Sunseed Music

The Isle of Wight is probably the most well represented for festivals in the whole of the UK and has more than you can shake a stick at (probably has a stick shaking festival too). For the more nautical but nice, there’s Cowes Week of course and the place also hosts the UK’s largest Walking Festival as well as a Garlic Festival. For the younger, less well heeled, more into dancing than yomping and non-yacht-owning – there’s Bestival. But the granddaddy of them all has to be the legendary Isle of Wight Festival.

The origin of the festival was a field near Godshill, IOW in 1968, where a group of hippies congregated for a single day event. Jefferson Airplane was the only headlining act to appear at the festival, performing on a stage made from two trailers bolted together. The support was provided by some unknown band called the move, and newbies T-Rex. This inauspicious shambles was the first great UK rock festival and it sowed the seed for far bigger things to come. 2010’s Isle of Wight Festival runs from 10^th to 13^th June and is sure to keep up the recent good work, but it wasn’t always like that.

The [Isle of Wight Festival|IOW festival] became far more ambitious in 1969, expanding to two whole days and headlined by Bob Dylan, mainly because the prospect of performing on Tennyson’s home ground appealed to him– that and he saw a film of the island. Some of the best acts that followed included Free, The Who and Joe Cocker. After that success, IOW Festival promoters planned a stellar line up for 1970 featuring Jimi Hendrix (his last performance, he died a month later), Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis, The Who, Leonard Cohen, Free and The Moody Blues. The five day festival and carnival was supposed to be the English answer to ‘Woodstock’, but sadly the love and peace ethos of the American original was not on show as almost one million hippies went on the rampage across the island forcing the authorities to clamp down on future festivals. In 1970 Parliament passed the ‘Isle of Wight Act’ which effectively banned all future festivals on the island.

The Charlatans headlined with Robert Plant in support in 2002 when the Isle of Wight festival returned after a gap of 32 years. Thousands of music fans took [Isle of Wight ferries|IOW ferries|a ferry to Isle of Wight|an Isle of Wight ferry|an IOW ferry] to enjoy the festival’s revival and this was just the start of things to come. Once hooked to the Island festival scene, it is only natural to return for Bestival which is traditionally and end-of-summer event.