.Ecclesden Common.
Worthing
The Archive.
Last update August 2007 . View at 1280X 1024 res .
|
. |
Ecclesden Common. Worthing |
The view from the Mud.
Recollections of those who attended Phun City.
Hi gwshark! (what kind of a name
is that?)
| I'm delighted to discover the Phun City site as I was there and one of the (dis) organisers. In the picture taken outside the old cottage that's me on the left, (Kevin Buckley). As you probably know, the guy on the right is Dave (Boss) Goodman and next to him John Cox (now sadly departed). I'm not sure who the guy with the hippie bag is, though he definitely looks familiar. I remember staying in the cottage which was very basic, I think we just had doss bags on the floor. I also remember that the local police inspector turned up early one morning to discuss security arrangements with the 'Head of Security' and I was more or less shoved out the front door to meet him. He started asking me whether we'd got retired police officers etc patrolling the site and, of course, all we had lined up were Hells Angels but I managed to blag it somehow. I'd travelled down in my battered MG Magnette and a friend Mac (Michael McDonnell, former Deviants member) drove a hired landrover which Farren and co. used as a kind of staff vehicle (that may be it in the photo). What I remember most about the festival was the 'phun money' as it became known. This consisted of vouchers which were supposedly redeemable at food outlets on the site. We were like a kind of aristocracy staying in the cottage while the hippies on the site slept in the woods and worked on getting the site ready in return for the vouchers. |
 |
Unfortunately
the vouchers were fairly quickly rumbled as worthless by the food stall people
and so they ceased to work after a while. My car had no starter motor and always
had to be pushed to start it. I have an abiding memory of hurling bundles of
'phun money' out of the windows to pay for the freaks to push the car to get
us going.
Of
the festival itself, I have a clear recollection of the Fairies stripping off
and I remember the irony of Free refusing to play for free - wankers! One other
thing I was involved in was negotiating with the hire company who wanted their
generator back because they hadn't been paid. They wanted to switch it off and
take it half way through the final evening. I remember pointing out that it
was our petrol in it and they agreed to let it run until the gas ran out and
then they'd take it away. Fortunately it held out.
If you're in touch with any of
those involved, including Mick Farren, Boss etc. please give them my regards.
I've got a mate who's always pipe-dreamed of a film about Phun City (he wasn't
there) - maybe someone should actually do it!
Regards,
Kevin Buckley
Michael McNamara wrote
I
also attended the Phun City festival in Worthing (not far from Brighton, where
we were living). I only went on the Saturday -- brought a tent and a bunch of
friends -- we travelled by rail. I remember being very close to the stage throughout
the MC5 set (who I had of course seen many times in Detroit and Windsor Canada)
- it was a killer set. I also recall spending a very wet night in the tent,
which eventually flooded. Soaked and tired on Sunday morning, we dragged our
stuff to the Worthing rail station and caught the next train back to Brighton.
The pictures you have up are interesting -- I am wondering if there are any
of me near the stage -- that shot of the guys sitting around the tent (by John
May -where's he from?) looks vaguely familiar.
regards
Michael
Anyone identify this lot? © Dicky Howett |
David the Daytripper wrote
The
Bath and West showground, the summers around Phun city. A farmer from Pilton
gets under the fence. He was bald and curious, I had auburn locks tumbling to
my waist and was also curious.
I wore sailors trousers and had hitched from Glasgow, where I had sold "original
art" door to door. He had come from a small farm near Glastonbury and wore
jeans.
I soon got into the swing of it, being my baptism of lyre, the Grateful Dead
had brought some Owsley acid over in the WEM cabinets and the sun shone.
The acid was handed out like the sacrament,
free at the point of use. The trip was great, the best I ever had and after
borrowing a few things, I set up a free tea stall and donated the moneys raised
to the newly formed Release.........treating myself for the work I had done,
to a train ticket to Worthing, where I heard there was to be a festival.
