The Archive.              Last modified Jan 2008 View this page at minimum 1000 res to see correct formatting .

The Watchfield Free Festival . 23-31st August 1975.

 Bands.

Provisional list of bands scheduled to appear .Taken from International Times .Thanks to Garry Gibbons for the information.

Watchfield festival featured these bands but there were far more groups who played , a full list would now be obscured by the mists of time .

Hawkwind , Jon Owen Tibet Strife White as White and Twice as Dirty Human Abstract Here and Now The Stranglers Scylla National Flag Slug addict Baker Gurvitz Army Conventional Douglas Valhalla Duce Dog Funny Farm Rosemary Schonfield Allan Clayson and the Argonauts Big Licks The Nova Mob Quinquere	Warp III East Of Eden Gong Cyclops Henry Cow Arthur Brown Traffic Asph Icetope Outrider Wandering Spirit Cocksparrow Tibet Writers Write Flint 101 Molybendium Liphook Hum Strum Lilt Brenner and Kane Band Edge Rent a Luny White as White and Twice as Dirty
		Cover of Hawkwind at Watchfield

The recent discovery of some old issues of the Watchfield Freek Press has given us this running sheet , which no doubt is not compleetely accurate but does nevertheless give a good idea of which bands were supposed to go onstage ,where and when . If you were a member of a band who played , please contact us and we will add your details to the page .....

Strife at Watchfield

Thnaks to the members of Strife for the copy of the video from which we have extracted these few viewable stills . Its a great shame it has deteriorated so badly as it was a good show .

The stills on the Strife site are from a disc which contains two sections of the set from Watchfield -
As far as I can remember, Strife borrowed a copy of their complete set on film and had it transferred it to video - very high tech in those days! (presumably borrowed from someone from the cable TV company who filmed it) The results were a bit of a disaster - as you will see - certainly not easily watchable!
The video deteriorated, and a few years ago, the most watchable bits were transferred to disk. I have no idea who, if anyone, still has a copy of the film - sorry.
All the best,
Martin

Whether this guy was the one who filmed Strife, or whether this was equipment used by film students to record the festival or not is debatable, but Nasher has this to report ....

Hi.....I was operating a community based film resource in Bath in those days,Workshop Films, and supplied some equipment to a guy who was making a film of Watchfield in 75 ......he had some equipment (I think an Arriflex camera) and mebbe supplies scrounged from HTV Bristol.

Cheers

Nasher.

I've just found your site - very interesting!
I was a roadie for Strife and can aim you in the direction of a couple of photos of the band at Watchfield - in glorious technicolour! They are at www.strife-music.co.uk (under photos).
My memories of Watchfield are pretty vague - when we arrived it was suitably chaotic - there was trouble with the PA. I remember that the band before us (sorry I can't put a name to them) played a pretty good version of Love's 'Alone again or'. We then decided to use our own PA in order to give some time to repair the festivals PA which was distorting badly. The guys played well and injected a bit of energy into the proceedings. (it was flagging a bit at the time)

The bands were being filmed for the local cable television - is there still some footage available? I was in the centre of the crowd wearing my luminous green beany hat (a gift from the band - "where's the prat in the hat?) mixing the sound. The crowd were up on their feet and I had a job to keep people from stomping on the mixer! - a couple of encores and it was over. The festival PA had been fixed so we loaded the gear back into the van. East of Eden followed us on stage - kicked off with "Jig-a jig" I think? Rob (the other roadie) and I walked round the site for a while - it was going dark, and the camp-fires created a great atmosphere. Then it was back on the road - we were one of the hardest working bands at the time - no time to stop and watch.
All the best
Martin - The Bean

Hi
I was the roadie for Wooden Lion who opened on stage C on the Friday night & played after Tibet on stage B on the Saturday night.
The lineup was Tony Morley Lead Guitar & Vocals, Terry Morley Bass Guitar, Wal Mansfield on Drums, Cardinal Biggles (Alan Essex) on VCS3 & 12 String Guitar, & The Captain (Roy Wood) on Lead Vocals & Costumes.
Roy still has the back stage pass
Also when Hawkwind came over from Reading on the Saturday ,Del Detmar didn't come with them & Cardinal Biggles did the noise making.
Other bands I remember being there were Thor/Nova Mob (they kept changing there name) & pre Clash Joe Strummer with 101ers
Travelling back to London in the car with Tony on the Sunday we blew the engine up
I last saw Sid Rawles running the swingboats at an all dayer in Victoria Park in the East End of London back in the late eighties.
Keep up the good work
Steve Wollington

