Memoirs of attendees.

Updates Jan 2005 New photos and recollections.

click on the images to see larger versions.

Graham Edgar remembers

    My memories of Knebworth 75 are of sun , Newcastle Brown , joints & some great music .

Myself & Gary Boddenham (see review of Buxton 1974) set off the day before the festival , to hitch down from Huddersfield . After a false start which , thanks to a dyslexic coach driver , saw us travel about 20 miles the wrong way up the A1 , we started to crawl our way Southwards . After several lifts and plenty of sunbathing we finally got an extremely fortunate lift from a group of likeminded people in a transit van . We spent a couple of hours sitting in the back with about 15 other people , smoking joints , drinking beer , singing , laughing & generally having a good time .

We were dropped off at Hitchen , as the owners of the van were going elsewhere for the night , & we proceeded to find a comfortable cornfield in which to sleep under the stars . (left ) The following morning saw us bussing it to Stevenage & getting to the site at about 10.00 a.m.    Then the music started , the drinking started , the smoking started & one of the best days of my life was spent under a clear blue sky - broken only by a Spitfire flypast .

Photos ©Graham Edgar

Roy Harper sang of darker things , Steve Miller sang of lighter things , Mr Zoot Horn Rollo played that long , lingering note and held it just as Beefheart instructed . Linda Lewis was bubbly & Mr Chapman did his best to hold it all together . The only thing I remember eating all day was an orange , and having seen the state of the toilets it was probably as well , but somehow we acquired Newcastle Brown , illicit substances & lager , sufficient to keep the body functioning .

Then in the early evening on came The Floyd .

The start was fairly slow , or so it seemed at the time , with technical problems & poor sound .Once Shine On got into its stride & Roy Harper contributed to Have A Cigar , it was beginning to build into something special . As darkness fell , the lights & animated show on the large circular screen began to be effective . Dark Side was played in its entirety followed by the inevitable Echoes , which seemed , to my ears to last forever & just got better as it went on .

The Fireworks , the lights , the film show & the funny little rocket which came from the back of the site along what seemed like a washing line ,all added to the experience, as the idea of pyrotechnics & such were pretty much in their infancy.    After staggering to the campsite we had absolutely no energy left to erect the tent , so we just used it as a duvet & slept blissfully until being awoken by car horns & people throwing up. - Time to go home .

     With the passing of time the memories have become maybe a bit more favourable than things really were & if I heard the recordings now I would probably be hugely disappointed , so I'll rely on my hazy recollection of what was , to me , a classic day .

Graham Edgar , Hudersfield , West Yorkshire

  Craig Morrison

Knebworth '75.
It was my second trip to Europe & I was into my 5th month of traveling with my hometown girlfriend. We'd already been in Israel, Greece, Austria,France, & Scotland. My journal says
"After Ann's we went to the Knebworth Pop Festival which took some effort- tube, train, bus & long walk. Found a spot to sit, couldn't see a thing but didn't seem to matter, place was jammed, about 70,000 they figure. Just lay there, the fever wasn't gone away so wasn't too chipper.

The comments about disenchantment ring true, even though I was obviously not at my best. The music I had loved on the radio growing up on the West Coast in the '60s--British Invasion, folk rock, the Northwest Sound [R&B influenced rock from Seattle & Portland: Louie Louie for example], garage, psychedelic--seemed a long way from the calculated weirdness of Beefheart (though I came to like him later); & the return to expedient blues for Miller (I still far prefer his earliest albums) seemed a cop out. Bands no longer seemed to want to take the time & care to create something both original & beautiful. Beefheart was original but harsh & quirky, seemingly for its own sake, & Miller seemed to go for formula & riffs. I never got into Roy Harper so I can say nothing about him. I do know that I never saw any of them again, & never saw Floyd. (Though I have seen thousands of live shows since.)
Well now I'm an ethnomusicologist with a Ph.D., a book on rockabilly already published, & another on the way called West Coast Rock: From the Folk Revival to Psychedelic Rock. I teach university courses on rock & roll & its sources, & the history of pop music.
keep up the good work,
Craig Morrison, Ph.D.
Montreal

