history of rock festivals

Background. Mel was very practical and very creative and very well organized. They didn’t need to advertise that. After that, it was all a struggle. Kaukonen: It was one of those magical days that made you say, “I have to move to the Bay Area” before you realize there’s only like 14 of those days a year. There were not enough gates where tickets were checked and fans made holes in the fences, so lots of people just walked in. Every country has its important festivals, and rock bands tour the festival circuit each summer, just as jazz performers have done for years. It originated in the United States and spread to other English-speaking countries and across Europe in the 1960s.

All of a sudden, that was trash. Bratton: Because of marijuana and LSD, mostly, we felt like we were on the cutting edge of this paradigm shift in human consciousness. You could really make a case that that weekend was the beginning of the Summer of Love. During the daytime, it was sunny and beautiful and there’s hippie chicks dancing around. They were looked down on. Rock, form of popular music that emerged in the 1950s and that by the end of the 20th century was the world’s dominant form of popular music. Like Woodstock, many of the subsequent festivals were commercial disasters, which kept any single rock festival from becoming an annual event like the jazz festivals had become, and the Rolling Stones’ unfortunate show at Altamont Speedway in Livermore, California, in 1969 (at which several people were beaten and one man stabbed to death) did nothing to improve their reputation. I don’t think it was our intention to use them as security, it was just our intention to have them present to be fearsome. I remember riding up the hill on the back of a Harley with one of the Hells Angels. They put so much pressure on the state that they revoked the license once, but the major California politicians that held sway over this local community reasoned with them and said, “Hey, come on guys. Roger McGuinn (The Byrds): We probably had some enhancements going on, so there was an altered state of consciousness.

Muldaur: People would twirl around and all the chicks in their bedspread dresses were doing what we called the “funky sun grope.” It was a real vibe of peace and love. He intended the US Festivals, with Bill Graham's participation, to encourage the 1980s to be more community-oriented and combine technology with rock music. When the 1965 Newport Folk Festival allowed the Paul Butterfield Blues Band to play and to back up Bob Dylan, controversy over the appearance of electric instruments followed, but the shrewd commercial decision meant that, increasingly, electric performers appeared at these events. An all-women festival, the Lilith Fair, copied this approach with great success in the late 1990s. So we brought in Dr. Bill. In Europe, destination festivals had been an essential part of the summer scene for decades, and good organization and payment of bands had always been part of the agenda. The original idea was to stage a concert that would raise enough money to build a recording studio for young musicians at Woodstock, New York. They want to go to the festival.” I said, “Sure. Steve Brown (Fantasy Fair attendee): The Be-Ins were the seed of the big outdoor get-togethers of people enjoying music. We had the 8 a.m. slot, but you’re talking about musicians, so 8 a.m. is still last night. Helped by the 1968 release of the Monterey Pop concert film, the festival quickly became one of the era’s most enduring musical events. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

Rounds: KFRC presented numerous shows at the Cow Palace in Daly City south of San Francisco. This was an extension of the Love-In in Los Angeles and the Be-In. Ted Wysinger (Artist): Magic Mountain was our first tour stop. It wasn’t a bunch of people sitting in stadium chairs in an indoor environment. Nobody wants to have that dark cloud. Art Reznick (Salvation): Everybody was doing acid, if nothing else. There, the sun was down and there was a feeling in the air. Because the venue had to be changed not everything was finished in time. Rock festivals had their origin in the jazz festivals held in Newport, Rhode Island, and in Monterey, California, in the 1950s. For Magic Mountain, it was like, “Let’s just do this gig and do as good a job as we can.”. They thought Bob Dylan was an idiot and a communist. We did a Love-In right before the festival and [producer] Kim Fowley was the MC and I remember him saying, “Here they are, these aren’t the original Grass Roots. There were a lot of local bands on the bill that didn’t become famous, but it shows you how viable the scene was that it could produce all of those acts within a small time period. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. He was swinging around it. I remember [Country Joe and the Fish guitarist] Barry Melton in the helicopter taking LSD and then we landed there and we had to get up to Mount Tam. It was outside and became the theme that we were looking for; just to get everybody really involved in the trippiness of the whole thing. Most European rock festivals are just star-studded, crowd-pleasing events, but Denmark’s Roskilde Festival and France’s Trans Musicales in Rennes, with their balance of big names and developing acts, have become important career stepping-stones for international performers, and England’s Glastonbury Festival is a cornerstone of the British rock scene for established acts and newcomers alike. When Jimi Hendrix was the last musician on the stage only about 25,000 fans were still present.

