Isle of Wight Festival 2002

Line-up

Ash DNA Doll Hundred Reasons Johnny 4 Neglected Youth Robert Plant Starsailor The Bees The Charlatans The Coral

Robert Plant 2002
After a thirty two year gap, Robert Plant kick starts the revived IOW Festival, at Seaclose Park on a green field site with the river Medina running lazily past. With his lions mane of hair and legend intact, Plant revives 'Hey Joe' as a tribute to Jimi, and 'Going to California' as a nod to Led Zeppelin, and his band mix psychedelia and world music to create something new, a bewitching backdrop to Robert's banshee wail.

2002 - Great new beginnings!
Thirty four years after the first Isle of Wight Music Festival, an all nighter in a cold field near Godshill, and it all begins again. This time around, the musical palette is wide - from classical hip hop, samba to Irish traditional folk, avante garde jazz to good old rock n'roll. The ages of participants range from 8 to 80, and just about every performance space on the Island is pressed into use. Truly 'to quote Shakespeare's "The Tempest"' 'the isle is full of noises/sounds and sweet airs'.

Headlining back in 1968 were Jefferson Airplane, prototype hippies from the Summer of Love, and a home grown English eccentric, Arthur Brown, whose theatrical rock, which included a flaming helmet, heavy make up and stage costumes, was to be a direct influence on everyone from David Bowie to Genesis. And here he is again, in the more sedate environs of the Medina Theatre, still beanpole tall, with a two hour acoustic set, incorporating all his hits, plus Arthur's crazy dancing and his truly operatic voice.

In another nod to the past, his special guest is the Island's own r&b superstar, Dick Taylor of the Pretty Things, another veteran of the original IOW Festivals. And yet the two cavort like kids on some 60s soul classics, and Arthur's band 'and half the audience' weren't even a twinkle in their parents' eyes back in 1968.

It is a wonderful start to the Festival fortnight, a blend of youthful energy and mature know how, and Arthur adds his benign presence to the big open air Rock Island gig two days later, in the adjacent Seaclose Park. Arthur, the rock n roll veteran, introduces the youth and fizz of Irish punk-poppers Ash, who play a storm. The weather is not at its best, though the sun comes out as the day proceeds, but a crowd roughly equal to that at the 1968 event watch disbelievingly as top grade live rock music comes back to the Island.

The next day, it all seems like a dream. Did I really see, only a short drive from home, local bands like Johnny 4 and the Bees 'Bob Marley meets the Beach Boys' giving their all on a state-of-the-art stage complete with massive monitor screens and crystal clear sound. Not to mention Scally surrealists The Coral, heavy rockers Hundred Reasons, the yearning magnificence of Starsailor, and Mr ‘squeeze my lemon' himself Robert Plant, playing a soulful and adventurous set which blended world music beats and strange textures with 60s psychedelia. It's 1968 again, but gone weird.

And to cap the night, as darkness falls, a magnificent set from the Charlatans, veterans of the second summer of love, with fireworks lighting the Medina as they cruise through their greatest hits. And as an added bonus, singer Tim Burgess has picked up along the way a serious Bob Dylan addiction, taking us back to the headliner of the 1969 Festival at Woodside Bay, a short crow's flight away from here. Add to that an organ sound straight out of the Doors, one of whose last performances was seen at Afton Down in 1970, and the circle is complete.

But the Isle of Wight Festival, 2002 style, encompassed far more than major bands playing large venues. It was very much a people's event, with everyone encouraged to join in, or take in music in the smallest and most intimate of venues.

I myself was prevailed to sit down at the Dimbola keyboard, and play some 12 bar blues during an acoustic lunchtime jam, with an 80 year old veteran of the dance band era on drums 'and he played a mean paradiddle' a harpist (the full sized version) and a wicked slide guitarist.

Nobody could have got to every event during that fortnight in early June; highlights which people raved about afterwards included the Unity Stompers at Wootton Recreation Ground and Roger Chapman screaming down Ryde Theatre. There was a whole day's worth of musical tributes to Jimi Hendrix at Ventnor Winter Gardens, and the Phil Beer band bringing peerless folk rock to the Botanic Gardens just down the road. Elsewhere take your pick from a drum masterclass at Ryde High School, Radio 1's Dave Pearce at the Balcony, an evening of Brass Band music, and the Island's own Symphony Orchestra playing Strauss and Gershwin. Plus soulster Edwin Starr, vintage jazzer Terry Lightfoot and a Samba workshop.

But the whole excitement and variety of that extraordinary fortnight were summed up in just one Saturday night for me. Firstly I went to Freshwater Memorial Hall to find not the usual nightly pursuits of long mat bowling or a dusty political meeting but a candlelit space, festooned with vintage Indian rugs, and then on came Evan Parker, the doyen of avant-garde saxophone, to play a solo demonstration of his 'circular breathing' - it seemed there were three men playing, not one. He returned to swap musical conversation points with Indian saxophone master Kadri Golpainath, who sat cross-legged on a cushion, alongside two tabla players emphasising the cross beats. Weird, cross-cultural stuff, like John Coltrane meeting Ravi Shankar, but live and intense and on the edge. And here and now, juts off Freshwater High Street, and opposite the local Spar. Anyone wandering in unaware would have thought that the Martians had just landed.

Then a breakneck car ride to the Medina, and just in time to catch Cara Dillon, that heartbreaking singer of Irish traditional song, literally as old as the hills, but with her red-hot electronic band brought bang up into the dance trance age. Two world class events in the same evening, and both taking place not in the Purcell Rooms or the Festival Hall, but right here, on the Isle of Wight.

May the Island soon again resound with 'sounds and sweet airs', and may such a feast of
music become an annual event.

Dr. Brian Hinton Brian Hinton has co-written an acclaimed biography of Ashley Hutchings, whose band Fairport Convention played in the dawn at Godshill in 1968. He is currently writing a book on contemporary alt-country.

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