The view from the Dust on August 30th and 31st, 1969.
Recollections of festival attendees
1.Tony Reed
I stumbled across your site almost by accident; I'd just downloaded "Wild Mountain Thyme" from the 69 concert from Napster, and out of curiosity, I searched Google for some more references. I was 19 that year, and travelling through Europe, as middle-class North American kids did then in the summer. Airfares were cheap for students, and you could go almost anywhere, including Algeria and other places I wouldn't dream of going now. I met Australians who were taking the "overland route" home; I doubt that that route still exists.
I got to the site on the Isle of Wight about, I don't know, 5 days or so before the concerts, with something like ten pounds in my pocket, and got a job digging toilets and putting up concession tents. All the good jobs, like building the stage, for instance, had been taken by Americans (and, yeah, by guys with carpentry skills). I met a bunch of people working there and we all lived in a small encampment we called Desolation Row. What else were we going to call it?.
David Kohn.
We even got semi-famous, and had a "journalist" from The People stay overnight who then went back to London and wrote a nasty piece about us. We got our pictures in various local and London newspapers and on the telly smashing up an old piano that the farmer gave us. I don't know why he gave it to us or why we smashed it up. It made some kind of sense at the time. Later, we got mentioned in Scaduto's bio of Dylan, although he got it wrong: I was the only North American in the group, which included a guy from the Midlands, some middle-class London kids, and a genuine Scottish tramp.
After the concert, that Monday morning, we were all going to stay and make some money helping with the big cleanup. Except that it was so truly desolate with the concert over and everyone just gone away and mountains of garbage all over that we just went home and forgot about it. Later, when I was back at UBC, I got a letter from one guy who was actually promoting a rock show of his own . He must have learned something while he was there, I guess. I have no idea what happened to the tramp. I don't have the pictures that appeared in the papers any more, or the Moroccan wallet that I kept for years with that "Help Bob Dylan Sink the Isle of Wight" thing pasted into it. Anyway, sorry to ramble on, thanks for putting up the web site.
2.Bill Ford
Pentangle © Colin Seftel
After a Friday night gig in Bristol my mate Bruce and I, respectively Guitarist and Vocalist of Birth (a pretty nifty, though I say it myself, acid rock outfit from Bath who did alright )and two girls, Caroline and Linda, drove overnight to Southsea and took a very early morning ferry to Ryde. We only had tickets for the Saturday and the only band I can actually remember were the Moody Blues - turgid, but maybe also Joe Cocker - good. We had no interest in Dylan, slept Saturday night on the beach, were awakened by morning rain and left. This was about the least interesting festival I ever attended out of some 20 or so. Nothing sticks in my mind about it at all except the sight of a very tall man who loomed up at us suddenly through the mist and scared us as we walked down a lane to the beach at about 1 am. When we returned to Southsea we were quite surprised to find Bruce's ancient Ford still in the car park as it didn't lock. When we'd left it, Bruce had remarked philosophically that if it did disappear it had only cost him £20. We then drove to the New Forest, had a few drinks in a pub and camped for the night amid the trees on our way home.
3.Frank Batten,
Northampton, UK
I came across your site having done a search for IoW festivals. I am meeting up with someone this weekend that I lost touch with thirty years ago, and I was trying to refresh my memory of the IoW in 69 and 70 as we went to both of those together. We arrived at Southsea in 69 too late for the last ferry, and kipped on the seafront and could hear (we thought) The Who playing on the island. I can't work out what night that would have been - we saw The Who live (that must have been on Saturday) but we also saw Bonzo Dog (and the wonderful VS RIP), but your listing shows them performing on the Friday. Do you know if anyone performed on Thursday evening? Did Bonzo Dog perform later in the weekend as well?
One thing has always stuck in my mind about Dylan's set - one of the newspapers said that the crowd booed and threw bottles at Dylan because he was so late on stage. The booing and bottle throwing was aimed at the people in the press compound at the front who stood up when Dylan came on stage, so none of us paying punters behind them could see anything. "Peace and Love" was one thing, but we still wanted value for money. The fact that Dylan was late didn't matter at all - he was there and that was all that mattered.
Great to see this site - keep up the good work, and if we come up with any concrete memories this weekend, I will let you know.
4.
Wonderful site, some great info and photographs !
Sadly no reference to a great band called "Marsupilami" who opened the show on the Friday evening.
Do you know if there are any references to this band, or photographs available ?
I believe in the 1970 festival program there were some small b&w photos of the previous years performers and next to The who was a shot of Marsupilami do you know if this might be available anywhere?
Anyway as you can guess I'm looking for any info concerning "Marsupilami" and their appearance at the I of W festival 1969.
Any help or assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Dusk © Tim Brighton
5.Von.
Dont have any pictures but i was there at the isle of wight to see Bob Dylan,its the best concert i've ever been to.
We found out where Bob was staying and out of all those people there was just 4 of us who knew where he was.
Every night we would listen to Bob rehearse the show in a converted barn on the property where he was staying,we had our very own concert,it was amazing,he came out and caught us one night and had a chat and gave us autographs,I still have mine to this day.
