My First and Last Rock Festival

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

With all the hype centered around this weekend’s almost-annual Glastonbury Festival, the self-proclaimed Greatest Festival in The World, I couldn’t begin to list the many things I’d rather do, or places I’d rather be. And that’s not to condemn the Festival itself as to just say I had my experience with that 50 years ago this month, and after that really had no interest. It would also turn out that my musical taste would change enough that by the 1970’s there were no festivals in my immediate scope that featured any acts I was even remotely interested in seeing.

Newport ’69 was the name of the festival I attended, and odd that it would be called that, as the nearest populated area called Newport was Newport Beach, California, only about 75 miles from the festival’s site at Devonshire Downs, a horse racing facility in Northridge, in the San Fernando Valley north of LA. There would be three days of concerts, with Creedence Clearwater headlining on the Saturday and The Chambers Brothers, Three Dog Night, and Marvin Gaye among the acts for Sunday. I went on the Friday with the headliner being Jimi Hendrix, with Spirit and Joe Cocker preceding, while the opener for the whole day was Ike & Tina Turner.

The problems were many, beginning with the fact that the concert venue was in a largely residential area, so just getting there involved parking about at least a mile away and walking for a half hour. As was the case with many concerts of that magnitude back then, tickets weren’t as secure as they are now, so while there was a good 10,000 people in there with legitimate tickets, there were hundreds of gate crashers that would create problems the whole weekend. This would come to a head on the Sunday, when there were clashes with police, and the more radical right-wing residents pointing out to police where the hippies were fleeing to, so some heads could get smashed by the overzealous cops.

There were concession stands that me and my date chose to ignore, as the lines for the few overpriced food and beverage stands could tie one up for a good hour and a half. We chose to starve ourselves, though I think we’d brought enough water to get through the 10-hour day. Because we were there on the site maybe an hour after the gates had opened, we were able to find a spot a mere 500 feet or so from the stage, meaning that without binoculars, the performers all looked about the size of your average peanut. Certainly there was no technology back then to create any type of video projection to enable anyone within earshot to actually be able to see something.

And so it went the entire day. Ike & Tina were fantastic, but I could only guess that from what I could hear. They were followed by The Don Ellis Jazz Orchestra, about as alien a booking as there could be, and they hadn’t even been listed in the billing. My guess is they were replacing no-shows, like blues singer Albert King and the band Southwind (?). The energy also kept being stymied by the lack of dynamic acts. The Edwin Hawkins Singers were fresh off a major fluke hit, but having only piano backing, their songs amalgamated into one until they eventually closed their set with Oh Happy Day. Same could be said for blues singer Taj Mahal, who failed to generate much with just him and his acoustic guitar until his closer of one of his better known tunes, Corrina.

Finally, Joe Cocker came and gave this festival the shot of adrenaline it needed. He was in great form and the sound of him and his band penetrated even back to where we were sitting. Spirit was even better, doing some guitar tricks with echo that Jimi Hendrix would have been impressed by. Which brings us to the headliner, who seemed to mostly be phoning it in. He was not even playing with the Experience that the billing claimed, as bass player Noel Redding had left to form his own band (anyone remember Fat Mattress?). There seemed to be endless jamming, not much vocal, and very little of the guitar gymnastics that Jimi was noted for. Eventually, after some diddling about with one blues jam, he went into Purple Haze, but that seemed a token gesture at best. As Hendrix was wrapping up, a couple disgruntled fans around us walked out shouting, “Goodbye, Hendrix, you sure were boring!” He would redeem himself a couple months later at a slightly better festival called Woodstock, but no Star Spangled Banner to close this gig.

After that, I chose to never attend a Rock Festival again except maybe as a performer, and I’ve held true to that. My duo act performed in front of as many as 10,000 people opening music festivals in places like Golden Gate Park, and it was exactly 40 years ago today that we performed in front of 6000 at LA’s Universal Amphitheatre opening for Robin Williams in what may have been our best gig ever. In the 00’s, I did the Reading and Leeds music festivals for seven consecutive years, as there were comedy tents at both festivals set up to house about 1000 people. Those were scary gigs, and each year there would be at least one comic who died a slow painful death, but somehow that never happened to me. In fact, the only bad thing I remember was the first year I did it, 2001, when halfway through my set, The White Stripes, who were enjoying their reign as The Next Big Thing, started their set on the Main Stage, and I could only helplessly watch my audience decrease by more than half.

I know people who were going to Glastonbury this year, and I’ve seen things posted on social media that would indicate they’re having a great time. I might have a great time there, too, if I was only about 50 years younger!

June 30th, 2019



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