A HISTORY OF ROCK FESTIVALS

CHAPTER ONE

The Atlanta Pop Festival and New York Pop Festival, Both 1970

Nowadays, festivals are as established a part of the summer landscape as cricket, rubbish weather and everyone rushing out into the park and stripping off on any day above 55 degrees Fahrenheit. It wasn’t always thus. We’d like to look back at the history of summer rock festivals, heading back to 1970 when the whole idea of a festival was still considered a radical – and. some feared – revolutionary idea. 200,000 hairy people in a field listening to rock n roll was genuinely a cause of concern for some of the authorities.

Their fears were misplaced. Few were plotting social revolution, most just wanted to get laid and listen to some good music and smoke a bit of dope. But these were changing times and no one knew were rock n roll was heading. One thing was for sure, some of the best bands of the era played.

So let’s go back 39 years to July 1970.

The Atlanta Pop Festival was held at Middle Georgia Raceway, Byron, Georgia 3rd July to 5th July 1970. So it wasn’t Atlanta then. It was a scorching hot weekend with temperatures breaking 100 degrees. The promoters thought they could attract 100,000 people and advertised the festival on FM radio stations. Tickets cost $35 which was considered high at the time and, because of that, they sold just 10,000 in advance.

There as also a feeling in the air that music should be free, and so people without tickets began to turn up chanting “free festival”. I’ve tried this outside of pubs but chanting “free beer, beer should be free,” just never works for some reason. A free stage had been put up outside the racetrack. Leaflets were printed up which said “If we kill the festival, we play right into establishment hands. We destroy our own scene.”

Sounds like a reasonable argument, doesn’t it? By all accounts the response was “music is for the people, power to the people, open the gates” etc etc. The promoters were naturally concerned with this turn of events and announced a free day on the Monday July 6 for those who couldn't afford the tickets.

But this did nothing to help. Altamont had happened in December '69 and everyone knew how badly that had turned out. So the promoters, caved and made it a free festival on the Friday night at 9.30pm. Proof that collective action, whether in the right or in the wrong, can be effective.

The politics may have been tricky but the music was brilliant. Friday night featured the Allman Brothers, Georgia's house band. They played a stunning set which was
available for decades as a bootleg but has since been released as a double CD.

Of course it rained – a thunder storm broke during the Allman Brothers’ set but they played on until being fried by the electricity forced them off, promising to return later. And they were as good as their word, returning at sunrise on the Sunday and playing for four – four! – hours.

Saturday dawned even hotter .People passed out, queued for water and salt tablets and generally blistered in the heat. Add in the traditional bad acid and STP laced with
strychnine and by Saturday night medical staff called in army helicopters to ship out the sick, the crazy and the sun-stroked. The place looked like a rock n roll version of M.A.S.H. Yay!

Local officials were horrified by the drug use, of course – this was all part of this new tradition – also naturally, to assuage their worries, the promoters hired some doctors
to talk about drugs and their dangers and an Indian yogi did a talk on “a drug free experience of music and love” which was probably very groovy while you were
tripping out of your brains.

Richie Havens claims to have seen five or six UFOs during the yogis speech, but then again, intoxicants had probably been taken. As Saturday was the 4th July, Hendrix played The Star Spangled Banner. There is film of his set: check out a brilliant Stone Free.

Other bands to play were BB King, a festival regular. Plus Mountain, Procul Harem, Jethro Tull, Rare Earth, The Chambers Brothers, Lee Michaels, Cactus, Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys, Poco and a brilliant Johnny Winter, who played a killer set.

The show was documented on a triple live album which paired it up with the same year’s Isle Of Wight Festival. You’ll pay at least £50 for a copy now. Atlanta is side one.

This was the last time a festival was allowed on this scale in Georgia. Legislation was passed to effectively prevent mass gatherings

Just a few days later on New York’s Randall’s Island, an event billed as “New York’s Pop Festival” was held. They hoped that not calling it just a ‘Festival’ might put the straights’ backs up a bit less. So this was to be different. for a start it was to be held in Downing Stadium and there’d be no camping. It was billed as a series of concerts rather than a ‘traditional’ festival.

However, three weeks before the shows, groups representing the Black Panthers, yippies and Free Rangers – styling themselves as the RYP/OFF Collective – presented the promoters with a list of frankly bonkers demands. They wanted 10 hand-picked community bands to play at $5,000 per group plus expenses. 10,000 free tickets for them to hand out, bail funds for anyone arrested at the festival, and a portion of the profits from any film of the gigs.

