Roy Harper and the Free Hyde Park Concerts.
I think it was Blackhill Enterprises with Pete Jenner who organised the free festivals in Hyde Park. They were wonderful.
It fitted in very nicely with the sixties attitude – music was not about money. Music was sharing and celebration. Those early concerts were just that. I suppose they were the London equivalent of the West Coast San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge free festivals – The Human Be-ins.
Pete had managed Pink Floyd. When Syd left Pete stayed with Syd. Floyd were instrumental in the whole emerging London Underground scene and were up to all manner of mischief and mayhem – like the infamous Games in May. Pete went on to work with Roy at Abbey Road on his wonderful Harvest albums in the 70s.
When it started up in 1968 I went along and it was a relatively small affair. A bunch of us freaks all turned up – seemingly just a few hundred – and we had a great day getting to know each other, passing around the sacraments and listening to the music.
The important thing for me was that Roy both compered and played. That was enough for me.
As it went along it got bigger and bigger, pulling in the weekend freaks and the out-of-towners. There were always some great bands – Pink Floyd, The Social Deviants, Pink Fairies, Traffic, Edgar Broughton Band, Pretty Things, Stefan Grossman, John Fahey, Action, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Jethro Tull, Fleetwood Mac, Nice, Fairport Convention and Pete Brown’s Battered Ornaments – but the main thing was to get together with a bunch of like-minded people to dig the scene, have a laugh, talk and come together.
I suppose my particular highlights was seeing Edgar Broughton doing his Captain Beefheart Drop Out Boogie and then giving those demons hell and the Pretty Things and Social Deviants jamming together and Twink climbing up the scaffolding and diving headfirst into the crowd. How he didn’t break his neck I’ll never know.
Roy was always great. He played Nobody’s got any money in the Summer – which seemed to be a suitable anthem for the whole Summer madness. I also remember him playing – In the time of Water – with some weird little marimba type instrument – the only time I ever heard him play either that number or that instrument. But more importantly he would talk between acts, introduce people and the whole thing had a relaxed, friendly vibe. Roy’s songs were the epitome of what the Underground was about. His anger at the establishment and how society was being run was exactly what we all felt.
Then it all went wrong. It was like the big boys moved in and it ceased to be a gathering of the faithful and became more of a corporate event. The Stones and Blind Faith drew in enormous crowds. I heard that Roy was not even allowed on stage and was turned away. The concerts were great but the ‘family’ vibe was no more. They’d become too big and turned into a spectacle.
The last one I went to was in 1974 with that fabulous Roy Harper and Heavy Friends (featuring John Paul Jones, Dave Gilmour and Steve Broughton). McGuinn was good too. It was great but it wasn’t like those early days.
But for me those Hyde Park Free Concerts represented all that was good about the sixties – the sharing, the friends, the positive vibes, the camaraderie, and the optimism – with Roy as the mischievous magician orchestrating the whole show.