When 600,000 people flocked to 'Britain's Woodstock'

And, that August, up to 600,000 people descended on the Isle of Wight for the third successive (and, until 2002, the last) festival on the island.

The 1968 event had starred The Move, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Fairport Convention. The 1969 edition had been headlined by The Who and Bob Dylan. Now, at the end of August 1970, the stars who were billed to appear included Jimi Hendrix, The Who, The Doors, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Joan Baez, Chicago, Free, Jethro Tull, Donovan, Kris Kristofferson, and Miles Davis and his Bitches Brew band. Not for nothing was the Isle of Wight festival seen at that time as Britain’s Woodstock.

The 1970 festival, however, became notorious for reports of gate-crashing, misbehaviour and drug-taking. Stallholders on the site reportedly called for police assistance over an alleged protection racket. There were skirmishes between hippies and police. Newspapers reported on the extent of nudity or semi-nudity at the festival. In a leading article on August 29 the Glasgow Herald pondered whether pop festivals were “just a strange manifestation of all that is amiss with youth today”.

In a 2020 Guardian essay on the festival, however, Patrick Glen notes: “Recently rediscovered photographs taken by Peter Bull show calm and content festival-goers, who resemble their contemporary counterparts aside from their attire, lack of mobile phones and the fact that they’re nearly all sitting down.

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Read more: Briefing: Isle of Wight Festival

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“There were disturbances, though”, Glen adds. “A group, no more than 200 of those camping on Desolation Hill, attempted to break down the perimeter wall the day before the festival began. Later, on Sunday morning, organisers and audience argued when security cleared the inner arena for Jethro Tull’s soundcheck and to check tickets. At 4pm on Sunday afternoon, MC Rikki Farr declared the festival free (to the horror of [co-organiser] Ray Foulk who was standing in the crowd) and, after the announcement, the inner arena wall was dismantled from the inside by ticket holders, prompting a queue of concerned workers and creditors seeking immediate payment backstage. There were 117 arrests for possession of drugs”.

All of that said, there was some great music on show at the Isle of Wight between August 26 and 30 – much of it can be enjoyed today on YouTube.

The scope of the 1970 festival is neatly summarised by music author Philip Norman in his Hendrix biography, Wild Thing. “Ronnie and Ray [his brother] expected to improve on the previous year’s attendance”, he writes, “but never bargained for the multitude that crossed the Solent to pitch camp on Afton Down. It was as if the world’s hippies recognised this as the last hurrah for love and peace and guilt-free pot and making unprotected love in muddy tents and frolicking around in foam, and were determined to wring every last ounce of joy from it.

“The numbers soon became impossible to compute since the grassy slopes overlooking the stage allowed thousands in to watch the performances without buying a ticket. The best estimate is around 400,000, nudging Woodstock very close; unlike at Woodstock, blissfully sunny weather persisted for the whole four days, but there was the same total lack of crime or violence”.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience went on stage in the early hours of Sunday, August 31. It was an electrifying performance. Norman records that the gifted Scottish guitarist, Bert Jansch, “lay prone under the stage, letting the monster vibrations from above wash over him”. Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, meanwhile, who had come merely to watch, “ended up helping to mix the sound”.

Speaking to the BBC in August 2001, Chris Weston, who was working as an electrician, recalled meeting Hendrix backstage. He said: “Hendrix came up the steps, he asked me how many people were there, and what it was like. I said there’s over 500,000, they’ve all come to see you. He was nervous - he said to someone, ‘How does God Saves the Queen go?’”

This, alas, would be one of Hendrix’s final appearances: he died just a few weeks later, on September 18, in London. Jim Morrison, the singer with another Isle of Wight act, The Doors, would die in July 1971, at the same age.

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Read more: A smashing time was had by them

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Joni Mitchell played an excellent set, despite an early attempt by a lone protester, Yogi Joe, to disrupt her performance.

“He was hauled off, and then came her great time. She appealed for respect, her voice almost cracking with emotion, and thus her set commanded attention, sympathy and even awe and love from the vast audience, her biggest ever”. These words were written in 2019, on the Rock’s Back Pages website, by Geoffrey Cannon, rock critic at the Guardian, who attended the 1970 show.

Mitchell’s fellow Canadian, Leonard Cohen, also played a brilliant set, having warmed up a few days earlier by playing in front of some 50 residents and staff members at Henderson Hospital, a psychiatric institution south of London.

In a 2004 interview with the Sunday Herald, Kris Kristofferson, who played his first-ever live UK show at the 1970 event, recalled that he and his band were booed from start to finish when the festival was “hijacked by White Panthers, Hell’s Angels and French anarchists:” Other acts suffered a similar fate. Kristofferson remembered that only Leonard Cohen escaped censure. 

The Who, for their part, were 15 months into a tour promoting their ‘Tommy’ concept album when they played the 1970 festival. The huge spotlights that played over the audience attracted “every moth and flying nocturnal animal on the island”, in the recollection of The Who’s tour manager, John Woolf. The Who began their concert at 2am.

Interestingly, the audience included one Robbie the Pict (the Scottish campaigner otherwise known as Brian Robertson). A 2003 interview with the Sunday Herald noted that he met an American woman at the festival “and amid signs of a ‘backlash against liberalism’ they decided to leave for the US, where he roadied for bands including Hawkwind and Grateful Dead”.

The presence of festivals and large, exuberant, youthful crowds on the island had long unsettled some local people as well as the Conservative MP, Mark Woodnutt. After the 1970 event Woodnutt brought about legislation that effectively presented another festival being staged. He told the House of Commons: “I spent two days at this festival incognito in my hippie outfit and the scene both during and after the festival was one of indescribable squalor and filth”. (Douglas Osmond, the chief constable of Hampshire police, who dressed as a hippy and and spent a day on Desolation Hill, took a more sanguine view of the proceedings).

On Facebook and elsewhere there are fond memories of 1970. One fan writes on Facebook’s ‘1970 Isle of Wight Festival Veterans group page: “I was there. Traveled from USA. I had just turned 18. I got there several days early and traveled the island. I helped set up for the event. Had great view every day. Just passed out from time to time only to wake up to Moody Blues! Sunday morning when many folks left, I stood within 10 feet of Richie Havens listening to Here Comes the Sun!!”

"54 years ago I was at the 1970 festival on my 16th birthday", writes someone else. "One of the most formative experiences of my life. So brilliant and it is still vivid in my memory".