Ove Stridh 

Memories from Knebworth Festival 1975

    This little story begins in May 1973 when me and a friend hitchiked to our nearest town Ostersund (in the middle of Sweden) to buy records. As usual at that time I was looking for records with Alice Cooper, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath etc who were my favourites. We were in our favourite record shop when my friend suddenly handed me a record and said: "You should listen to this one, I heard it last weekend at my cousins home and it';s something special"
I looked at the record and thought: "Nice sleeve". I listened to it, bought it and that was it! From that moment I was a total Pink Floyd fan. The record? Yes it was "The dark side of the moon", the best album ever in all categories.
Soon I had bought all the Floyd records and I got my walls covered with posters and pictures of Pink Floyd.
     

I read everything I could get my hands on that included a single word about them. I looked at the posters where you could see them on stage with all that mystic smoke and dreamed about how fantastic their concerts would be. So in the spring of 1975 at the age of 17 I read in New Musical Express that Pink Floyd should preview a new album at an outdoor gig in England. I can't remember how but we managed to get tickets for the Knebworth festival by post. When I held that ticket in my hand I thought "Wow, am I really going to see the Floyd? Is this really true??" Part of Pink Floyds apparatus for the plane that flew over the audience lurks right as the crowd wait for an act to start. Photo by Ove

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    Then we bought interrail tickets and began our trip from the middle (but if you ask someone from Stockholm they would call it the north) of Sweden. We travelled through Norway, Denmark, Germany and Holland on our way to England and Stevenage. In those days there were no freestyle players so we carried a cassette player that was pretty heavy, at least a couple of kilos. I think we heard "The Dark Side" a hundred of times on that trip.We (me and my friends Anders and Hans) came to Stevenage the day before the concert and it was amazing. The town was already filled with fans and you could hear Floyd music everywhere and shoppingwindows were filled with Pink Floyd records, posters and so on. People were drinking beer and enjoying themselves and some of them took a bath in a fountain.
I will never forget that guy who came by when we were sitting towards a wall having a beer and he shouted "Tomorrow.!!" And then he ripped his shirt open. He had "Pink Floyd" tatooed right over his chest! What a guy!!
Then we took a nice walk with our beercases and sleeping bags (our only luggage) to the campsite.

       I don't remember many details from the other acts from one of the Monthy Python-guys getting the audience to shout "get off" and off he went. I also think I remember that Captain Beefheart was throwing records out into the audience.
Other details I remember are:

* Two swedish hippie guys who came stumbling through the crowd carrying large beer cans (5 litres or so). As they passed us shouted in Swedish "vilket jaevla drag" which means something like "this is fuckin heavy". We could hear that they came from the part of Sweden called Skane.
* The logs that were sent through the crowd, handed from people to people. It looked very funny, just like big worms crawling over peoples heads.
* The fires in the outer parts of the arena. I think it was both campfires and a couple of tents that was burnt down.
* The guy sitting in the top of the tower, I think he was dancing up there. And the voice on the PA (John Peel??) who said "If that guy wont get down from there the Floyd wont go on stage". The guy in the tower was not a very popular person in that moment.
* My friend Anders who ran right into a branch of the tree next to us. Lots of people around us had a good laugh and gave him a big applause.
* The guys who sat in front of us smokin a lot of joints. I still got memories from them, the holes they burnt in my sleeping bag.

     Suddenly a couple of Spitfires flew over the arena and I have to admit that it wasnt until at least a month later that I realised they were part of the show, when I read the reviews in MM. And in that very moment Pink Floyd were on stage!!!
I don't remember much from the first part of the set (Raving & Drooling, You Gotta Be Crazy and Shine On You Crazy Diamond) except from that it was some struggle with the sound and that Roger Waters seemed a bit angry.
    Then the "Dark Side.." part came and I was totally stunned. This was my by big dream coming true, to see Pink Floyd playing "The dark side of the moon" live with all the films and effects. Wow, I can still feel how I felt right then! The qudraphonic sound, the clocks in the "Time" film, the waves in "The great gig in the sky", the fantastic guitar solo on "Money" etc etc. It was so good!!
When they came to "Eclipse" I nearly went desperate because I was thinkin "Oh no its nearly over now".
And I surely never will forget when they came back on stage for an encore and Roger said "This is called Echoes". This piece is one of my all time favourites and it was just magic to sit there in the dark and watch this fantastic band perform it live. How many times hadnt I been laying on my bed at home listening to to "Echoes" and now it was for real! It still sendsshivers down my spine when I think about it.

