Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-30-1970: Part 9: Richie Havens

Here is the ninth and final album from the last day of the 1970 Isle of Wight festival. It's an acoustic set by Richie Havens.

Perhaps the festival organizers thought there would some positive symbolism to having Havens close the festival, since he was the act to open the 1969 Woodstock Festival, and their hope was this would be seen as the British version of Woodstock. 

When I first posted most of the music from this festival in 2023, I skipped the sets by Donovan, Joan Baez, and Havens, due to poor sound quality. We have soundboard recordings from nearly all the other acts, but only audience recordings from those three. But now, as I write this in 2026, I think the audio editing technology has improved enough for me to post these. Beware though, since the sound quality is still pretty rough. Only so much could be done.

That was especially the case with this Havens set. The good news is that he mostly performed in solo acoustic mode, although he was supplemented by some drumming and some other instruments on a few songs. That's good, because it's easier to get a clear recording from a solo acoustic performance than a full band one. But cutting against that was Havens' aggressive strumming style. There was a frequent problem of wind blowing against the microphones, and that was made worse by his style, with the microphone probably already near its limit. 

Luckily, I have an audio editing program, Izotope, that has a specific "de-wind" filter, as well as a "de-rustle" one. I used both of those on all the songs here, and it helped a lot. I used some other audio editing tricks as well. Read my write-up for the Donovan set for more information on that. The bottom line is, this sounds decent now, but still far from as good as most of the rest of the festival. Still, it's nice to have this, if you want to have as much from the festival as reasonable, like I do.

I included the rest of this write-up for the Leonard Cohen set when I posted it back in 2023. That's because the Cohen one was the last set from the festival that I posted at that time. But now that we have one after that one, I've moved that text from that album to here:

--- 

So that's the end of the festival. All in all, I have to say that although the festival had some problems, in terms of music, the line-up was fantastic, and the recordings that have been made public contain a lot of great music. That's especially the case because so few festivals from this era were professionally recorded from start to finish like this one was. The only one that bests it, in my opinion, is Woodstock, because all of that has been released. 

Maybe someday there will be a complete release of this festival too, allowing us to hear the full sets from Kris Kristofferson, Mighty Baby, Supertramp, the Groundhogs, Gilberto Gil & Caetano Veloso, Fairfield Parlour (a.k.a. Kaleidoscope), Lighthouse, Family, Cactus, Shawn Phillips, Tiny Tim, Melanie, Ralph McTell, and more. If that happens, I think it would be an even more impressive musical document than Woodstock, with even more big name classic artists.

Oh, as an aside, the Everly Brothers, Mungo Jerry,  Cat Mother, Spirit, and Redbone were on the bill for the concert, but none of them actually played. There were a lot of last minute arguments with the promoters about getting paid, since it was common for musical acts to get stiffed at big festivals like this at the time. Here's a concert poster showing the acts, including those who didn't show. You can tell from the font size which ones were considered the biggest attractions.

In case you want to know more about the festival, there's an entire website about it here, with lots of photos and personal accounts:

https://www.ukrockfestivals.com/iow1970menu.html

If you attended, I'd be curious to hear your impressions. Was it a disaster, or great, or somewhere in between? I gather the vast majority of people who went had a good time, so I'd consider that a successful festival.

This album is an hour and one minute long. 

154 Maggie's Farm (Richie Havens)
155 Minstrel from the Gault (Richie Havens)
156 Fire and Rain (Richie Havens)
157 War (Richie Havens)
158 I'm a Stranger Here (Richie Havens)
159 The Parable of Ramon (Richie Havens)
160 Here Comes the Sun (Richie Havens)
161 Freedom - Run Shaker Run (Richie Havens)
162 talk (Richie Havens)
163 Hare Krishna (Richie Havens)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/NB1fkJhs

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/UINy9WILdRLmo9B/file

The cover image is from this exact concert.