In return for compliance the RYP/Off Collective would promote the festival in their communities and would provide ‘troops to act as security and PR men! If the promoters didn't agree, there would be violence and they would call it a ‘free peoples event’ and no one would buy tickets.

The promoters, doubtless feeling a bit sick, said they’d negotiate. This in turn got the local Young Lords – who were to the Puerto Rican community (who were predominant in the Randall’s Island area) what the Black Panthers were to the black community – a bit cross. They wanted a piece of the action. The RYP/Off people agreed and some of their demands were agreed to by promoters.

By the time people arrived for the Friday show, 8,000 out of the 25,000 did not pay as so-called security looked the other way. Hendrix, Grand Fuck Railroad, John Sebastian, Steppenwolf and Jethro Tull all played on Friday – a really strong line-up. There are recordings of Hendrix’s set out there. There’s even amateur footage of a sizzling version of Ezy Rider and Foxy Lady

By Saturday, the bands began realising they’d probably not be getting paid since there was so much gate-crashing, so managers wanted paying up front before bands took the stage.

Ravi Shankar refused to go on, Delaney & Bonnie, Miles Davis, Richie Havens and Tony Williams' Lifetime didn’t even bother turning up. Gate-crashing continued with the collective asking people to give them money and get in ‘free’. By Sunday the promoters gave up and called in a free festival, but it had been free since the start in reality. 30,000 had busted in without paying.

Ten Years After and Cactus played without being paid, as did the New York Rock N Roll Ensemble. Dr John, Mountain and Little Richard followed suit but most bands just didn’t
turn up at all, much to the punters’ disgust. A reporter asked promoter Don Friedman what he thought about it all.

“The festival spirit is dead, and it happened quickly,” he said. “I don’t know the reasons why. Greed on everyone’s part, I guess. The love-peace thing of Woodstock is out. Anarchy. Complete and total anarchy. That’s what’s replaced it.”

It’s a sad and quietly profound statement. It was a financial disaster; no money was paid to the collective; the bail fund collapsed; most performers were not paid. A movie called The Day The Music Died did come out in 1977 and featured some of the performances, as well as highlighting all the problems.

The conflicting demands of all the different groups, the bands, the fans and everybody else just reflected the wider disparities between a disintegrating counter-culture movement in 1970 and a burgeoning rock n roll industry.

But above it all there, was some blisteringly good music played at both these festivals and at the end of the day, the music is really what matters. Then and now.

CHAPTER TWO

Atlanta Pop Festival and The Seattle Pop Festival both 1969

The history of festivals is littered with disasters: with the army being called in, promoters losing a ton of money, artists not being paid, bad acid and crazy Hell’s Angels acting as security.

But it wasn’t always like that. In this section, we’re going to look at two festivals held in July 1969 that were both very successful in terms of good vibes, good music and good money.

The Atlanta Pop Festival was held on the 4th and 5th of July 1969 and pulled in 140,000 people to the Atlanta International Speedway in Georgia.

Despite riots at recent festivals in Denver and Northridge, California the local authorities gave the event their blessing. Local newspaper The Atlanta Journal ran an editorial praising the variety and quality of performers and saying “a full music diet is good for a city. Pop music is important and expressive of our times.”

How enlightened and, like, groovy man. And as if by instant karma, the whole festival ran smoothly and everyone had a great time.

The Friday night was choc full of top-notch blues and jazz bands including Credence Clearwater Revival, Canned Heat, Johnny Winter, The Butterfield Blues Band, Dave Brubeck, Booker T and Blood Sweat and Tears.

The Saturday gig included Led Zeppelin, Janis, Spirit, Joe Cocker, Chicago, Grand Funk Railroad, The Staple Singers and Tommy James and the Shondells.

The festival was organized by Alex Cooley, who later put on the excellent Texas International Pop Festival in Dallas.

The thermometer tipped over 100 degrees and the local fire department hosed the gathered rockers down with fire hoses. But unlike at other festivals where high temperatures seemed to go hand in hand with violence or demands for a free festival, no such trouble happened in Atlanta.

Photos of the event show a massive, shade-free venue with a tiny stage set in the middle of it. It’s about as far away from the giant stages and sound systems we see today as you can imagine.

