Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music 1970

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Poster for the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music 1970
Poster for the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music 1970

The Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music was a music festival held at the Bath and Wells Showground in Shepton Mallet on the 27-28th June 1970. It featured a lineup of the top American west coast and British bands of the day, including Donovan, Mothers of Invention, Santana, The Flock, Led Zeppelin (headlining act), Hot Tuna, Country Joe McDonald, Jefferson Airplane (set aborted), The Byrds (acoustic set), Moody Blues (unable to play), Dr. John (acoustic set), Frank Zappa, Canned Heat, It's a Beautiful Day, Steppenwolf, Johnny Winter, John Mayall, Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention, and Keef Hartley. This lineup eclipsed the more famous Isle Of Wight festival held in August of the same year, but as it attracted less press coverage at the time and was a smaller affair, it has generally received less attention in the years since. The show started at midday on the 27th (a Saturday) and finished at about 6:30 am on Monday morning.

Bath was the brainchild of promoter Freddy Bannister, who had held a smaller Blues festival within Bath itself in 1969. The 1970 show attracted a significantly larger crowd of 150,000, but, like the Isle of Wight festival, an audience of such magnitude created some serious on-ground difficulties. The logistics proved to be too vast for Bannister's small team to adequately cope with, and his security staff stole large amounts of gate receipts, resulting in a far smaller profit than expected. The festival also suffered from inclement weather on the Sunday night, with Jefferson Airplane being rained off half way through their set and The Moody Blues not playing at all due to the wet stage.

Actually getting to the festival itself was another problem for many of the throng of fans. The country lanes leading to the site were swiftly blocked by cars, also meaning that many of the bands' equipment trucks could not get to the site. As a consequence the festival ran behind schedule and many bands had to play to diminished crowds in the small hours of Monday morning. The last act, Dr John, hit the stage at dawn on the Monday

The festival featured many innovations, including projections of the bands on screens on the side of the stage, a good quality PA system, on-site tents for the patrons to sleep in and larger tents which projected films such as King Kong throughout the night . The expenditure on these items ate into the profits, and many people decamped with the tents, which were hired. This was another expense that had to borne by the promoters.

The festival was captured on both film and on video, in varying quality, but a lack of post-festival organisation led to the footage being lost for many years. Much of it has now been recovered, but the black and white footage is of poor quality and is in many different hands. It is considered unlikely that it will ever see the light of day as a legitimate release since no one can agree on who owns the copyright. This situation could be contrasted to the Isle of Wight Festival, which was professionally recorded and filmed in colour.

The festival was widely bootleged, and several audience tapes are now in circulation. It is rumoured that excellent soundboard tapes also exist, though to this point they have not publicly surfaced.

[edit] Led Zeppelin performance

Led Zeppelin accepted an offer from Bannister to headline the festival at a fee of ₤20,000. They took the stage at about 8:30 pm, as the sun was setting. The band's performance is widely considered by music critics, and members of Led Zeppelin itself, as being one of the most important of their career, representing a turning point in terms of the amount of recognition they received in Britain (until that point their on-stage success and popularity had largely been borne out on numerous United States concert tours). At Bath the band played five encores. Their setlist from the show is as follows:

[edit] Pink Floyd performance

At the concert Pink Floyd premiered their new suite, "Atom Heart Mother", which at that time was announced as the "Amazing Pudding". The performance featured a complete brass band and 12 string choir, and took place at precisely 3 am, due to major delays. As well as the Atom Heart Mother suite, the band also played tracks from "Ummagumma", "Music From the Film More" and "A Saucerful of Secrets". The band's setlist from the show is as follows:

[edit] External Links

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