6.Michael Wilson
I was at the concert all three days in 1969. It was right after they landed men on the moon. I was curious if there is any video available of those concerts? I am now an artist and jazz pianist and live in the wine country of northern California. Those days live fond in the memory all though not all of it is clear, we know it was quite a party. I had been visiting my dad's parents in the north of England (St. Annes-on-Sea) and wassupposed to go to the lake district with them. Instead I found a girl who was interested in going and we spilt on the train to points south. From London we hitchhiked to the south coast and took the hovercraft to the island. We found a barn to camp in and then headed to the festival. I couldn't believe all the people. I forgot that in London we had stopped off for the tribute to Brian Jones given for the Stones in Hyde Park. That was outrageous!
David Kohn
From London one of our rides was in a Mini Cooper which had five people in it. It went out of control at one point and hit a side guard so we stopped (of course). I remember a beer truck stopped and two burly guys pulled our fender back in place so we could continue on. The Isle was really something else. Never have been to a better concert ever!
7.W Roy
I was at the festival, with a friend, trying to sleep in a tent, not being able to use the loo. I felt so miserable, unable to see anything, only to hear the music ,that I gave up before Bob Dylan came on. I went home early. How sad is that !
8.Tony Phelps Derby - England
This was my first festival but perhaps the best and most memorable.I had just turned 18 and some of my favourite groups were to be performing - The Nice, The Who, The Bonzo's, Julie Felix, Tom Paxton, Moody Blues, Family - I had albums by all of them. And of course the greatest songwriter of the 20th century was headlining - this was unmissable. The tickets were ridiculously cheap by today's standards - £2-10s for the full pass (though my wages were only £8 a week as a trainee draftsman). But cost was unimportant; I would have sold my soul to be there. People had started gathering at the site more than a week before the concert began and the newspaper articles and TV reports on the aptly named Desolation Row only served to excite me further - I knew this was where I belonged. The week leading up to the concert I was holidaying with my family and cousins in Cornwall so I only had to catch the coast train to Portsmouth and from there it was a quick ferry ride to Ryde, with it's more than mile long pier. It was almost an homecoming for me as I had spent 3 years growing up on the IOW at a boarding school in Ventnor run by nuns for children with severe asthma (country air and all).
I arrived at the site on the Thursday in the clothes I wore, no tent or blanket and the remains of my holiday money in my pocket - so I spent a bit of it buying a large plastic sheet and a mexican blanket, found a couple of sticks and draped the plastic over it to form a makeshift tent. Luckily it never rained and wrapped up in my blanket I was actually quite warm and comfortable for the duration. I don't actually remember eating anything much at the site, though on the morning of the Saturday I took a bus into Ryde and had lunch at a Chinese restaurant. I didn't stop long in Ryde as I didn't want to miss a minute of the stage activity, but I do remember seeing Nashville Skyline on sale for the first time and wondering if Dylan would be performing any tracks off it.
Apart from Dylan and the Band there were some very memorable performances and this is where I heard and became an instant fan of Third Ear Band (one of the most underrated bands of the era in my opinion). Other acts I have great memories of were the Bonzo's with their inimitable stage performance, the Moody Blues, and the Nice (who I was a great fan of). I was also a great fan of the Who at the time and their set just blew me away. Apart from a few songs at the start and end the main body of the concert was given over to an almost complete performance of Tommy. Fantastic!
I was pretty close to the stage for the final evening. (one of your other correspondent's mentions the bottle throwing incident, and yes, the target was not the stage but the plebs in the press area around the front of the stage) I was really looking forward to seeing Richie Havens as I wasn't very familiar with his music, but someone had told me that his appearance was one of the conditions laid down by Dylan before he'd agree to come. Whether there was any truth in this I have no idea but it was a great performance either way. I had just struck up a bit of a friendship with an American couple who had come across on a charter flight just to see Dylan and this is where I had my first taste of Cannabis (which I took to like a duck to water). The Band followed Richie Havens and then suddenly it was time for the culmination of 3 great days of music, fun and festivity. An hour or so later and it was all over and I was left with this overpowering feeling of what now? Suddenly my home-made tent didn't seem so appealing and I just wanted to get home to a warm bath and bed.
So I abandoned my plastic sheet, wrapped my blanket round my shoulders (I still have it) and joined the great mass of humanity wending it's way to Ryde pier. Ryde pier is so long that there is a train station at both ends of it. I was told that people were queuing the entire length of the pier but I decided to see for myself so caught the train to the end. Sure enough, for as far as I could see the pier was just jammed. The word was going round that it was going to take over 24 hours to clear even though ever ferry available was running. Some people from the train tried to jump the barriers to the head of the queue and were unceremoniously turfed back out. I had just decided to walk back into Ryde and find somewhere to doss when I was asked to help a girl back out over the barrier as she was about to faint. To my eternal shame, while helping her I managed to get one leg over the barrier. I stood straddling the barrier until ten minutes later someone else needed helping out and in the process my other leg made it over. I didn't get on the next ferry, but the one after I just made . From there a quick train ride to London where I slept on the platform along with about a thousand others until the police woke us and the first train to Derby saw me safely home.
I emigrated to Australia the following year so missed the Hendrix concert. I must have been to around 30 open air concerts since then, but Isle of Wight 69 was my first, and to my mind, still the best one ever.
ourse, the lack of sleep (sic!). I was only 16 and a half and some of my favourite groups, household names these-days, were performing - Moody Blues, The Who, Julie Felix, Joe Cocker, Free - among others. Then, of course, there was Bob Dylan, I was so looking forward to seeing him.