The program for the event interestingly dealt openly with drugs, stating:

“Atlanta is a generally cool town, with relatively few dope busts. Almost all psychedelics are available with the exception of grass. Prices on lids range from $15 to $20, tabs of acid from $4 to $6, hash at $10 a gram. We have music and be-ins in the park every weekend.”

I don’t know how that compares to prices today – has there been inflation or deflation in drug prices? The latter I’m assuming.

Alex Cooley made $12,000 from the event. The fact that it had passed off so successfully was credited with helping the counter-culture flourish in the area.

There are a few blogs of people’s personal experiences at the festival and most seem to confirm how excellent most of the band were, especially Led Zeppelin, who were sweeping across America at the time, taking the country by storm.

How much anyone could have heard with the primitive PA systems is open to debate but this was certainly one festival fondly remembered by those who attended.

Also in 1969, The Seattle Pop Festival was held 25-27 July at Gold Creek Park, Woodenville, Washington. It was $6 for one day, $15 for all three. Bands playing included Chuck Berry, Black Snake, Tim Buckley, The Byrds, Chicago Transit Authority, Albert Collins, Crome Syrcus, Bo Diddley, The Doors, Floating Bridge, The Flock, The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Guess Who, It’s A Beautiful Day, Led Zeppelin, Charles Lloyd, Lonnie Mack, Lee Michaels, Murray Roman, Santana, Spirit, Ten Years After, Ike & Tina Turner, Vanilla Fudge and the Youngbloods. Not bad eh!

70,000 attended and it was promoted by Boyd Grafmyre, who had previously worked with the New American Community at the successful and highly groovy not-for-profit Sky River Festival in ’68, also in Washington.

This was one of the first not to use any regular or off-duty Police officers as security. He brought in 150 youth volunteers from Seattle’s Head Start programme. They were ticket collectors, maintenance and security.

The whole weekend ran so smoothly that Grafmyre grossed over $300,000 in return for $200,000 spent. This hugely profitable success proved that if you did it right festivals could make you a lot of money.

Chick Dawsey, who owned Gold Greek , was pleasantly surprised by the fans who turned up.

“I disagree with their movement 100 per cent,” he said. “But some of us adults better get the hell closer to them. They respond very much to kindness, we older people better learn this. If they need a drink of water we, the establishment, should go out and offer it.”

Hey that sounds like a straight dude getting with the programme to me. Cool.

Of the bands that played, naturally Zep were brilliant as the soundboard bootleg that has been available for decades proves. Santana, who were to be a big hit at Woodstock the following month, were also widely acclaimed.

While there were problems with sanitary issues and water supplies, this was still a well-run, peaceful, very cool festival. Not bad for $15 certainly.

CHAPTER THREE

Mar-y-Sol, Vega Baja, Puerto Rico 1972

In 1972, promoter Alex Cooley, who had produced the second Atlanta Pop Festival two years previously, came up with a novel idea. With local authorities, the cops and just about everyone else making it harder and harder to put festivals on, why not go somewhere where the Man wasn’t going to, like, bum you out, dude. Somewhere where legal hassles would be minimal. Hey, how about Puerto Rico? Cool idea, yeah? Well, actually no.

The Veja Baja is on the north coast of the island on 420 acres of countryside right by sandy beaches and Cooley rented it for the Mar-Y-Sol (sea and sun) festival on April 1 to April 3.

Special package deals were put on from major East Coast cities. But at $152 for a round trip from New York, it wasn’t cheap for rock fans used to gatecrashing for free. Cooley expected up to 50,000 to make the effort and spend the money and in the final reckoning just 30,000 turned up.

The site was constructed by commune The Family in between bouts of being groovy and doubtless smoking the good stuff. It was a kind of paradise; sun, sea, surf and rock n roll.
Naturally, things, as they tend to do, went wrong.

A week beforehand the local court slapped an injunction on the festival because of the possible sale and consumption of drugs. No shit, Batman! Well, they got that right. Some fans decided not to make the journey on hearing this news. Others just travelled anyway figuring hey, it’s a festival, things always go screwy.

It was as late as Thursday when the injunction was over-turned, just as people were arriving for the Friday show. Free buses were set to take people from the airport to the site, except none turned up. The bus people, thinking the gig was called off, didn’t show. Ooops. So fleets of cabs were dispatched to pick people up instead. This took a long time because it was a three-hour journey so the Friday night music was delayed while people arrived.

