Fact #189764
When:
Short story:
The third day of the Isle Of Wight Festival, Isle Of Wight, England, UK, Europe, features Chicago, Family, Taste, James Taylor, Arrival and Lighthouse.Full article:
Judy Totton (fan) : I went in a tiny Fiat with three blokes. I had £7 and some tinned ham to last me the weekend. Richie Havens was great, and Tiny Tim was good fun, but I remember trying to get a bit of sleep at one point and being woken up by a huge explosion which turned out to be Emerson Lake and Palmer firing canons on the stage.
John Peel (UK radio deejay) : A tragic waste of time, talent and electricity.
Carl Palmer (E.L.P.) : I just remember that we went down like a storm. The crowd went crazy when we finished.
Nick Richards (fan) : The majority of people [without tickets] got up on the hill at the side of the stadium. It was an incredible view but you were anything between a quarter and half a mile from the stage. It didn't make any difference, the sound system was brilliant, you just couldn't see details of faces etc. but you got the sound just the same.
There were probably half a mile of stalls round the back of the arena which people had set up for themselves selling candles, dope, food, whatever. They just did it until the police moved them on. One guy had his stall seized on the edge of the woods at the back of the arena. Quite a way back. The police had marched him away and left one policeman guarding what was left of the stuff. When they came back, all the rest of the stuff had gone and the copper was stark naked, tied to a tree. There was no harm done to him.
Cas Caswell (bassist for Tiny Tim) : Tiny Tim sent word that he didn't want a rock'n'roll backing. That he wanted some reading musicians for the parts, more of a jazz trio. They didn't want Pete Kelly because his own MD played the piano and so in the end it was just Jack Richards and myself. To be honest the whole thing was a complete shambles. We dutifully went along. It took me about five hours to get to the gig because of all the traffic jams. Took me about seven hours to get home afterwards as well. I did about a twelve hour stint away from home for forty quid. Which was the Musicians Union rate, which we never got.
To add salt into the injury as we went on we saw the manager insist on Tiny Tim's money and these guys came up with this enormous suitcase absolutely packed with large denomination notes and he wouldn't even accept that. He insisted on seeing every last pound counted out. It took nearly an hour to count the money and that's why they were asking Joni Mitchell to keep going.
We had this grim section in the caravan with our tonques hanging out watching all this lolly changing hands. Jack and I didn't have the courage to ask for our forty quid and we never did get it. Just a few months ago, this guy who's just put the film together and the CD and the video, he suddenly got in touch with Jack and me, he said he'd tracked us down and would we settle for five hundred dollars each for the recording rights? It's the longest time I have ever had to wait for gig money. It was thirty six years to the day except that Jack's been paid and I haven't . . ."
Tiny Tim says on the film how it all ought be free and love and everything. If only they could have filmed that little bit at the back there.
Tiny Tim : My knees were knocking because I'd never played at a rock festival. I started with an old song that goes, 'I'm very high, high, high, up in the hills'. That went down surprisingly well. Then they joined in the rock'n'roll medley and I knew I'd won them over when their hands all went up and they started swaying for It's A Long Way To Tipperary.
Cas Caswell : It was mind-boggling to go out on that stage and look and see an audience, I thought I was going to be nervous. If you play in front of fifty people you're pretty nervous, if you play in front of half a million people you're more nervous. But because it stretched over the horizon suddenly there was no nerves at all. Because it was totally meaningless. There was this ocean of people. There was no part of the landscape you couldn't see full of people. The MD said here's the dots lads and off we went.
Vic Churchill (fan) : It was very cold at night and difficult to get to sleep. I slept in my clothes in a small tent with a small plastic sheet on the ground. It was freezing. Quite a way from the stage too. I had this green velvet jerkin made from a pair of curtains.
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John Peel (UK radio deejay) : A tragic waste of time, talent and electricity.
Carl Palmer (E.L.P.) : I just remember that we went down like a storm. The crowd went crazy when we finished.
Nick Richards (fan) : The majority of people [without tickets] got up on the hill at the side of the stadium. It was an incredible view but you were anything between a quarter and half a mile from the stage. It didn't make any difference, the sound system was brilliant, you just couldn't see details of faces etc. but you got the sound just the same.
There were probably half a mile of stalls round the back of the arena which people had set up for themselves selling candles, dope, food, whatever. They just did it until the police moved them on. One guy had his stall seized on the edge of the woods at the back of the arena. Quite a way back. The police had marched him away and left one policeman guarding what was left of the stuff. When they came back, all the rest of the stuff had gone and the copper was stark naked, tied to a tree. There was no harm done to him.
Cas Caswell (bassist for Tiny Tim) : Tiny Tim sent word that he didn't want a rock'n'roll backing. That he wanted some reading musicians for the parts, more of a jazz trio. They didn't want Pete Kelly because his own MD played the piano and so in the end it was just Jack Richards and myself. To be honest the whole thing was a complete shambles. We dutifully went along. It took me about five hours to get to the gig because of all the traffic jams. Took me about seven hours to get home afterwards as well. I did about a twelve hour stint away from home for forty quid. Which was the Musicians Union rate, which we never got.
To add salt into the injury as we went on we saw the manager insist on Tiny Tim's money and these guys came up with this enormous suitcase absolutely packed with large denomination notes and he wouldn't even accept that. He insisted on seeing every last pound counted out. It took nearly an hour to count the money and that's why they were asking Joni Mitchell to keep going.
We had this grim section in the caravan with our tonques hanging out watching all this lolly changing hands. Jack and I didn't have the courage to ask for our forty quid and we never did get it. Just a few months ago, this guy who's just put the film together and the CD and the video, he suddenly got in touch with Jack and me, he said he'd tracked us down and would we settle for five hundred dollars each for the recording rights? It's the longest time I have ever had to wait for gig money. It was thirty six years to the day except that Jack's been paid and I haven't . . ."
Tiny Tim says on the film how it all ought be free and love and everything. If only they could have filmed that little bit at the back there.
Tiny Tim : My knees were knocking because I'd never played at a rock festival. I started with an old song that goes, 'I'm very high, high, high, up in the hills'. That went down surprisingly well. Then they joined in the rock'n'roll medley and I knew I'd won them over when their hands all went up and they started swaying for It's A Long Way To Tipperary.
Cas Caswell : It was mind-boggling to go out on that stage and look and see an audience, I thought I was going to be nervous. If you play in front of fifty people you're pretty nervous, if you play in front of half a million people you're more nervous. But because it stretched over the horizon suddenly there was no nerves at all. Because it was totally meaningless. There was this ocean of people. There was no part of the landscape you couldn't see full of people. The MD said here's the dots lads and off we went.
Vic Churchill (fan) : It was very cold at night and difficult to get to sleep. I slept in my clothes in a small tent with a small plastic sheet on the ground. It was freezing. Quite a way from the stage too. I had this green velvet jerkin made from a pair of curtains.