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.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-30-1970: Part 7: Joan Baez

This is the seventh album from the last day of the 1970 Isle of Wight festival. It's an acoustic set by Joan Baez.

I've described in other write-ups how, when I posted most of the music from this festival in 2023, I didn't post a few of the sets due to poor sound quality. This is one of those sets, along with ones from Donovan and Richie Havens. But as I write this three years later, audio editing technology improved enough for me to hopefully clean these up enough to make them worth listening.

For whatever reason, out of the three, this Baez one probably sounds the best. Most of it comes from an audience bootleg. But a couple of the songs come from other sources which are a lot better, for instance "Let It Be." Perhaps the crowd was quieter, since it was late at night by this time. Also, there don't seem to be as many airplanes flying overhead as during the Donovan set, which took place in the middle in the day. Still one more lucky thing is that the taper recorded most of the banter between songs, when virtually none of that was recorded for the Donovan and Richie Havens sets. 

I ran this music through various audio editing filters, the same ones I described in my write-up for the Donovan album. So that helped. But still, beware. One can only do so much with problematic source material. This sounds okay now, but it still sounds worse than most of the other music from this festival. 

This album is an hour and two minutes long.

105 Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word (Joan Baez)
106 talk (Joan Baez)
107 Let It Be (Joan Baez)
108 Joe Hill (Joan Baez)
109 talk (Joan Baez)
110 The Brand New Tennessee Waltz (Joan Baez)
111 talk (Joan Baez)
112 The Hitchhikers' Song (Joan Baez)
113 The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [Edit] (Joan Baez)
114 Farewell, Angelina (Joan Baez)
115 talk (Joan Baez)
116 Oh Happy Day (Joan Baez)
117 Blowin' in the Wind (Joan Baez)
118 Gracias a la Vida (Joan Baez)
119 Te Ador (Joan Baez)
120 talk (Joan Baez)
121 C'era Un Ragazzo Che Come Me Amava [Edit] (Joan Baez)
122 Suzanne (Joan Baez)
123 talk (Joan Baez)
124 Sweet Sir Galahad (Joan Baez)
125 I Shall Be Released (Joan Baez)
126 talk (Joan Baez)
127 Ghetto (Joan Baez)
128 Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (Joan Baez)
129 We Want Our Freedom Now (Joan Baez)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1yVdU8uM 

alternate:

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

The cover image is from this exact concert.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-30-1970: Part 2: Donovan

Back in 2023, I posted the vast majority of all the available music from the 1970 Isle of Wight festival. However, there were three sets I didn't post due to sound quality issues. This set by Donovan was one of them. I have now made some audio edits to get this to a decent state. But note that the sound quality is just okay, and worse than the vast majority of the recordings from this festival.

The problem here is that while most of the other publicly available recordings from this festival are soundboard bootlegs (or even official live albums), this one comes from an audience bootleg. And not even a particularly good one. There was a lot of wind blowing on the mike, airplanes flying overhead, nearby people talking, and other such problems that got onto the record. 

On the plus side, I write this in September 2026, and audio editing technology has improved a lot since I posted most of the other music from the festival in 2023. So I ran these songs through multiple filters, mostly using the MVSEP program, but also Izotope 10. That helped sometimes, but not all the time. It's better, for sure, and I consider it listenable, but if you have high standards, this probably isn't for you. There still are many problems I couldn't fix.  

For most of the concert, Donovan performed in solo acoustic mode. That was a lucky break for us, because it's easier to get a decent recording of that kind of music compared to a full band one. But for the last few songs, he switched to performing with his band at the time, Open Road. The last four songs in particular got really rocking, which meant the sound quality got even worse. So I decided not to include those, sorry.

Thing start off strong with "Catch the Wind." But that's just luck. It has the best sound quality of any song, because it was included on the album "Message to Love" that went with the film documentary of the same name. You'll notice a drop-off between that and everything else.

Another problem is there's no banter between songs, with one exception (track 21). That's because the person who recorded this paused the recordings between songs. This was a common bootleg recording style in this era, due to people wanting to save tape. The audience applause was generally cut off right in the middle as well for every song. But there were a few that escaped that problem. I used the few cases of having the applause die out, and then pasted those endings onto other songs, so all the applause come to natural ends. 

This album is 56 minutes long.

017 Catch the Wind (Donovan)
018 Henry Martin (Donovan)
019 Sailing Homeward (Donovan)
020 The Pee Song (Donovan)
021 talk (Donovan)
022 Hurdy Gurdy Man (Donovan)
023 Slow Down World (Donovan)
024 There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly (Donovan)
025 The Garden (Donovan)
026 How Silly (Donovan)
027 Get Myself Together Somehow (Donovan)
028 Atlantis (Donovan)
029 Sand and Foam (Donovan)
030 There Is a Mountain (Donovan)
031 Train Whistle Blues (Donovan)
032 Mistaken Eternity (Donovan)
033 Season of the Witch (Donovan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/uUHwRKtE 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/He9B38q80uR8oYP/file

The cover image comes from this exact concert. 

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-29-1970: Part 1: John Sebastian

I'm very delighted to be posting this. Back in August 2023, I posted most of the music from the big name acts who played the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. However, there were a few that I'd missed. What was frustrating was that I found four more sets, of John Sebastian, Donovan, Joan Baez, and Richie Havens, but they were from audience bootlegs and the sound quality was so poor that I decided they weren't worthy of posting.

Recently though (November 2023), my musical associate Lil Panda was telling me about the great features of the audio editing program he's using, called Izotope. (I don't have that one, since it's fairly pricey.) One feature it has is to "de-wind" - to get rid of the sound distortions caused by wind blowing on microphones. That was the exact problem with the audience bootlegs of those four Isle of Wight sets that I didn't post - lots and lots of wind noises. So I asked if he could try out the de-wind function of them, and he agreed. Boy, what a difference! It's like day and night. The wind rustling noises are pretty much totally gone. Thanks to that change, I feel I can finally post those four sets, starting with this one.

Keep in mind though that this is still based on an audience bootleg. So while it's definitely listenable, in my opinion, it's not as good as a soundboard recording, which is what most of the other Isle of Wight sets are. Luckily, this is a solo acoustic set, which means the sound flaws are less noticeable than if it had been a full band set. But things are variable. For instance, the first song "Mobile Line" sounds rough, but a few songs later, "She's a Lady" sounds pretty much like a soundboard. So if you're very picky when it comes to sound quality, listen to the whole thing. At least a good chunk should be acceptable to even those with high standards.