On arriving in the town, I got a bedsit floor to crash on and signed on. The
summer was great, no one knew what the hell we were, not even us. I screened
off someone's screen print at the local art school and flogged them on the front
for 50p....different times. I'd walked into the college and just helped myself,
though I had paid for the paper. We got pulled once, on the front. I kept shouting
"kamerad" and we both put our hands up. The law got embarrassed and
we took the opportunity to stuff our stash down the panda cars seat.
I went to the Phun city ground before
it started and set up a free food kitchen on the edge of the wood. Two new metal
bins a large fire and guess what? nettle stew.
I crashed in an old roadworkers caravan, solid and green just inside the woods.
The stage got built and the people started to arrive. Large tents and a sign
that flashed changing words was set up and Mick Farren held court in one of
the tents, the music kicked in, the acid flowed and the sign flashed "London
has been nuked, you are now free". The lights played over the small audience
and we played up to the lights.
The absence of fences just seemed natural, a space in which we could freak out
and have some fun.
Dave Page, "Motherfuker",
hassled the organisers for some bread for the free food kitchen and though they'd
obviously lost a lot of money giving us a free, good time, they donated and
Dave sat down in the path of the local bus, we went into the nearest town and
got some food and booze.
Later some difference broke out between "Buttons" a biker who was
there and "Motherfuker".
Man it was like "High Noon", the lights fading, the funs winding down
and this biker drives his car at top speed, right up to Dave's little hut at
the entrance to the woods. Dave doesn't move a muscle and somehow after the
car has come to a screeching halt inches from Mr Page, the dude gets out and
they're all over each other and well like I hear the biker had apparently brought
over Hells Angel accreditation for the UK and like Dave had been the freak spokesperson
and like they formed a pact, that we would do no harm to each other.
To this day I have never heard or read of a hippy doing harm to a biker and
visa versa. Which is nice..divided we fall etc.
Well
the Red Umbrella catering had gone bust and were throwing their food into the
rubbish pit. I wanders up and start lecturing this poor sod on material possessions,
so he asks me to give him the cowry shells round my neck....no way says I...point
made.......hey capitalism isn't that bad, man.....Wavy Gravy, Woodstock.
We were going to stay in the woods after, but one sunny morning the pigs arrived
in buses and upset the people left in the woods and turned them out of their
tents. I remember one old sergeant photographing us, like a fascist photographing
gypsies, as Larkin says, it's immensely sad.
The woods, a spot in which I had reserved, was now covered in shit, the mess
wasn't much and the whole thing ended..I went back to Worthing and in 1970 brought
the land and money together and then helped build the Glastonbury Fayre of 1971.
I e mailed Mr Farren some years ago and got a nice reply.He was and is a hip gentleman and I would gladly help him out. I met Edward Barker at an anti madness industry do in London, not long before he died....they never talk about his madness only his genius, they're one and the same thing.
Phun city was just that, fun....we
gave a toss and tried in our naive way to make a difference, we brought colour
back to the British palette and that is no bad thing.
Free nettle soup anyone?
Best wishes,
Daytripper.
hola amigo: just read the Phun City review ...
hey, you know, some of the days might well have happened like that ... in the middle of it all, living with joy farren - hands on with the pink fairies, brother of Mick farren, as author of the Buttons book ... believe me, Buttons and Co were very pleased - people arrived, they were presented with the 'opportunity' to contribute, most of the cash went to the patched up clubbers ...not to Phun City ... and who can blame them ... but let's get over this 'joy' image of the romantic bikers not taking care of themselves. Joy and I ran that the collection team and I can tell you, while we were collecting cash - we paid the house rent..... all these years later ... fuck the history ... grow up... Phun City was a fuck up from the word go from the very unprofessional group of maniacs who dreamed it might be ... that some of them managed to find a creative rainbow in the middle of the storm will always be 'a miracle'.... and I guess that's why we'll always love them ...