Thank you Dave, Roger, Nick and Rick!!!

   Afterwards we stumbled and struggled in the dark until we found a place in the forrest where we could put out our sleepingbags and spend the night. I think it was near a road though. This was one of the highlights in my life I can assure you.

    In 1979 I went back to Knebworth mostly because that I wanted to see The New Barbarians but unfortunately they had cancelled their gig that weekend. Although Led Zeppelin were pretty good so I was satisfied with the trip despite the Barbarians failure.

Greetings from
Ove Stridh
Jamtland in the middle of Sweden.

Kevin Tole writes

It was a spur of the moment thing. I turned up at a friends house and some one asked "Do you fancy going to Knebworth?". Why not I thought. We set off from Plymouth with a minibus full of people generally getting spliffed up all the way. Must have been about 3 in the morning we rolled into this motorway service station, and all being pretty dismayed at the prices began what might be termed a consumer takeover. The first person in the queue would take something out of one of the slots, take a bite or a swig and pass it to the person behind till by the end of the line it was finished and the evidence was then concealed. Took 'em 10 minutes, which was as long as it took for the front people to get to the paydesk with a coffee for them to suss us then the shite hit the fan with threats of the law etc etc.    Made Knebworth dead early in the morning and found out a place to sit with a decent view in the bowl area centre field. Kipped a bit then had a shuggle around. By the time I woke up the place had FILLED. And we set off to look for someone to get seriously loaded up off of.Don't remember much of Linda Lewis on stage but here electric voice wafted over us as we boogied about saying hello to whoever, filching, wenching, smoking n scrounging. Then Roy Harper came on stage and played a pretty good set - both acoustic and electric. Whenever Roy was on you KNEW it was going to be a serious dopehead's day.

     Monty Python were..........Monty Python and sounded very much NOT part of what was going on. By this time it was starting to kick in and when the Captain hit the stage I was ready for it. By the time of Dali's Car I was
out there in Big Eyed Beans-land. fuck all these others around me who were only here for "the Floyd, man". Don was the reason for being here. "When I was knee high to a grasshopper this Black Jesus came outta the
swamp...............". I could have listened to the guy all day. This was a serious return to form after some dubious output not long before. I dunno how long he was on but this was what Knebworth was about. When they
finished with the usual return to the Zoot Horn Rollo wall of feedback style finish I could have gone home....should have really.
The Steve Miller Band were appalling but how do you follow up after Don.
    Later in the evening Pink Floyd came on and played a very long and masterfully engineered set. You know the kinda thing they did back then well - massive theatre, great sound etc etc. Started off with Echoes and
stuff from the album with the geezer diving in the water as a presentation of the new stuff. then after a short break it was main event time and the whole of darkside of the moon. Errrrrrrrrr Dave? can we have the Captain
back onstage after.
    Back in the bus and a long and exhausting trip back to darkest Devon taking it in turns to stay awake and keep the driver in between the verge and the white lines.
Shanti
Kev

   Great to see pics of concert. My main memories of the day are arriving at ticket booth about 9am and wanting to pay by cheque for two tickets. At that time the only person who could authorise accepting cheque payment was concert promoter Freddie Bannister himself. I was lead into his caravan where he was eating a fried egg sandwich and he duly accepted my cheque. My girlfriend and I then bagged a spot nearish the stage where we stayed for the rest of the day which ended with Pink Floyds fireworks landing in the by then tightly packed crowd. The urinal was a tent with dustbins in the arena. By midday these were filled and overflowing down the hillside away from the tent. The music was great though and we got away on a motorbike and missed the lengthy traffic jams.

