Fifty years ago today I was at the Bath
Festival, the biggest assignment I covered during my first summer on Melody Maker.
Compared to the National Jazz & Blues Festival at Plumpton in Sussex that
I’d attended the previous year, this was just huge; perhaps as many as 150,000
people stretching all the way up a hill for almost as far as the eye could see.
The reason was that Led Zeppelin was appearing, taking pride of place on
Sunday, the final day. It was their biggest show yet in the UK, an important
step in the upward momentum their career was taking.
Having driven down from London I got snarled up in traffic and didn't arrive until quite late on the Saturday afternoon, my portable typewriter in the boot of my
car, all set to report this major event like the trusty reporter I’d trained to
be. I parked my car backstage, hooked up with Chris Welch and photographer Barrie Wentzell, then wandered around, eight weeks into this job
and feeling unusually privileged to be inside the inner sanctum at a major
festival. The weather was fine, though it wouldn’t stay that way, and for
longer than seemed necessary I was entertained by a chap with a guitar called
Joe Jammer, evidently someone’s roadie, who was filling in while Frank Zappa
readied himself to face the crowd. Frank came and went and was followed,
curiously, by Maynard Ferguson, an ageing (by Bath standards) big band leader
who’d taken a left turn into jazz rock to appeal to a younger audience. I also
watched It’s A Beautiful Day whose singer Patti Santos had made an altogether
pleasing impression on me earlier in the week when I’d collared her for MM’s ‘Blind Date’ feature in which we
played records without saying who it was and inviting comment.
The highlight of the evening, though,
was Pink Floyd, whom I was seeing for the first time, premiering their new work, Atom
Heart Mother, the album with the cow on the front. They went on very late,
set their controls for the heart of the moon and played until the early hours
of Sunday morning. I listened to them in wonderment and awe, then retired for
the night, driving to Bath and a nice warm bed in a B&B, unlike so many
others who slept beneath the stars.
(Photo by Terry Farebrother)
The next day I drove back to the site
around midday and was astonished by the scenes in
the village of Shepton Mallet. There was a phone box with a
queue that stretched for over 100 yards. I calculated that if there were three
people in the queue for each two yards, there were 150 people waiting, and that
if each call lasted ten minutes, the last person in the line would wait for 25 hours
before making their call. There were similar queues for toilets and food on the
site; indeed, the contrast between the conditions endured by the fans and those
enjoyed by the artists and their guests brought a sharp intake of breath. Huge
tepees had been erected backstage to serve as private quarters for artists
while a big marquee served as a dining room in which waitresses dressed in
traditional black dresses with white aprons served three course meals and a
selection of fine wines.
In the adjoining bar I met the members of
Led Zeppelin for the first time, introduced by my new colleague Chris
Welch. Jimmy Page was dressed as a yokel in his grandad’s old coat and a scarecrow hat, Bonzo
was wrapped up in a leather coat with fur trim and John Paul Jones, who arrived later by helicopter, kept his thoughts to himself, as he always would. Robert
Plant, bare chested, hair aglow and by far the most affable, autographed a pink
backstage pass for me*, and later in the
day I passed this memento on to a girl I knew who was in the crowd, a big Zep fan whom
I hoped would grant me her favours as a result. I actually got DJ John
Peel to make an announcement from the stage: “Would Lorraine meet Chris by the
backstage gate in 15 minutes.”
It
was also my introduction to Led Zeppelin as a live force. They appeared 30
minutes after an American group called Flock, led by violinist Jerry Goodman, and - though I didn't know it at the time - Led Zep’s crew, led by their formidable manager Peter
Grant, had hustled Flock off the stage with undue haste in order that Jimmy and
his merry men could perform just as the sun was setting behind them. Mighty
impressive they were too, even though my view was restricted by being so close
to the high stage that I had to crane my neck to see what was going on up
there. I couldn’t see Bonzo at all, and if the other three stepped back they
too were out of my sight line. But I could certainly hear them. Good grief!
They opened their set with the hitherto
unreleased ‘Immigrant Song’ which they attacked with all the ferocity of the
marauding Vikings Robert was singing about. Drums and bass reverberated like
cannon fire, and Jimmy Page’s guitar cut through the twilight like a broadsword.
Every other band on the bill sounded decidedly limp dick compared to this
onslaught. The reception was phenomenal, song after song greeted with wild applause, and they returned to the stage
for multiple encores. It was a coming of age for them, their first really huge
British show, a triumph, and there I was lapping it all up. Serious competition
for my beloved Who, I remember thinking.
“Led Zeppelin stormed to huge success at the Bath
Festival,” Chris Welch and I wrote in the following week’s MM. “As about
150,000 fans rose to give them an ovation, lead singer Robert Plant told them: ‘We’ve
been away a lot in America and we thought it might be a bit dodgy coming back. It’s
great to be home!’
“They played for over three hours – blues,
rock and roll and pure Zeppelin. Jimmy Page, in a yokel hat to suit the
Somerset scene, screamed into attack on guitar. John Paul Jones came into his
own on organ as well as bass, and John Bonham exploded his drums in a
sensational solo. And the crowd went wild, demanding encore after encore... a
total of five!
“They kicked off with a
new riff from their next album called ‘Immigration Song’ [sic]. They actually took some time to warm up the
crowd, but this may have been intentional as they built up to a fantastic
climax with an act lasting over three hours... They had made all the hang-ups
worthwhile and given the crowd a night to remember – whatever else happened. In
their final minutes, they paid tribute to the Masters of Rock and Roll with the
songs of Little Richard, Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry.”
In
fact, the encores included snippets of Buffalo Springfield’s ‘Mr. Soul’, Muddy
Waters’ ‘Long Distance Call’, Big Joe Williams’ ‘El Paso Blues’, Elvis
Presley’s ‘I Need Your Love Tonight’ and a final blast through Little Richard’s
‘Long Tall Sally’ included Gene Vincent’s ‘Say Mama’ and Chuck Berry’s ‘Johnny
B. Goode’.
Aside from the mighty Zeppelin,
Sunday’s stars were Donovan, Santana, Flock, Hot Tuna, Country
Joe, Jefferson Airplane (whose set was aborted amid pouring rain due
to fear of electrocution), The Byrds, who played a truly delightful
all-acoustic set, and, closing the show early next day, Dr. John who
tripped the night away as it finally turned to daybreak. Sunday’s music at Bath
that year started at midday and finished at about 6am on Monday morning. I
saw it all and in the misty dawn light drove immediately back to London, parked
my car behind Fleet Street, rode the elevator to the MM office and wrote my story.
It wouldn’t be the last night without
sleep that I willingly endured in seven years’ service on Melody Maker.
* I hadn’t been
on MM long enough yet to realise it was
dreadfully uncool for rock writers to ask for an autograph. Now I wish I’d
asked them all, all the hundreds I eventually met, for their autographs.
1 comment:
Hot Tuna were my highlight there unto the earlier hours of Monday…
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