Monterey Pops! An International Pop Festival
Report by Michael Lydon, unpublished, for Newsweek, June 1967
Reporting for Newsweek took me to Monterey. I'd gone to work for Newsweek right out of college in 1965 – I was a reporter in the ...

Monterey Pops! An International Pop Festival (2)
Report by Michael Lydon, unpublished, for Newsweek, June 1967
Part Two

DAY TWO was over and Sunday came grey and cold, but the excitement was still there and growing. Could anyone believe what had happened, what ...

The Bloodless Battle Of The Badge: The Press at Monterey Pop
Report by Derek Taylor, World Countdown News, July 1967
THE CLEAN YOUNG man at the window said he was from the Los Angeles Times and there was nothing in his face to say he wasn’t, ...

Where’s the Money from Monterey Pop?
Report by Michael Lydon, Rolling Stone, November 1967
For the first issue of Rolling Stone in November, 1967, editor Jann Wenner asked me to do an investigative piece on what had happened to the ...

Recollected in Tranquility: Woodstock
Report by Mike Jahn, Music & Artists, June 1970
IN AUGUST 1969 we pulled into Woodstock, feeling about half-past dead. I had to go there and write about three days of love, peace and rock ...

Last Rites Are Merry Ones at the Fillmore East
Report and Interview by Mike Jahn, New York Times, June 1971
WITH SEVERAL THOUSAND dollars worth of free food and beer and what one Fillmore regular described as "the best vibes since the place opened," the Fillmore ...

The First Great Rock Festival Of The Seventies
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Ink, October 1971
Isle of Wight/Atlanta — a CBS 3 record set ...

The Foulk Brothers: Pop Promoting Blues
Report by Philip Norman, Sunday Times, 1972
"RONNIE..." RONALD Foulk's secretary broke into the conference. "Will you accept a transfer call from America?" ...

The Concert For Bangla Desh
Review by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, January 1972
If you buy only one LP in 1972, make it this one ...

Universal Exhibition: The Bickershaw Festival
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, Oz, May 1972
"FESTIVALS," SAID Tommy Chong, leaning up against the RCA caravan at Bickershaw, "are just camping out with a light ...

Grateful Dead et al: Bickershaw Festival, Lancashire
Report by Nick Kent, Frendz, June 1972
BICKERSHAW, A SLEEPY little Northern town, had certainly never seen anything like it before. Coronation St had been invaded by the day glow kids and what ...

Woodstock Remembered: KGB stages a rock festival
Report by Steven Rosen, LA Free Press, November 1972
SUNDAY’S KGB "Charity Ball" was important for one reason: the concert proved that people in large numbers can still come together for an event and experience ...

Wet City: Sly and Company Live in London
Report by Rob Partridge, Melody Maker, July 1973
LIKE THE WEATHER, the music at London’s White City on Sunday was a mixture of fair and foul. ...

Ike and Tina Turner, Caravan, John McLaughlin et al: Startruckin' 75
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, August 1975
WHERE THE HELL is Lou Reed?
Good question, if a trifle academic, but eminently suited for whiling away times in the coach by discussing. ...

The Selling Of Reading Festival
Report by Chris Salewicz, NME, August 1975
THE SUN was westering in a haze of towering cumulus, fire-orange against midnight black, filling the still air with speckled light, as we came over the ...

Windsor/Watchfield Festival: The Smallest Story Ever Told
Report by Andrew Tyler, NME, August 1975
Meanwhile...out west on Windsor's High Chaparral, a wandering hippie couple in search of the Ultimate Alternative Festival are waylaid by a pack of journalists hungering for ...

Wild In The Streets
Report by Mick Farren, NME, August 1975
MICK FARREN visits the Notting Hill Carnival ...

The Who: Who-ray!
Report by Chris Welch, Melody Maker, June 1976
"Will the people on the lighting tower please get-off because it's very dangerous and we are afraid that tower might go"
– Nicky Horne, Capital Radio. ...

