Hyde Park, 1969: the counterculture's greatest day. And the Rolling Stones came too
The Rolling Stones will return this summer to Hyde Park – an echo of the groundbreaking day 44 years ago when the British underground scene came into its own. What do those who were there remember?
Ed Vulliamy, Peter Beaumont and Tess Reidy
The Observer, Sunday 7 April 2013
The Rolling Stones onstage in Hyde Park, 5 July 1969, with Marianne Faithfull and the World in Action camera crew visible behind the photographers to the left. Photograph: Reg Burkett/Getty Images
THE BANDS
It really wasn't all about the Stones. King Crimson, Roy Harper and the late Alexis Korner all featured in the seminal cultural event of that British summer.
King Crimson nearly stole the show, playing songs from their forthcoming landmark album In the Court of the Crimson King. "It was a lovely sunny day, and it launched us," the band's manager, David Enthoven, remembers. "We overran, and there was a lot of waving at me by the Stones' stage manager. But we had to finish, and we did, with me crouching under the stage sounding an air-raid siren [which everyone in the crowd remembers, without knowing exactly why or whence it came]." Drummer Michael Giles says: "Hyde Park was a special and prestigious event for us. It was the first time we had played to tens of thousands of people in the open air. Being almost unknown, we were free to walk through the crowds unobserved."
Roy Harper became a British folk star and had already released albums such as Come Out Fighting Ghengis Smith and Folkjokeopus. Unlike the Stones, who famously arrived in a limousine, Harper travelled by public transport – "either on the 16 bus or by tube". He had performed at the first Hyde Park free concert the previous year, headlined by Pink Floyd. This year, he reflects, it felt different: "1968 was absolutely brilliant. It felt like a moment of huge cultural change. By 1969 it felt like a profound difference had taken place … Even those of us in the artists' area were kept separate from the Rolling Stones, who came and left via a corridor. I realised that the heavy hand of management and authority – that had lifted for a moment – was in full charge again. It was a sea change. I think I felt there was a darkness coming. That was my overriding reaction."
Enthoven did not stick around to hear Mick Jagger: "No. I mean, I like the Stones. But I buggered off, to be honest. Job done, let's get out of here."
THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE
The thousands in the crowd, estimated at anywhere between 250,000 and 500,000, looked like a great bowl of confetti. Some perched like birds in the trees, others stood on piles of tins or upturned litter baskets; girls climbed on boys' shoulders. While playing, says Harper, "I remember this sea of people and standing on the stage seeing three or four people at a time, who'd fainted, being passed hand over hand over the top of the crowd."
The crowd were the event, to a degree, filmed by six crews from Granada's World In Action for what is regarded as a milestone in TV history. In the early summer of 1969, the distinguished producer Jo Durden-Smith was called by Jagger with a suggestion. As recalled by Leslie Woodhead, who directed the programme, Jagger said: "Hey Jo, you've got groovy crews, why don't you come and film us in the park?". Granada was doubtful – "remember, this was a month before Woodstock, so who knew if this would work?"
Woodhead's crews "fanned out across the park filming kids in boats, a nutty preacher woman and smooching hippies. A warning was delivered about fans perching in trees who might come to grief. Looking back it all feels achingly innocent and prelapsarian. The fact that [the Stones' lead guitarist] Brian Jones had died only two days before gave the whole thing a self-consciously melancholy undertow."
Woodhead's colleague, the late great director John Sheppard, had been with Jagger the previous day, and now escorted him in the back of a limo with his girlfriend, the ultimate "beautiful person", Marianne Faithfull – daughter of an army officer and Austrian baroness and much-admired actress at the Royal Court.
