"The
Return of the Knebworth Fayre"
Knebworth Park near
Stevenage, Hertfordshire on a very wet English day on 22 June 1985
!['Knebworth Rock Festivals', by Chryssie Lytton Cobbold,](pix/KnebRockFest.jpg)
I
have a page of background to and history
of the festival here that contains some Purple content (text and
images). Click on the image to the right to read scans of the Music
UK magazine Knebworth preview.
The Return of the Knebworth
Fayre proved quite an amazing start to my festival going experiences.
The title referred back half a decade when the site regularly held
rock festivals - the likes of Led Zeppelin and Genesis having played
during the 1970's. Knebworth House now has a website that has a short
feature on the 80s
festivals plus to find out more about the history of the festival
the owners have a gift
shop website which used to sell copies of the useful reference
book 'Knebworth Rock Festivals', by Chryssie Lytton Cobbold, November
1985. It appears no longer to be listed so I assume it has now sold
out.
The 1985 bill may have been
slagged off by the press, the audience and the public, but I was looking
forward to it. I'd seen only one of the bands on the bill before,
Meatloaf, and had never been to a festival. The weather could certainly
have been kinder but if I could survive Knebworth then I guess I can
survive any festival.
REVIEW
INDEX &
Advertised approximate show times
|
Arena opens |
10:00 |
ALASKA |
11:45 |
MOUNTAIN |
12:50 |
MAMA'S BOYS |
13:50 |
Colt Car
(?) Sky divers |
14:35 |
BLACKFOOT |
15:00 |
UFO |
16:15 |
Marlborough
Aerobatic Display Team |
17:00 |
MEAT LOAF |
17:30 |
SCORPIONS |
19:15 |
DEEP
PURPLE |
21:30 |
End |
23:30 |
Other reviewa of Knebworth by:
Brian McPherson
|
I was certainly not new to
headliners Deep Purple and the members that passed through their ranks
in the late 60's and early to mid 70's; my first gig was Gillan in
Aberdeen on the last tour the band did (1982) and the first band I
ever went to see twice on a tour was Whitesnake (in 1984) which strangely
enough was the last tour Ian Paice and Jon Lord played with the band.
Come April that year the reason became clear when Tommy Vance announced
the Deep Purple reformation on the Friday Rock Show on Radio 1. Little
did I imagine that evening that I would have the chance to see than
band - and even further from my mind was the fact that they may play
just one UK show and that would be in the middle of a rather large
field!
The rest of this page recalls
my memories of the trip to, and time before the music began at, the
Festival. It includes information on the trip Ian Gillan made through
the crowd as part of the Friday Rock Show and I believe will give
you an idea of the build-up to the music. If you are only interested
in the Deep Purple part of the show I suggest you click on the link
in the box to the right though on doing so you may miss some out on
some of the atmosphere the event generated.
The
reformation tour began in the last few weeks of 1984 in Australia
and followed the sun (as I seem to recall one of the band saying in
an interview) round the world before finding themeselves home on almost
the longest day of the year in Knebworth, England. Unfortunately the
sun wasn't playing the game and only popped out occasionally during
the day between heavy showers. Despite this spirits were high in the
crowd with most of us bonded by the fact we were either seeing the
legend that was Deep Purple for the first time ever or the first time
in at least nine years. Of course before our big moment came a lot
of travel, water and music. For these pages I'll stick mainly to Purple
related memories and a brief rundown of the other acts on the bill.
Tickets
went on sale several months earlier and adverts also appeared for
overseas trips. One of these, to Genk in Belgium, appealed to me for
three reasons. Firstly the collection point was outside Knebworth
directly after the show so I wouldn't have to worry about getting
back to London. Secondly I'd never been abroad and this would give
me a good excuse. Finally, at that point nobody had any real idea
if the reunion would last (Gillan and Blackmore had a difficult relationship
in the early 70s and I don't think many people thought much had changed
even ten years down the road. With this in mind the chance of catching
a bus directly after the Knebworth show seemed like a good idea even
for a poor student (as I was at the time - mainly due to my DP record
buying habit) so I booked up. I also filled in details for a passport
so imagine my disappointment when the passport arrived around the
same time as a letter saying the trip was off due to lack of interest.
All was not lost however as it meant the money I saved could be used
to spend a few days in London as this trip was the furthest south
I'd been in my life. A Uni friend, Chris Fremantle, offered to put
myself and another friend, John Stout, up for a few days after the
show. With accommodation sorted the three of us boarded the overnight
Stagecoach (a Scottish bus company that had started trading a few
years earlier and was undercutting the competition - now they run
many of the bus companies around the UK and some trains as well) on
Thursday the 20th June 1985 for the eleven hour trip to London.
