subject: Granddaddy Of Them All [print this page] The Isle of Wight is home to more festivals than you can shake a stick at (there is probably a festival dedicated to stick shaking as well).
For the more nautical but nice, there is Cowes Week of course and the place also hosts the largest UK Walking Festival as well as a Garlic Festival. For the younger, less well heeled, more into dancing than yomping and non yacht owning among us there is Bestival.
But the granddaddy of them all has to be the legendary Isle of Wight Festival.
It all began in 1968 in a field, near Godshill, Isle of Wight where assorted hippies gathered for a one day event. Jefferson Airplane was the only major act on a stage constructed from two trailers. Support came from unknowns like The Move and some band called T-Rex.
This inauspicious shambles was the first great UK rock festival and it sowed the seed for far bigger things to come.
Isle of Wight Festival 2010 runs from 10th to 13th June and is sure to keep up the recent good work, but it was not always like that.
The Isle of Wight Festival became far more ambitious in 1969, expanding to two whole days and headlined by Bob Dylan, mainly because the prospect of performing on the home ground of Tennyson appealed to him.
The Who, Joe Cocker and Free followed. After that success, IOW Festival promoters planned a stellar line up for 1970 featuring Jimi Hendrix (his last performance, he died a month later), Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis, The Who, Leonard Cohen, Free and The Moody Blues.
This mammoth five day extravaganza was our equivalent of Woodstock, but unfortunately the love and peace ethos of Mark Yasgur farm was not shared, and with nearly 1 million rampaging hippies taking over the Island, it was decided that enough was enough.
The 1970 Isle of Wight Act was passed by Parliament to ban all future festivals.
After a 32 year absence it came back in 2002 with the Charlatans headlining supported by Robert Plant. Thousands of music fans took an Isle of Wight ferry to enjoy the revival of the festival and this was just the start of things to come.
2003 saw a bigger festival spread over two days with onsite camping, sun, beer, tents, noodles and toilets!
Some world class bands were there too including Iggy Pop, Paul Weller, Counting Crows, Bryan Adams and Starsailor.
With new promoters, things went from strength to strength attracting acts like David Bowie, Faithless, REM, Coldplay, The Prodigy and the Foo Fighters performing under the sunny blues skies at Seaclose Park.
Coldplay, the Police and the Sex Pistols have also made the trip across the Solent. 2009 served up The Ting Tings, Bananarama, Eddi Reader, Will Young and his dad Neil as well as Simple Minds.
