The Knebworth Park Festivals.

Knebworth Park Concert .

June 21st 1980.

The Beach Boys, Santana, Mike Oldfield, The Blues Band , Elkie Brooks, Lindisfarne.

   The first Knebworth festival of the decade and also the first financed by Capital Radio and Allied Breweries. The promoter was also a fresh face , as Freddy Banister's company had gone into liquidation after the 1979 disaster . The Cobbold's ( owners of Knebworth House) had to meet strict restrictions on attendance numbers and hours of performance , but this show attracted a very different crowd to that of Led Zeppelin, so they need not have worried unduly !

   Although there was a licence for 100,000, only 43,000 punters showed on the day . The weather was not good and it was very wet at times as we can see from the photo on the right . Capital took a financial bath, as the event cost 500,000 pounds to stage and recouped far less than that .

   The festivities began at 12.pm and finished half an hour early at 11.pm !. This was an unheard of occurrence as most Knebworth's were notorious for overrunning and for crowds having to put up with countless hours of waiting as "technical problems" were sorted out onstage. This early finish would have suited most of the concert goers as very few camped out or partied excessively and most appeared to want to go home to their warm beds rather than stay up all night boozing themselves senseless around foul smelling rubbish fuelled fires in the campsite. Only around 15000 camped out on the Friday night ....

What a relatively boring lot !

Didn't they know what festivals are REALLY about !

BUT they did have a can fight during the Beach Boys set , so they were not that much out of the norm of the 80s ....

   This concert was notable for being the last recorded concert featuring the original lineup of The Beachboys , the whole event was recorded to soundboard as well as being filmed and portions were broadcast on Capital Radio. In recent years some of the sets have been released commercially on both DVD and CD .See the recordings page for full details.

Right : Paul Jones of the Blues Band ,accompanied by what appears to be the disembodied head of a Scotsman on the left .....

Photo © Henry Cobbold Knebworth House