When I first posted all the Isle of Wight albums in August 2023, I was only able to find three songs from John Sebastian's set with worthy sound quality. "Red Eye Express" was included in the documentary movie "Message to Love." "Daydream" also sounded particularly good, although I don't know why. Those three had been included as part of the Joni Mitchell set, which I'd called Part 1 for the August 29, 1970 sets. But now I've removed those from her set, and given it a new title (Part 2), new cover art to fix the title, and new song numbering (since the numbering continues from after Sebastian's set). Then all the other sets from August 29, 1970 are changed, with Part 2 becoming Part 3, and Part 3 becoming Part 4, and so on. Thus, I recommend you re-download all of those. Furthermore, I've added two songs to the Ten Years After set, so you'll especially want to get that one.

It'll probably be a couple of weeks before I can add the Donovan, Joan Baez, and Richie Havens sets, because Lil Panda is traveling and won't be able to get to them until then. All three of those sets are from the last day of the festival, August 30, 1970, so there will be lots of renumbering of all the sets from that day.

One nice surprise about this album is that, midway through Sebastian's set, he had an impromptu reunion with Zal Yanovsky, who co-founded the Lovin' Spoonful with Sebastian. They played four Lovin' Spoonful songs together that Sebastian usually didn't play as a solo artist. Here's what Sebastian later had to say about it: "I hadn’t played with Zal since the group broke up, except in hotel rooms and living rooms. He’s been touring with Kris Kristofferson, you know, and a message was passed up to me on stage twice before I understood it, asking me why I didn’t ask Zal to come up. It was really weird doing those old Spoonful numbers."

There's a fair amount of talking between songs. In addition to what Lil Panda did with getting rid of the wind sounds, I ran all the talking tracks through another editing filter. This one is called "Enhance Speech," by Adobe. Unfortunately, it's only good for talking, not singing. For these tracks, it did add some clarity to his somewhat muffled voice.

This album is an hour and nine minutes long.

001 Mobile Line (John Sebastian)
002 Lovin' You (John Sebastian)
003 You're a Big Boy Now (John Sebastian)
004 talk (John Sebastian)
005 She's a Lady (John Sebastian)
006 How Have You Been (John Sebastian)
007 talk (John Sebastian)
008 Jug Band Music (John Sebastian)
009 talk (John Sebastian)
010 I Had a Dream (John Sebastian)
011 In the Still of the Night (John Sebastian)
012 talk (John Sebastian)
013 4 Eyes (John Sebastian)
014 talk (John Sebastian)
015 Rainbows All Over Your Blues (John Sebastian)
016 talk (John Sebastian)
017 Blues in the Bottle (John Sebastian with Zal Yanovsky)
018 Do You Believe in Magic (John Sebastian with Zal Yanovsky)
019 talk (John Sebastian with Zal Yanovsky)
020 Boredom (John Sebastian with Zal Yanovsky)
021 talk (John Sebastian with Zal Yanovsky)
022 Bald Headed Lena (John Sebastian with Zal Yanovsky)
023 talk (John Sebastian)
024 Darlin' Be Home Soon (John Sebastian)
025 Harmonica Solo [Instrumental] (John Sebastian)
026 Younger Generation (John Sebastian)
027 talk (John Sebastian)
028 Daydream (John Sebastian)
029 Red Eye Express (John Sebastian)
030 talk (John Sebastian)
031 Younger Girl (John Sebastian)
032 talk (John Sebastian) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/uPAoebqX

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/h2k0BmQoJuRdu4L/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-30-1970: Part 8: Leonard Cohen

This is the very last of the albums I've posting from the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, unless more music emerges with worthy sound quality. (And I know there's more out there, so please help if you can!) 

Many people got the impression that Jimi Hendrix was the last act of the festival. But there actually were three more big name acts who came after him: Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, and Richie Havens. It was about 2 A.M. when Baez started her set, and about dawn when Havens finished his set. I don't know what the festival organizers were thinking putting on three mellow folk artists after the hard rocking Hendrix, but that's what they did.

We only have rough audience bootleg recordings of the sets by Baez and Havens. But Cohen's full set is presented here in excellent sound, due to the fact that it was officially released in 2008 as "Leonard Cohen: Live at the Isle of Wight 1970."

Here's what Murray Lerner, director of "Message to Love," had to say about Cohen's set: “[Cohen] said some very nice things about the radical movement of the time: 'We’re a small nation, but we're going to grow. We need our own land.' I remember he had a lot of beautiful women singing with him – I was jealous. He had that kind of attraction, I think - the suffering poet [laughs]."

This album is an hour and 23 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On September 6, 2026, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. However, I changed the album title from "Part 6" to "Part 8," and renumbered all the songs, because I found a set that comes before this that I'd previously missed.

130 talk (Leonard Cohen)
131 Bird on the Wire (Leonard Cohen)
132 talk (Leonard Cohen)
133 So Long, Marianne (Leonard Cohen)
134 talk (Leonard Cohen)
135 You Know Who I Am (Leonard Cohen)
136 talk (Leonard Cohen)
137 Lady Midnight (Leonard Cohen)
138 talk (Leonard Cohen)
139 One of Us Cannot Be Wrong (Leonard Cohen)
140 The Stranger Song (Leonard Cohen)
141 talk (Leonard Cohen)
142 Tonight Will Be Fine (Leonard Cohen)
143 talk (Leonard Cohen)
144 Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye (Leonard Cohen)
145 Diamonds in the Mine (Leonard Cohen)
146 Suzanne (Leonard Cohen)
147 talk (Leonard Cohen)
148 Sing Another Song, Boys (Leonard Cohen)
149 The Partisan [La Complainte du Partisan] (Leonard Cohen)
150 talk (Leonard Cohen)
151 Famous Blue Raincoat (Leonard Cohen)
152 talk (Leonard Cohen)
153 Seems So Long Ago, Nancy (Leonard Cohen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Av4U55Zd

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/eEA6ppzlKBvKWZi/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-30-1970: Part 6: Jimi Hendrix

By this time on August 30, 1970, the Isle of Wight Festival was coming close to the end. But there were still four more acts to go, and the next act was probably the most anticipated one for the crowd: Jimi Hendrix.

Unfortunately, Hendrix's performance was not his best. Hendrix hadn't played any concerts for a month, which was a long time for him back then. Drummer Mitch Mitchell later admitted that it was a mistake not to rehearsed before they took the stage. "We were rusty, and it showed. The audience didn't help, and we had technical problems, with funny voices coming through the PA." And  "it was cold and dank."

