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The Archive
Last update Jan 2005 -new recollections
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The view from the mud. |
Recollections of festival punters
I stumbled across your site almost by accident; I'd just downloaded "Wild Mountain Thyme" from the 69 concert from Napster, and out of curiosity, I searched Google for some more references. I was 19 that year, and travelling through Europe, as middle-class North American kids did then in the summer. Airfares were cheap for students, and you could go almost anywhere, including Algeria and other places I wouldn't dream of going now. I met Australians who were taking the "overland route" home; I doubt that that route still exists. I got to the site on the Isle of Wight about, I don't know, 5 days or so before the concerts, with something like ten pounds in my pocket, and got a job digging toilets and putting up concession tents. All the good jobs, like building the stage, for instance, had been taken by Americans (and, yeah, by guys with carpentry skills). I met a bunch of people working there and we all lived in a small encampment we called Desolation Row. What else were we going to call it?.
We even got semi-famous, and had a "journalist" from The People stay overnight who then went back to London and wrote a nasty piece about us. We got our pictures in various local and London newspapers and on the telly smashing up an old piano that the farmer gave us. I don't know why he gave it to us or why we smashed it up. It made some kind of sense at the time. Later, we got mentioned in Scaduto's bio of Dylan, although he got it wrong: I was the only North American in the group, which included a guy from the Midlands, some middle-class London kids, and a genuine Scottish tramp. After the concert, that Monday morning, we were all going to stay and make some money helping with the big cleanup. Except that it was so truly desolate with the concert over and everyone just gone away and mountains of garbage all over that we just went home and forgot about it. Later, when I was back at UBC, I got a letter from one guy who was actually promoting a rock show of his own . He must have learned something while he was there, I guess. I have no idea what happened to the tramp. I don't have the pictures that appeared in the papers any more, or the Moroccan wallet that I kept for years with that "Help Bob Dylan Sink the Isle of Wight" thing pasted into it. Anyway, sorry to ramble on, thanks for putting up the web site.
Tony Reed
Bill Ford
After a Friday night gig in Bristol
my mate Bruce and I, respectively Guitarist and Vocalist of Birth (a pretty
nifty, though I say it myself, acid rock outfit from Bath who did alright )and
two girls, Caroline and Linda, drove overnight to Southsea and took a very early
morning ferry to Ryde.
We only had tickets for the Saturday and the only band I can actually remember
were the Moody Blues - turgid, but maybe also Joe Cocker - good. We had no interest
in Dylan, slept Saturday night on the beach, were awakened by morning rain and
left.
This was about the least interesting festival I ever attended out of some 20
or so. Nothing sticks in my mind about it at all except the sight of a very
tall man who loomed up at us suddenly through the mist and scared us as we walked
down a lane to the beach at about 1 am.
When we returned to Southsea we were quite surprised to find Bruce's ancient
Ford still in the car park as it did n't lock. When we'd left it, Bruce had
remarked philosophically that if it did disappear it had only cost him £20.
We then drove to the New Forest, had a few drinks in a pub and camped for the
night amid the trees on our way home.
Bill
Frank Batten
I came across your site having
done a search for IoW festivals. I am meeting up with someone this weekend that
I lost touch with thirty years ago, and I was trying to refresh my memory of
the IoW in 69 and 70 as we went to both of those together. We arrived at Southsea
in 69 too late for the last ferry, and kipped on the seafront and could hear
(we thought) The Who playing on the island. I can't work out what night that
would have been - we saw The Who live (that must have been on Saturday) but
we also saw Bonzo Dog (and the wonderful VS RIP), but your listing shows them
performing on the Friday.
Do you know if anyone performed on Thursday evening? Did Bonzo Dog perform later
in the weekend as well?
One thing has always stuck in my mind about Dylan's set - one of the newspapers
said that the crowd booed and threw bottles at Dylan because he was so late
on stage. The booing and bottle throwing was aimed at the people in the press
compound at the front who stood up when Dylan came on stage, so none of us paying
punters behind them could see anything. "Peace and Love" was one thing,
but we still wanted value for money. The fact that Dylan was late didn't matter
at all - he was there and that was all that mattered.
Great to see this site - keep up the good work, and if we come up with any
concrete memories this weekend, I will let you know.
Frank Batten,
Northampton, UK
Mike.Fouracre@artscouncil.org.uk
dont have any pictures but
i was there at the isle of white to see Bob Dylan,its the best concert i've
ever been to,
We found out where Bob was staying and out of all those people there was just
4 of us who knew where he was.
Every night we would listen to Bob rehearse the show in a converted barn on
the property where he was staying,we had our very own concert,it was amazing,he
came out and caught us one night and had a chat and gave us autographs,I still
have mine to this day.
Von.
Hey there-
I was at the concert all
three days in 1969. It was right after they landed men on the moon. I was curious
if there is any video available of those concerts? I am now an artist and jazz
pianist and live in the wine country of northern California. Those days live
fond in the memory all though not all of it is clear, we know it was quite a
party. I had been visiting my dad's parents in the north of England (St. Annes-on-Sea)
and wassupposed to go to the lake district with them. Instead I found a girl
who was interested in going and we spilt on the train to points south. From
London we hitchhiked to the south coast and took the hovercraft to the island.
