It was 53 years ago ……. the music was good … the sun shone ….. and we were all happy

Today I came across this poster.

That poster, 1970

And in a trice I was back 53 years ago with friends wondering what to do on an indifferent Friday night in late August.

The usual haunts were discarded, and someone mentioned the Isle of Wight Festival, and without much thinking, other than to collect sleeping bags we were off in Tony Behan’s car, heading out of London in the late evening for the coast.

Some where on that hill was me, 1970

The rest really is a blur.

On arrival we found that a section of the festival was camped on a hill above the site, it was free and to my shame we opted to camp three.

Memories are vague with the passage of half a century, but I remember falling asleep to the sound of the Doors and marvelling at heaps of camp fires dotted across the hillside which illuminated the night sky.

Alas ours was a but a short stay, Tony had to be back in London for work on the Monday and so my one real experience of a festival and one of the legendary ones, was a day and a night.

To which when my lads ask, “What did you do at the Festival?” I can only ruefully reply I was a “Hippy for a day”.

But it was memorable and allowed me to bore friends with stories of the event as we watched the film Woodstock on a day when we should have been in lectures.

And I might say added to my image with our kids of something more than just Dad, the teller of silly stories who forgets things and always managed to ruin their best tee shirts in the washing machine.

Me, 1970

I could go on about the significance of the event, the huge collection of talent that was on display or the awful conditions down by the latrines.

But I won’t other than to say over the years I am amazed at the number of people who I have discovered were also there, two of whom I worked beside for nearly 20 years.

I thought of including their stories in the ones I have written over the years, but those belong to them.

Location; The Isle of Wight

Pictures; today’s reminder of yesterday, the poster, 1970, me in 1970 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and at the Festival, 1970, Roland Godefroy,who granted permission to use the image  under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 

*Isle of Wight Festival, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Isle%20of%20Wight%20Festival