Not having been to many concerts at 13, I didn’t know what to expect, but even then, I remember thinking, “Wow, this is amazing.” It was the hippie thing of no barriers or boundaries. England’s Reading and Leeds festivals achieved new prominence in the 21st century, and the legendary Isle of Wight Pop Festival was resurrected in 2002. Sloan (Singer-songwriter): That weekend was fascinating musically because the Doors were still considered second-rate Rolling Stones. All was well, and all was joyous. Rounds, too, hired a film crew to document Magic Mountain, but nearly all of the footage has been lost and virtually no audio of any of the performances exists. When Adler and Phillips came up to see our festival, they asked, “How did you get all this done? By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. The label told me to sign away everything I’ll ever earn and earned and sent out word that I was persona non grata. The Woodstock Festival was a three-day pop and rock concert that turned out to be the most popular music event in history. This place is a dust bowl with barbed wire fences.” The beauty of the Fantasy Fair was that it was so innocent. And he had plenty of them.

While the Grateful Dead were gigging for the first time in New York, Owsley Stanley stayed behind to bless any willing artists with LSD. I remember listening to Dionne Warwick and thinking, “God, she is so talented.”. But to many of the artists and fans who were in attendance, it remains a pivotal moment of the counterculture takeover. Larry Taylor (Canned Heat): People would get together in a big park and listen to music and hang out. In Europe the story has been completely different, particularly on the Continent, where festivals are an essential part of the summer scene and where good organization and payment of bands have always been part of the agenda. I see Don turn around, panicked, and walk off the back of the stage like there was no drop and fall off. Nowadays, it’s a standard pop and rock fest–– Muse and Pharrell Williams headlined the 2015 edition. It became a symbol of the hippie movement of the 1960s.. Four young men organized the festival. Long before Altamont, they were the security guards at the Be-In to handle all the lost children. Almost everyone knew each other and at that time, so early in the Summer of Love, a lot of outsiders hadn’t really started to come in from around the country. Such a sweet man. History. It was the essence of the experience of being in San Francisco at that time. There was no real “backstage.”. Morton: There was absolutely no security. Bill Champlin (Sons of Champlin): Just about everyone in the Bay Area, at some point, had something to do with the show. Occasionally, a festival will focus on a particular genre (e.g., folk, heavy metal, world music), but many attempt to bring together a diverse lineup to showcase a broad array of popular music trends. You had to either have doctors or a “Freak Out tent” like we had at Woodstock.

But at that point, there was no underground radio outside of San Francisco. Spectators at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in Bethel, New York, August 1969; scene from the documentary film.

The artists just mingled with the crowd because it was a different vibe then. Corrections? The event caused a giant traffic jam. Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple and creator of the Apple I and Apple II personal computers, believed that the 1970s were the "Me" generation. Kaukonen: The musical community in San Francisco was different than today.
I remember watching the Doors and then just seeing them leave the stage and lay around on the grass with the crowd after they did their set. Sloan: I was a songwriter and my record label really didn’t want me out there in the public. The 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, held at the fairgrounds where the Monterey Jazz Festival was produced, was the first major rock festival, but its logistics, expense, and commercial failure deterred other American promoters from mounting similar events until the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, held in Bethel, New York, in 1969, became the prototype. Lou Adler (Monterey Pop co-producer): I don’t know what Mel’s talking about.

York: We didn’t have a drummer, so one of the guys who was working on the stage crew came up to us minutes before we were about to play and said, “Do you guys need a drummer?” and we said, “Oh man, that would be cool.” He had no idea who we were; he just recognized that we were four guys on stage with guitars and a bass but no drummer. Lawrence: I think the basic thing was a consideration for the audience and realizing that there were other options than just sitting them down in a seat and watching a show.

Loasby was an established and successful promoter working that year on the Rainbow UK tour and penned the festival as the final show of the tour for the band to headline. I took my guitar out of the case and put the strap over my shoulder. McDonald: The LSD was starting to work and the Hells Angel guy who took Barry up on the back of his motorcycle introduced himself as Broke Dick.

And there won’t be a barrier between the audience and the performers.”. The outdoor theater had no lighting, so the festival started at 8 a.m. and had to be over by 6 p.m. I’ll be back later.” Thanks, Kim. Updates? Rock festivals had their origin in the jazz festivals held in Newport, Rhode Island, and in Monterey, California, in the 1950s. It was their turf and we needed their support. They put on a show that had a much different element than any of the San Francisco bands. Stanley Mouse (Poster designer): Because it was Magic Mountain, I felt the image I used was magical, but it ended up being heavy-handed. They weren’t part of that scene. Lawrence: My crew worked hard at putting up scaffolding, building and decorating the stage, putting up all those concession booths, et cetera. Casady: [Fantasy Fair] felt the most at home. I started feeling really good. Omissions?

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