Pete Townshend, lead guitarist for the Who, later commented, "What made me work so hard was seeing the condition that Jimi Hendrix was in. He was in such tragically bad condition physically. And I remember thanking God as I walked on the stage that I was healthy." Perhaps Townshend had a point, because Hendrix died just two weeks after this concert. It was his last performance in Britain.

However, Murray Lerner, director of "Message to Love," the music documentary of the festival, disagreed: “I didn’t think he was in bad shape, I just thought he was tired. He did great renditions of 'Red House' and 'Machine Gun' – which I think is as good as anything he's ever done. Although admittedly he didn’t give the usual wild, waving around [performance]." 

Lerner added, "Before he went on, Jimi asked: 'How does "God Save the Queen" go?' And then he played it. He said: 'Everyone stand up for your country and your beliefs, and if you don’t, fuck you.' 'Machine Gun' is always great, but in this case [Hendrix said]: 'Here’s a song for the skinheads in Birmingham. Oh yeah, and Vietnam. I almost forgot about that.' 'Machine Gun' goes on for about 17 minutes.”

Personally, I think this performance is better than most people give it credit for. It did start poorly. Hendrix apparently had just taken a nap before going on stage, and he was still groggy. After a few numbers, he actually commented between songs that he was starting over. I think from that point on, he got a lot better. I like concerts from the latter part of Hendrix's all-too-short career, where he played many of his great newly written songs, like "Dolly Dagger" and "Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)." It's particularly nice that he played "All Along the Watchtower," because he didn't do that one very often.

The recording sounds excellent, because his entire set was officially released in 2002 as the album "Blue Wild Angel: Live at the Isle of Wight." Most of it has also been released on DVD.

This album is an hour and 59 minutes long. I think it's the longest recording from the festival.

UPDATE: On September 6, 2026, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. However, I changed the album title from "Part 5" to "Part 6," and renumbered all the songs, because I found a set that comes before this that I'd previously missed.

079 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
080 God Save the Queen [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix)
081 Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Jimi Hendrix)
082 Spanish Castle Magic (Jimi Hendrix)
083 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
084 All Along the Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix)
085 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
086 Machine Gun (Jimi Hendrix)
087 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
088 Lover Man (Jimi Hendrix)
089 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
090 Freedom (Jimi Hendrix)
091 Red House (Jimi Hendrix)
092 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
093 Dolly Dagger (Jimi Hendrix)
094 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
095 Midnight Lightning (Jimi Hendrix)
096 Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix)
097 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
098 Message to Love (Jimi Hendrix)
099 Hey Baby [New Rising Sun] (Jimi Hendrix)
100 Ezy Rider (Jimi Hendrix)
101 Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix)
102 Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
103 Voodoo Child [Slight Return] (Jimi Hendrix)
104 In from the Storm (Jimi Hendrix)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/kqy4VS5f

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/1HNFiJJ4HgPJyKu/file

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-30-1970: Part 5: Jethro Tull

The next act to play at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival was Jethro Tull.

Here's what band leader Ian Anderson had to say about the festival: "Things were going around both backstage and front of house that made it a little unpleasant for everybody. It was out of control, and the organizers were struggling to keep the thing from degenerating into something quite horrible. It was perhaps a testimony to the local police, and generally the welcoming residents of the Isle of Wight, that the thing happened at all." 

Regarding the Jethro Tull set, he said, "At the Isle of Wight, we knew we were unlikely to get paid, and we determined early on that this was something that we really just had to go through and try and keep a modicum of a smile on our faces. So we just kind of got on with it and did our bit. It was not a good gig, it was not a bad gig, it was just a little frenetic and a little tense."

Once again, the sound quality is excellent, because the complete set has been officially released. It came out in 2002 as "Nothing Is Easy: Live at the Isle of Wight 1970."

This album is an hour and seven minutes long. 

UPDATE: On September 6, 2026, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. However, I changed the album title from "Part 4" to "Part 5," and renumbered all the songs, because I found a set that comes before this that I'd previously missed.

065 talk (Jethro Tull)
066 My Sunday Feeling (Jethro Tull)
067 talk (Jethro Tull)
068 My God (Jethro Tull)
069 talk (Jethro Tull)
070 With You There to Help Me (Jethro Tull)
071 To Cry You a Song (Jethro Tull)
072 Bouree [Instrumental] (Jethro Tull)
073 talk (Jethro Tull)
074 Dharma for One (Jethro Tull)
075 talk (Jethro Tull)
076 Nothing Is Easy (Jethro Tull)
077 We Used to Know (Jethro Tull)
078 For a Thousand Mothers (Jethro Tull)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/y5RFQLiG 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/UFDS0oQIjtRKQXL/file

The cover photo of Ian Anderson is from this exact concert.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-30-1970: Part 4: The Moody Blues

Continuing to move forward chronologically, next up for the Isle of Wight Festival is the Moody Blues.

When the band started to play it was still light out, but by the time they finished over an hour later, it was dark.

The set is complete and sounds excellent, due to the fact that it was officially released in 2008 as the album "Threshold of a Dream: Live at the Isle of Wight 1970."

Murray Lerner, director of "Message to Love," the music documentary of the festival, looked back on the set with the eye of a director interested in the visual presentation. "It was at twilight, and the lighting was unusual. I liked the singing – it was more melodic than most of the other groups. Especially 'Nights in White Satin.' They were sympathetic to the crowd – that I remember quite well. And the beauty of the light at the time they performed was amazing."

This album is an hour and ten minutes long.

UPDATE: On September 6, 2026, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. However, I changed the album title from "Part 3" to "Part 4," and renumbered all the songs, because I found a set that comes before this that I'd previously missed.

041 talk (Moody Blues)
042 Gypsy (Moody Blues)
043 talk (Moody Blues)
044 The Sunset (Moody Blues)
045 Tuesday Afternoon (Moody Blues)
046 Minstrel's Song (Moody Blues)
047 talk (Moody Blues)
048 Never Comes the Day (Moody Blues)
049 talk (Moody Blues)
050 Tortoise and the Hare (Moody Blues)
051 talk (Moody Blues)
052 Question (Moody Blues)
053 talk (Moody Blues)
054 Melancholy Man (Moody Blues)
055 talk (Moody Blues)
056 Are You Sitting Comfortably (Moody Blues)
057 The Dream (Moody Blues)
058 Have You Heard [Part 1] (Moody Blues)
059 Voyage (Moody Blues)
060 Have You Heard [Part 2] (Moody Blues)
061 Nights in White Satin (Moody Blues)
062 talk (Moody Blues)
063 Legend of a Mind (Moody Blues)
064 Ride My See Saw (Moody Blues)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/nM3D2Z5S 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/rtWBB3MnxkQhPBF/file

The cover photo comes from this exact concert. I wanted a photo of the entire band, but I could only find good ones of individual band members. So I chose a photo of Justin Hayward, who sang and wrote most of their hits.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-30-1970: Part 3: Pentangle

After Donovan, the next act at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival was the British folk-rock band Pentangle.

