Garden Party • Rick Nelson — Pop Time Machine

Garden Party. On this day, October 15, 1971, Rick Nelson was at Madison Square Garden, playing the "Rock & Roll Spectacular" concert. The concert featured 50 stars Chuck Berry, Bobby Rydell, The Shirelles, The Coasters, Bo Diddley, and a few others. When Rick Nelson played some newer songs, instead of only his classic songs, some in the audience booed. Nelson had came on stage dressed in the then-current fashion, wearing bell-bottoms and a purple velvet shirt, with his hair hanging down to his shoulders.

Nelson later wrote the song “Garden Party”about the experience, and it becomes a huge comeback hit for him the next year, 1972. It totally revived his career, and gave him many more years of touring and performing. “Garden Party" tells of various people who were present at the concert, but he sings it in obscure, oblique references (such as Yoko brought her Walrus, referring to Yoko Ono and John Lennon).

Wikipedia’s article on “Garden Party” suggests some interpretations as to the references in the song lyrics:

A garden party; October 15, 1971's Rock 'n Roll Revival, the concert itself at Madison Square Garden in New York;
My old friends; fellow performers at the concert: Chuck Berry, Bobby Rydell, The Shirelles, The Coasters, Bo Diddley;
Yoko's walrus; (Beatle) John Lennon;
Mr. Hughes; (Beatle) George Harrison, who was a next-door neighbor and good friend of Nelson's. Harrison used "Hughes" as his traveling alias;
(Mr. Hughes) hid in Dylan's shoes; Harrison's planned (but later abandoned) an album of Bob Dylan covers;
I said hello to Mary Lou, she belongs to me; Nelson's song “Hello Mary Lou,” which he played at the concert; also a reference to “She Belongs to Me,” a Bob Dylan song covered by Nelson;
I sang a song about a Honky-Tonk; The Rolling Stones song “Honky Tonk Woman;” the song that allegedly caused the booing;
And it was time to leave; Nelson's subsequent departure, before the concert had finished;
Out stepped Johnny B. Goode; Chuck Berry's song “Johnny B. Goode;”
Playing guitar like a-ringing a bell; the line in "Johnny B. Goode,” "he could play guitar just like a-ringing a bell;”
I'd rather drive a truck; Elvis Presley once worked for a time as a truck driver, having famously been told after several failed auditions to "stick to truck driving because you're never going to make it as a singer"

"Garden Party" was Nelson's last top 40 hit on the US pop charts, climbing all the way to number six. The song topped the Billboard Easy Listening Chart, for two weeks. It made it to number six in both Australia and South Africa, and number one in Canada. Nelson toured off and Obscure on for another 14 years, until his untimely death in a plane crash on December 31, 1985, flying from Alabama to Dallas, Texas for a concert. The plane was his own plane, a Douglas DC-3, which had been experiencing a history of mechanical problems. All seven passengers aboard the plane died. Only the two pilots survived.