A historic day in the summertime!
One of the first open air music festivals in the UK took place at a Staffordshire pig farm. Here we look back at the event with photos from our archives...
THE picture above was the scene in Madeley in May 1970 as thousands of music fans arrived for a concert later dubbed ‘Staffordshire’s Woodstock.’ The two-day Hollywood Music Festival featured big names such as Black Sabbath, the Grateful Dead, Free, Jose Feliciano and Mungo Jerry. Weekend tickets cost 50 shillings.
It was reportedly the Grateful Dead’s UK debut while Mungo Jerry kickstarted their career with an impressive performance. Not long after they would have a number one hit with In The Summertime.
Also featuring were Screaming Lord Sutch and his Heavy Friends, and Radha Krishna Temple, a group who played Hare Krishna for 45 minutes non-stop.
Estimates of the number of attendees at Ted Askey’s farm range from 20,000 to 45,000. They slept in tents and marquees.
Ted had become involved after chatting to Keele University students while collecting pigswill from the campus. The students had seen other open air festivals and wanted to stage their own.
They just needed some suitable land and found it on Ted’s pig field in Hollywood, a site between Madeley and Leycett.
Sentinel journalist John Abberley later recalled in a column: “I went round there on the Saturday evening and arrived just in time to hear an unknown group called Mungo Jerry playing In The Summertime.
“It really was a catchy tune and people were dancing all over the place.
“Mingling with the crowd were the local vicar, the Reverend Eric Stopford, and several Methodist ministers. Among the flowerbedecked hippies they looked like missionaries.”
Music historian Garry Marsh, from Wolstanton, attended the festival as a 16-year-old.
He later told The Sentinel: “You could certainly call it Staffordshire’s Woodstock. A festival on Madeley’s scale would take a year’s planning with today’s regulations. Yet, in 1970,
Then it was all put together in less than half that time.
“I shall never forget walking on to the Farmer site Ted with a friend and seeing a whole hillside in front of us covered with a mass of people and a stage at the bottom.
“They came to Madeley from all over the place. We met visitors from Holland and Germany. Everybody sat in silence and just listened.
“Some dope was smoked and about four people were taken ill but I don’t recall the police making any arrests.”
Do you have any memories of the festival? Or do you have other memories of seeing popular bands of your day? Tell us your stories by emailing waywewere@thesentinel.