We found a barn to camp in and then headed to the festival. I couldn't beleive
all the people. I forgot that in London we had stopped off
for the tribute to Brian Jones given for the Stones in Hyde Park. That was outrageous!
From London one of our rides was in a Mini Cooper which had five people in it. It went out of control at one point and hit a side guard so we stopped (of course). I remember a beer truck stopped and two burly guys pulled our fender back in place so we could continue on. The Isle was really something else. Never have been to a better concert ever!
Cheers
Michael Wilson
I was at the festival, with
a friend, trying to sleep in a tent, not being able to use the loo. I
felt so miserable, unable to see anything, only to hear the music ,that I gave
up before Bob Dylan came on. I went home early. How sad is that!
W Roy
This
was my first festival but perhaps the best and most memorable.I had just turned
18 and some of my favourite groups were to be performing - The Nice, The
Who, The Bonzo's, Julie Felix, Tom Paxton, Moody Blues, Family - I had albums
by all of them. And of course the greatest songwriter of the 20th century
was headlining - this was unmissable. The tickets were ridiculously cheap
by today's standards - £2-10s for the full pass (though my wages were
only £8 a week as a trainee draftsman). But cost was unimportant; I would
have sold my soul to be there. People had started gathering at the site more
than a week before the concert began and the newspaper articles and TV
reports on the aptly named Desolation Row only served to excite me further -
I knew this was where I belonged. The week leading up to the concert I was holidaying
with my family and cousins in Cornwall so I only had to catch the coast
train to Portsmouth and from there it was a quick ferry ride to Ryde, with it's
more than mile long pier. It was almost an homecoming for me as I had
spent 3 years growing up on the IOW at a boarding school in Ventnor run by nuns
for children with severe asthma (country air and all).
I arrived at the site on the Thursday in the clothes I wore, no tent or
blanket and the remains of my holiday money in my pocket - so I spent a bit
of it buying a large plastic sheet and a mexican blanket, found a couple of
sticks and draped the plastic over it to form a makeshift tent. Luckily
it never rained and wrapped up in my blanket I was actually quite warm and comfortable
for the duration. I don't actually remember eating anything much at the site,
though on the morning of the Saturday I took a bus into Ryde and had lunch at
a Chinese restaurant. I didn't stop long in Ryde as I didn't want to miss
a minute of the stage activity, but I do remember seeing Nashville Skyline on
sale for the first time and wondering if Dylan would bee performing any tracks
off it.
Apart from Dylan and the Band there were some very memorable performances and
this is where I heard and became an instant fan of Third Ear Band (one
of the most underrated bands of the era in my opinion). Other acts I have
great memories of were the Bonzo's with their inimitable stage performance,
the Moody Blues, and the Nice (who I was a great fan of). I was also a great
fan of the Who at the time and their set just blew me away. Apart from a few
songs at the start and end the main body of the concert was given over to an
almost complete performance of Tommy. Fantastic!
I was pretty close to the stage for the final evening. (one of your other correspondent's
mentions the bottle throwing incident, and yes, the target was not the stage
but the plebs in the press area around the front of the stage) I was really
looking forward to seeing Richie Havens as I wasn't very familiar with his music,
but someone had told me that his appearance was one of the conditions laid down
by Dylan before he'd agree to come. Whether there was any truth in this I have
no idea but it was a great performance either way. I had just struck up
a bit of a friendship with an American couple who had come across on a charter
flight just to see Dylan and this is where I had my first taste of Cannabis
(which I took to like a duck to water). The Band followed Richie Havens and
then suddenly it was time for the culmination of 3 great days of music, fun
and festivity. An hour or so later and it was all over and I was left
with this overpowering feeling of what now? Suddenly my home-made tent
didn't seem so appealing and I just wanted to get home to a warm bath and bed.
So I abandoned my plastic sheet, wrapped my blanket round my shoulders
(I still have it) and joined the great mass of humanity wending it's way to
Ryde pier. Ryde pier is so long that there is a train station at both ends of
it. I was told that people were queuing the entire length of the pier
but I decided to see for myself so caught the train to the end. Sure enough,
for as far as I could see the pier was just jammed. The word was going
round that it was going to take over 24 hours to clear even though ever ferry
available was running. Some people from the train tried to jump the barriers
to the head of the queue and were unceremoniously turfed back out. I had just
decided to walk back into Ryde and find somewhere to doss when I was asked to
help a girl back out over the barrier as she was about to faint. To my
eternal shame, while helping her I managed to get one leg over the barrier.
I stood straddling the barrier until ten minutes later someone else needed helping
out and in the process my other leg made it over. I didn't get on the
next ferry, but the one after I just made . From there a quick train ride to
London where I slept on the platform along with about a thousand others until
the police woke us and the first train to Derby saw me safely home.
I emigrated to Australia the following year so missed the Hendrix concert. I
must have been to around 30 open air concerts since then, but Isle of Wight
69 was my first, and to my mind, still the best one ever.
Tony Phelps
Derby - England
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