When I first posted this album in 2023, it also included three songs from Donovan's set, which came right before Pentangle's. However, when I reposted this in 2026, I was able to finally include Donovan's set as a separate album. So this album, previously "Part 2," has been renamed to "Part 3," and the Donovan songs have been removed.

We're lucky to have most of the Pentangle set. None of it has been officially released, nor did any of it appear on any bootlegs that I know of. However, in 2019, Colin Harper posted what he had of the set on YouTube, and I've taken it from there. Harper wrote a book about Pentangle and has been involved in the rerelease of all their albums, so he's had access to material from their vaults. 

That's the good news. The bad news is, there were a number of problems with this recording. First off, the first three songs are missing: "Train Song," "Sally Free and Easy," and "Bruton Town." There was nothing I could do about that. Also, the first minute or so of "Hunting Song" was missing, and the last couple of minutes of the final song, "Pentangling," was missing. I found a good bootleg from the same year at Berkeley, and I patched in parts of that to fill in the missing sections. As a result, there are now about 37 minutes out of what had been a 55 minute set.

Pentangle was not happy with how their set went. Harper wrote: "The group always recalled the show as sub-par, to do with various offstage distractions, poor onstage sound, and someone stage-invading at one point and standing on singer Jacqui McShee's foot (indeed, you can hear her asking this person to get off her foot during 'Rain and Snow'). [However,] at this remove, it sounds like they acquitted themselves very well in the circumstances."

This album is 37 minutes long.

034 talk (Pentangle)
035 Light Flight (Pentangle)
036 Will the Circle Be Unbroken (Pentangle)
037 Hunting Song [Edit] (Pentangle)
038 Rain and Snow (Pentangle)
039 House Carpenter (Pentangle)
040 Pentangling [Edit] (Pentangle)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/paqWbbjX 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/tEX3yaxk0EWN6Cq/file

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-30-1970: Part 1: Free

This album is the first of the last day of the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. As such, the track numbering starts at one again and the coloring of the text on the album cover is different (yellow for all the albums from this day).

The good news is that I have the entire set from the band Free here, in excellent sound. The band news is there were four acts that played before Free on this day, and I don't have any music from any of them at all. The four acts were :Good News, Kris Kristofferson, Ralph McTell, and Heaven. Don't feel bad if you never heard of Good News or Heaven, as they're both very obscure. 

Kris Kristofferson played earlier in the festival, but his set was badly received, in part due to problems with the sound system. So he was given another chance on this day. His music was much better received this time. Folk-rocker Ralph McTell also went over well, according to the press accounts.

That takes us to Free. They had just released the album "Fire and Water," containing their biggest hit, "All Right Now." The popularity surged. The album reached Number Two in the British charts, when their last two albums hadn't charted at all. The crowd was still near its maximum size of 600,000 to 700,000 people, so it was the biggest moment of Free's career so far.

Murray Lerner, the director of "Message to Love," the music documentary of the festival, later said about Free, "To me they were a revelation. I had never heard them before. I thought they were fantastic – their energy, their sensibility. And 'All Right Now' to me was really a thrilling song."

The sound quality is excellent, because the whole set was officially released as the album "Live at the Isle of Wight 1970."

This album is 49 minutes long.

001 talk (Free)
002 Ride on a Pony (Free)
003 talk (Free)
004 Woman (Free)
005 talk (Free)
006 The Stealer (Free)
007 talk (Free)
008 Be My Friend (Free)
009 Mr. Big (Free)
010 talk (Free)
011 Fire and Water (Free)
012 I'm a Mover (Free)
013 The Hunter (Free)
014 All Right Now (Free)
015 talk (Free)
016 Crossroads (Free)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/73uwuG8g 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ZFaI3Bdg00sZpEx/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-29-1970: Part 8: Melanie & Sly & the Family Stone

By the time these acts played on the August 29, 1970 bill for the 1970 Isle of Wight, it was well after midnight. (Technically, I should date these performances to August 30th, but if I did that it would get messy since I often don't know which acts went on after midnight.) The still massive crowd was getting very sleepy.

With that in mind, it seems bizarre that the next acts to follow the Who were Melanie, a sensitive female singer-songwriter, and then the energetic funksters Sly and the Family Stone. But that's what happened.

In retrospect, it looks like Melanie got the shaft. She had been an unknown newcomer until she got widespread attention with her performance at the Woodstock Festival in 1969. Since then, she'd had a big hit in early 1970 with her song "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)" about her Woodstock experience. 

Melanie later described her experience at the Isle of Wight Festival: "I had to follow The Who's performance of 'Tommy.' Nobody wanted to do it. Jim Morrison from the Doors turned it down. I don't know how I got it. I was the path of least resistance, I guess. I was all by myself. [Who drummer] Keith Moon announced me. We had spent a lot of time together that day and had become friends. He realized my situation and helped to break the ice. It was [getting near] dawn. The Who had played throughout the night. There was a friendly atmosphere but, [the audience] finished. They had just seen 'Tommy'; [Who singer] Roger Daltrey in his prime. Here I was, with just my guitar and my voice. I started to sing. The dawn was coming and the sun was rising. Little by little, I see heads popping up. I woke everybody up! I played one of my best concerts. After I did the Isle of Wight, I had two hit albums in England."

Unfortunately, I was unable to find much of Melanie's set in worthy sound quality. I've only included three songs, and I'm probably pushing it with a couple of these. Her song "What Have They Done to My Song Ma" sounds the best, because the full version was later shown in a French TV documentary.

By the time Sly and the Family Stone started their set, the sun had already come up! (You can see this with the cover photo.) The band's music is about as lively and danceable as music can be. It seemed most of the crowd did rouse themselves for the performance. However, most were too exhausted to dance and just watched.

