Party like it’s 1969
It was 50 years ago this month that a group of aspiring promoters on the Isle of Wight pulled off the biggest musical coup of the times. The Foulk brothers convinced Bob Dylan to come and play their festival instead of one being organised on his own doorstep at Woodstock, which was taking place the same month.
Both festivals, in their own way, would help define the era.
And now a day-long event is being held on the island to mark the anniversary – dubbed the Million Dollar Bash after a track on Dylan’s The Basement Tapes album.
Bill Bradshaw, a former features editor on the Isle of Wight County Press and award-winning Fleet Street journalist, is part of the All Wight Now organising team.
All Wight Now was set up to mark the 50th anniversaries of the island's original three music festivals from 1968-70.
Bill explains: 'We had a small scale evening gig undercover at Tapnell Farm, which overlooks the 1970 festival site, which seemed quite a good place, as I don’t think anyone could find the 1968 site any more!
'We had Arthur Brown from 1968, Ashley Hutchings from Fairport Convention, The Pretty Things - all these veterans from the original festival.
'Then we thought, right, what next? We decided to do something for
each of the three festivals, and that we ought to ramp things up a bit on a sliding scale, to reflect how big the following two were.
'The 1968 one was a relatively small-scale affair of about 12,000 people, but the 1969 festival was massive because they got Bob Dylan and it was somewhere in the region of 150-175,000, which at the time was the biggest festival in the UK. We’re celebrating what was this audacious coup in getting Bob Dylan and the rest of a very good bill. When we do the bash it will be 50 years to the day that Dylan took to the stage.'
It was only on July 16, 1968, that Ray Foulk got the call to confirm they had Dylan.
'In that six week window they had to go from thinking they might get 20, 30, 40,000 to see The Who and that, to: "Oh my gosh, we’ve got the biggest draw on the planet!"'
Only The Beatles would have been bigger, but they had stopped playing live by this point. 'It’s an incredible story,' adds Bill. While Dylan is not appearing this time, he has given the event his blessing. He contacted Ashley Hutchings, who returns this year with the all-star Dylancentric band, to pass on a new poem which Ashley will share with fans on the night.
'Ashley is back this year as our curator and he’s put together a band called Dylancentric for the bash, which is very exciting. We’ve also got Richard Thompson, another ex-Fairport and iconic artist in his own right, who will be playing a full set for us, and he has played on the same stage as Dylan as his lead guitarist.
'It should be a great day. For the pure rockers we’ve got Wishbone Ash, and for the blues-rockers, we’ve got Kossoff... And The Band Plays On, which is more than a tribute to Free, who were also on the '69 bill.
'And then we’ve got some more '69 veterans, like Julie Felix who’s still treading the boards, she’s performing, Pentangle who were part of the bill in '69, and The Pretty Things who played in both '68 and '69, we’ve got Phil May and Dick Taylor from them back as well, which is lovely.'
The day isn't just an exercise in nostalgia though, they want to attract music fans of all ages.
'It’s not just for the grey-tops we’d like to get as many people there from across the generations as we can to see this great music. 'For the younger generations, we’ve got a couple of great names. Deana Walmsley who was on The Voice this year where she was coached by Tom Jones, and she’s a fantastic rising talent, and a guy called Blair Dunlop who won the BBC folk music Horizon award back in 2013, he’s fantastic – it’s great roots music and he's a great singer-songwriter.'