It was hot, and wells drilled for water began to run dry. Locals started selling water for up to a buck a glass. Bad vibes, man. Then the locals found that people were showering in an open area and there were like chicks, in the nude, dude, like wow, so there was some leering, jeering and whistling. relations between the rock n roll festivalers and the locals deteriorated.

No one was surprised when some Puerto Ricans got drunk and tore down a couple of American flags before putting up their own flag instead. Fights broke out. Things were uncool.

A 16-year-old coke dealer from a neighbouring island was murdered with a machete in the night, presumably by local dealers. A couple of other people drowned while swimming and a third was killed when he hit his head on a rock. The grim reaper, it seemed, also liked to rock.

Apparently there was a marijuana shortage and so people got loaded on tranqs, barbs and psychedelics. Pot was selling for $50 an ounce instead of the more usual 15 or 20. But more suffered from sunburn than bad drugs. Presumably, if more widely stoned, the vibe would have been much more mellow. It’s hard to get involved in a fight when you’re lying on your back wondering what the colour blue tastes like.

Music finally got going on Saturday afternoon and things chilled out a bit. Nitzinger, Brownsville Station and folkie Jonathan Edwards all did good sets but it was BB King and then the Allmans who really put some energy into proceedings. Despite the death of Duane they were still the kings of festival, playing for hours, right through till dawn.

Sunday opened with jazzy Dave Brubeck and the excellent Herbie Mann - check out his Notes From The Underground album on which Duane Allman plays: it’s marvellous. Savoy Brown did their boogie and ELP did their neo-classical noodlings. At some point Mahavishnu Orchestra did a set. Alice Cooper played till the sun rose.

However, reports suggest that of the 30,000 there, many didn’t see the music for fear of having tents and such ripped off and so hung around the camp area.

As Friday had been a write-off, the music continued into Monday with J. Geils Band, Cactus, Dr John, Bloodrock and The Faces amongst others. Several bands including Black Sabbath were booked to play but didn’t perform.

People began to drift away as rumours circulated that there was no transport back to the airport circulated. This was actually true. Bummer. Bad vibes pervaded. ‘Get me off this island’ seemed to be the general feeling. But with no way of getting to the airport many started walking hoping to thumb a ride. Remember when people did that without worrying they’d be picked up by a homicidal maniac?

And so a refugee line of hairy people trudged up the highway, some paying for rides from locals: $20 was the going rate. Everyone felt very bitter at this turn of events but it wasn’t over yet.

The airport was in chaos, with planes overbooked with other tourists returning to America. The Red Cross even turned up and tents were erected to accommodate all the people waiting to leave. It took some three days to get a flight out. Cooley reckoned he’d lost $200,000. The Puerto Rican government wanted the promoters for tax evasion but didn’t bother to try and extradite them.

It was the only festival to be held there. Everyone had their fingers and everything else burned.

There's a double album on Atco of the event: expect to pay around $20 for it. It spent seven weeks on the Billboard chart and peaked at 186. Best track? The Allmans’ ‘Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More’ and Mahavishnu Orchestra’s ‘Noonward Race’. I’m not sure if it got a UK release. It’s not in the Record Collector bible so I’m guessing it didn’t.

Cactus released some tracks recorded live at the fest on ‘Ot n Sweaty and in 2006 Greg Lake found a 16-track recording of ELP’s performance which is on From The Beginning on disc 5. I think J. Geils and a couple of others also released their sets.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Human Be-In, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, January 14 1967

Festivals had been held for many years in the jazz world but the rock festival as we would come to know it had its seeds in the Trips Festivals put on by Fillmore impresario Bill Graham in January 1966 at the Longshoreman’s Hall in San Francisco. The house band for these events was the Grateful Dead and they were billed as an attempt to achieve the psychedelic experience without drugs, though acid, still legal at the time, was available.

Big Brother And The Holding Company played along with other local bands and the events were a big success. No surprise there: great bands, trippy light shows and plenty of acid from Owsley’s lab is a recipe for success.

That spring of 1966, various writers, poets, musicians and the San Francisco Mime Troupe (such things always attract a mime troupe and jugglers too for some reason – why is juggling part of the alternative lifestyle?) formed the Artists’ Liberation Front. One of many things they did was to produce the Free Faire, an outdoor, free version of the Trips Festivals with rock bands and poets all getting their groove on.

