Nikon FEs were great. Solid camera bodies that could ensure anything, including plummeting from a bungee tower. Nothing like a strap breaking and watching your favourite camera body lens hurtling to sudden doom. Except ... there was only a dint in the motor drive? I'm actually not overly surprised that the body survived - I'd dropped it off of tables and onto ice being the clumsy person I am - but I was shocked that my f2.0 85mm portraiture lens survived. There's no way I would want to try that with digital equipment.
That solid build made the FE great for concerts. At least for the concerts where you might get bumped around a bit, like New Model Army in a bar where you are vying for space with elbows and other body parts, trying to get that perfect shot in the first three songs they've allotted you. And in that kind of environment no one would begrudge getting whacked with a solid steel camera - that would be considered atmosphere. This was a lot tamer though than being just a spectator the previous time I saw NMA opening for The Damned in Finsbury Park where I had my legs on one side of a support pole for the tent and my body on the other as the crown thrashed back and forth for the better part of the day.
At the other end of the spectrum were bands like Metallica. The crowd was an afterthought. Normally you would only be allowed to shoot the first three songs and then off you go. For Metallica it was the last three songs. I do admit that front of front row wasn't bad and there was an insane amount of room in the pit for us, security and one or two dancing bears. Not that there were any dancing bears, but there was definitely room enough for them.
I was running on a budget those days - so two or three rolls of 36 frames was usually the most I shot (noting that you lost shooting time loading new film), and while the big newspaper photographers were there with their insane lenses, I needed to get creative. My favourite (and longest at the time) lens was the same second-hand 85mm that I had used so often to test gravity with surprisingly consistent results. It was (and still is) a great portraiture lens but at this distance you weren't getting the close-up head shots. Instead it was all about composition.
And sometimes you lucked out with composition, especially as you had limited idea of how the photo would turn out until you were sniffing developer in the darkroom watching the image gradually fade in. Composition really is a combination of the fixed items on the stage, lighting you can take advantage of, if the individuals in the band happen to each move in a way that forms a satisfying collective whole and if you're fast enough to spot it all come together. But even then, so much depends on the type of lighting, and in the age of film you needed to imagine if that light would be atmospheric like for The Northern Pikes or sharp as a pin with The Minstrels, especially with black and white film. I have rolls of film of bands where the lighting let everything down - where the bottom of the face was brightly illuminated but not the top, or everything was dull, or the lighting was too varied too quickly - and those rolls made it all the sweeter when you actually got a shot that somehow captured the feeling of the moment. I've not shot concerts since everything went digital and I'm not sure if the instant knowledge that you were getting the shots you wanted and the almost limitless shooting would be better than the thrill hours later of knowing that two or three of your photos were everything you hoped for.