...The Beaulieu Jazz Festival riots!
JULY 30 There’d been outrage at the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island earlier in the month, when the National Guard used tear gas to pacify streets full of bottle-throwing drunks unable to gain admittance. The governor declared a state of emergency, and Charles Mingus, who was part of a rival event held nearby, reputedly threatened to throw acid in the face of NJF co-organiser Louis Lorillard. Over in Britain this Bank Holiday Weekend, another jazz event saw trouble which would be remembered as The Battle Of Beaulieu.
The Beaulieu Jazz Festival had been held since 1956 at the 8,000-acre Hampshire pile of 33-year-old hereditary peer Edward MontaguScott. Compered by Lord Montagu and broadcaster Alan Dell, and with around 10,000 attendees expected, this year the three-day bill featured acts including: Acker Bilk And His Paramount Jazz Band, the Johnny Dankworth Orchestra with Cleo Laine and Memphis Slim (Saturday); Humphrey Lyttelton, Wally Fawkes, and The Dill Jones Trio (Sunday); and Victor Feldman, the Tubby Hayes Quartet and the quintets of Ronnie Scott and Joe Harriott (Monday). The Radio Times spoke of “floodlit stone ramparts,” and that five BBC TV cameras would capture the action live from 10.45pm until 11.25pm on Saturday.
Things seemed peaceful initially, with people sat in the sun on wooden chairs and young jazzers in bowlers and top hats playing banjos and clarinets. But there was tension in the air, supposedly sparked by the differing expectations of Dixieland-mad trad fans and progressive-minded modernists, plus rock’n’rollers up for a ruck. In his 2012 overview Trad Dads, Dirty Boppers And Free Fusioneers: British Jazz, 1960-1975, Duncan Heinen spoke to John Dunbar, future Indica Gallery co-founder and ’60s scenester, who attended aged 17. “There were certainly a lot of quiffs in evidence there,” he said of the latter contingent. “They were drunk and they got impatient.”
Things started to go wrong when London hard boppers The Jazz Five came on. Saxman Harry Klein later told Melody Maker that the presence of TV cameras encouraged a stage invasion. Alongside clarinet man Vic Ash, he was, he wrote, “hustled, buffeted, battered, clouted, cuffed” and had paper and sweets stuffed into his baritone sax.
There were other flashpoints: once a young man on the top of the festival merry-go-round was seen to be filmed, others joined him. At one point a BBC microphone was grabbed with an anonymous shout of, “Free beer for the working man!” Lord Montagu appealed in vain for calm. Things got worse when it was time for West Country trad clarinetist Acker Bilk to take the stage. “All the Teds were going, ‘We want Acker,’” Dunbar told Heinen. “Bottles were coming down and finally a lighting tower collapsed. It was complete, mad devastation… over fucking Acker Bilk.” (Some sources say scaffolding gave way under the weight of marauding jazzers during or after Johnny Dankworth’s set). Broadcasting live, the BBC returned to the newsroom six minutes earlier than expected, announcing, “It is obvious things cannot continue like this.”
On July 31 The Observer reported that there’d been two arrests, with 20 ambulances and five fire engines in attendance. The BBC said £500-worth of equipment was lost in the melee. In addition, a piano was destroyed,
“Complete, mad devastation… over fucking Acker Bilk.” JOHN DUNBAR
instrument cases were damaged and a potting shed was set alight. Humphrey Lyttelton’s trumpet was later found in a car park, and some of George Melly’s clothes were seen up a tree. Yet order was restored and the music went on.
A week later in Melody Maker, editor Pat Brand hailed “excellent jazz played in one of the most beautiful settings in Britain,” but feared, “the national opinion of jazz had been thrown back 30 years.” Acker Bilk was also distressed, saying, “I had my coat ripped” and, “the trouble came from… imitation, phoney beatniks.” Lord Montagu said the newspapers had exaggerated the violence, and blamed about 100 “irresponsible hooligans, whose connection with or interest in jazz was nil.” He added that he’d been deluged with letters from well-wishers and that everyone owed it to jazz to forge on. The same day, The People published an excitable piece entitled ‘Blame these four men for the Beatnik horror,’ naming Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Gregory Corso as the drugged-up, unhinged nihilists somehow responsible.
Beaulieu did take place in 1961, and film exists of 16-year-old attendee Rod Stewart. After more antisocial behaviour, this time in the village, the event was discontinued, and the coming of the beat groups meant jazz lost its youthful following. Yet in 2008, Acker Bilk, Humphrey Lyttelton, George Melly and others reunited to play Lord Montagu’s 80th birthday at the Beaulieu Jazz Picnic – this time without stage invasions, destroyed pianos, or demands for free beer for the workers.