Jerry Martini, saxophone player Jerry Martini for Sly and the Family Stone, later recalled about their set: "It was good. I just remember us playing our concert, going over well, and having a great time at the nightclub they had there – it was jam-packed. I remember leaving that with a good feeling." However, he added, "I don't think it was as good as Woodstock for us. Woodstock did the most for us, but it was way up there."

Their set ended on a down note, however. After playing about 45 minutes, the band left the stage, and didn't return for an encore. According to one account, an empty beer can was thrown and hit the lead guitar player. Lead singer Sly Stone was so upset by this that he refused to return for the encore. But another account says the people running the concert cut things off due to the schedule being so wildly late. There was a public announcement that the area near the stage had to be cleared and cleaned up. 

The good news is that what exists of the Sly and the Family Stone set sounds great, because it was released on the box set "Higher!" The bad news is that it is known the band played three more songs at the start of their set: "Thank You [Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin]," "M'Lady," and "Sing a Simple Song." I've read that worthy versions of these songs are publicly out there, but are very hard to find. If you have them, please let me know so I can add them in.

This album is 30 minutes long.

133 What Have They Done to My Song Ma (Melanie)
134 Birthday of the Sun (Melanie)
135 Good Book (Melanie)
136 Stand (Sly & the Family Stone)
137 You Can Make It If You Try (Sly & the Family Stone)
138 Dance to the Music (Sly & the Family Stone)
139 Music Lover - I Want to Take You Higher (Sly & the Family Stone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1CJ2qEg9 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/uAt3L31ev0nQnlj/file

The cover photo of Sly and the Family Stone comes from this exact concert.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-29-1970: Part 7: The Who

The next musical act for August 29th at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival was the Who. It's pretty remarkable to consider that the Doors preceded the Who, after many other great acts, and there were still more to come before the night ended!

The Who were one of the few big acts to play both the 1969 and 1970 versions of the Isle of Wight Festival, so this is an opportune time to explain a bit about the history of the festival. 

The first Isle of Wight Festival was in 1968, and started out relatively small. Only about 10,000 people attended. Some of the acts that played were Jefferson Airplane, Arthur Brown, the Move, T. Rex, Fairport Convention, and the Pretty Things, but as far as I know, no known audio recordings exist. 

The 1969 festival was a much bigger deal, with about 150,000 people attending. The main draw was Bob Dylan, who played with the Band. It was Dylan's first full length concert since he'd been sidelined due to a motorcycle accident in 1966. Others who performed included the Band (by themselves), the Nice, the Pretty Things, the Who, Free, Pentangle, the Moody Blues, and Joe Cocker. As far as I know, there are no known recordings of any of these performances, with the notable exception of the Bob Dylan set, which eventually got officially released decades later.

By the way, the 1970 festival would be the last one until 2002. It became an annual festival after that. The 1970 one was so very large that it upset the people who lived nearby. The backlash was so severe that local officials made sure to foil any further festivals there. There was even an attempt to ban this time to festival nationwide, but it didn't pass because it proved impossible to make legislation that banned only festivals of music that establishment types didn't like.

Anyway, as mentioned above, the Who played both the 1969 and 1970 festivals. It turned out their set lists were very similar, because both featured full performances of the "Tommy" rock opera. At one point in this concert, lead guitarist Pete Townshend even commented on how similar their act was to one at the previous festival. The problem was the Who was taking a long time getting their next album ready. It wouldn't come out until 1971, the classic "Who's Next" album. Furthermore, in May 1970, the live album "Live at Leeds" was released, and most of the songs that they played that weren't a part of "Tommy" were included on that album.

They only played one song, "I Don't Even Know Myself," which they said was from their next album, though in the end it wasn't included on it. "Water" was another new song played here that ultimately didn't make it to that album.

But despite the fact the Who was treading water in terms of new material (in an era when acts usually released one album a year - Creedence Clearwater Revival released THREE in 1969!), they delivered an impressive, long performance. Murray Lerner, director of the "Message to Love" documentary about the festival, later commented, "The Who’s performance was really fantastic. A great, theatrical presentation, with huge spotlights behind them that dazzled you. The ending of Tommy was really incredible. And Naked Eye was great.  And of course, [drummer] Keith Moon was fantastic – playing around and having fun." 

This album is an hour and 52 minutes long.

095 talk (Who)
096 Heaven and Hell (Who)
097 talk (Who)
098 I Can't Explain (Who)
099 talk (Who)
100 Young Man Blues (Who)
101 talk (Who)
102 I Don't Even Know Myself (Who)
103 talk (Who)
104 Water (Who)
105 talk (Who)
106 Overture [Instrumental] (Who)
107 It's A Boy (Who)
108 1921 (Who)
109 Amazing Journey (Who)
110 Sparks [Instrumental] (Who)
111 Eyesight to the Blind [The Hawker] (Who)
112 Christmas (Who)
113 The Acid Queen (Who)
114 Pinball Wizard (Who)
115 Do You Think It's Alright (Who)
116 Fiddle About (Who)
117 Tommy Can You Hear Me (Who)
118 There's a Doctor (Who)
119 Go to the Mirror (Who)
120 Smash the Mirror (Who)
121 Miracle Cure (Who)
122 I'm Free (Who)
123 Tommy's Holiday Camp (Who)
124 We're Not Gonna Take It - See Me, Feel Me (Who)
125 Summertime Blues (Who)
126 Shakin' All Over (Who)
127 Spoonful (Who)
128 Twist and Shout (Who)
129 Substitute (Who)
130 My Generation (Who)
131 Naked Eye (Who)
132 Magic Bus (Who)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/tn1iiYca

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/eciWn0kVKcUSDeT/file

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-29-1970: Part 6: The Doors

The next musical act on August 30, 1970 of the Isle of Wight Festival were the Doors.

It's fairly remarkable the Doors were able to play this festival. At the time, lead singer Jim Morrison was in the middle of a trial in the US, for allegedly exposing himself on stage in Miami. But apparently, they had booked this concert appearance before those troubles began, so they were granted permission to leave the US briefly to perform at the festival.

Murray Lerner, who directed "Message to Love," a music documentary about the festival, later recalled: “Jim Morrison said to me: 'I don’t think you’re going to get an image, because our lights are low. We’re not going to change it.' But in fact I got some beautiful images by looking into the light and making it look surrealistic and abstract. ... The Doors were hypnotic, but they had to leave right after their performance – they were on trial in Miami. They were let out just for that performance. So they had to leave right away."

