Melvis Remembers: Hendrix at The Isle of Wight

1970 was a good year for festivals. I’d got a taste for them at the Isle of Wight the previous year. The highlight for me had been an amphetamine enhanced introduction to The Who live. Unfortunately I overdid the Dexedrine, spent the whole night staring at the inside of a tent and was dead on my feet by the time Dylan came on the following evening. I didn’t even see him. Everyone stood up and I was staggering around on a sea of crushed beer cans at the back of the crowd, desperately trying to keep my balance. I could hear him, but it was still a massive anticlimax.

The following year I got to work there. Some mates of mine had a company distributing underground magazines. We got transportation, tent space, free jazz cigarettes and a bowl of muesli in the mornings. In exchange we did a couple of hours crowd-selling and took turns to mind the stall.

We’d done the same a few weeks earlier at the Bath festival. There I’d seen, amongst many others, Santana, Led Zep, Jefferson Airplane, It’s a Beautiful Day and The Pink Floyd debuting Atom Heart Mother. But Hendrix was headlining the Isle of Wight.

A dozen of us travelled down in the back of a Luton Transit containing 2000 copies of the Schoolkids Oz. [Shame I didn’t keep a few]. It was a massive festival. I’ve since seen the movie which tries to make out it was some kind of Altamont disaster. Well it may have been for the organisers and the guy who got bitten by a security dog, but I had a great time. The weather was superb. I didn’t overdo the dexies and crowd-selling was a breeze; International Times, Friends, Gandalf’s Garden and the Schoolkids Oz, which sold like hot cakes, joss sticks and Esmerelda large rolling papers. The sharing of Jazz Cigarettes with complete strangers turned out to be an integral part of the crowd-selling experience.

With the exception of the Stones, anyone who hadn’t played at the Bath festival played the Isle of Wight. The Who – Daltrey in the fringed jacket lassoing the mike around whilst a fearsome Townsend leapt about dementedly in a white boiler suit. The Doors – Jim Morrison – exuding charismatic magnetism whilst virtually standing still.

I missed far more bands than I saw. Forty years on a few things stand out in my memory. ‘Ten Years After,’ whom I’d seen being fairly pedestrian in a small blues club earlier that year, got two hundred thousand people up off their stoned arses and going mental to Alvin Lee’s killer-riffed ‘Going Home.’

Standing in the middle of that enormous crowd when Emerson Lake and Palmer debuted the Moog synthesiser. That moment in the middle of ‘Oh Lucky Man’ when the synth does a four octave leap: everyone just gazed at each other in astonishment. Two hundred thousand people all simultaneously thinking what the f*ck was that? And then there was Hendrix.

I’d dropped the acid at just about the perfect time. In the words of Lou Reed ‘I was rushing on my run’ as Jimi was announced. I hurtled off on my own. No need for mates. This was to be me and the man. Total concentration. Not surprisingly the arena was packed. Everyone was sitting down. I seemed to surf through the crowd, nimbly weaving through without treading on a single hippie; I headed for front and centre. By the time he’d begun I’d found a space thirty yards from the stage about the size of a dinner plate where I was able to ground one of my buttocks. I stayed there for the duration of the set, perched on one arse-cheek, my limbs contorted way beyond yoga. It’s amazing what you can manage when you’re nineteen and determined.

I’ve subsequently seen the film and know, that compared with, say, Jimi Plays Berkeley, this was not a great Hendrix gig. However, with my enhanced consciousness, this is what I experienced.

There was a beam of light coming out of the top of his head into the sky. There was another beam of visible energy coming from the centre of his chest into the centre of mine. A further beam went from the top of my head into the sky. Through this circuit incredible unearthly sounds of cosmic power and glory were flowing imbued with a passion and intensity that passeth all understanding. It was as if Hendrix was trying to pull God down from the sky to show everybody. He knew it was impossible, but he was going to try his damnedest.

At one point, just in front of me, a foolhardy hippie got to his feet and began to idiot dance. Immediately a stunningly beautiful blonde, incandescent with outrage, leapt up behind him, put her hands on his shoulders and slammed his arse into the ground. The fool had gotten between her and Jimi. He had the good sense not to rise again.

When Hendrix finished he apologised, said something like ‘maybe we’ll get it together next time.’ I couldn’t understand it. I was blissed out in the extreme. The top of the stage appeared to be on fire, but that seemed perfectly natural to me. How could you follow that? Apparently with Joan Baez or Leonard Cohen, I forget which, but I do remember running out of that arena as fast as I could. Hendrix was still resonating through my head, the way the taste of a delicious meal can linger in your mouth. I couldn’t be doing with acoustical folkiness whilst still savouring the afterglow of James Marshall Hendrix.

When I got back to our campsite ten minutes later I found that one of my genius mates had taped the Hendrix set. We plugged his cassette machine into a large pair of speakers and listened to it all over again.

Melvis © 2009