Status Quo: Quo Storm The Castle
Live Review by Harry Doherty, Melody Maker, July 1976
Rock festivals in Wales always tempt providence, as many a Marley or 10cc fan can attest. But at Cardiff Castle last Saturday, the sun shone and ...

The Final Tribute to Jimi Hendrix
Memoir by Al Aronowitz, Circus, September 1977
I HAD TO talk Miles into going to Jimi's funeral with me. ...

The Stiff Tour: Stiffs Drugs And Rock 'N' Roll
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, November 1977
"SEX AND drugs and rock and roll...sex and drugs and rock and roll...sex and drugs and rock and roll..." Hot damn, m'man, Leicester University is jumpin' ...

The California Jam Festival
Live Review by Sylvie Simmons, Sounds, April 1978
THERE WEREN'T even traffic jams. ...

Blackbushe Festival - Nice To See Ya, Bob
Live Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Sounds, July 1978
...OR RATHER, IT would have been, but at least we heard him and that made the hassles worthwhile, reports our survivor of the million dollar (and ...

The Songs Remain The Same: Led Zeppelin at Knebworth Park
Live Review by Mick Brown, Rolling Stone, October 1979
...

Rhythm Of The Pete
Interview by Richard Cook, NME, October 1982
After the ambitious WOMAD Festival, the bailiffs cometh and PETER GABRIEL has decided to get himself out of hock – even if it means a reunion ...

US Festival ’83: No More In ‘84
Report by John Mendelsohn, The Record, Summer 1983
AFTER PUNK, audiences weren’t supposed to pay large amounts of money anymore for the privilege of watching superstars from the length of a football field away, ...

The Rat And The Band Aid "Saint"
Report and Interview by Mick Brown, Sunday Times, December 1984
BOB GELDOF has been transformed from fading Boomtown Rat to charity superstar behind Christmas’s biggest pop hit, helping Ethiopian famine victims. Mick Brown ...

Pictures That Rocked the World: Live Aid
Report by Steve Turner, Radio Times, July 1985
Fresh from co-writing the world’s fastest selling single, Bob Geldof is up to his eyes in organising the world’s biggest and most ambitious rock concert. If ...

A Conspiracy of Hope: Amnesty International
Report by Charles Bermant, The Globe and Mail, June 1986
A CONSPIRACY OF Hope, a package tour benefiting the human rights organization Amnesty International, kicked off at the Cow Palace Wednesday night with more than five ...

Acid Crackdown: Sunrise III, Greenwich
Report by Simon Witter, NME, November 1988
2003 note: Sunrise III, which took place in November 1988 on an industrial wasteland that would later house the Dome, was a pivotal event in Acid ...

Dead Aid/Instant Bad Karma By The Mersey: The John Lennon Memorial Concert, Pier Head, Liverpool
Report by Michael Gray, The Times, May 1990
IT HAS TAKEN the music industry five years to transform the rock-stars-for-charity mega-event from Bob Geldof's coherent effort to ameliorate a real tragedy to this self-serving, ...

Knebworth 90: The Billion Dollar Buskers
Live Review by Mat Snow, Q, August 1990
IN DAYS OF yore, the elders tell, the grassy slopes of Knebworth would resound to the pagan strains of Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Allman Brothers and the ...

By the Time I Got Back to Woodstock
Essay by Steve Turner, The Independent, August 1990
To Sally Grossman, the living room of her Bearsville home near Woodstock in New York State is nothing extraordinary. It has an old fireplace, some antique ...

Jane’s Addiction and Lollapalooza: A Woodstock For The Lost Generation
Interview by Simon Reynolds, New York Times, August 1991
There’s no contest: this summer's biggest tour is the aptly titled Lollapalooza, a mobile rock festival featuring a bill of premier alternative bands – Siouxsie and ...

Reading '91: Reading, Writhing And Riffmatic
Live Review by Keith Cameron, NME, September 1991
FRIDAY: IT WAS obvious, really – he had to say it. Who better than His Supreme Iggyness Of Pop, the Godfather of (s)punk rock, to sum ...

