1976 Reading Festival

My first festival, an experience I'll never forget. It was the glorious summer of 1976 and the UK was in the middle of a drought. So rucksack packed, myself and Eric Craig, a good school friend, headed out to hitch-hike our way from Newcastle to Reading, aiming to arrive on the Thursday before the Festival kicked off over the August Bank Holiday weekend. It took us a couple of days to travel to Reading on a pretty uneventful journey apart from a guy throwing a load of porn mags our way while we were stuck on a roundabout outside Leeds somewhere which were duly burnt that evening for a bit warmth!

We arrived at the Festival site in mid afternoon on the Thursday pitched the tent and took it all in, no kids around in those days, festival weren't the family friendly events they've now become and going to the loo was to risk dysentery! It was pretty much a sea of denim, leather jackets and long hair! Pretty soon we'd met up with a few more friends who had traveled down as well as discovering a white van parked nearby selling scrumpy in dodgy plastic containers. Thursday evening was spent drinking scrumpy and burning sausages by way of eats!

Fridays headliners were Gong and according to the list I have Friday also featured Mallard, The Mighty Diamonds, Roy St. John, Stallion, Supercharge and U-Ray. I don't remember anything about the bands that played through out the day, but Gong were a very relaxed pleasant end on a warm summers evening to the first day. This would be Pierre Moerlens Gong who were firmly in the Jazz-rock genre by this time, Steve Hillage and Daevid Allen along with the teapot pixies had long gone.

Saturday brought Festival headliner Rory Gallagher along with Camel, Eddie and the Hot Rods, John Hiseman's Colliseum, Manfred Manns Earthband, Moon, Mick Pickett, Pat Travers Band, Phil Manzanera's 801, The Sadista Sisters and Van der Graaf Generator. Although the festival wasn't a competition to give winners and losers, I remember Manfred Manns Earthband went down an absolute storm as they played through a torrential downpour that pretty much flooded out the Saturday night. I remember plunging 2 large cans of Watneys Red Barrel in to the mud and standing on them late on the Saturday night. It was no great loss losing the two cans as Watneys Red Barrel was pretty much the same as drinking coloured water!

Sundays finale gave us AC/DC on what must have been one of their very first UK appearances. AFT, Back Door, Black Oak Arkansas, Brand X (with Phil Collins on drums), The Enid who were excellent, The Dambusters March never sounded so good, Howard Bragen, Sassafras, Sutherland Brothers and Quiver, Ted Nugent who played with so much distortion he was almost unlistenable. Special guests to finish off the night were Osibisa, but after a couple of songs in we decided it was time for more scrumpy and end the evening around a communal camp fire.

All in all a great 3 days, one nights sleep then the hitch hike home starts!  Roll on Reading '77.

1974 and 1975

My first Friday night at The Mayfair came in 1974 a few days after my 16th birthday. Sadly The Mayfair is now long gone but a great great place to see a gig, well I think it was, I cannot be 100% sure as Fridays at The Mayfair involved imbibing lots of Snakebites in plastic glasses! I'm not clear on who played on those Friday evenings but I'm pretty sure I saw The Sensational Alex Harvey Band there for the first time, Edgar Broughton played there and Beckett, who's lead singer went on to front Back Street Crawler. There's no doubt a few others who are now just a distant memory. In 1975 the only band I can definitely recall seeing there was Alvin Lee. Around that time I would arrive at The Mayfair in a long grey RAF overcoat, no wonder I was so thin back then, I must have spent most of Saturday totally dehydrated and nursing a hangover!

The RAF coat almost got me beat up one night, back in those days Newcastle was split between the 'Skins' and the 'Hairies'. Coming out the Mayfair a friend and I were just about to start the long walk up the West Road when we heard a shout behind us, coming towards us were 7 or 8 skinheads intent on giving the 2 'Hairies' a good seeing too. Not fancying the odds it was time to run, we must have been alcohol fueled, or they were drunker than us, as we outpaced them reaching the Big Lamp where they gave up and headed off down Elswick Road while we continued back home to Fenham. Pity I can't remember who we'd seen that night!

Only one gig at The City Hall that year, the rather wonderful Sensational Alex Harvey Band, a great live band who's staging was getting more and more elaborate. Alex Harvey was one of the best front men I've seen.