Roy Wood, of Wooden Lion , also sent us this update on the bands time at Watchfield and plans to reform in 2004

Hi, I was the singer from Wooden Lion who played on a couple of the stages at this festival. We were there throughout the whole festival .Our synth man also played with Hawkwind (I was a friend of Lemmy's and they were trying to steal him at the time) at their show on one of the evenings. Strangely enough we have recently all got back together and may even get round to doing a few shows. I went on to have a couple more bands in the late seventies and then became a sound engineer : Wooden Lion Homepage

Someone pointed your site out to me ages ago and I had meant to write for some time but some how never quite got around to it. I was sitting here last night waiting for a file to finish downloading and I thought I would drop you a line. I wonder how many other veterans of these festivals are out there and have never got in touch. I wonder how many are still playing. Maybe we should arrange an 'Old Hippies Reunited' (tongue firmly in cheek in case you are wondering). This area is a bit of a haven for old hippies and I have met a few since I moved here. The amazing Arthur Brown lives up the road in Lewes and plays round here regularly. He was at the festival because I remember talking to him behind the stage on night but I cannot recall if he played.

We actually have almost the same line up as when we played Watchfield. We have a different drummer that is all (oh yes, and we are a lot older!).

The trouble with trying to recall what happened at these festivals is, quite apart from the time passage, some members of the band had a tendency towards a bit of puff and acid. I do remember that, when we got on stage, I announced that we had arrived with very little dope and asked if anyone had some to sell maybe they could see us after. All through the set people came up to the stage and just left stuff for us. Our roadie, Steve Wallington, (still a good friend and probably going to do the job for us again if we get round to doing a show) collected all the stuff. Part of the way through the show I took a pyramid and I think that is how I wound up on top of the scaffolding at the front of the stage at the end. I remember looking at the stage in the morning and realising I had bent the top.

I do remember some of these benefit gigs. One was in a house in Regents Park. It was a squat and someone turned up at around 3 am in his dressing gown and slippers to complain about the noise. We did one gig which was in Basingstoke and I think that was something organised by the Watchfield / Windsor benefit people Alan, our synth player used our PA just for his noise machines because the Half Human Band's PA was available for the stage. The review in the local paper said something like 'a horrible howling noise was heard all over Basingstoke' and the local council officially banned us from the town.

When I look at things like Glastonbury and Party in the Park I realise that the technology has come on a long way from when we did these shows in the seventies but the spirit then was so strong. In the course of my work as an engineer I did a lot of festivals all over Europe but nothing compared to those early days when it was all for free and the main reason you were there was to have fun and make a noise.
Regards
Roy

Another band to play at Watchfield were White as White and Twice as Dirty , John Bently sent us this

We were the only people on site who thought Zorch were boring (they played from 11pm till 5am and we wanted to get to sleep!
(White as white were a pre punk racket with psychedelic interludes...)
 
I remember White as White being the first band on at watchfield and it being mentioned in the telegraph and later joe strummer borrowing Ian's guitar for the 101ers set. Stranglers and Traffic also played at watchfield but I remember the festival as being slightly disillusioned after windsor. Didn't even get arrested!
 
love John
 
PS :Wally Dave Bennett and I arranged some Windsor benefit gigs around this time in Aldershot with a wonderful band from epping forest called Wooden Lion  where are they now?  they played at the festivals too

Paul Trew of White as White also contacted us about the group's involvement at Watchfield

Hi
I played bass in 'white as white and twice as dirty'
we opened the festival in the early hours of the morning after having come straight from a Watchfield benefit gig at Bedford town hall,we played there with Tibet who were a strange German band
The sunday papers were full of lurid accounts of how we kept all the villagers awake,which i suppose we did....

White as white were veterans of windsor and played 5 times at the festival, i think we were the last to leave By the way we were just 17.

I remember the 101ers racing around in their van, they were probably the only band to play more times than us.