The band's most recent album was "Morrison Hotel," released in February 1970. But they only played two songs from it, "Ship of Fools" and "Roadhouse Blues." Instead, they generally leaned on classic songs dating back to 1967. It was pretty late at night by the time the band took the stage, and Morrison later complained about how cold and windy it was. So perhaps they relied on the songs they knew best to get their through a tough situation.

The sound quality is excellent, because the whole performance has been officially released on album and DVD as "Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970." However, I felt the lead vocals were rather low, so I boosted them in the mix using the UVR5 audio editing program.

This album is an hour and seven minutes long.

087 talk (Doors)
088 Back Door Man (Doors)
089 Break On Through [To the Other Side] (Doors)
090 When the Music's Over (Doors)
091 Ship of Fools (Doors)
092 Roadhouse Blues (Doors)
093 Light My Fire (Doors)
094 The End (Doors)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/KZnAQCpm

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ed9zS8sYss8VRnq/file

The cover photo comes from this exact concert. Most of the pictures I found were very dark and just featured Morrison, but this one had more light and showed the whole band.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-29-1970: Part 5: Emerson, Lake & Palmer

The next big act to play the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival was Emerson, Lake and Palmer (ELP).

They were unknown to the crowd, because they had only played their first concert a few days before. But they were given a prominent billing because they were considered a "supergroup" of sorts, coming from well regarded groups such as the Nice and King Crimson. Only after this concert did the band secure a record contract.

ELP singer Greg Lake later recalled about the festival, "The enduring memory is the actual physical sight of that many people. I suppose before that, the only other time you’d see that many people gathered together would have been a war. The night before, we’d played to something like 1,000 people. The next day it was 600,000."

Lake had mixed feelings about the festival as a whole: "There was a kind of random chaos taking place. In a way, it was all meant to be relaxed and 'peace, love, and have a nice day', but there was kind of a tension about the whole thing." However, the band's performance was received very well. "After that festival, the very next day, ELP was on the front page of every music newspaper. It was indeed one of those overnight sensations."

The bad did have one problematic moment, however. Lake recalled, "We decided to fire these 19th-century cannons at the end of 'Pictures At An Exhibition' – to emulate the 1812 Overture. Unknown to us, the road crew had doubled the charge in the cannons. All I can remember was seeing this huge, solid-iron cannon leave the ground! It blew a couple of people off the stage. Luckily there was no cannonball in it. Thank God!"

The set is complete, and it sounds great, because it was officially released as "Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970" in 1997.

Tracks 73 to 83 make up a musical suite called "Pictures at an Exhibition," based on a 1894 piano suite by the same name by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky. Despite being played in concert from this time forward, ELP wouldn't release an album version of it until late 1971.

This album is an hour and nine minutes long.

068 talk (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
070 talk (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
069 The Barbarian [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
071 Take a Pebble (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
072 talk (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
073 Promenade [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
074 The Gnome [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
075 Promenade (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
076 The Sage (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
077 The Old Castle [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
078 Blues Variations [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
080 The Hut of Baba Yaga [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
079 Promenade [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
081 The Curse of Baba Yaga (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
082 The Hut of Baba Yaga [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
083 The Great Gates of Kiev (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
084 Rondo [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
085 talk (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
086 Nut Rocker [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/f42sW4us

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/1B45m18frdhBfWX/file

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-29-1970: Part 4: Ten Years After

The next musical act to play the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival was Ten Years After.

This set started with the songs "Love like a Man" and "Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl." When I first posted this album, I didn't include them, because they sounded worse than the others. But I have since changed my mind, after making some tweaks to improve their sound somewhat. However, they still are rougher than the others.

As far as I know, the only song to be officially released is "I Can't Keep from Cryin' Sometimes," which was included in "The First Great Rock Festivals of the Seventies" album. Everything else is from audience bootleg sources. The remaining songs sound decent, though maybe not always as good as some of the other sets from the festival.

Apparently three more songs were played that I don't have, period: "Hobbit," "Classical Thing," and "Scat Thing." If anyone has what I'm missing, or has songs with better sound quality, please let me know.

There are only six songs here. But Ten Years After was knowing for extensive jamming, and that's the case here. "I'm Goin' Home" is over ten minutes long, and "I Can't Keep from Cryin' Sometimes" is nearly twenty minutes long.

This album is 55 minutes long.

UPDATE: On November 8, 2023, I updated the mp3 download file, because I added the first two songs, "Love like a Man" and "Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl."

061 Love like a Man (Ten Years After)
062 Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl (Ten Years After)
063 No Title (Ten Years After)
064 I Can't Keep from Cryin' Sometimes (Ten Years After)
065 talk (Ten Years After)
066 I'm Goin' Home (Ten Years After)
067 Sweet Little Sixteen (Ten Years After)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6TtPfmrc

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/VPwL7DjgMH19efk/file

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-29-1970: Part 3: Tiny Tim & Miles Davis

A great thing about big music festivals like the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival is the diversity of musical acts. That certainly is the case with this album. Who would ever put Tiny Tim and Miles Davis back to back? I don't know, but that's what happened in that festival.

As I mentioned in the write-up for the previous album, the huge crowd grew troublesome during Joni Mitchell's set, although it was not the fault of Mitchell or her excellent performance. Then, somewhat improbably, Tiny Tim put the crowd in a good mood again. The crowd of over half a million people then stayed in a good mood for the rest of the day, including having a positive reaction to Miles Davis, despite his jazz style being quite different from the music of nearly all the other acts.

Tiny Tim has to be the most unlikely star of the 1960s. Who could have imagined that playing ukelele and singing falsetto versions of songs from the 1920s and earlier would be a winning formula? But he had a hit with the song "Tiptoe through the Tulips" (which was first released in 1929). 

Unfortunately, when it comes to Tiny Tim's set, only three songs are available here. "There'll Always Be an England" is from "Message to Love" documentary about the festival. The other two songs are from bootleg and have rougher sound quality, but still sound acceptable to my ears.

Murray Lerner, who made the "Message to Love" documentary, had this to say about Miles Davis' performance: "Miles Davis was a surprise - and really unusual. It was a revelation. The crowd really liked it. He went on, played, waved his hand at that audience and walked off. He played for approximately 38 minutes straight, without stopping."

By the way, a story goes that when Davis walked off stage, he was asked the name of the song he'd just played, and he replied, "Call It Anything." As a result, a portion of his set was available under the that name on the 1971 album "The First Great Rock Festivals of the Seventies." But that's really just the last few songs of his set lumped together. We know the actual names of the songs because a DVD of his entire set was released in 2004.

