A cherry red Doc Martin slams down the kick-start. The resultant whine is
less than pleasing but, due to the Governmental tinkering of the day, the 16
years olds of blighty are confined to a gutless 50cc. It is crushingly
embarrassing, when mates of one month older are happily zipping about Greater
Manchester in mirror-bedecked Lambrettas or throaty mid-range biker
contraptions. But it is 1972 and we are feeling our way. Such is the case on
this day…on Sunday May 7 as, eager and Crombie-clad, the 16 year old pootles
through the dank roads of Stockport, Salford and Leigh, suffering three swamping
deluges along the way. As an outing it seems peculiarly lonely, at least during
the hour-long journey, as cars splash past with contemptuous disregard for the
sad site of a moped in the rain. But the boy on the Puch is seeking a
comradeship, of sorts. At home he has a treasured copy of the three album
Woodstock set; an evocative artefact indeed and brimming with the sounds songs
and announcements that had already gained worldwide infamy. “It’s like I was
rapping to the fuzz…can you dig it? New York State Freeway is closed, maan. Can
you dig that? Lot of freaks.” That was, I always thought, Arlo Guthrie…not that
it really matters. And, best of all, the fully energising, politicising, random
anti-ism ranting of Country Joe MacDonald and his celebrated ‘fuck’ cheer. How
that changed the dynamic of million teenage bedrooms, back in the days of
glorious hope and innocence. But the boy seeks more than that. He needs to see
it for real…the sights, the aromatic allure, the squalid scrambling in the mud.
The Woodstock spirit, so exotic when booming from the stereogram – or alive on
the cinema screen which he has yet to witness – has ludicrously arrived in
Bickershaw, Wigan. And yes, the boy knows full well, that Sunday afternoon will
indeed see a spirited set by Country Joe MacDonald. It will also see him
befriended by Hells Angels of the Nottingham greaser variety… a delightful tribe
who steal him through the fence in pure Mick-Farren-at-The-Isle-of-Wight fashion
and who supply him with a rolled protrusion of questionable strength, on which
he puffs as The Grateful Dead produce hour after hour of hypnotic Americana. Not
a bad introduction to the festival experience. It’s a little story I have told
many times and I sense a few yawns from close friends. However, I make no
apologies as memories of that trip provide me with a direct link to a one-off
festival frozen in a glorious naiveté. The mere fact that there was only one
Bickershaw Festival and that it balanced an eclectic artistic success with
rather shambolic management – not to mention three days of unremitting
downpour…all this seals it in a unique time capsule.
These were among the things discussed at Wigan’s Museum of Life recently, as
Chris Hewitt – he of Ozit Morpheus Records and Deeply Vale Festivals - provided
a talk that glimpsed perceptively into a festival that hinged so warmingly
between aghast locals and the arriving weirdo hoards. Ferocious activity from
the local baker and fish’n’chip shop saw a peculiarly northern edge to the
festival fayre while, post fest, the local grubby oiks scurried in the mud,
hustling away with discarded posters and sundry ephemera. All this comes to mind
on the fortieth anniversary of The Bickershaw Festival. A fact celebrated with
the release of a sumptuous Bickershaw box set from Hewitt’s Ozit Morpheus that
has taken over ten years to painstakingly piece together. Generally speaking, I
am not over-fond of the box sets…more often than not they tend to prey on the
lust of sad completists, much to the detriment of the original music. (Do you
really need to submerge your beloved seventies album in the thick fog of hastily
recorded demos?). However, now and then one stumbles across such a package that
really does carry you back to an age that now seems to belong on a different
planet.
This is even addressed by Bickershaw Festival organiser, Jeremy Beadle, on one
of the DVDs included in this package where he warns of the evils of ‘gigantism’,
where festivals are concerned. Maybe even at that point, as he surveyed the
dampened spectacle before him, he really knew that the future lay, not in
eclectic events that might challenge and undermine the system, but in the
pitiful commercial hierarchy that governs the gargantuan festival circuit today.
The box set allows you into that rag-taggle world, without pretension nor
superfluous recordings. Included are Tom Hewitt’s original film, itself a two
hour spectacle of footage, from the extraordinary to the mundane complete with
an audio splicing that delivers sizeable chunks of music from The Grateful Dead,
New Riders of the Purple Sage, Donovan, The Incredible String Band, Country Joe
MacDonald, Dr John, Captain Beefheart, The Flamin’ Groovies and a lurid
selection of performing lunatics. (Hewitt revealed that broadening the showcase
from music to music and performing arts was sufficient for the festival to seize
a helpful ‘arts’ grant). Best of all, however, is the somewhat wry relationship
between the craggy folk of Bickershaw and the aforementioned freak influx.
