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Last update June 2009

Knebworth Park. 7-5-75.

Above. The Steve Miller Band entertain the vast audience at the 75 Knebworth concert.

The PA looks pretty puny compared to most of the rigs we see nowadays, but this could also be due to the excessive height of the stage

 

Photos © Martin Stame

    After the success of the 1974 Bucolic Frolic, veteran rock promoter Freddie Bannister promoted another large outdoor concert in the grounds of stately Knebworth Park, scen of the previous years show.

 

 

 This time round the draw card was Pink Floyd ,backed by a solid bill consisting of

  • Linda Lewis 
  • Monty Python 
  • Steve Miller, 
  • Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band ,  

 And being the ultimate show of their 1975 tour, this should have been an artistic triumph for the band , but events unfortunately conspired to make this rather less than that , at least as far as the Floyd were concerned.

Photo© Henry Cobbold

    The festival also played host to the mother of all traffic jams ( left ) and queues stretched back for up to ten miles in length, something that had not happened to this extent in  1974. This was partly due to the fact that although the festival was a sell out - and the organisers had asked people without tickets NOT to attend -many fans still arrived in the hope of scoring tickets from touts, or just hanging around and listening to the show from outside. Car breakdowns on the connecting roads also did nothing to help things and the fact that the police took control of the traffic arrangements apparently did little to cure the  problems either. 

    These pages are intended to be a celebration of the festival, the second in a long line of one day events held at Knebworth Park. You will find here as many details of the day as we can muster, most especially oral recollections of those who attended, details of performances , photos ,press accounts ( can anyone help with providing some more of these ) , band personnel, set lists , available recordings and links where available.

     We 'd also like to thank the following people for contributing to the development of the pages so far. 

Richard Arrridge, Martin Stames , Henry Cobbold, Neil Rice , Graham Edgar ,Ove Strindh and Chris Atkins.

Thankee gents ....
   

There Must Be A Better Way

The abridged Knebworth commemorative set There Must Be A Better Way is now available at £59.99 and anyone wanting to know more about the sets should email the Bannisters - it contains the following:
 

The flyers, programmes and tickets from 3 of the following festivals:
1974 Allman Brothers, Tim Buckley, Alex Harvey
1975 Pink Floyd Steve Miller Captain Beefheart
1978 Genesis - Jefferson Airplane
1978 Frank Zappa, The Tubes, Peter Gabriel
1979 Led Zeppelin, New Barbarians
A boxed set of 30 photographs from the festivals.
A video containing Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rolling Stones, Genesis and Led Zeppelin in either PAL or NTSC
A hard backed book with all the behind the scene stories.

and as a SPECIAL FREE GIFT to anyone purchasing the set we give 5 live CDs from Knebworth plus a Rolling Stones DVD
 
You may read an impartial review here go to 'reviews'

( NB : The Archive has no commercial ties with Freddie Bannister or his products , we include this information to inform our viewers about the availablity of these items .Please note that most of the audio on the bonus discs supplied with the boxed sets are audience tapes and vary considerably in quality )

Contents.

Reviews
The performances from Knebworth 75 that are known to exist on tape .Pages contain recording details , photos and links .

As far as weknow none of the other acts were recorded . But here are the details of their performances , plus a photo of Linda on-stage provided by Henry Cobbold.


Site details .

Can we get a witness ?

We have been endeavouring to collect as many recordings of the artists that featured at these concerts as possible, so we can effectively review the performances, provide set lists and band line-ups. Any info displayed on these pages or which is sent to us for review remains the copyright of the contributor and the Archive makes NO PROFIT from its use. The intention is to also display as many personal histories of the festival as possible for the benefit of readers of the site and we welcome all written contributions, no matter how long or short.

If you can contribute in any way, with tapes, reviews , photos or personal histories, please .Contact us

Knebworth Concerts 1974-86

  

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