This album is 41 minutes long.

Note that the track count continues where the last album left off. I keep going with that numbering through the rest of the August 29th sets. Also note that the track numbers have an extra digit. That's because there are over 100 songs in total for the whole day.

051 There'll Always Be an England (Tiny Tim)
052 Two Times a Day (Tiny Tim)
053 talk (Tiny Tim)
054 Love's Ship (Tiny Tim)
055 Directions [Instrumental] (Miles Davis)
056 Bitches Brew [Instrumental] (Miles Davis)
057 It's About That Time [Instrumental] (Miles Davis)
058 Sanctuary [Instrumental] (Miles Davis)
059 Spanish Key [Instrumental] (Miles Davis)
060 The Theme [Instrumental] (Miles Davis)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ohxV3Nkg 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/tLs0sYPxB4BcsG7/file

The cover photo of Davis comes from this exact concert.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-29-1970: Part 2: Joni Mitchell

This is the start of August 30, 1970, the fourth day of the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. By this time, the crowd was at its maximum size and virtually all the acts were big names. 

This album contains all of Joni Mitchell's set. John Sebastian's set was the first one of the day, and that has been posted here as Part 1. Between his set and Mitchell's, there were sets by Shawn Phillips and Lighthouse. (Lighthouse had played a set the day before, but did a second one.) Unfortunately, I can find no audio for either set, at any level of sound quality.

Mtichell's entire set has been professionally released on DVD as "Both Sides Now: Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970." That means the sound quality is excellent overall. However, the vocals were a bit muffled for three of the songs. Perhaps something went wrong with her microphone. Whatever the case, I did my best to improve it using UVR5, but I could only do so much in this case.

When people say that the 1970 Isle of Wight was a disappointment, Exhibit A happened during Joni Mitchell's set. I'll quote Wikipedia to describe what happened:

"Following her performance of "Woodstock", a hippie named Yogi Joe interrupted her set to make a speech about the people at the festival in an encampment built of straw bales known as Desolation Row. When Joe was hauled off by Joni's manager, the audience began to boo until Mitchell interrupted her own set to chastise the audience and make an emotional appeal to "give us [the artists] some respect. ... After the crowd quieted down, Mitchell closed her set with "Both Sides Now" and returned to the stage for an encore singing two more songs for an appreciative crowd."

If you want to know more, here's a Guardian article about it:

Joni Mitchell, Isle of Wight 1970: the day the music nearly died | Joni Mitchell | The Guardian

Murray Lerner, who filmed the documentary "Message to Love" about the festival, later had this to say about the incident: "She decided to face-down the crowd, and was playing the piano, vamping, and almost crying. She said to the crowd: ‘We’ve put our lives into this stuff. ... You're acting like tourists.' That changed the whole tone of it. She called the crowd 'the beast' [afterwards, in private] and she decided to face them down. She had had problems with other places and had given in. But she decided in this case not to." 

Neil Young was at the festival, and he'd planned to join Mitchell for a duet near the end of her set. But he cancelled that idea when he saw the friction with the audience. In fact, he was so upset that he left the festival entirely before Mitchell's set even finished.

Although Mitchell's admonishment of the crowd calmed things down some, the situation was still tense. Tiny Tim, who was kind of a musical throwback novelty act, happened to be the act to follow Mitchell. Luckily, he put the crowd in a good mood again, and that mood lasted for the rest of the day. Lerner later commented, "The audience went wild for Tiny Tim! Because it was like a campy reaction. You would have thought he was the biggest star in the world."

Anyway, you can listen instead of just reading about this, because the Yogi Joe interruption and all the rest is captured well in the audio recording. And I'm pretty sure that's him shirtless in the photo on the album cover.

The good news is, even though this set may have been an ordeal for Mitchell at the time, musically, she still sounded great. In my opinion, she was at the peak of her musical creativity around this time. Her most critically acclaimed album, "Blue," wouldn't be released until 1971, but she played three songs from it, "My Old Man," "California," and "A Case of You," plus "Hunter," which was an outtake that didn't get released until decades later.

This album is 54 minutes long.

UPDATE: On November 8, 2023, I updated the mp3 download file because I removed the three John Sebastian songs in the beginning. That's because I was finally able to post the full Sebastian set. That became Part 1, so this was renamed to Part 2.

033 talk (Joni Mitchell)
034 The Gallery (Joni Mitchell)
035 That Song about the Midway (Joni Mitchell)
036 Chelsea Morning (Joni Mitchell)
037 talk (Joni Mitchell)
038 [He Played Real Good] For Free (Joni Mitchell)
039 talk (Joni Mitchell)
040 Woodstock (Joni Mitchell)
041 talk (Joni Mitchell)
042 My Old Man (Joni Mitchell)
043 Willie (Joni Mitchell)
044 A Case of You (Joni Mitchell)
045 talk (Joni Mitchell)
046 California (Joni Mitchell)
047 Hunter [The Good Samaritan] (Joni Mitchell)
048 talk (Joni Mitchell)
049 Big Yellow Taxi (Joni Mitchell)
050 Both Sides Now (Joni Mitchell)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Dntoq4aJ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/EFid4JZodPZrTeX/file 

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-28-1970: Part 4: Family, Procol Harum & Cactus

This is the final album from August 28, 1970 of the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. Three bands are featured here, but most of the songs were performed by Procol Harum.

Given that most or all of the festival's music was professionally recorded, I don't know why some parts of it has been made public and other parts of it have not. Fourteen songs were released on the album "The First Great Rock Festivals of the Seventies" in 1971, including one by Procol Harum and two by Cactus. But somehow most of the Procol Harum set has come out on bootleg with excellent sound, and none of the Cactus set has.

Only three songs from the Family set have emerged, with varying levels of quality. "The Weaver's Answer" sounds particularly good because it was included in the documentary movie about the festival, "Message to Love." I have read that a couple more songs they played are out there with worthy sound quality, "Procession" and "Drowned in Wine," but I can't find them. If you have them, please let me know so I can add them in.

Unfortunately, even with Procol Harum, this is only a partial set. It is known these songs were also played: "Whisky Train," "Conquistador," a medley of 1950s hits "Go! Go! Go!," "High School Confidential," and "Lucille," and the finale, "Whaling Stories." It's a particular shame no recording of that 1950s medley has emerged, because the band almost never played cover versions, and there are no recordings of them performing that anywhere else.

