Isle Of Wight Festival
To mark its 50th anniversary, we look back on the iconic 1970 Isle of Wight festival, with its to-die-for star-spangled bill – and also remember the anarchy that made it the last IoW for 32 years. We also look at proposals to ‘recreate’ the festival next
To mark its 50th anniversary, we look back on the iconic 1970 Isle of Wight festival, with its to-die-for bill – and the anarchy that made it the last IoW for 32 years. We also look at proposals to ‘recreate’ the festival on the island next year.
“It began as a beautiful dream, but it has got out of control and it is a monster.” So said 1970 Isle of Wight festival promoter Ron Foulk, after it was over. The 1970 Isle of Wight Festival remains – by some distance – the biggest rock’n’roll gathering ever held in Britain – and Europe, for that matter. Over the course of the August Bank Holiday weekend it attracted (by police estimates) around 600,000 people, more than four times the island’s resident population and more than double the number anticipated by the promoters.
It was the third rock festival to be staged on the island. The first, in 1968, was a relatively modest affair headlined by Jefferson Airplane that drew around 10,000 people. But the following year local promoters the Foulk brothers, with their company Fiery Creations, scored a major coup when they managed to lure Bob Dylan away from the Woodstock Festival to make his first live appearance in more than three years, along with a supporting cast that included The Who, the Moody Blues and Free. This time 150,000 people showed up, and a legend was born.
Suitably emboldened, the promoters set out to emulate the previous year’s epic Woodstock Festival for their 1970 line-up by booking Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Ten Years After, Sly & The Family Stone, John Sebastian, Joan Baez, Melanie and Richie Havens. They then added The Doors, Chicago, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and Miles Davis along with the freshly formed Emerson Lake & Palmer, the Moody Blues, Free and Jethro Tull. It was a mouth-watering menu.
But the locals were unimpressed by the prospect of another ‘hippie invasion’, and regaled the island authorities with tales of debauched behaviour the previous year. In fact there had been remarkably few reports of misbehaviour, but the authorities needed to look after their rates-paying residents, and refused to grant a licence for the site or the alternatives that the promoters put forward. The only site they were prepared to sanction was at Afton Down on the south-west of the island. Quite apart from its lack of amenities or infrastructure, the site was on the opposite side of the island from the ferry ports, which meant punters had to tramp eight miles across the island to get there. There was also a prevailing crosswind, which meant the residents of Freshwater some three miles away often got a better sound than those at the festival. But most significantly, one side of the site was bordered by a grassy slope, from where you could sit and watch the proceedings without having to buy a ticket.
But the promoters were undeterred, and even increased the festival from two days to five, with artists now queuing up to be part of the event. However, they were not prepared for the unprecedented number of people from across Britain and Europe descending on the island in the week leading up to the August Bank Holiday, drawn by the festival’s reputation, a line-up to match and a prolonged spell of hot sunny weather.
For the vast majority of those who came, that’s what they got. The music (much of which is now available on DVD and YouTube) mostly met the expectations. While Hendrix and The Doors, two of the biggest names, delivered lacklustre sets for different reasons, The Who and Free both played magnificent shows, and Jethro Tull, the Moody Blues, Ten Years After, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Leonard Cohen and Taste’s Rory Gallagher all boosted their reputations. And of course there were those unique, festival-defining moments: Tiny Tim getting the crowd to sing along to There’ll Always Be An England; the Latin rhythms of Brazilian Tropicalia musicians Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso that got everyone on their feet at the end of the second day; the Voices Of East Harlem doing the same the following night. It was moments like these, as much as any of the superstar performances, that helped create a sense of occasion and togetherness that today permeates the memories displayed on various websites commemorating the 1970 festival.
One punter, a convent girl from Liverpool who went with a bunch of school mates and the blessing of their headmistress, remembers sleeping in a park in Southampton while waiting for the ferry service to the island start. “The atmosphere was fantastic,” she recalls, “the weather was great ,and I had the time of my life being away with friends listening to amazing bands like Free, The Who, Jimi Hendrix and love of my life Leonard Cohen. And we were free of our parents for the first time ever,” she told Rokit.co.uk. Even the horrendous state of the toilets, basically planks over an open pit, has faded to a nostalgic reminiscence: “I probably didn’t shower or go to the loo for a week!”