1973 and all that!

1973, the year I spent every bit of pocket money on gigs and good old vinyl, I was still to young to get in to The Mayfair (that would come next year!), so all these are City Hall gigs.

Starting with....
The classic Deep Purple line up on the Machine Head tour, Nazareth were support who later went on to greater things! It was an awesome gig and quite possibly the loudest one I've ever been to.

In March I managed  two gigs, Groundhogs and Status Quo. I can still remember the drone of the mellotron during the opening of Earth Shanty from Hogwash. Don't remember an awful lot from the Status Quo gig. It's Piledriver era so I probably went because I'd heard 'Paper Plane'

Next up 2 gigs in two nights, there were probably only about 50 people in the City Hall for The Edgar Broughton Band, 'Out Demons Out'. As for Fanny, well I don't remember anything at all about their performance! 

After this came Faust, now this one I do remember, for two reasons. First the insane Gong were support and the Faust set was cut short because the drummer had an attack of food poisoning! Still it was my first taste of Krautrock, Faust took to the stage in darkness only lit by the orange 'on' lights of their amps. Faust Tapes was duly purchased along with Tago Mago by Can and Zeit by Tangerine Dream, the Kraftwerk albums came a couple of years later. I'm still listening to Tangerine Dream to this day!

Argent, Rory Gallagher,  Uriah Heep and a return for Nazareth ended the year. The Rory Gallagher gig started a life long love of his guitar playing.

1972 and a couple of typo's!

After my first gig in the summer of 1972, I was definitely hooked so what better way than to take in T Rex arch rivals Slade. From what I remember it was a pretty good gig, opening with Suzi Quatro then on to Thin Lizzy with Eric Bell on guitar before Slade stomped on to do an 'all the hits' gig.

The final gig of 1972 was a real classic. Hawkwind the Space Ritual Tour (note the typo's on both tickets) Lemmy was still with them and we were witness to Stacia's naked dancing, what more could a 14 year old want!

The first few rows of the City Hall had scented joss sticks placed on them and as the night progressed the place filled up with the heady aroma of patchouli and err... something not quite legal!

The set list would be the same as the live album released in 1973, The Space Ritual Live, one of the best live albums ever!

I find it a bit odd to hear Master of the Universe used in a car advert these days!

First ever gig!

It was a long time ago, this was the second set after a matinee performance, support were Quiver, it was probably the same set list as the Born to Boogie film.

Some background info.

T. Rex were a British rock band, formed in 1967 by singer/songwriter and guitarist Marc Bolan. The band formed as Tyrannosaurus Rex, releasing four underground folk albums under the name. Tony Visconti (their producer for several albums) claimed in a documentary on the band that he had taken to using the abbreviated term "T. Rex" as a shorthand, something that initially irritated Bolan, who gradually came around to the idea and officially shortened the band's name to "T. Rex" at roughly the same time they started having big hits (shortly after going electric).
In the 1970s, the band had reached success with glam rock hits like "Jeepster", "Get It On", "Ride a White Swan", "20th Century Boy", "Children of the Revolution", "Hot Love", "Telegram Sam", and "Metal Guru". Check out Electric Warrior and The Slider, definitely th ehighlights of the Glam years.

Quiver
A melodic UK progressive rock band, Quiver occasionally followed a country rock path but achieved more success following their merger with the Sutherland Brothers. The line-up comprised Tim Renwick and Cal Batchelor. Renwick had formerly been with Junior’s Eyes, and he and Batchelor recruited Cochise drummer John ‘Willie’ Wilson. Subsequently, the line-up of Wilson, Renwick, Batchelor, and ex-Village bass player Bruce Thomas , recorded the self-produced Quiver. For the recording, they were augmented by Dick Parry (saxophone). The same line-up recorded Gone In The Morning, but due to lack of commercial success the band was subsequently dropped by Warner Brothers Records. The members were not coming up with new songs, and so they decided to join the Sutherland Brothers, the two line-ups merging in late 1972 with the addition of Pete Wood. Tim Renwick is now an in-demand session guitar player, touring with bands such as Pink Floyd and Mike And The Mechanics.  Quiver’s greatest claim, however, is being the first ever band to play the legendary Rainbow Theatre in London.