Interestingly enough, and this certainly settles with my fading memories,
despite the atrocious weather, lack of facilities and any sense of organisation,
there was very little tension hanging in the air. Other factors help set the
scene. While a few did manage to camp, the vast majority simply sat down in the
mud for three solid days, rather nobly accepting all that horrors that nature
could provide. Miraculously, no one was killed…a fact that is especially
striking upon the musicians who performed on a stage amid spaghetti strewn live
wires, a primitive PA system and, most incredible at all, no main stage roof.
Hence three days of heavy Lancashire rain fell on those speakers before The
Grateful Dead took the stage.
The box set provides a further four hours of DVD footage; a feverishly assembled
mish-mash which zips by in dizzying fashion. Some of it exceedingly raw, which
one might expect from a film largely built from personal footage although recent
interviews prove reflective while adding direct links to personal tales of
enjoyment and trauma. Interesting to note just how people hang in winsome
nostalgia for a festival that had often been given the unfortunate name,
‘Mudstock’. But the fact is that Bickershaw – and a number of early seventies
festivals such as Hollywood, Deeply Vale, Buxton, Rivington Pike et al –
provided a simplicity of purpose that is no longer relevant. All we can do is
watch these DVDs, listen to the audios – six of them, containing items of
varying quality from all of the major artists and scan through the accompanying
hardback book. This, in itself, proves to be an archive of bewildering depth. I
recall visiting Mr Hewitt’s Northwich home, a few years back, as this material
was being assembled. This entailed-literally-wading through acres of Bickershaw
press cuttings ranging from the hilariously local – the Leigh Journal remains a
warmingly quaint publication – to national and underground press. Literally, it
was like walking into the heart of the book. From the underground sections you
will discover a Bickershaw underbelly, as pinioned by such writers as Charles
Shaar Murray and Mick Farren. How interesting to discover just how seriously the
mainstream and underground press took Bickershaw. Maybe it was seen as a genuine
riposte to southern magnets such as The Isle Of Wight. Or could it have actually
been the allure of Beadle, who had spent the previous months attempting to
establish a North West edition of Time Out, then a feisty and subversive organ
rather than the tepid what’s on guide of today. It is difficult to say but,
intriguingly, the backstage caravans were a bustle of music writers and sundry
sycophants from across the world.
The book, which is unpretentiously assembled and punctuated with notes and
memories from Hewitt himself, allows you to spend innumerable hours filtering
through the resultant press articles without actually having to wade through
that living room. Indeed, the book alone provides an opportunity to float back
to a lost cultural universe, a place that existed beyond the control of the
powers that now so silently govern the modern equivalent. In truth, there simply
is no comparison. True enough, the food and facilities of a Download or
Glastonbury are beyond compare – although are always depressingly familiar. At
Bickershaw, as stated, you had to make do with a pie, chips and gravy or,
specially imported into the people’s republic of Wigan for the festival, a weird
new sticky concoction called yoghurt. “We had heard of it,” said a local
shopkeeper, “But we didn’t know what it was.”
The same, perhaps, could be said of The Grateful Dead, who’s unique and
endlessly drifting Americana had yet to fully penetrate the UK. Perhaps it never
did. For they were never really a band for this side of the pond, even if their
familial approach to their fans caused knots of ‘Deadhead’ to spring forth in
unlikely areas of England. This may all sound rather hippyish but, squint hard
at that bill and, like attendees Joes Strummer and Declan MacManus, you may just
see the first shards of punk shining from the stripped down attack of The
Flamin’ Groovies or Brinsley Schwarz, featuring a young Nick Lowe.
The greatest irony of all, perhaps, being the established fact that the Grateful
Dead’s idealistic approach to their own commercial viability would actually
establish them as the most successful tumble of touring and merchandise of all
time. More than that, even Apple Mac famously chose to emulate the Dead’s
marketing technique in recent years. Now there is irony for you. A darker irony
perhaps, is the undeniable fact that events such as Bickershaw helped trigger
the path to festival gigantism. Of this, Jeremy Beadle was sadly perceptive..
Review by Mick Middles
August 2012