Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Jun 23, 2011 11:42:23 GMT
Isle of Wight Festival UK 26th-30th August 1970
The Last Great Event By Ray Foulk With Caroline Foulk
Ray Foulk (one of the organisers) recalls Jim Morrison was in a foul mood and refused to allow the stage to be lit at all. They managed to get him to allow some red light but anyone further back than a stones throw saw nothing.
“Our set was subdued but very intense. We played with a controlled fury, and Jim was in fine vocal form.
He sang for all he was worth but moved nary a muscle. Dionysus had been shackled.”
Ray Manzarek
"In August 1970, hundreds of thousands of people flocked to the Island to attend what was then, and still is today, the largest crowd gathered at a music festival in the UK.
It was a remarkable moment in popular culture, with the hippie movement, the love generation and international rock superstars, all gathered together for a long weekend of music under the sun at Afton.
They came from far and wide — indeed press officer Peter Harrigan told television news crews that people had written from Asia and there were heavy ticket sales in Australia and charter flights from America.
Peter said: “I should think one in six, one in seven people at the festival will be from overseas.”
At its peak, the crowd swelled to several hundred thousand and the County Press noted that “estimates of the attendance varied from 150,000 to 400,000.”
On the Sunday festival, MC Rikki Farr famously told the crowd (introducing The Doors set at 12 midnight Saturday/Sunday and he said half a million not 600,000) that up to 600,000 people had come to the event — a figure organiser Ray Foulk describes as “absurd.”
Isle of Wight 1970: A View From The Crowd
"It is officially reported that over a half a million people have come to the Isle Of Wight for this festival. One of the reason ... one of the reasons, ladies and gentlemen is on the stage now. Please welcome, The Doors ! "
M.C. Rikki Farr.
"The Doors were abysmal. Since watching them drag their weary way through that embarrassing set, people I’ve rapped to often tell me what I missed and how good Manzarek was and how well they did Light my Fire and how foxy Morrison looked. It must be fucking hard work for people who dug the band in the past to keep those pretty illusions floating around. They were bored and apathetic, to them it was just another gig to keep their charisma going; but this time they blew it."
John Coleman, "IOW 70: The Music". Friends, October 2, 1970.
"At five minutes past midnight, The Doors shambled onstage. Despite all the reports to the contrary, I found them magnificent, with Morrison’s voice coming over clear and passionate.
“The Doors sneaked out on stage and everybody in the world stood up.
Everybody else behind them threw beer cans at them until they sat down.
A bearded Morrison was content to stand quite still and deliver his somewhat sombre songs while organist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robbie Krieger and drummer John Densmore provide a sinister backing.
It was something like listening to a Doors album through a bad record player that runs slow. Apparently they’d had a lot of backstage hassles. The equipment wasn’t right and by the time they got on they were in a bad mood, which showed through to the audience.
They just played Doors numbers, no attempt at communicating, no response to the inevitable applause. They got an inevitable encore, but declined to take advantage of it, they just moodied their way off the stage.”
The bootleg recording of their set shows how good they were with tight versions of ‘Back Door Man’, ‘When The Music’s Over’ and ‘Light My Fire’-bellowed like a great bull- as well as the mysterious, unreleased ‘Ship Of Fools’ and ‘The End’, which was ominous to the point of nightmare.
“Backstage, Morrison was at the bar, bewhiskered and looking like a lumberjack, preoccupied with his Miami court case, on the charge of indecent exposure. A bra-less wench, starstruck by the superstar blurted out ‘You mean if you did it in New York you’d just get a fast fine and that’s all?’.
“I didn’t do it anywhere” replied Morrison with distaste.
Within a year Morrison was dead –or, some people claim, not.
His grave in Paris an object of twisted veneration."
Taken from “Nights in Wight Satin” an illustrated history of the
Isle of Wight Pop Festivals by Brian Hinton.
Published by The Isle Of Wight County Council. 1990.
The Last Great Event By Ray Foulk With Caroline Foulk
Ray Foulk (one of the organisers) recalls Jim Morrison was in a foul mood and refused to allow the stage to be lit at all. They managed to get him to allow some red light but anyone further back than a stones throw saw nothing.
“Our set was subdued but very intense. We played with a controlled fury, and Jim was in fine vocal form.
He sang for all he was worth but moved nary a muscle. Dionysus had been shackled.”
Ray Manzarek
"In August 1970, hundreds of thousands of people flocked to the Island to attend what was then, and still is today, the largest crowd gathered at a music festival in the UK.
It was a remarkable moment in popular culture, with the hippie movement, the love generation and international rock superstars, all gathered together for a long weekend of music under the sun at Afton.
They came from far and wide — indeed press officer Peter Harrigan told television news crews that people had written from Asia and there were heavy ticket sales in Australia and charter flights from America.
Peter said: “I should think one in six, one in seven people at the festival will be from overseas.”
At its peak, the crowd swelled to several hundred thousand and the County Press noted that “estimates of the attendance varied from 150,000 to 400,000.”
On the Sunday festival, MC Rikki Farr famously told the crowd (introducing The Doors set at 12 midnight Saturday/Sunday and he said half a million not 600,000) that up to 600,000 people had come to the event — a figure organiser Ray Foulk describes as “absurd.”
Isle of Wight 1970: A View From The Crowd
"It is officially reported that over a half a million people have come to the Isle Of Wight for this festival. One of the reason ... one of the reasons, ladies and gentlemen is on the stage now. Please welcome, The Doors ! "
M.C. Rikki Farr.
"The Doors were abysmal. Since watching them drag their weary way through that embarrassing set, people I’ve rapped to often tell me what I missed and how good Manzarek was and how well they did Light my Fire and how foxy Morrison looked. It must be fucking hard work for people who dug the band in the past to keep those pretty illusions floating around. They were bored and apathetic, to them it was just another gig to keep their charisma going; but this time they blew it."
John Coleman, "IOW 70: The Music". Friends, October 2, 1970.
"At five minutes past midnight, The Doors shambled onstage. Despite all the reports to the contrary, I found them magnificent, with Morrison’s voice coming over clear and passionate.
“The Doors sneaked out on stage and everybody in the world stood up.
Everybody else behind them threw beer cans at them until they sat down.
A bearded Morrison was content to stand quite still and deliver his somewhat sombre songs while organist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robbie Krieger and drummer John Densmore provide a sinister backing.
It was something like listening to a Doors album through a bad record player that runs slow. Apparently they’d had a lot of backstage hassles. The equipment wasn’t right and by the time they got on they were in a bad mood, which showed through to the audience.
They just played Doors numbers, no attempt at communicating, no response to the inevitable applause. They got an inevitable encore, but declined to take advantage of it, they just moodied their way off the stage.”
The bootleg recording of their set shows how good they were with tight versions of ‘Back Door Man’, ‘When The Music’s Over’ and ‘Light My Fire’-bellowed like a great bull- as well as the mysterious, unreleased ‘Ship Of Fools’ and ‘The End’, which was ominous to the point of nightmare.
“Backstage, Morrison was at the bar, bewhiskered and looking like a lumberjack, preoccupied with his Miami court case, on the charge of indecent exposure. A bra-less wench, starstruck by the superstar blurted out ‘You mean if you did it in New York you’d just get a fast fine and that’s all?’.
“I didn’t do it anywhere” replied Morrison with distaste.
Within a year Morrison was dead –or, some people claim, not.
His grave in Paris an object of twisted veneration."
Taken from “Nights in Wight Satin” an illustrated history of the
Isle of Wight Pop Festivals by Brian Hinton.
Published by The Isle Of Wight County Council. 1990.