Jamie Mandelkau
Oh what fun I had at phun city,its all bit vague tho due to being my first encounter with the sweet lady acid(strawberry fields according to the man that gave it me).Memories I do have include a large blow up tent like a hot air balloon on its side with a light show and sound system inside,entered through an airlock door it was like a different universe inside.I also seem to remember that radio geronimo had something to do with it as Irecall a banner either in front of or behind the stage.The stage had some kind of platform in front of it and I have vivid memories of it collapsing under the weight of pogoing angels.
I saw dave motherfuckers name mentioned I recall him and a chap called dave trippers being instigators behind the phun city liberation mob later to be active at the isle-of-wight.I have in my collection a post card of the festival which as soon as I get a scanner for this damn computer i will bung it of to you.God it all seems like an age ago, fuck it was. Still got most of me brain left and all me hair so I cant complain.
I took a closer look at the news
reports and there was a photo of a guy in a disabled
wagon .He went by the name of crippled Eddie and was truly an amazing guy.He
held all sorts of records in his motor,furthest distance travelled in one day
and also one year,also the most write offs. One hell of a guy you'd see him
at all the festivals hanging out the roof and boogying fit to bust.The bloody
things were only meant to be taken to the shops and he drove his all over the
country.Does anyone know what happened to him?. . love
and peas Spike.
love and peace
SPIKE .....
P,S. does anybody else remember the pale blue woodstock headbands that seemed to be sold by the yard at all the festivals that wonderful year ?
© Dicky Howett |
The blow
up tent Spike mentioned, was an inflatable dome myself and friends took
to festivals (free and otherwise) between 1969 and 1972. It was 50 ft
high and 100 ft across and with a fair wind could get 1000 good folk inside.
Festival organisers liked having us on site because most of them had a
music curfew on stage of 11 ish but we could play, being "inside",
all night. The dome called FairGround, had a team of 25 unpaid but happy
labourers who all played some instrument or other and who lived all summer
on the road with the dome: they spent most winters mending it! Apart from a lot of hard work that went into producing interesting all night gigs, the lightshow was designed by Phil Vaughn and Roger Dainton: their main claim to fame is their design and construction of the neon sculpture over the Hayward Galley, built at that time and still going strong today. The machinery was built to amazingly tough standards by Peter Wynne Willson, founder of WWG, the leading lighting innovation company of today: it seems old hippies don't even fade away......by the way, instead of payment, the crew played a two hour set every night . Their band name was Cosmic Wreckage: no record deal was ever forthcoming. John Bloomfield |
Many many thanks for putting this site up. I'd run away from home some
time in 1969 crashing a night at Richard Neville's bedsit in Notting Hill without
his permission. I had a crappy job as night porter in a hotel that I just got
sacked from but I didn't care as I was going to Phun city. I'd been given a
free ticket by the Pink Faries at the Roundhouse and I was so looking forward
to going.
Think I caught the train down to the coast and thence to the festival site.
I so wanted to be in the in-crowd of hippies, I was just a dorky kid who didn't
know what way was up!
Hung around the side of the stage and watched the Pink Faries high on a variety
substances. I sure wished I was one of them, suddenly they were up there on
stage and asking why nobody was taking their clothes off.
Well it was a fucking cold English summer and no one seemed to respond.
So at this apathetic response all the members of the band except the drummer
disrobed and played the set stark naked. This for me was the musical high spot
for me.
I vaguely remember MC5 and
Mungo Jerry. The other kind of high spot was taking Acid for the first time.
I had a great time running around the festival site and I've been forever changed
being at Phun City. Over 30 years later I'm listening to Dr Crow the Deviants
new album. What a fucking long strange trip it's been.
Brother
Gonzo
Melbourne
Just found your page about
Phun City. I was there with five other mates from Preston, Lancs, we drove down
in 2 Reliants chock a block with egg boxes of food and stash :) The driver was
on speed (liquid, out of a bottle in a soaked rizla), he crashed out for ten
hours soon as we got there :)
It was perhaps the best one I ever went to for "feeling", it was a
real Freaks Festival. You could be sure there was only Freaks there :)
Best memory : buying a full set of HP Lovecraft paperbacks from a stall in the
market - that market was excellent. Also, a Hells on the entry with a big club
who looked heavy, but we sort of drove up slowly and said "can we come
in" and he smiled and said "yeah, just do what you want, man"
LOL
Can't remember much of the music except Pretty Things, they were my alltime
fave band. And Roger Chapman, but I remember him best from IOW with Family.
