Monsters Of Rock
There were great festivals before it, and great festivals after it, but for a magical stretch in the 80s and early 90s, bands and fans made the pilgrimage to a field in Leicestershire for the greatest hard rock and metal festival of them all. This is the
For a magical stretch in the 80s and early 90s, bands and fans made the pilgrimage to a field in Leicestershire for the greatest hard rock and metal festival of them all.
On a sodden latesummer Saturday in 1980, the world changed. Or at least the corner of it where heavy rock lived did. On that day, August 16, 1980, upwards of 40,000 denim-clad longhairs gathered in a field in the East Midlands to witness the birth of an event that would play a huge part in shaping the decade to come: the inaugural Monsters Of Rock festival.
It was far from being the first outdoor mega-gig. Monterey, Woodstock, the Isle of Wight, Bath, Reading Rock And Blues Festival, Glastonbury Fayre, the California Jam… all of them had carved out their place in history, generating their own legends and folklore, heroes and villains. It wasn’t even the first festival dedicated solely to hard rock or its snarling, leather-clad offspring, heavy metal. Since 1977, heavyweight promoter Bill Graham’s Day On The Green in San Francisco had become a showcase for the likes of Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, AC/DC and Van Halen. But this new arrival, held in a vast bowl in the centre of a motor racing track near Castle Donington, Leicestershire as a showcase for Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, was different. This was the first festival to proudly proclaim itself a rock festival. An unprecedented coming together of the tribes, transported by car, coach, train and motorbike from all four corners of the country and beyond.
If Monsters Of Rock had ended there, on the cusp of a new decade, its place in heavy metal’s great mythology would be assured. But it didn’t. It returned the next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, each time growing in scale and importance. Over the next decade and a half, Monsters Of Rock – or simply ‘Donington’, as everyone who ever went knew it – became the single most important event in the hard rock and metal calendar, an alternative-universe version of Royal Ascot or Wimbledon or what Glastonbury has since become.
During its 16-year history, Monsters Of Rock hit triumphant peaks, not only mirroring heavy metal’s own journey but also defining it. There was glory along the way, and comedy. There was heartbreaking tragedy too.
Almost a quarter of a century after its last hurrah, its spirit lives on – in Download, Wacken and countless other gigs that are indebted to it. But Donington was the wellspring from which everything else followed. This the story of the greatest rock festival of them all, by the people who were there.
Rainbow entered the 1980s as unlikely pop stars. Guitarist and mastermind Ritchie Blackmore had replaced original singer Ronnie James Dio with Hawaiian-shirted livewire Graham Bonnet, reshaped the band’s classical sturm und drang into a sleeker, more chart-friendly sound, and been rewarded with a pair of Top 10 hits in Since You Been Gone and All Night Long. How better to celebrate than throw a huge party in a field in August?
Don Airey (Rainbow keyboard player): We did a show at Newcastle City Hall, and the next morning we’re all sitting round after breakfast waiting to get on the bus, complaining that there’s no big gigs any more. And Cozy
“This was the new generation of heavy metal. This was our music – f**king have it!” Biff Byford
[Powell, drummer] said: “Well, why don’t we hold our own festival”
Tim Parsons (concert promoter, MCP Promotions): Ritchie Blackmore wanted to finish their tour with an open-air show. Paul Loasby was Rainbow’s promoter, and he called Maurice Jones, who was my senior partner at MCP. Maurice liked the idea.
Bernie Marsden (Whitesnake guitarist): Maurice Jones was a very down-to-earth Midlander. He definitely wasn’t a Bill Graham figure.
Don Airey: Cozy knew the people who ran Donington Park race track. He phoned them up. Within a day we’d booked Donington
Rob Halford (Judas Priest frontman): We were very aware that it was the first festival of its type in the UK and was a major event in that respect. All the festivals that had happened in the UK before had had a cross-section of bands, so this was the first to go with specifically one type of music. Our reaction when we first heard about it was that we’d like to give it a crack.
Tim Parsons: The name was given to us by Peter Mensch, who had just taken over the management of AC/DC. He suggested it to Maurice: Monsters Of Rock. It sounded good.
Biff Byford (Saxon frontman): When they asked us to play this thing called Monsters Of Rock, we had no fucking idea what it was.
The date of the first Monsters Of Rock was set for August 16, 1980. The timing couldn’t have been better – the NWOBHM was in the ascendancy, and rock fans new and old were hungry for an event to call their own. But its success was by no means a shoo-in. The organisers needed to sell 30,000 tickets just to break even.
Tim Parsons: We were about a week away and we’d sold 20,000 or so tickets. We were looking at a disaster. Then in the last week or so sales literally doubled.
Andy Copping (rock fan and future Download festival boss): As a teenager who was into his rock music, this was something incredible. I’d been to