Woodstock
Review and Interview by Chris Salewicz, Mojo, July 1994
WOOSTOCK BEGAN ON A GOLF course. Three years before they were to be responsible for Governor John Rockefeller declaring the Woodstock Festival area "a state of ...

Peace, Love, Music: Woodstock Revisited
Retrospective by Tom Graves, American History, February 1996
"IT'S A NEW dawn," Grace Slick, lead singer for the Jefferson Airplane, told a swelling crowd of 400,000 at Woodstock, the most famous music gathering in ...

Lilith Fair: If You Want To See a Show, Put On a Festival – Sarah McLachlan Takes the Girls on the Road
Interview by Carla DeSantis, Rockrgrl, July 1997
MOVE OVER, Lollapalooza. This year's summer traveling festival to watch is the Lilith Fair, the brain-child of Canadian artist Sarah McLachlan. ...

The Guiness Fleadh
Report by Chris Smith, The Performing Songwriter, March 1998
IF YOU HAD said to someone twenty years ago that Ireland was hot, they would have assumed you'd never been, because, truthfully, the place is just ...

Glastonbury: Pop Feast Kicked Off By Football
Report by Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, June 1998
Caroline Sullivan sorts fab from drab ...

Tibetan Freedom Concert: People Have The Power
Report by Paul Lester, Uncut, August 1998
MONDAY, JUNE 15, THE CAPITOL BUILDING
It is 10 days before Bill Clinton's historic first presidential visit to China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. An estimated ...

Glastonbury ‘98
Live Review by Rob Chapman, Mojo, August 1998
AFTER THE quagmire of 1997 it surely couldn’t be Pop Passchendaele II could it? Oh yes it could. Unlike last year, when the Glasto monsoon arrived ...

A Day in the Garden: Woodstock Revisited
Live Review by Richard Younger, Midtown Resident, Summer 1998
It took 29 years, but on Saturday, Aug. 15, I finally made it back for "A Day in the Garden". What attracted me to the day-long ...

Woodstock
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, August 1999
Woodstock. August 15, 16, 17, 1969. Three days of peace, love and music. For the past thirty years, it has been touted as a new stage ...

Spirit of '69 Woodstock Alive At Falcon Ridge
Comment by Chris Smith, Billboard, August 1999
BLAME IT ON the heat. Blame it on poor security. Blame it on the cause/effect relationship between artist persona and audience behavior. Blame it on Joseph ...

Live Killers
Comment by Tom Cox, The Guardian, September 1999
HERE'S A JOKE. Last night, I met an alien outside a pub in north London. We got chatting about hobbies and stuff, and he ended up ...

Altamont: An Eyewitness Account
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, November 1999
The Rosy Apocalypse

ALTAMONT, 6th December, 1969. The name itself is fraught with menace – its flinty suggestive syllables (altar-mountain-tumult) reinforcing biblical overtones. ("The devil ...

The Experience Music Project Opens in Seattle (Part 1)
Report by Charles Bermant, Rolling Stone Online, June 2000
IT WASN'T YOUR typical ribbon cutting. Gazillionaire Paul Allen smashed a Stratocaster made of unflavored green rock candy, designed especially for the occasion by glass artist ...

Jimi Hendrix: Experience Music Project Opens in Seattle (Part 2)
Report by Charles Bermant, Rolling Stone Online, July 2000
SHORTLY BEFORE BO Diddley began his set at the Experience Music Project celebration, Jimi Hendrix Experience bassist Noel Redding approached him with greetings from a mutual ...

They Have Come For Your Parents: Ozzfest 2001, National Bowl, Milton Keynes, 26th May
Live Review by The Rev. Al Friston, Rock's Backpages, June 2001
My my, hey hey, hard rock will never die. OK, it doesn’t scan quite as well as ol’ Neil’s line, but you get my drift. For ...
To see an illustrated version of this article, click here

Life Support: Michael and Emily Eavis
Interview by Sheryl Garratt, The Observer, June 2001
Michael Eavis, founder of the Glastonbury Festival – taking a rest this year – and his youngest daughter Emily. ...

