A couple of comments on the blog have got me rummaging about in my dressing up box. Where on earth is that other shoe and whatever did I do with the kaftan I made for the gig of the 60s? The clothes are falling to pieces but the memories are made of stronger stuff.
All this nostalgia because two comments have suddenly arrived on a blog I posted last year to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Barbecue 67. It is hard to believe that the likes of Hendrix, the Cream and Pink Floyd all came to rock Spalding Bulb Auction. But perhaps it is even more incredible that the promoter celebrates his 70th birthday on Sunday.
How do I know that? I opened my blog ten days ago to find a comment from Paula Scott who is searching the Internet for trophies to present to her brother in law on his birthday. That was fascinating enough but a few days later I find another comment, this time from Pete Barraclough, one of the two guys who compered the event and actually drew up the extraordinary line up for the gig and couldn’t believe it when Brian Thompson (aka Checky) decided to go for it.
The tickets for Barbecue 67 cost £1
The rest is history (and old clothes). But history has an odd way of turning up on eBay and other nooks of the Internet. As Pete says, there’s a poster which would make a great birthday present for Checky; he just wishes he had had the foresight to make a film of the event in those innocent days long before YouTube. ( just think, the tickets for Barbecue 67 cost £1). We probably all have our regrets: what could have possessed me to turn down that opportunity to interview Hendrix and why didn’t the promoter think to keep any posters or newspaper cuttings?
Luckily for Paula there are lots of compulsive hoarders around and a quick Google soon turns up a lot of old rockers: take a look at UK rock festivals! I would however like to point out that I myself also rather enjoy 21st century music (Ray and I occasionally while away an evening battling hip hop and old blues, giving each other the opportunity to say, “But they all sound the same”…)
So what does Pete Barraclough do now? He’s a presenter on Sky Sport but music is still his first passion. Maybe there is still scope to dream up another fantastic event… Meanwhile, good luck Paula with the search – and thanks for the excuse to delve into happy memories, nicely tinted with time. And Happy Birthday to Brian with thanks for an unforgettable gig. I can’t get used to the idea of a rock festival impresario turning 70, any more than I can believe that quite a few of the Barbecue 67 audience must now have bus passes. Me included.
Now, where is that other shoe? Do you suppose there would be any eBay interest in one shoe? Right foot, in good condition. And, by the way, I should have a lot more old LPs (I used to review them when I was on the Spalding Guardian and got them free after all). I bet one of my sons has pinched them for sampling.
October 22nd, 2008
There were no helicopters to drop stars from the sky. Hendrix arrived in a Vauxhall Velux driven by the lead guitarist of a local band – the promoter had booked them to be sure of a crowd.
A letter from an old friend brings the past flooding back. Not the past as I like to remember it, but the past as it really was – or at least as it was reported in the newspaper we both worked for.
Sheila reminds me this is the 40th anniversary of Barbecue ‘67 in the Summer of Love when a bulb auction shed in Spalding, Lincs rocked to some of the best sounds of the sixties. It was also the day I turned down the chance to interview Jimi Hendrix.
I know, it’s crazy. I cannot explain why – especially to my bolder sons – except that
even then Hendrix was a legend and I was a very young trainee reporter on the weekly Spalding Guardian. Instead my mates Pat Prentice (one of his other scoops was the three-legged chicken of Gedney Drove End) and John Thorne (now semi-retired from BBC radio) went backstage while I stood at the end of the auction shed, in a home-made pink and purple kaftan, to take note of the behaviour of the crowd.(No voodoo child in this picture.)
We were all expecting more to happen than the music. Spalding had never coped with anything more challenging than the annual tulip parade before. The police sent for the cavalry and the entire staff of the Spalding Guardian and Lincs Free Press were out in force including Hugh the agricultural correspondant. And both photographers.
In some ways it wasn’t any more peculiar to stage a rock spectacle in Spalding than it is to plonk T in the Park in a field near Kinross. Rock festivals haven’t changed that much – not least because some of the old codgers still persist in playing: The Who were headlining T in the Park last year, for goodness sake.
There were screaming fans but the artificial fever of celebrity culture was unknown back in 1967. Jimi Hendrix was put up at the Red Lion pub – just imagine the Arctic Monkeys booking into the Jolly Beggars at Milnathort to be handy for the main stage at Balado. And there were no helicopters to drop stars from the sky. Hendrix arrived in a Vauxhall Velux driven by the lead guitarist of a local band – the promoter had booked them to be sure of a crowd.
All this detail comes from the souvenir issue of the paper Sheila sent me. To be honest, I don’t remember much beyond the sweaty excitement and the overwhelming sound. But it is one of those ‘I was there’ experiences that have become family legend and I like to picture myself as the cool (if timid) commentator on social trends. So what did this perceptive ‘Young Idea’ columnist have to say about the great rock event of the decade? She thought (and I quote):
“From the music angle, Barbecue ‘67 was a mixed success. Geno has a football match effect. Jimi Hendrix (chief crowd puller) fits music to sensationalism; the Cream are good, to see the Move is to forget, to see Zoot Money is to see everything and to see Pink Floyd is to laugh.”
Dougal is incredulous when I show my cutting to him. ‘What were you dissing all these great bands for?’ After all, the only band he hasn’t heard of is Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band (a soul band who used to fill the Starlight Room at the Gliderdrome Boston of a Saturday night – and apparently reformed for the special 40th anniversary gig). Sheila and John turned in beautiful descriptive pieces; I guess I was determined not to be too impressed, way back there at the end of the hall.
But I wasn’t the only one who missed a trick. At the end of his set Jimi Hendrix set fire to his guitar and left it to fizzle out on the stage. From there (according to Colin Ward, the driver of the Vauxhall Velux) it was picked up with the rubbish and thrown into the council dump.
Or did someone save it for eBay?
[pssst: thanks for dropping in, readers who got this far might also enjoy Hendrix at Barbecue 67 and an exciting new installment How I missed Hendrix and Benjamin Zephaniah will follow as soon as I have caught up with the day job! xx Ed]
June 21st, 2007
