Isle Of Wight Festival 1969
The 1969 Isle of Wight Festival was held on 30−31 August 1969 at Wootton, and attracted an audience of approximately 150,000 to see acts including Bob Dylan & The Band, The Who, Free, Joe Cocker and The Moody Blues. It was the second of three music festivals held on the Isle of Wight between 1968 and 1970. Organised by Fiery Creations, aka brothers Ronnie and Ray Foulk, it became a legendary event, largely owing to the participation of Bob Dylan, after the "minstrel to a generation" had spent the previous three years in semi-retirement. The event was well managed, in comparison to the recent Woodstock Festival, and trouble-free.
The 1969 festival was considerably larger and more popular than the year before due to Dylan's inclusion on the bill. He had been little heard of since his allegedly near-fatal motorcycle accident in July 1966. Shunning the Woodstock Festival, held practically on his doorstep in upstate New York, Dylan was initially reluctant to perform his comeback show on this little-known island. After weeks of negotiations, the promoters showed him a short film of the Island's cultural and literary heritage; this appealed to Dylan's artistic sensibilities, as he was enthusiastic about combining a family holiday with a live performance in Tennyson country. Prior to the festival, Bob Dylan and The Band rehearsed at Forelands Farm in Bembridge, and were joined there by George Harrison, the only "outsider" to have been permitted into his enclave in the Catskill Mountains. On Saturday, 30 August, the day before Dylan was to take the stage, fellow Beatles John Lennon and Ringo Starr arrived on the island, along with Keith Richards, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts of The Rolling Stones, and Eric Clapton. Also seated in a sealed-off VIP area in front of the stage would be Beatle wives Pattie Harrison, Yoko Ono and Maureen Starkey, together with Liz Taylor, Richard Burton, Jane Fonda, Roger Vadim, Donald Cammell, Syd Barrett, Elton John and others.
Read more about Isle Of Wight Festival 1969: Bob Dylan's Performance, The Who's Performance, Line-up
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—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)