Laurence Williamson

   By 1975 I was a regular festival goer, but I had also acquired a partner and fathered two children. The line up at Knebworth was, however, too good to miss - so we took the little ones with us, plus a decent supply of dope which we intended to sell at the site in order to finance the trip. As it turned out we ended up smoking most of it and passing around free joints. Most of the concert is a blur - too much dope and a poor sound system. I remember Steve Miller being very fat and boring. His set seemed to consist of one boogie blues number after another. Because of the kids we had to leave during the Pink Floyd set. I remember the Spitfires roaring overhead, and walking away with the sound of Pink Floyd gradually diminishing in the distance.

Steve (SilkTork)

   I was at the festival in 1975, arriving by car the night before with my brother and two friends. I slept under the car that night and we got set up very near the front the next morning. One moment there were only a few hundred people and the next you looked back and all you could see was heads stretching to the horizon. There were clouds of hash smoke and dealers openly plying their trade under flags advertising their wares.

   Linda Lewis was pretty inaudible and the crowd sparse and I seem to remember her not exactly going down too well. I had forgotten that Roy Harper was even there although I was a big fan at the time. Steve Miller was absolutely fantastic as was Cpt. Beefheart. Pink Floyd were also amazing and I had no idea that there were technical problems, It all seemed pretty good. I remember the flypast which was  scary and also a model plane that travelled from a tower down a wire above the crowd and crashed into the back of the stage. This may have been the start of the fire work display.

Photos © Martin Stame

   The main memory was the state of the diabolical toilet facilities. There was a huge metal drum about a meter tall that had holes cut in the top all around the perimeter and metal walls dividing the 'cubicles' like cake slices. This soon became completely full and overflowed.
After the gig I went alone to London and  tried to use the toilet in the station at Stevenage but there was a cone of shit  rising two feet out of each bowl and more spread about the floor and walls. The train into London was a 'special' and reminiscent of cattle cars to the Nazi death camps.
 
Ah me. those were the days.

Peter Napier

Knebworth 1975. When Pink Floyd played and there was a flying pig (or was it a plane? My senses were dulled at the time). Otherwise, hated it. Horrible, commercial, yuk. Don't remember any of the other bands and was stopped twice by the police.

Edward Collier

Knebworth-1975
The Floyd Knebworth in 1975 was a land mark for me. I'd had a gap year job in a record warehouse-distributor that was a real eye opener after my sheltered up-bringing. On the Thursday night I spent all my savings on a second hand Ducati 250 motorcycle. Friday was spent sorting out insurance and helmet before riding home from Acton to Battersea in the rush hour, never having ridden a bike before. Saturday morning I rode up to Knebworth and that night I slept next to my new wheels. The Floyd set was impressive. They played the 2nd half of Meddle, the whole of Dark Side of the Moon and the whole of Wish You Were Here in 3 sets. The highlight was the joke airplane. There was a long wire strung the length of the field down to the stage with the model airplane attached. At some crucial stage the plane flew down the wire and hit the stage with a cherry bomb. Except that the actual effect was pathetic! Another abiding memory was the 5 way speaker system with 3 big stacks out in the field. Gilmore's guitar swirling round in full surround sound was mind boggling.

Julian Bond

 

Contents.

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

• Roy Harper.
• Steve Miller Band
• Captain Beefheart
• Pink Floyd

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.

• Linda Lewis and Monty Python.

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Site details .

• Knebworth House photos of the festival site.
• Richard Arridge's photos of the festival.
• Ove Stridh's photos of the festival.
• Martin Stames photos of the event ( new Feb 2004 )
• Festival posters and programme details
• The view from the mud -recollections of festival attendees-updated Feb 2004

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Can I get a witness ?

    We have been endeavouring to collect as many tapes of the artists that featured at the 75 bash , so we can effectively review the performances, provide set lists and band line-ups. The intention is to also display as many personal histories of the festival as possible.

If you can contribute in any way, with tapes, reviews from the Music press, photos or personal histories, please Contact email

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Knebworth Concerts 1974-79

Knebworth 74

Knebworth 75

Knebworth 76

Knebworth 78

Knebworth 79

Knebworth links

• Limited edition reprints of the Knebworth festivals are available here
• Freddie Bannisters book on the Knebworth festivals
• Memorabilia from various early British rock Festivals can be seen here
• Original '76 posters and '79 tickets
• The Knebworth House festival pages

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