I saw Hawkwind minus Stacia who I think was getting married and I too got my picture in Woman's Own dancing to Hawkwind stood next to a guy with a paper bag on his head
I recall the carousel toilets with horror, particularly when a dog got stuck in them and there weren't many volunteers to pull it out

white as white broke up about 6 months later, Ian the guitarist went on to play with 'Ballaaam and the Angel ' and me,rich and paz have all carried on playing with local Hampshire bands, I'm currently with Bluestate on the south coast.

Paul Trew

Another band to play the festival were Poltergeist

I was lucky enough to play at Watchfield in 1975 in a band called Poltergeist.  When we arrived we went to the HQ where we were told which stage we were playing on.  We managed to plug our appearance on the pirate radio station that was operating out of an old toilet in the HQ! The pirate station was annoying radio one at the time because the frequency was very close to theirs.
We started playing just as it was getting dark and it started to rain.  But this did not put off the audience who built themselves a fire in front of the stage and soon a large crowd gathered to watch our set. Halfway through one of our songs a massive cheer went up.
We thought we had finally made it but later found out that this was because a couple had taken refuge under the stage to get out of the rain and had started their own 'performance' in time to the music!
The band on after us was White is white and twice as dirty.
Frank Baldwin

Charles Tyler was at Watchfield with his friends Solar Ben.

I used to hang out with them in Wales when I lived nearby. They all lived in a beautiful Welsh farmhouse called Fynnon Wen at the end of the Rheidol valley. Barry Coleman played guitar, Steve played bass, Robin played drums, Michael Wilding (Elizabeth Taylors eldest son) played sax and Betine sang. The bus in the pics here and in the Meigan Fayre pics belonged to the band. You can see Robin in it with his long red hair. We took it to a number of festivals in those years.

Hi
I was the guitar player with Synthesis
The line up was:
Dave craggs..Bass
Phil Witton...Drums
Wild P Hucker..Guitar & Vocals.
I remember a no pressure, very peaceful afternoon gig. And it was the Tuesday that we played, the highlights for me were Gong on the main stage, and Tibet on some other stage.
When I root through my archives I may find other info and will contact you again.
I went on from Synthesis to being one of the founders of Ogre a notorious festival band from 1978-99 Now I'm with MSM an ambient soothe & groove thing.
You can check it out here:
www.wildphucker.com
www.ogreland.co.uk
Email: wildphucker@ogreland.co.uk 
I've enjoyed visiting your site keep up the good work
Regards
Hucker

Hi there,

I have great memories at watchfield, we were a very young band called Fever, we did a short 20 or 30 minute slot early evening on the Saturday, what great times we had, we did one or two self penned numbers and a few covers.
The band was,
Tony Barnett, lead vocals.
Dave Lloyd lead guitar.
Neil Walker bass guitar.
Dave Ziggmund drums.

Regards.
Tony Barnett.

Above : Fever , having a ball at the Watchfield festival 1975

Well i might be a bite late in stumbling across your sites, but i was there
too....
My band, Wandering Spirit played at Windsor '73 & '74, Stonehenge '73, '74, '75, & Watchfield '75.
Certain members (and non-members) of the band got together with a couple of Here-and-Now members at Watchfield, and briefly became Captain Snort and the Hog-Fuckers from Hell, the only band known to have demolished a piano
on stage, while in search of the lost chord... (ahhh, they don't make Acid like that any more...) We also attended Seasalter & Meigan, but didn't play.

Gareth Williams

Hi

I was the drummer in the band Wandering Spirit from Hertfordshire and we played twice at Watchfield in 1975. We were starting to get used to this playing at free festivals- a bunch of young hippies who lasted as a band for 5 years making a mainly instrumental racket sometimes with a lightshow and mostly having a great time. Our second appearance, on a stage I can`t remember the name of( see photo),we were joined by a singer friend from Herts called Martin and he improvised some very interesting vocals over our material with titles such as "If I should wake before I die", "Stroke", "Are you dead or just revisiting?" and "Furthur".........

A Government -approved free festival site? It felt different to the other ones at Windsor and Stonehenge but still wonderfully anarchic and we got in and out with no hassle from the boys in blue-unlike next year at the strange Seasalter event in Kent........
Love `n peace,

Graham Cole (now 52 and full-time vegan-organic gardener)

Any info to add ?- Contact email

Free rock festivals of the 70s and 80s

Back to the main Archive.