing came to my dad and said, "˜Hey, we want to rent the Castle for one show.’ I think that was maybe in like ’78, around there. And that show was the Doobie Brothers, and that blew Charlevoix wide open. I mean, the whole town was just, like, gridlocked. There were no hotels; there was no beer anywhere. It was insane."
Art Reibel saw what Castle Farms could be. For his daughter, the concert days were magical.
"For one day, the Castle would just be like this beehive of all kinds of people from all over the world, and then the show would happen," she said. "It always amazed me that my dad brought that to Charlevoix."
Over the next two decades, the Castle turned a town of 2,500 people into the center of the universe. Charlevoix hosted some of the biggest acts in music, rock bands at the height of their success like Bob Seger, Tina Turner, Rod Stewart, REO Speedwagon, AC/ DC and the Scorpions.
MARION TOWNSHIP VS. THE CASTLE
Something that brought thousands of scraggly young people, gridlock, noise, crime and bare store shelves was not going to go unchallenged, however – not even in 1970s northern Michigan.
"Grocery stores would sell all of their food," Reibel said. "And our capacity at one point was 17,000 people. That was a big crowd."
Marion Township officials set out to shut them down. They created a "mass gathering permit" that targeted just one business in the county.
"So we would comply and comply and comply, and it was just one thing after another. They would try to shut us down," she said.
Art Reibel also battled then-Sheriff George Lasater.
"There was a lot of back-and-forth with my dad and George, but in the end, my dad was a lawyer and he always represented himself and, quite frankly, he would take on any challenge that those guys could throw at him," Reibel said. "He was like, "˜Alright, bring it on. I appreciate the opportunity.’ He was quoted in the paper as saying that."
Art Reibel usually prevailed. In the early days of Castle Farms, he had served as Charlevoix County district court judge, a fact later noted in news articles pointing out how the county’s circuit court judge consistently ruled in favor of the concert venue in cases brought by the township. Reibel left the bench after two years when the state bar began to investigate whether he used his office to further the interest of his venue.
"When he died, the township owed him a bucket load of money in legal fees, which we never collected, of course, because it probably would have broke the whole township," Reibel said.
GOOD TIMES, BAD TIMES
George Allen ran security and sold T-shirts at the Castle in its heyday. He saw a stage roof collapse, served Styx a lawsuit and once had a semiautomatic handgun put to his head by a band’s drummer.
Allen was there in the early days when the stage was a bunch of flatbed trailers parked side by side and covered with plywood.
One of the early concerts by the softrock duo Seals and Croft, known for their hit "Summer Breeze," almost didn’t happen. A new tarp cover had been installed after one failed in heavy rain just days before they were to play. The new cover got its first test during the concert.
"We had rain big-time on the night of the show," Allen said.
Although a drainage system had been built into the new cover, it was flawed and water rained down on the band from six places where drains were attached to fire hoses. One of the band members suffered a shock and Seals and Croft left.
"It was crazy. We were just absolutely flabbergasted," Allen said. "Art Reibel found out that they’d left and, of course, we've got to have them back because the show’s got to go on. He and the sheriff went to their hotel room and convinced them that they needed to get back to the Castle."
Lasater, now a county commissioner, agreed that happened, but he said it only happened because those were the early days of the venue and he was trying to be diplomatic.
"Mr. Reibel pleaded with me to help him," Lasater said.
STYX: IT WAS A DISASTER
Things didn’t always go Reibel’s way. Styx was supposed to play the Castle around 1980, at the height of their fame. They were supposed to play the Sunday of a Labor Day weekend following several dates in Detroit. On Friday afternoon, Reibel learned Styx planned to cancel.
"Dennis DeYoung, the singer, had been hit in the head by a tennis shoe by someone in the crowd," Allen said. "They were canceling our show and they were going right back to Chicago. It was a sellout show and they canceled it."
Reibel learned the band still planned to play Detroit that Friday night. He was furious. He locked himself in his office.
"He typed up two papers. One was a lawsuit and one was a legal document that was called a writ of attachment in lieu of judgment," Allen said. "He set out to seize their equipment."
Reibel found a judge at a cocktail party to sign the writ, and he and Allen boarded a plane. By early morning they were at the Renaissance Center in Detroit, where the band was staying.
"We knew even which rooms they were in," Allen said.
At 6:30am, Allen knocked on the singer’s door and said, "Dennis, you’re served."
The move didn’t convince Styx to play the show, however. Allen said Reibel knew he would never be able to book a band again if he sued Styx or seized their equipment.
"We spent the next eight months refunding tickets by mail," Allen said. "It was a disaster."
ABSOLUTELY DREADED IT
Anyone who lived in Charlevoix during that period has stories to tell.
"We dreaded it, we absolutely dreaded it," said David Miles, director of the Charlevoix Historical Society, who worked at the Lodge Motel in the 1980s.
The traffic, the drunkenness, the rude behavior, the fights, the public urination – it was too much.
"Charlevoix was just a mob scene," Miles said. "Traffic was backed up right through town, right from the Castle. It was bumperto-bumper and some of the behavior, it was absolutely obnoxious."
Despite Miles’ personal desire to forget that era, he dutifully helps to preserve its history; the history center has documented the 120 concerts held at Castle Farms.
Miles knows plenty of tales of bad behavior involving bands and their fans, but he also has positive stories. Take the time when Miles encountered a group of long-haired, leather-clad, tough-looking guys in big boots, guys who looked like trouble-making hooligans in the reception area of the Lodge. Miles didn’t expect what he got.