Another, Bill Ford, went “just to see Melanie” on the Friday, and then discovered she’d been moved to the following day. “I slept under a blanket – all I had with me – in one of the sideless marquees they’d erected,” he told ukrockfestivals.com. “I awoke at six-thirty a.m. and have never felt so
“The line-up was so diverse. But then this was before they started categorising music.” The Moody Blues’ John Lodge
cold in my life.” He didn’t have a ticket for Saturday, but rubbed his hand on a still-wet ink-stamp passout from an obliging punter. He remembers “ELP sounding great, before they became too portentous, The Who blasting Tommy into the night, Jim Morrison leaping in and out of the spotlight, plus the oddity of Tiny Tim, and of course Melanie, who I thought was brilliant”.
The artists, too, largely have a warm retro view of the festival, which ran pretty much to schedule, coping with the inevitable delays that afflicted all festivals back then.
Of the artists who played in 1970 and have signed up to recreate the festival at its original site next year (see panel opposite), John Lodge of the Moody Blues has a vivid memory of the crowd. “They seemed to have come from everywhere,” he recalls.
“It was great to be a part of it. We’d driven down, and as we crossed the island we saw the locals making tea and cakes for the people walking across. The other thing was the line-up. It was so diverse. You had Free and Pentangle and the crowd listened to them both. But then this was before they started categorising music.” Pentangle’s Jacqui McShee remembers sitting in the Moody Blues’ Rolls-Royce before going on stage. “It was very comfortable,” she tells us. “And they were so kind. There was such a heady atmosphere. I was a huge Miles Davis fan, and he did an amazing set. It was a thrill to watch Hendrix as well.”
Ten Years After drummer Ric Lee recalls hanging out with Keith Moon and
“We put this festival on for you bastards with a lot of love… Now you want to break our walls and you want to destroy it. Well, you go to hell.” Crowd announcement by festival MC Rikki Farr
drinking “large brandies, dear boy – highball glasses filled with brandy and a tiny splash of Coke”. That may have contributed to Lee’s fit of pique during TYA’s set. “I smashed the snare drum mic,” he says. “It kept dropping on to the snare head, so eventually I hurled it on to the floor. I’d forgotten the whole set was being recorded.”
But beyond the artists enclosure backstage, trouble was brewing. The promoters were having problems with a section of the crowd who’d settled on the self-styled ‘Desolation Row’ on the slope outside the fence. A group of French anarchists began agitating for a free festival. Attempts to clear Desolation Row only raised the resentment, and attempts at dialogue fared no better. Most people inside the fence remained unaware of what was going on. Joni Mitchell’s set was interrupted by a stage invader making a political statement that was incomprehensible to anyone more than 50 yards away.
But the words ‘free festival’ set alarm bells ringing among agents and managers who wondered if their acts would be paid. There is film footage of money being counted out to Chicago before they went on stage. And Tiny Tim apparently required financial reassurance before he agreed to tiptoe through the tulips.
Attention focused increasingly on whether ticket sales could cover the promoters’ overheads. As the fence rattling grew louder, the tension briefly exploded on stage when MC Rikki Farr ranted: “We put this festival on for you bastards with a lot of love. We worked for one year for you pigs. Now you want to break our walls and you want to destroy it. Well, you go to hell.”
Once the organisers accepted bankruptcy and had taken down the fences, Farr was more relaxed.
“We’ve lost everything, but when I say ‘everything’ I only mean money,” he said on the last day of the festival. “We are possession-wise more naked than any of you because we are now open to creditors. But we don’t care about that. The very fact that you are sitting there and we have been able to provide this is worth more than money can buy. All I can say to you is go home with some love and some peace.”
Promoter Ron Foulk probably had the right perspective when he said afterwards: “This is the last festival. It began as a beautiful dream but it has got out of control and it is a monster.”
There would be no more Isle of Wight festivals for 32 years. The authorities moved swiftly to pass an act of parliament that banned any gathering of more than 5,000 people on the island.