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The Archive.
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Updated June 2009 .
Added a second Photogallery to accomodate more pix
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Reading August 22-24th 1980. |
Krokus © Phil Ryan |
The twentieth festival and this year really saw the transformation to a festival that was dominated by heavy rock music. The brief experiment with new wave was gone and in its place was a slew of bands that were guaranteed to meet with approval from the mainly metal orientated audience .
Pat Travers onstage Reading 1980 © Ferg Ranson
It was probably inevitable that the festival would begin to concentrate on Metal after the violence of 1979 between New Wave and Metal fans as it made commercial sense for the promoters to go with the big crowds that would attend a heavy rock show, but it was a shame that the once eclectic festival line up was now more or less dominated by just one sort of music . If there were any other sorts of act on this bill they would probably have fared badly and even heavy bands who were out of favour could also receive rough treatment from the crowd. Def Leppard were initially on the receiving end of a rain of mud, cans and rubbish because they were perceived to have "sold out " . |
Photo courtesy of Jana Chrzova © visit her pages to view more |
Rory Gallagher onstage © Stuart Alexander |
However, there was still room on the bill for blues rock stalwart Rory Gallagher , some of the old Reading favourites seemed to be able to transcend the genres . But artists like Gallagher and Hawkwind were the exceptions to the rule , for most of the next decade , Reading was to become the one of the major UK Heavy Rock festivals, rivaled only by the aptly named Monsters of Rock festival held at Castle Donnington in the midlands, this catered for the REAL headbangers, but Reading gave ita run for its money on occasions. |
Photo courtesy of Stuart Alexander ©
Friday
22nd Aug. |
Sunday
24th Aug |
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Sat 23rd Aug
*The Angels may not have appeared and one source questions whether Garry Moore was present . |
NB : Acts are listed in order of appearance . # replaced by Slade *The
Pencils did not play at the festival, as they had all their equipment
stolen the night before. I think they even split up after the fact that
this happened, but cannot confirm that part. |
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Photos of Gillan Reading Rock 1980 © Phil Ryan
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Photo courtesy Pete |
Another hail of cans , pity the poor roadies !
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Trimmer and Jenkins © Ferg Ranson |
Famous Names © Ferg Ranson |
Mamas Boys onstage Reading 1980 © Ferg Ranson |
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Left: Sozzled and adrift in a sea of cans Above: campsite Reading 1980 Photos © Stephen Vaughan |
Reading 1980 pages
Can we get a witness ?
We need more info on this and the other Reading festivals, we are now in the curious situation of having better documentation on some of the earlier festivals, so c'mon headbangers, get yer photos out and fire up whats left of the aging braincells .Send your recollections and scans to us NOW ! !! Contact us
Thanks to photographers Stuart Alexander, Stephen Vaughan , Pete, Paul Brannigan and Ferg Ranson for allowing us to use their pix of the festival. You can also see more pix from Reading 1980 by looking at Alan Perry's excellent photos of Reading 1980, you can purchase copies of these pix at his website where he has oodles of top photos of metal bands from the 70s to date.
Reading in the 80s to date- Fat Regs excellent site covers Reading from 1982 onwards although why we still link to him I don't know as he STILL hasn't updated his link to this site ! Its four years out of date !
The early festivals.
You can find out the complete
line ups of the first festivals if you follow the links below .
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Festivals 65-83
Most of these have fairly complete documentation .But new contributions of any sort are always welcome regarding any of the festivals.
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