"It was "˜yes sir, no sir,’" he said. "They were so polite and pleasant and I couldn’t understand why they weren’t acting the way they were supposed to. Well, it turned out that they were Bon Jovi, the year before Bon Jovi hit it big."
THE WINDS OF CHANGE
In the 1990s, the music business changed. Big acts wanted venues five times the size of Castle Farms. Smaller acts could not fill the lawn or pay the bills.
"The music business was changing; there was a lot going on with MTV and bands were promoting themselves in different ways, rather than really being out on tour, especially outdoor amphitheaters, so that kind of changed," Reibel said.
Castle Farms really only existed through the sheer force of Art Reibel’s personality and, as he got older, there was no one to take his place.
"We tried some other things," Reibel said. "I established a really great art festival; we had a wine tasting room. We had a lot of different things going on."
Castle Farms closed as a concert venue in 1996 and Art Reibel died in 1999 at the age of 66.
"At his funeral, I remember saying to Ronnie Winchester, down there at Winchester’s, I said, "˜What is the deal with this music?’ I said, "˜It’s really depressing.’ And he said you could play whatever you want, and so we got some Doors and some REO Speedwagon and some Rod Stewart and we rocked the roof off that funeral home."
ALL GROWN UP AND CLEAN SHAVEN
The R-rated party at Castle Farms is long gone and today the place is a family-friendly wedding venue that includes life-sized chess boards, elaborate gardens, a full-sized steam train and a restored castle.
Alissa Post, a Castle Farms marketing assistant who has worked there for the past nine years, said the current owner Linda Mueller, who purchased the property in 2001, was not available to comment about the property’s raucous years.
Under Mueller’s watch, the venue has been transformed and now hosts five wedding halls.
"The castle had fallen into some major disrepair. It was a different place," Post said. "Now, it’s a totally different feeling."
Kim Reibel likes what it’s become. "They’re having little concerts out there, I think – little chamber concerts, but no more rock ’n’ roll, that’s for sure. Only in our memories," she said. "It’s morphed into something else, but honestly, Linda Mueller gave my mother and I a tour last time we were up there. She gave us a personal tour of every inch of the place and it was very emotional, but honestly, I couldn’t have cherrypicked a better person to have the Castle."
COULD SOMETHING LIKE IT HAPPEN AGAIN?
Most people believe the party days of the "˜70s and "˜80s are markers of a bygone era. Mancelona resident Jim Dandy, 57, who now lives in Maine, agrees those days can never return. Some of Dandy’s best memories are from the Castle.
"We just partied and rock "˜n’ rolled.
You’d go to the concert and you’d just find everyone from your hometown in there. Mancelona had a certain area," Dandy said. "My birthday’s in July, so it was always this huge party with all your friends around, and then Def Leppard is playing in the background."
Sam Porter of Porterhouse Productions, a Traverse City–based concert and event company, believes northern Michigan could play home to a destination concert venue again, but it would have to be the right fit for the region.
"It almost has to be designed in conjunction with camping and a hospitality area," Porter said.
Even if a large outdoor music venue returned to northern Michigan, it wouldn’t be the raucous, drunken, drug-fueled party that was Castle Farms.
"Back then, there weren’t even child car seats," Porter said. "Times have changed; northern Michigan has changed."
SHERIFF: BUY MY BOOK
Lasater was sheriff for 32 years and said he’s seen the Castle at its best – today, as a posh wedding venue – and at its worst, when it hosted rock concerts. Lasater said the concerts overwhelmed his small department.
"There were some concerts, we had more people in that concert venue than we had in the population of Charlevoix county," he said. "It was a tremendous challenge."
Lasater said he’s got lots of great stories from those days, run-ins with fans and artists alike, but he would prefer people read about them in the book he’s written about his tenure as sheriff, "A Seat in the Front Row," which includes a chapter devoted to Castle Farms and is scheduled to be published in December.
"Art was a unique individual," Lasater said. "He sued me, I think, two or three times during the concert times, so I would say our relationship was sometimes good, but most of the time adversarial."
NORTHERN MICHIGAN’S WOODSTOCK
Mark Brzezinski, a 50-year-old retired army paratrooper who lives in Orlando, Fla., grew up in Saginaw and spent summers at a Kalkaska cabin. He attended his first Castle concert, Molly Hatchet, at age 12.
"As we got a little bit older, and as we were able to drive as teenagers, we tried to book every one: Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day," Brzezinski said.
Years later, he got nostalgic. He bought a copy of "Castle Stories," an out-of-print book of personal reflections about Castle Farms written by Canadian Duane Roy. He read it cover–to–cover and wanted more. He couldn’t find a blog or a Facebook page dedicated to the Castle, so he started one in 2012 called "Castle Farms Music Theater (1977–1996)." It’s grown into a community of 4,500 people who have posted thousands of comments and photos that document the ticket stubs, the hot summer afternoons and the smiling, glassy-eyed faces that make up the Castle’s history.
Kim Reibel is amazed. "The first time I saw it, it stopped me in my tracks," she said. "Because I was surfing around looking. I thought maybe there’s something out there about the Castle. I wish my dad could see that. It’s amazing that it’s still alive and people still talk about it."
The page also stirs plenty of nostalgia; people often write that they want the rock venue back. Brzezinski knows the Castle of the "˜70s and "˜80s lived in a long-gone era and can never return.
"The police would be all over it," he said.
"It was a magical place. I had a lot of good times there growing up, you know? A lot of people say, "˜Oh, bring back the Castle’ and you know that’s never going to happen. It was northern Michigan’s version of Woodstock and it lasted 20 years."
View On Our Website