- Place – Isle Of Wight Festival
- Time – 30th August 1970
- Artist – The Who
By Saturday the 29th of August the festival was well on its way.
There were many uncertainties of which bands were going to actually to appear.
The tension back stage between the organisers and artist about payments was growing.
This caused major unpredictability to running order of the day.
John Sebastian steals the show.
Early on Saturday morning with no bands available to perform John Sebastian arrived on stage to sing a few songs with, as he described his, cheapo cheapo guitar.
The solitude of one man and a guitar performing to such a huge audience could have been so easily dismissed as a quick stand-in act.
But the natural charisma and charm of Sebastian mesmerised the entire crowd before the first song had even finished.
His magnetism allowed him to carry the audience through twenty one, mostly classic, songs, resulting in nearly three hours of pure magic.
Back on track.
By mid-afternoon agreements had been reached and the festival was almost back on track.
This delay played havoc with what would have been a reasonable schedule for all artists.
The Who begin and the problem starts.
The Who should have appeared on the Saturday evening but it was early on the Sunday morning before they started their set.
Within three or four minutes of the opening song Vic shouted to me that Keith Moon had hit the large tom drum mic and busted it.
He told me to get up on stage and get a mic on the drum.
I ran to the backstage entrance to find it guarded by several Hells Angels.
One of them, a six-foot longhaired neanderthal type character covered in leather and tattoos said to me,
“No one goes on stage while the band’s playing.”
I explained the problem but unfortunately it was not negotiable.
I rushed back to tell Vic that I couldn’t get to the stage due to the primate situation,
he yelled, “I don’t give a shit, get on the stage and get a mic on the tom”
I rushed to the back of the stage again to be greeted by the same mandrill who gave me the same grunts as before, enhanced with a
“Now Fuck Off.”
I ran back to explain to Vic there was no way I could get on the stage.
I was to become close friends with Vic over the next nineteen years and this would be one of the only times I would ever see him really angry or hear him raise his voice.
He screamed,
“Go back and tell that stupid ape bastard the recording is going to be fucked, he will be personally responsible and the band will be furious with him.”
I rushed back to the stage once more now armed with Vic’s instructions I repeated them, verbatim.
I just left out the bit about his heritage.
This seemed to do the trick I was immediately allowed through.
The Who were now in full flow, thundering out a mass of noise, it was hard to distinguish what song they were performing.
Finally I reached the stage.
The stage was vibrating as if a small earthquake was taking place.
I could see the band’s silhouettes lit from the front by tremendously bright white lights.
Although you couldn’t see the audience you could feel the presence of over a half a million people hidden in the darkness beyond the blinding glow.
This is when paralysis started to set into my whole body.
I realised there was no way I could casually walk onto the stage in front of so many people to find a spare mic and replace the broken mic whilst Moon was in full flow.
Knowing Moon’s reputation, he was quite likely to stop playing in the middle of a song and ask what the fuck I was doing.
So I had only one option, get someone else to do it.
Passing the buck.
Looking around I spotted Neville.
I made my way over to my prime candidate and screamed into his ear that Vic had sent me to tell him to replace the mic.
Nev’s faced dropped, he was also aware of Moon’s reputation.
I could see in his facial expression that he was experiencing the same terror that had spread throughout my body, it’s possible he may have even touched cloth.
Nev tried to come up with several excuses, but I made it clear that Vic had insisted he had to do it immediately.
We could now see clearly that Moon had smashed the head off the Neuman U67 tom mic, which was lying on the floor.
I stood and watched while Neville nervously crawled around the drum kit on his hands and knees, bravely picking up the head of the broken mic and then screwing on a replacement new head onto the remaining body.
The mission was complete, so I swiftly reported back to Vic, not really mentioning Neville’s input.
I did tell Neville the real story a few years ago and his reaction was one of laughter as I thought it would be.
I would like to thank Neville Crozier for his help with these Isle of Wight posts.
600,000 People – give or take
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