Procol Harum's lead singer Gary Brooker later commented that the band generally enjoyed the festival, despite it being cold when they played: "Of course it was cold while we were waiting to go on, but once you are playing you soon get hot and sweaty. I really enjoyed playing there, it was not a bit like an American festival. Their festivals are into politics as much as the music and they tend to go on for a whole weekend without a break because it does not get cold at night. It was nice to play to an audience who had come solely for the music, in the most part."

Here's what Cactus drummer Carmine Appice had to say about the festival:

“The thing that I remember the most is the fact that we were hanging out a lot backstage with [Jimi] Hendrix. Everybody had little areas where they hung out. I remember a lot of jamming going on, with guitars and lots of banging on tabletops. At these festivals there was always a lot of drugs. We used to drink a sip of wine backstage, and you didn’t know – sometimes it would have mescaline in it or something weird. Everybody was smoking pot. ... It was cold, it was rainy. I think it was damp and foggy. I think the Isle of Wight was a bit of a disaster. That was the drag of being a headliner of those kind of festivals – by the time you go on it’s like the wee hours of the morning and your audience is going away. Look at Hendrix playing Woodstock – he had nobody there. Whereas Santana played when the place was packed."

This album is 48 minutes long. Just the Procol Harum portion is 30 minutes long.

51 Strange Band (Family)
52 Good News, Bad News (Family)
53 Weaver's Answer (Family)
54 Still There'll Be More (Procol Harum)
55 Wish Me Well (Procol Harum)
56 talk (Procol Harum)
57 The Devil Came from Kansas (Procol Harum)
58 Shine On Brightly (Procol Harum)
59 talk (Procol Harum)
60 Your Own Choice (Procol Harum)
61 talk (Procol Harum)
62 Juicy John Pink (Procol Harum)
63 A Salty Dog (Procol Harum)
64 No Need to Worry (Cactus)
65 Parchman Blues (Cactus)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/7XXymZ7F

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/jGvb6QuYmxdGaiL/file

The cover photo is of Gary Brooker of Procol Harum, from this exact concert. This was the only case for all the album covers I made for this festival where I couldn't find a good color photo. So I converted a black and white to color using the Palette computer program.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-28-1970: Part 3: Chicago

The next big act to play the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival was Chicago. As you can see from the cover photo for this album, night had fallen by the time they took the stage. By that time, the crowd had reached its maximum size of about 600,000 to 700,000 people.

Chicago released their second album, "Chicago" (retroactively called "Chicago II") in early 1970. It was a big success, spawning three Top Ten hits in the US, "Make Me Smile," Colour My World," and "25 or 6 to 4." So the band was a very popular concert draw at this time.

This is the entire set. It was released in 2018 as the album "Chicago: Live at the Isle of Wight Festival." The sound is excellent, so I didn't have to make any edits or remixes this time.

Tracks 42 to 47 make up a song cycle called "Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon." I could have posted that as one giant track, but I broke it up into each named section. 

Walter Parazaider, Chicago's saxophone player, later recalled the festival: “They had us in a holding area, with cottages and everything, which was just spectacular. The weather was great. Isle of Wight was our first experience of [playing festivals]. And you talk about people being really young – eyes as big as silver dollars, and taking everything in. The whole spectacle of it was amazing. It was massive. When you get that amount of people, just a whisper from a crowd is a roar. If you don’t keep within yourself, you could just as easily throw your horn in the crowd and run around like a lunatic, just freaking out. ... The crowd was very receptive. That first album had 'I'm a Man' on it – a Spencer Davis Group tune – and it had gone over quite well in England. They knew the material, and we were quite well received. It was one of the highlights of our career. It was a knockout."

Note that, like the previous album in this series, the first track here is not 01. Instead, the numbering continues where the previous set (Tony Joe White) left off. I'm going to stop mentioning this, but assume this pattern continues for the rest of the albums. I reset back to 01 each new day of the festival. This makes it easier if you want each day of the festival to be one non-stop listen.

This album is an hour and 29 minutes long.

Oh, and just for fun, here's a photo showing just how large the crowd of 600,000 or more actually looked like.

31 Introduction (Chicago)
32 South California Purples (Chicago)
33 Beginnings (Chicago)
34 talk (Chicago)
35 In the Country (Chicago)
36 Intro [Instrumental] (Chicago)
37 Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is (Chicago)
38 talk (Chicago)
39 Mother (Chicago)
40 It Better End Soon (Chicago)
41 talk (Chicago)
42 Make Me Smile (Chicago)
43 So Much to Say, So Much to Give (Chicago)
44 Anxiety's Moment - West Virginia Fantasies [Instrumental] (Chicago)
45 Colour My World (Chicago)
46 To Be Free [Instrumental] (Chicago)
47 Now More than Ever (Chicago)
48 25 or 6 to 4 (Chicago)
49 talk (Chicago)
50 I'm a Man (Chicago)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/XDB9nHcU

alternate link:

https://bestfile.io/en/u33dzVSQUbJxVLW/file

The cover photo comes from this exact concert. 

UPDATE: On September 28, 2024, I updated the cover image by upgrading it with the Krea AI program.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-28-1970: Part 2: Tony Joe White

Next up from the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival is a set by Tony Joe White. This one is straightforward, as it just features his set and nothing else.

White is best known for his song "Polk Salad Annie," which was a Top Ten hit in the US in 1969. But he was a talented singer-songwriter who wrote hits for others, including "Rainy Night in Georgia" by Brook Benton and "Steamy Windows" by Tina Turner. He died in 2018.

This is his complete set. It was officially released in 2006, but only as part of a box set.

This album is 32 minutes long.

Note that I'm starting the track numbering here with 18 instead of 1. That's so you can put all the songs from the August 28, 1970 sets into one folder to make one continuous listen, if you so desire. I'll be doing the same with the August 29th and 30th sets, starting back with track 1 for each new day.

18 Boom Boom (Tony Joe White)
19 talk (Tony Joe White)
20 Roosevelt and Ira Lee [Night of the Mossacin] (Tony Joe White)
21 talk (Tony Joe White)
22 I Want You (Tony Joe White)
23 talk (Tony Joe White)
24 Groupy Girl (Tony Joe White)
25 Stud Spider (Tony Joe White)
26 talk (Tony Joe White)
27 Polk Salad Annie (Tony Joe White)
28 talk (Tony Joe White)
29 Save Your Sugar for Me (Tony Joe White)
30 talk (Tony Joe White)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/aiD1oRUe

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/WgNNioQAq8yJnyV/file

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.