Her singing voice had been nurtured by Andrew Loog Oldham, who wrote As Tears Go By for her with Jagger and Keith Richards, and she had given Jagger the copy of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita that inspired Sympathy for the Devil. Now she joined Woodhead on stage to hear it played. "Alongside me on the stage", he recalls, "Marianne Faithfull kept the faith. As I set up on stage with my crew, I looked across at Sheppard with his team, already visibly in the spirit of the day. John's cameraman, the wonderful Nic Knowland, seemed to have flowers in his hair. I recall the first act: Screw, a very pre-punk band with a harmonica brutalist who seemed to attack his innocent mouth organ with such ferocity that his mouth streamed with blood. Then I saw him spitting out an artificial blood capsule."
A barricaded elite enclosure was cornered off for VIPs, girlfriends and press, manned by Hells Angels and other self-appointed security. Most of the girls wore cheesecloth and were bra-less. Paul McCartney was there, as were Keith Moon, the Who's drummer, and Viv Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, who went on to entertain in a pub on Kensington High Street, just down the road from the Albert Hall, where the Who and Chuck Berry were playing that night.
In the aftermath, recalls Woodhead: "I knew we'd witnessed something special, but it was hard to process it all. We discovered we couldn't find a crucial film roll of Satisfaction, lost under a bush somewhere. I wonder if someone found it and still keeps it as a memento of the day. I edited the film in Manchester and we screened it in Granada's London office for Keith, Bill [Wyman], Charlie [Watts] and Mick Taylor. As we came to the end of part one, Keith said: "I hope the lead guitarist tunes up before part two."
THE HELLS ANGELS
Woodhead remembers "walking into the park before 7am through the slumbering hordes of fans, stretched out on the grass like a defeated army". He says: "As I reached the stage, Hells Angels were stretching and yawning, their metal swastikas glinting in the sun, unmenacing as those ducklings … I filmed as the Stones security chief told the Angels to take it easy."
A south London chapter of the motorcycle club had been established in 1950, but it was unclear whether those on duty in Hyde Park were all members. The Angels had been adopted as part of the counterculture, despite their Nazi regalia, and used for security at concerts by many bands in the US, including the Grateful Dead.
REST OF THE WORLD
A year on from uprisings in Prague, Paris, Berlin, Mexico, Chicago and elsewhere, the tumultuous decade was nearing an end, but Northern Ireland was about to blow: that summer saw some of the worst rioting of the Troubles. Within weeks, Protestant mobs were burning out the Lower Falls Road and the seeds of the Provisional IRA had been sown.
In Vietnam, war raged. Having promised "peace with honour", the Vietcong marked the day after US Independence Day by sinking a cargo ship, the Welfare, south-east of Saigon. There were 43 shelling incidents throughout South Vietnam, making that night one of the worst in terms of attacks.
In the US, 5 July was also the day Black Panther leader Stokely Carmichael resigned, accusing his group of dogmatism and denouncing its alliance with white radicals.
Britain's Ann Jones had won the women's singles title at Wimbledon the day before at the 14th attempt, while Rod Laver won the men's title (again) as the Stones played. Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins were preparing for lift-off to the moon.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
King Crimson went on to take their place among the great bands. Enthoven went on to manage Roxy Music, Brian Eno and, now, Robbie Williams.
Harper became a refusenik, turning his back on commercial music. He went on acoustic tours with Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, who wrote a song in tribute to him. He performed at the last Stonehenge free festival in 1984, lost his house to a bank soon afterwards and celebrated his 60th and 70th birthdays with concerts at the Royal Festival Hall. He is now finishing an album in Ireland, where he has lived for 20 years.
Faithfull went on to write Why'd Ya Do It? – perhaps the bitterest non-love song ever, apparently for Jagger. In the 1980s, she lived on the streets as a heroin addict, but went on to perform The Threepenny Opera in Dublin and record a magnificent account of Kurt Weill's song cycle The Seven Deadly Sins.
Woodhead is one of the world's most decorated documentary film-makers and is now publishing a book on how the Beatles rocked the USSR.
Sheppard is credited with having forged his own inimitable genre of film for TV. A fervent fan of Queens Park Rangers, he was always to be found in the Coningham Arms pub in Shepherd's Bush before a game. He died in 2009.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/apr/07/stones-park-first-time-around
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