And Wm Burroughs too, rest his Soul :)
The Hells is the guy in the middle in the photo you have on the Phun City photos page. Wot else? I remember best the market, I strolled round that market on the Saturday about fifty times, making up spliffs and joshing with this one and that one, those HP Lovecraft paperbacks really blew my mind and I've STILL GOT THEM. Not much else left from that period neither :)
The market area ? © Dicky Howett |
Of course, the pissing down of rain was pretty despondent, but coming
from Lancashire you don't notice that reelly :) I remember putting a few quid
in one of those collection buckets - this from Reliant riders, not Mercedes
:) I best think of that festival as about the only one where you knew about
99% of the folk were just like you so it was real easy to just get chatting
and sit round.
Right On
Ian
His name was smiler, just appeared in town one day, hitched up from london, dont know what he was doing in the midlands, a few years older than me and me mate, dead hip and streetwise, a lot of credibility.
He said something about
going to Phun City near Brighton and would we like to come.
Me and Gordon grabbed our sleeping bags and with smiler and no money we hit
the road.
Fast forward to the site 2 days later.
Remember feeling relieved that the site was located in such a lovely bit of countryside with an extensive belt of decidious woodland, while the area in front of the stage had a gentle ridge which with the woods offered great protection from bad weather, which was warm and sunny mostly (I think).....
We ended up around a campfire in the woods. A genuine Californian hippie in long white robes holding a plastic bag with thousands of hits of pure acid came along trying to give us some tabs but all the people around the fire were surfing on lots of clean hi quality acid and everyone had more than enough anyways. Couldnt stop laughing, everyone around the fire got caught up in this helpless laughter and i cant recall if it was for hours or days.
At one point a young woman inside the bender by the fire suddenly winced and cried out in pain, we all feel apart in helpless laughter it was so bad that she couldnt help joining in, even though she was in a lot of pain.
I didn't find out what had happened until I got back home in the midlands a few aeons later. I picked up me dads daily mail and read an article about how a young woman in the woods at Phun City had been shot in the back and had to be taken to hospital.
Just before she cried out
there had been a very loud sharp cracking noise, the bullet had gone through
the woods and got her in the back, she was about 9ft in front of me in the bender,
had she not been there, it would have hit me in the face.
The rest of the festival was as brilliant as that was nasty, intense!
The dominant feeling though was one of being safe, not having to be on my guard,
Remember lying helpless in the leaves that had turned into millions of little paper cutouts of Marilyn Monroe, as I lay staring up at the sky, I could see Marilyn Monroe projected onto the clouds. think I was too ripped to catch much of the stage acts with the exception of the MC5.....WHO WERE CHRONICALLY GOOOOOD, blistering Hi intensity Live punk rock with a vengeance, they exploded onto the stage and delivered a set that took of like scud missile, still cant believe how great it was!!! and that I was within spittin distance.
Towards the end of the festival my green velvet smoking jacket (a real one) caught an ember from the campfire and literally started smoking which was an appropiate end for a smoking jacket.
Remember staggering towards
London still tripped out with cars, lorries pulling up offering me lifts and
got back to the midlands without hardly any effort.
Tom
I just found the web site
by accident and what a find it is! I travelled with a friend from Wales to see
the MC5 who I love at the time. The trip was well worth it as we got back stage
and spent a lot of after performance time with the band in their tour trailer.
What a memory. Now to get down to reading the reviews.
Dave Keats
I was there with my girlfriend. I'd been working with IT as a news/features writer, and we came to help -- I had some stage management experience and was supposed to help out in that way, but just never happened. I somehow ended up running a newscaster on a side-stage tower. We slept under a flatbed, having been told by Farren & Co. (who disliked me) that contrary to promises and the truth, there was no room left at the pub. I used to have some film of the event somewhere. My favorite anecdote? being asked, "Want some acid", and on saying no (there was no need to buy any), being asked, "Why the fuck not?"
