As noted i went to high skool in the 1970's i shud git a medal for surviving that.

This was England's uncontrolled rock festivals - that was their 1970's

It's the Weely Festival of Progressive Music 1971 Essex

Rock Festivals over in the Ye Merry England are just as crazy as in the USA.  50 years ago was the Weeley Festival of Progressive Music, in 1971. It’s festival rock music history. Fire, violence, Hells Angels, and then the aftermath of court cases and legislation.

Date: Friday, August 27, 1971 – Sunday, August 29, 1971
Venue: Weeley
Location: Weeley, Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, UK

In 1971 what kind of music event can we have in Weeley. Not familiar with organizing rock festivals they called Brighton-based Colin King, he did the Bath and Isle of Wight festivals. Sure he'll take care of us. “If you want big, then I’m your man,” he used to say. Big is what it is. Was what it was. Bigger than anyone could imagined. They had a Permit for 10,000 people. It’s not surprising that when 130 to 150,000 turned up, the facilities provided struggled to cope. There was limited food available and the toilets were far from acceptable. 150,000 descended on north Essex.

During the weekend, fires destroyed cars, tents, motorbikes and catering stands and a number of people required medical treatment. Hells Angels, employed to take care of site security, were involved in several running battles with on-site caterers. The latter group put a call out for locals help and when those reinforcements arrived, the Hells Angels were cornered behind the stage and received a severe beating and damage to their bikes. Hate when that happens.

Now that rock festivals are highly organized garden parties at former holiday camps and converted airfields, with star performers and creature comforts, it’s hard to imagine how, a quarter of a century ago, they could have been such debacles of mayhem and chaos that they resembled rehearsals for the apocalypse.

Much has been written about Woodstock, Altamont and the Isle of Wight – the good, the bad, and the ugly of the early music fests – but other shows have been all but forgotten with the passage of time. Which is a pity because many were equally bizarre events, especially when the aims of their promoters ran head-first into the reality of inflicting a large tent-town on some unsuspecting rural geography and then filling it with a temporary population of rock’n’rollers determined to behave with high illegality. This was right before The War On Drugs. Early mid 70's. The War On Drugs was not ready for what it was taking on. It had no idea.

The Bickershaw Festival was one prime example of old-school rock-festival anarchy in the UK. 1972 it was. The line-up included the Grateful Dead, Captain Beefheart, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Dr. John, Hawkwind, The Kinks, Country Joe McDonald, The Incredible String Band, Donovan, Wishbone Ash, Maynard Ferguson, and a host of non-musical acts such as Cheech & Chong, high divers and clowns.

It was 53 years ago, Bickershaw, England was the site of what is generally remembered in the UK as one of the all time wettest rock festivals, but for all the rain that was dumped on the crowd during the course of its three days, the crowd’s enthusiasm was rarely dampened.

Organized by future television personality Jeremy Beadle, the Bickershaw Festival featured a wide variety of artists from the UK and the US, and when we say “wide variety,” we’re in no way using the phrase in a hyperbolic fashion: the lineup included Hawkwind, Dr. John, Donovan, the Incredible String Band, Captain Beefheart, Maynard Ferguson, Wishbone Ash, the Kinks, the New Riders of the Purple Sage, and a five-hour set from the Grateful Dead.

The late Joe Strummer once claimed that it was his favorite festival of all time, making specific mentioned of Captain Beefheart’s set, which took place in the wee hours of the morning. Similarly, Elvis Costello has raved about the Dead’s performance, citing it as the reason he decidedly definitively that he was going to start a band.

The flooding was pretty nuts, though. It was raining before the festival started, there were showers throughout the majority of its three-day span, and there was standing water all over the place. And as if they didn’t have enough water already, a high-dive act performed at some point during the festival, and their tank was emptied right in front of the stage. Top-notch planning there, eh?

In the end, the Bickershaw Festival proved to be a one-off event, likely due to the fact that the organizers actually lost money, but the memories of those who made it through the rain have lasted them a lifetime.

Listening to the show right now, it's a really great concert. Up there with the best of the Europe '72 tour thus far. Also Bobby leads everyone to sing "Happy Birthday" to Bill Kreutzmann before introducing Donna for "Playing in the Band." This is certainly one of the top Grateful Dead shows. And judging from reading about the difficulties endured by the people at the concert, it may be a more enjoyable experience to listen to it from the comfort of your home.

Another event was of course the Weeley Festival that took place a year earlier, just outside Clacton, in August 1971. The Weeley Festival was the diametric opposite of Bickershaw. The weather was hot and dry, and – instead of slowly sinking into a sea of liquid mud – Weeley erupted into raging grass fires, and violent confrontations between the festival’s security men and outlaw motorcycle clubs.

Both events looked good on paper. Each featured a stellar bill: the posters for Weeley boasted the Faces, T.Rex, Status Quo, Rory Gallagher, King Crimson, Mott The Hoople, Mungo Jerry and the Pink Fairies, while Bickershaw offered its drenched and mud-covered crowd the Kinks, New Riders Of The Purple Sage, Dr John, Hawkwind, Country Joe McDonald, The Incredible String Band, Donovan and Wishbone Ash, plus an historic set by Captain Beefheart and the specially reassembled Magic Band, and the first four-hour set by The Grateful Dead ever seen by a British audience. The promoters guaranteed reasonably priced food and drink, a free camp site, and adequate toilet and washing facilities. As it turned out, however, these were the least of anyone’s worries.

To say these promoters were inexperienced is hardly fair. In the early 1970s nobody really knew how to run a huge open-air rock event. Blackhill Enterprises – who presented the free concerts in Hyde Park – had become adept at promoting shows that lasted just a few hours in the afternoon. A three-day event was a very different matter, and crucial factors were inevitably overlooked.

Curved Air was at the Weely Festival but Stewart Copeland was not in the band at that time. He joined in 1974. He stayed about a year and started The Police and he was never seen again. ..... until he was all over the world in 1980.

Weely Festival Bands:

The Edgar Broughton Band
  Juicy Lucy
  Principal Edwards Magic Theatre
  Status Quo
  Tir Na Nog
  Grinco
  Stone The Crows
  Barclay James Harvest
  Al Stewart
  Colesseum
  King Crimson
  Mott the Hoople
  Curved Air
  Tudor Lodge
  The Groundhogs
  Rory Gallagher
  Caravan
  Heads, Hands and Feet
  Julie Felix
  Quintenessense
  Anne Briggs
  Rod Stewart And The Faces
  T Rex
  Van Der Graaf Generator
  Stray
  The Crazy World of Arthur Brown
  Lindisfarne

If you didn't see the ozarks music festival then you didn't see it.

It was the last of America's uncontrolled rock festivals - that was our 1970's

Yes that would be the infamous Ozark Music Festival. Look again if you dare-

1974 Ozark Music Festival Sedalia Missouri

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