The Big Chill Festival
Report by Sheryl Garratt, The Observer, August 2001
IT'S A WARM Sunday afternoon, and I'm stretched out on the grass watching white clouds blow across blue sky, while Norman Jay plays some of my ...

Bishopstock 2001: Nina Simone and Van Morrison
Live Review by The Rev. Al Friston, Rock's Backpages, September 2001
Two cantankerous legends hold court in the Devon sunshine

ONE FESTIVAL, THREE DAYS, four major cancellations... and two obstreperous veterans doing their thang on Bank Holiday ...
To see an illustrated version of this article, click here

George Harrison et al: Concert for Bangla Desh
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Mojo, March 2002
The first hi-profile multi-star benefit concert of the post-psychedelic era. Harrison, Dylan and Shankar strut their stuff alongside Clapton, Ringo and Leon Russell. ...

Glastonbury
Interview by Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, May 2002
"IF YOU LOOK right through the centre of the Pyramid stage," says Michael Eavis, waving at the steel framework that squats surreally in the middle of ...

The Meeting of the ‘Twain: Monterey Pop and the Great California Divide
Special Feature by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2002
"TRAVELING UP the Coast from the ruins of the Sunset Strip to the Haight is a Dante-esque ascent," New Yorker Richard Goldstein could write of a ...

A Black Woodstock: Wattstax
Retrospective and Interview by James Maycock, The Guardian, July 2002
Intro: This is about 1000 words longer than the version published by The Guardian. There’s much more on the concert, more quotations and more on the ...

The End Of The Beginning: Jefferson Airplane at Altamont
Book Excerpt by Jeff Tamarkin, Helter Skelter Books, Summer 2003
THE VIOLENCE AT Altamont had begun before the Airplane even arrived, when a number of Hell’s Angels, who had been amassing near the stage, wantonly attacked ...
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Windor 1974: The Forgotten Festival – I Was There
Memoir by Mark Hudson, Daily Telegraph, June 2004
A world away from today's money-spinning Glastonbury, the Windsor Free Festival of 1974 was illegal, drug-happy and absurdly idealistic, recalls Mark Hudson ...

Wattstax
Retrospective by Richie Unterberger, Mojo, July 2004
THE BIGGEST soul concert ever was about to end in a riot. ...

Choo Choo Ch’Boogie: Festival Express 1970
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2004
IT WAS THE Lollapalooza of its day – a week-long, three-date circus of a rock and roll tour featuring The Band, Buddy Guy, Janis Joplin, Delaney ...

Live Aid: The View From The Pitch
Memoir by Pete Paphides, The Observer, October 2004
Nothing was going to stop a schoolboy fan of the Boomtown Rats making it to Wembley on that fateful day. Peter Paphides recalls every high and ...

Live8: Just Another Gig – With Added Feelgood Factor
Comment by Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, June 2005
NEARLY EVERY A-lister worth the name is doing their bit, making Live8 the first truly all-star charity show since Live Aid. Madonna! U2! Coldplay! You can't ...

The Human Be-In
Retrospective by Joel Selvin, Mojo, Summer 2007
ALL THROUGH the previous year, word filtered out of San Francisco about remarkable happenings and a strange new community of youths gathering around the city's Haight-Ashbury ...

Bestival, Isle of Wight ***
Report by Rick Pearson, Evening Standard, September 2008
Still bloody loud and clear at Bestival ...

Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music
Film or DVD Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, June 2009
4-DVD, 2-Blue-Ray set comprising the original 1970 documentary of the ultimate rock festival, with two hours of new footage plus a new 50-minute documentary about the ...

Various Artists: Woodstock 40 (Rhino)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Observer Music Monthly, July 2009
WE ARE ALL so inured these days to the business of rock festivals – sponsored, multi-generational, beamed into our living rooms – that it's difficult now ...

I Was There: Nostalgic Recollections From Led Zeppelin's 1979 Shows at Knebworth
Book Excerpt by Dave Lewis, Then As It Was (Tight But Loose Publishing), August 2009
FOR THE THOUSANDS of fans who converged on Hertfordshire over the first two weekends of August 1979, Led Zeppelin at Knebworth was more than a gig. ...