After
a mainly sleepless night we arrived in London early, if not bright,
and Chris navigated us through the London Underground to the Battersea
Park area where we would be based. After dropping some of our gear
off and freshening up a little it was back into town and a train North
towards our goal, Knebworth. Unfortunately our 'local guide' chose
to ignore the posters telling us not to get off at Knebworth station
so we were the only three that did. The station was marginally closer
than the recommended Stevenage (from where all the organised busses
to the site departed) but there was no transport available other than
shanks pony. Ah well, it was a nice sunny afternoon so off we set
in vaguely the right direction (we hoped and we had no map to follow).
After some wandering another bunch of lost souls, German and with
transport, were daft enough to ask us for directions. Luckily when
we said we had a reasonable idea but would have to show them they
opened the door to their VW microbus and we were saved a couple of
miles hike. Looking back at maps (multimap of the Stevenage/Knebworth
site and Knebworth
Park itself) it seems that we would have had to navigate to Junction
seven of the M1 and then into the park. Even at this point, late afternoon,
crowds of people were walking towards the Park and when we eventually
arrived at the camping site it seemed to be already fairly full.
We'd not brought a tent but
the promised general accommodation tents seemed to be lacking. I think
there was one largish green marquee type but it was already full (though
John may correct me on that). Still the weather was OK and I did have
a 6' by 4' plastic groundsheet packed to sit on so we didn't worry
too much. As the sun shine we became familiar with the outline of
the festival environs things looked promising (apart from the accommodation
issue).
Fellow traveller
John Stout remembers:
... hot and sweaty ride down on a stagecoach. We 3 sat
near the front upstairs. Chris pulled out a crossword from
a newspaper to pass the time during the night and I
chatted away to the girl next to me, only to discover that
she was about to enter a convent!
You got the bit right about the campsite. As I recall we didn't
bring any gear at all with us. We hitched a lift onto the
campsite with the Germans in their van - Biker types? I also
remember us all trying to get a fire going under a large tree,
but then being shunted off by the gamekeepers.
We staggered into the arena at midnight thinking there might
be more shelter - bad move! It was even more exposed, and
worse still, having given up our tickets to get in there was
no going back. We huddled around one of the speaker towers
for a while and then I decided to go and see if I could get
a free coffee etc from the Red Cross. (Apparently it was the
wettest night in Knebworth for a number of years!)
I stumbled around the site, eventually clapping eyes on a
small caravan. Having knocked politely on the door, and head
popped round and the bloke's eyes lit up - first customer
of the night!
I thought I'd better try and act up the hypothermia bit just
to be convincing, but as it turned out I didn't have to act
too hard, given the Red Cross bloke's diagnosis. I was all
for going back to find Doug and Chris, but oh no, the bloke
insisted that I was in no condition to go back out there!
Instead, I was led off to a big marquee outside the arena
where I couldn't believe my eyes.....a dry bed for the night.
Not only that, but I woke next morning to the smell of a cooked
breakfast! The bloke even got me back past the security guards
and back into the arena without a ticket.
So it was with a full stomach and a hearty step that I waded
back through the mud to find the others, eventually stumbling
across two mud-encrusted lumps in the ground. Needless to
say, my earlier good fortune was met with less than enthusiastic
greetings......
Chris and I stayed on the slope until the end of Blackfoot,
I think. I remember being nearer the front for UFO and Meat
Loaf (being next to the ML fans who clearly were too refined
for a rock bash like this one), and the Scorps. Unlike the
other support acts, the Scorps dispensed with a Radio 1 DJ
introduction, and literally exploded onto the stage with 'Blackout'
(as opposed to Coming Home which was the set opener for the
rest of that tour).
I was at the front for the first 3 DP songs, and then gave
up and worked my way to the back - memories of moving between
the sound towers to the surround sound antics of Blackmore's
guitar antics during 'Truckin'.
The crowds were so big at the end that Brian missed his bus
home. Chris and I joined the mud-covered crowd slowly snaking
along from site to station, in single file - it took bloody
ages. And then when we got to the station we thought 'Oh,
Doug's not here...' and fell onto the next train. Actually,
we were amazed that you made it all the way back to Battersea
- wasn't it your first time in London? .
|
With
time to fill I left the other two to see if I could meet up with a
guy I knew from my then local The Moorings in Aberdeen. He was a veteran
of at least the Led Zeppelin Knebworth experience and was hitch hiking
down. I knew he was being dropped off at Junction 7 so I walked back
against the slowly moving cars, some already stuck in the soft ground
where they had tried to cut off corners, others with resigned drivers
blaring out their Purple tape of choice. The atmosphere, and anticipation,
was already building and this was more than twenty-four hours before
Purple were due onstage.
