Isle of Wight Festival

The original events were promoted and organised by the Foulk brothers (Ron and Ray Foulk) under the banner of their company Fiery Creations Limited and their younger brother Bill Foulk. The venues were Ford Farm (near Godshill), Wootton and Afton Down (near Freshwater) respectively. The 1969 event featured Bob Dylan and the Band. This was Dylan's first paid performance since his motor cycle accident some three years earlier, and was held at a time when many still wondered if he would ever perform again. Followers from across the world trekked to the Isle of Wight for the performance. Estimates of 150,000–250,000 attended. The 1969 festival opened on Friday 29 August—eleven days after the close of Woodstock. Dylan was living in Woodstock, New York, at the time and it was widely believed that he would perform there, after the event had been "put in his own backyard". As it happened, Dylan left for the Isle of Wight on 15 August—the day the Woodstock festival began. The 1970 event was by far the largest of these early festivals; it was reported at the time have an attendance of 250,000, but at some point many years later someone started claiming it to be one of the largest human gatherings in the world, with estimates of over 600,000. Included in the line-up of over fifty performers were Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, The Doors, The Who, Lighthouse, Ten Years After, Terry Reid, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Joni Mitchell, The Moody Blues, Melanie, Donovan, Gilberto Gil, Free, Chicago, Richie Havens, John Sebastian, Leonard Cohen, Jethro Tull, Taste featuring Rory Gallagher, and Tiny Tim. The unexpectedly high attendance levels led, in 1971, to Parliament adding a section to the Isle of Wight County Council Act 1971 preventing overnight open-air gatherings of more than 5,000 people on the island without a special licence from the council. The 1970 festival was filmed by a film crew under director Murray Lerner, who at that point had just directed the Academy Award-nominated documentary Festival of the Newport Folk Festival. The footage passed to Lerner in settlement of legal fees after a dispute with the Foulk brothers in which each side claimed against the other for breach of contract. Lerner distilled material from the festival into the film Message to Love (released on video in the US as Message to Love: The Isle of Wight Festival: The Movie) released theatrically in 1996 and subsequently on DVD. In addition to this film, Lerner has created full-length films focused on performances by individual artists at the 1970 festival. To date there have been individual films of Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, The Moody Blues, Free, Taste featuring Rory Gallagher, Leonard Cohen, Jethro Tull, The Doors, and Joni Mitchell. Dave Roe (ex Liverpool Collegiate) produced all the psychedelic artwork for posters and advertising material. 1968 The first festival was held at Hells Field, Ford farm, near Godshill, on 31 August and 1 September 1968, and was attended by about 10,000 people. Jefferson Airplane headlined, with Arthur Brown, The Move, Smile, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation, Plastic Penny, Fairport Convention, and The Pretty Things also performing. 1969 This took place on 29 to 31 August 1969 at Wootton Creek, with an estimated attendance of 150,000. 1970 This event was held between 26 and 30 August 1970 at Afton Down. Attendance has been estimated by the Guinness Book of Records to have been 600,000 or even 700,000. However promoter Ray Foulk has said he believes it to have been half of that. News agencies at the time reported the attendance figure as 250,000. It was widely reported on, due to its line-up and extremely high attendance. Acts included Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Jethro Tull, Ten Years After, Chicago, The Doors, Lighthouse, The Who (whose set produced a live album), Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Supertramp, The Moody Blues, Joan Baez, Free, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Kris Kristofferson, Donovan, Ralph McTell, John Sebastian, Terry Reid, Taste featuring Rory Gallagher, and Shawn Phillips. ==Revived festival details==