Yes, it's true, I was at the great "Isle of Wight Festival" of 1970. Look, here is my original programme, along with the one for 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Bath Festival and the one for Hendrix and Soft Machine at the Royal Albert Hall - an improbable combination, it's true, but it did happen. East Afton Down never took on the infamy of Max Yasgur's Farm at Woodstock, but what happened there had at least as much to do with what came after as any of the heavily- publicised goings-on across the Atlantic. I have been drawn back to this peaceful place myself on occasion, as you will see below, because the Isle of Wight was a nice place then, and still manages to be today when left to look after itself. I believe some of those early hippies never left, but opened up lots of those indispensable places that exist to extract money from tourists - artsy potteries, coffee shops, mobile phone recharge kiosks - you know the kind of things. Either that, or they are still holding on in the hopes that, before they die, they might yet hear some music worth the price of the return ferry ticket. It was lacking at the time.
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In my original essay on this subject, much fiddled with in the intervening years - actually, much reduced, once I saw the futility of belittling so much that others seemed to hold dear - I wrote the following:
"Even today, it is not clear whether the festival was the final flourish of what made the 60s memorable for so many, or the first triumph of the latter- day materialism and cynicism - "me first" - that has now engulfed us."
Did I ever really wonder? Even before I wrote it, it was obvious that the 60s subculture, however enjoyable it may have been as it happened, and however despised it may have become since, was never much more than an idle dream for a generation with time on its hands. Time that soon ran out. No, time never runs out, it simply goes off and finds more interesting things to do. The festival was one of the very things that ushered in the cultural disaster that followed, which has since become "real life". On August 28, 1970, we thought we had found the answer to it all at East Afton, but we were young and innocent (still possible in those days) and walked straight into the trap. On August 30 ,1970, the trap closed. It's been tightening around us ever since. The longer we go on, the more certain it becomes that we will never find a way out, or back.
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Maturity always comes too late. Hindsight, that most useless of commodities, showed that this was no spontaneous blooming of something altogether new and wonderful. Far from it. It was merely a link in the long chain of life that bound its unsuspecting participants to the debasement of their own future culture. It's clear enough when we look around at what the world has now become. Donovan's "Universal Soldier" is on a roll, everywhere, every day. Tiny Tim boomed "There'll Always Be an England" through a megaphone - was he pulling our legs? Of course he was, and we loved it. So did we miss the point somewhere? How far should we, who were actually there, blame ourselves for being stooges? What ever became of Donovan? Tiny Tim?
Not everyone fell for the trick, of course. Half a million people can only ever be a minority. But it was a big enough minority to capture people's attention, and the fences being torn down made enough noise to smother the noise of the infinitely greater destruction going on in the background. Many more people today hear that noise and know exactly what it is. They listen, understand, and fundamentally ignore it, because it's uncomfortable. Today, there is no reason why anyone should be a stooge. So there are more than ever. The world as it is only functions because of them. It's comfortable. What more would anybody want?
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Back in 1970, we had a decisive hold on what was really important. We'd say "far out", and carry on. Yeh, man.
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The Festival video was a long time coming, perhaps because it revealed too much about what was going on, concealed as it was from most of those who actually took part. But that was completely unimportant, because nobody who watched it - at least, nobody who mattered - noticed that it recorded what might in retrospect be seen as a turning point in the destiny of a generation that came close to breaking out of the cage that could still at that time have been pulled apart. A noisy element in the crowd did sense what was really at stake, probably without even realising it, and were making their feelings known. French anarchists, mostly, taking time off from the Paris barricades. It took a plea from Joni Mitchell, of all people, to effectively shame them into a silence that was ultimately far more shameful than their protests; and that, as the saying goes, was that. The positively un-anarchic audience dutifully booed the bringers of noises they didn't like, and settled back in time-honoured fashion to enjoy the bringers of noises they did. A touch of comfort, to make up for having to sit on the grass. None of them ever bothered to stop and count the price, and I'll bet none of them has yet. But that moment in history is the kind of moment when whole futures change for the worse. A moment for singing Big Yellow Taxi in relative silence. That's what seemed important. The video allows us to replay endlessly that moment of insignificant triumph and wonder how things might have been... otherwise... else... if only... for so many...
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...for so many reasons, then, the memory of it all is bitter-sweet. The realisation that the "alternative lifestyle" image booming out of the speaker towers was little more than a front for the shameless materialistic ambition pursued by its purveyors did much on its own to help kill the innocent optimism of the age stone dead, let alone the real work of destruction that was going on where most of us never saw it. The process was helped along by such realities as the music being mostly dross from start to finish, the politics puerile and the fence painting atrocious, all underscoring the hotly- contested price of an entry ticket. Which, I might add, I paid for, in full and in advance. Demonstrating, to my own complete satisfaction, how it all, or mostly, works: the innocent playing their part honestly because it's the only way they know how, and ending up with little more than wistful memories, leaving those who make the rules up free to ensure that everything is canted over to deliver the hard stuff straight into their own pockets.
Shame about the event... pity about the outcome. I have stood on those slopes again more than once, without another person anywhere in sight, and quietly pondered The Meaning of it all. Where are all those people? They can't all have sold out - can they? For some of the time, I let my mind go blank, knowing what had once taken place, and all that has happened since, and seeing that everything was still there as if none of any of it had ever happened. Drawing me back to a time when I knew less and enjoyed more, and strengthening me to leave it all again and take my place back in the tiny, ticky- tacky niche that has been mine ever since, and will eventually be someone else's. They will probably take one look and dump it in the recycle bin.
Thanks, life, for the memory (yes, even the bitter parts), and for doing what you did to bring me to this place at that special time... and special greetings to anyone reading this who was there "on the hill" facing "the dogs of war", yet still managed to make it as far as today without falling into the bottomless pit of their own innocence. East Afton Hill is still there, with no sign of Desolation Row. That has grown and moved on. You are surrounded by it, you are - and were - right. The music is dross, the politics has gone from puerile to evil, and the atrocious fence painting now fills every advertising space around you.
If you are secretly unconvinced that that is the way things should be, then what remains is yourself and your own inner space. A space in which you need never lose the dream of August 28, 1970 no matter how tightly that trap is drawn about you.
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It takes a while, but you eventually get to realise what is, or is not, important about events in your life like the Isle of Wight Festival. In itself, it had nothing of any value. I stood on that hill again, and did not see one other person where once there were half a million. I heard no sound where once I could lean against the wall it made. I remembered people I walked with here, who are no more.
This was nothing to do with any of it... not the music, or the rock stars, or the iron fences, or the friends who didn't get this far. I did the only thing I could think of. I said "far out," and walked away.
Time has brought enlightenment, but too late. It will take more than the toppling of a few fences to sort this one out.
Yes, it's true, I was at the great "Isle of Wight Festival" of 1970.
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