The most important of these was The Human Be-In (even hippies love a pun). Labelled as A Gathering of the Tribes, it attracted 20,000 people from the sprawling hippy, alternative, drop-out, biker, drug and free love community. The Dead played along with Quicksilver Messenger Service, Airplane and even Dizzy Gillespie. Allen Ginsberg got up and chanted some Hindu mantras – as you do – all in an attempt to usher in a new era and spirit.

Timothy Leary asked the crowd to “turn on to the scene, tune in to what is happening and drop out of high school, college, grad school, junior executive, senior executive and follow me the hard way.” Who could resist?

Local communal group The Diggers gave away fruit and vegetable stew, the air was filled with the smell of incense and dope and the sound of those little tinkling bells.

It sounds like a nice afternoon in the park, really, doesn’t it?

The event out the burgeoning hippy scene (ooh groovy yeah baby) on national display and as such was an inspiration to people not just in the rest of America but all across the western world. The counter-culture was cool, and people wanted to be part of it. It’s easy to see why people thought it was the dawn of a new era and, as naïve as it may have proved to be, we’ve never needed an optimistic vision more than we do now, so there’s much inspiration to be taken from this little piece of rock n roll history.

Gary Duncan, guitarist of the Quicksilver Messenger Service recalls: “By the time we got there, there were, like, 20,000 people. Word got out, and all the news crews arrived, and it became a social movement.”

Ray Manzarek, keyboardist of The Doors says: “We were in San Francisco to play our first gig at the legendary Fillmore. The four of us all looked at each other and said, ‘We’re gonna change the world!’ Of course, we didn't, but that’s another story.”

Sam Andrew, guitarist, Big Brother and the Holding Company: “I’ve never been able to decide if we were there or not. I thought for years that we were in NYC having meetings. But every third gig someone will come up and say, ‘I saw you at the Human Be-In!’”

Pamela Des Barres, self-proclaimed groupie and author of I’m With the Band says: “I went to that, and soon [the love-ins] started in Los Angeles. It was the most free-floating, exquisite experience every time. My girlfriends and I would make cupcakes and put flowers in everybody’s hair. The communes were spreading, everybody living together — this was brand-new stuff!”

And let’s face it, nothing says revolution like cup-cakes does it?

It was clear that such gatherings had a future in popular (counter) culture.

The Fantasy Fair And Magic Mountain Festival June 10 & June 11 1967. MountTamalpais, Marin Count, California.

This is the first authentic rock festival, and was held six months after the Be-In. In historical terms it’s overshadowed by the Monterey Pop Festival which happened a week afterwards but it was nonetheless an historic event held on top of Mount Tamalpais just over the Golden Gate Bridge.

It was produced and sponsored by Tom Rounds and his partner Ed Mitchell. Rounds was program director at KRFC, a Bay Area radio station. It was a community project, profits from which would go to the Economic Opportunity Council that operated in the black ghetto area of Hunter’s Point.

It was two events at once – an arts and craft fair for local arty types and artisans. The music happened in an adjoining amphitheatre.

These are the bands that played:-

Saturday, June 10
The Fifth Dimension
Dionne Warwick
Canned Heat
Jim Kweskin Jug Band
Moby Grape
13th Floor Elevators
Spanky and Our Gang
Roger Collins
Blackburn & Snow
The Sparrow
Every Mother's Son
Kaleidoscope
The Chocolate Watchband
The Mojo Men
The Merry-Go-Round
The Doors

Sunday, June 11
Jefferson Airplane
The Byrds
P.F. Sloan
The Seeds
The Grass Roots
The Loading Zone
Tim Buckley
Every Mother's Son
Hugh Masekela
Steve Miller Blues Band
Country Joe & the Fish
Smokey Robinson & the Miracles
Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band
The Sons of Champlin
The Lamp of Childhood
The Mystery Trend
Penny Nichols
The Merry-Go-Round
New Salvation Army Band

It’s thought this was actually The Doors first big show as Light My Fire was burning up the charts. And it looks like an incredible bill on both days, doesn’t it? And all for just $2.00!

There was an attempt to appeal to local rock fans and top 40 pop-pickers as well. By all accounts it was a groovy day out in the sun for everyone. It passed off peacefully and all litter was picked up and binned at the end of it all, leaving the lovely Mount Tamalpais as they found it. This was a trend sadly not followed in the next years.

Both these events set the precedent for what could be achieved before Monterey, a week later, set them into legend.