Graham W
Positive ID- The guy in the light clothing centre is my erstwhile chum, Christopher Priest, acclaimed SF author of such as 'The Prestige', 'The Space Machine', 'The Glamour' and 'Fugue For A Darkening Island'. © Dicky Howett |
The tv crew were from Lion Films making a 'music video' of the festival using Philips LDK 3 cameras, quite new at the time. The video footgage was going to be converted to film and shown in cinemas. Again , does anyone have further details? I wonder in what form the British Lion footage is? It's no good if it's still 2 inch quad, the original format. Even a 1 inch transfer would be in doubt (stiction, dropouts etc). If in movie film form, even the dyes would have started fading by now.
Dicky Howett
Chaotic
doesn't begin to describe it. I went for the mc5 and they were magnificent.
edgar broughton played out demons out for ever,well, at least half an hour,
the weather was terrible but festivals seemed to attract rain.glastonbury,bath,worthing
soaked every time.
very scary angels,chasing people about by torchlight cries in the night,but
i seem to remember the freaks burning motorcycles in retaliation,maybe they
were just burger vans.
didnt seem to be much peace and love there.
Adam Zeigler
Fancy finding a site like
this ! I was there for a week digging the drainage pits and putting in the bogs.
First time I smoked dope. I helped to carry William Burroughs to the medical
tent, and duplicate a free paper called the Phun City Planet. Any copies of
that around or is the only one in my mums loft.
I will write my account as soon as I have the time. Any idea where Gez Cox is
??
Mick Davis
I lived in Shepherds Bush at that time and hung out in a pub on Portobello Road where various members of Hawkwind and the Fairies would meet up before getting in a van to go to that nights gig.
That weekend I met up with Anita Richards (a friend) and went down to Phun City on the Friday afternoon/evening. We all (we were in someones van) put a little money together and the Hells Angel at the entrance gate of the field was happy to accept whatever it was we gave him to get in. I remember being immediately greeted as we aproached the stage area by someone selling good black dope. (I saw him later on the Sunday wandering around offering dope at a discount as he didn't want to carry it back up to town!)
The Friday night was relatively
dry but the weather rapidly deteriorated. I understood that they had had weather
insurance, but believing the weekend would be good they had cancelled the insurance
at the last minute to save money.
I remember the MC5, and I remember Mungo Jerry playing 'Jug music'. He was asked
by the audience to play his then 'hit'. (In the summertime) He refused saying
"why do you want me to play that shit?" I remember 'Twink' of the
Fairies, stark naked on stage (but do I remember him still wearing that tall
top hat?)
I was sitting right next to the guy (mentioned elswhere) with the invalid carriage
and we were all sharing food (mostly carrots provided by Anita) "take a
bite and pass it on".
When the (Saturday?) rainstorm
came we all crammed into the Dome and smoked- I particularly remember that high.
There was the time when two or three plain clothes police turned up and stood
on the outskirts of the crowd (small crowd!) and someone from the stage directed
us all towards them and we all chanted Pigs! Pigs! and pointed until they left.
One of the nights was (mostly) dry and I slept on top of one of the PA's speaker
cabinets.
I remember the area between the stalls (good collection of books and the inevitable brown rice) and the stage being populated by a number of people tripping out of their heads and holding mirrors which they were looking into. (!)
I and others contributed
a little money (no-one had any) on the Sunday 'diesel for the generator'. I
saw, but didn't take part in, the arguments about the burger vans (weren't they
hot dogs?) and I recall the French (?) anarchists digging out the buried food
and handing it round.
Definitely a phun weekend and shortly after I went down the the Isle of Wight,
which I shall recount on another occasion...
P.
If you have any info regarding the festival please get in touch Contact email
Publicity and underground press articles.
Recordings of Phun City and band details
Memories sweet memories
- Recollections by attendees
- Fairground Dome- new Dec 2004