After waiting forty-five minutes
with no sign I decided that his e.t.a. was very dependant on luck
and as I could wait anywhere between minutes and hour decided to head
back to the campsite. On the way I passed what was probably an only
just open merchandise stall and bought probably one of the first programmes
on sale at around 7.30pm. I knew that Ian Gillan was due to go walkabout
the that evening as part of the Friday rock show build-up and decided
a programme was a sensible thing to buy and get signed. Quite how
I thought I was going to get it home safely afterwards I don't now
but I did and it is still in pretty good shape.
I've
forgotten how we filled the evening but I guess food, a beer or two
and chat about music and what we expected of the following day filled
the evening until at around ten thirty the man himself appeared and
was soon surrounded by a crowd of enthusiastic fans. The initial congregation
began at the low point of a dip between the arena entrance and the
road above the campsite. This positioning meant the BBC mobile radio
backpack could not connect to the broadcast van elsewhere on the site
and almost certainly safely positioned in the backstage area on the
other side of the summit. The fun then really began as this growing
crowd of radio crew, fans and the object of their attention slowly
navigated their way up the damp hillside winding between tents and
falling over guy lines. Various stops were made and I think the first
chat with Ian was about halfway up the hill though this was only a
brief "hello" to the radio listeners. the signal was still deemed
low and the summit was headed for as the drunk, sleeping or otherwise
engaged inhabitants went about their noisy way oblivious that the
bloke singing on the tapes they were playing had just walked past
them.
The rain had started by now
and with a decent signal attained Gillan stopped and chatted with
the crowd explaining that he wanted to get a few of us on air to say
where we'd come from for the event. Just as he was about to go live
the BBC man dropped or had jostled from his hand the microphone and
somehow it landed safely in my palm. I guess in a way this was my
first interview with the man even though the only part I had in it
was holding the microphone. I would have been the next person interviewed
(and the furthest travelled judging by those before me) had the section
not been cut short and Tommy Vance playing another record. Maybe the
BBC boys had been worried by the less than perfect microphone skill
I showed. Looking back I should have disconnected the head section
and kept it as a souvenir but I was a nice lad and just handed it
back to the person it belonged to. (This little escapade gave me an
idea for a nom de plume on the local Northsound (Aberdeen Independent
radio) radio show after the summer where everybody else used odd names,
Heavy Metal Hamster being Mr Stout while I became Ian Gillan's Mobile
Mike Stand).
With
that Ian headed back to the dry studio and better quality technicians
and we were left with a dilemma, our half hour adventure had finished
and now we had a long night to survive with no tent, rain coming down
and only trees for cover. We split up to see if we could find anywhere
that was free and had some degree of shelter but on regrouping nothing
particularly had been found. Somebody then said the gates had opened
and so we decided getting wet inside the arena was no worse than outside
and in we went. I guess we were within the first half dozen inside
the vast slope that within twelve hours would hold 50,000 people and
by the time Purple came on anywhere between 70 and 80,000 depending
on which reports you believe..
As you've probably guessed
there was even less cover in the arena though we had almost complete
run of it. After a scout around we found a couple of large sheets
of polythene, one of which already had other people under it. The
other, close to the mixer desk tower, we managed to grab briefly until
people collecting the sheet as rubbish (if I remember correctly) evicted
us. With our cower gone it was down to three of us sitting on one
end of the groundsheet and pulling the other end over our heads. Needless
to say this wasn't very satisfactory and even with waterproof trousers
and a rubberised yellow jacket above normal clothing it was still
cold and damp.
Mountain supported Deep Purple
on further european shows and the Rockpalast recorded and broadcast
one of them. Find out more here: http://www.rockpalastarchiv.de/concert/mountain.html.
Of course three weeks later
there was a much more famous outdoor live event and it had much more
luck in the weather department, Live Aid. While it would have been
nice to have been there for a few of the bands I think a wet Knebworth
was experience enough for one year.
Almost* the entire event
was recorded by the BBC with sections broadcast live, the following
Saturday and through the night in 4th November of 1985 on The Friday
Rock Show. My original intention was to cover the whole festival in
one go but Tim has already beaten me to it here.
The most informative
DP site the Highway Star also has views
and reviews.
* The Scorpions set
was never broadcast (and probably not recorded) as they had just released
'World Wide Live' on double LP (video and CD followed) and the setlist
was very similar.
Here you will find a couple
of audience pictures
of the crowd and stage, rain and shine care of Charlie.
If you would like to remind
me af anything I've missed email
me or sign
the guestbook..