(Saturday) 21 August 1976 was the day of the Knebworth Fair. The day the biggest audience gathered in Britain for a single-day music concert.
I was 16 at the time, in between taking my O Levels and beginning life in the sixth form I spent the summer working at Millers in Poole. Millers were (world) famous for their pork pies and sausages, they made pies and sausages for Marks and Spencer and Sainsbury's as well as their own name brands. My job that summer was in the pork pie making part of the factory, working a twelve hour shift three days a week from 8-8 and two days of finishing at 5. I was paid £80 for the sixty hours which seemed a good deal at the time. I was a pork pie pricker, the person who put the small holes in the top of the pies before they were cooked.
Anyway I saw an advert for the Knebworth Fair in Sounds and two bands jumped out at me The Rolling Stones and Lynyrd Skynyrd. The lineup was completed by 10cc, Hot Tuna, Todd Rundgren's Utopia, and the Don Harrison Band. Tickets were £4.25 in advance and I bought mine from Setchfields in Poole. The concert was scheduled to start at 11 a.m. and I had the problem of getting from Dorset to Hertfordshire in time for the start. For the Friday night I managed to organise a lift leaving Poole at 8p.m on one of Millers articulated lorries to Romford Essex, via a delivery at Fleet and then caught the last bus after midnight to my grandparents house. I then had to get up at 6 on the Saturday morning to go by tube to King's Cross and catch a train to Stevenage from where it was a short walk to Knebworth.
At the time I was friendly with some of my mates older brothers and one of them was going to Knebworth with three of his mates, one of them told me that if I could find them at Knebworth I could share in whatever they had.
Trying to find four people in a crowd of 120,000 on a hot summers day was going to be easy wasn't it? Actually it was, one of them was from New Zealand and I walked around the top of the hill at the back of the grounds looking for a black flag with a silver kiwi on it - I found it almost straight away.
I can't remember much about Don Harrison, Hot Tuna or Todd Rundgren - I actually fell asleep during Todd which was a bit of an insult but enitrely due to my lack of sleep. Lynyrd Skynyrd woke the crowd up and if the BBC ever shows that clip of 'Free Bird' again you can actually see me shaking my shoulder length ginger hair to some good old fashioned southern boogie. 10cc took ages to get ready due to problems with their taped effects for 'I'm Mandy Fly Me' and 'I'm Not In Love' - when I met up with a mate of mine a few days later he thought it was disgusting that a group should use tapes on stage - how times change!
Between 10cc finishing and The Stones coming on was a famous incident where a man walked on stage, stood in front of the cameras that were broadcasting the concert onto two huge screens, and began having a wank. I've since seen photographs of the incident so I know I wasn't tripping.
The Rolling Stones eventually arrived onstage at around midnight, an hour after the concert was supposed to close. The Stones were brilliant, they played for two hours and then everybody disappeared into the Hertfordshire night. My mates brother said I could sleep in his Vauxhall Viva as the other three had tents, eventually I caught the eight o'clock train back to King's Cross and on via Waterloo to home.
That was really the end of my interest in The Stones, apart from Start Me Up! I saw Lynyrd Skynyrd's last U.K concert at the Rainbow, Finsbury Park, six months later - the main members of the band were killed in a plane crash in the states. Punk had arrived and music would change for the best.
I still have the official programme which cost 40p. Page 3 is headed 'Some Notes For Your Convenience' - it has a list of food prices and a warning not to pay more. Fish and Chips are 55p and a (whole) Pizza 60p. The train fare from Stevenage to Kings Cross £1.24 or two pizzas!
The Stones played Twickenham this weekend, I doubt you could get a pizza for less than a tenner never mind a concert ticket, train ticket, fish and chips, pizza and drinks and still have change from a tenner!
5 comments:
Coincidentally in 1978 when you were getting your influence I went to Knebworth - 15 and just finished my O levels, didn't actually know what Knebworth was, just that Genesis were headlining. Also Tom Petty Jefferson Starship, Devo (I think) and I can't actually remeber much about any of the others but I didn't take my black Knebworth/Genesis sweatshirt off for weeks :-)
I knwo it doesn't seem to 'gel' with the Clash and all that (and at least bi-monthly visits to the Marquis (then in Wardour street) Hammersmith Odeon/Palais...Jam, Undertones, Squeeze, 'and all that jazz'
Shoulder length ginger hair. So when did the Baldinio days start?
Span,
That was what was weird about the 1976-1978 period, buying The Ramones and then going to the Wembley Arena to see Yes. I saw Squeeze, Ultravox and Hawkwind on successive Fridays - very strange.
Six.
The Baldinio years began in my mid twenties.
I've missed out on all these concerts and many of these bands.
So that also means all these concerts and festivals too.
The Rolling Stones...I can see that they have been important to the music business and know most of their hits but have never bought a Rolling Stones record...Is their music that was not a hit better? As in general I do not actually like what they do, most groups I can find at least one song.
Having said that I do not find myself switching off their music if it comes on the radio...I'm going to try their concert being broadcast on Radio 2 on Bank Holiday Monday...perhaps I'll chnage my mind and finally understand.
Hi Gildy
I think the Rolling Stones golden period was probably 1969-1973 as far as the cream of their output goes. The four albums: Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street and the massively underrated Goats Head Soup would definitely feature in a Top 20 of U.K albums of the past forty years. During this period they also released a quartet of their best singles: Jumpin Jack Flash, Honky Tonk Women, Brown Sugar and Tumblin Dice.
I haven't been excited by anything they have done in the last three decades. I remember seeing a clip from a concert where a young American lady said "I've loved these guys from way back." The interviewer said "When," to which she replied "Oh, you know the Some Girls album." - That was 1978!
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