Mudstock
I sold my first Hawkwind album this week and with it a bit of my "extended" childhood. I discovered Hawkwind in 1972 at the Bickershaw Festival. My first outdoor rock festival, a three-day affair held in a large field southeast of Liverpool. I was only 21, had been in England less than four months, and was tripping out on the whole idea of finding myself immersed in such a scene. It also made me a huge fan of Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band - whose live performances I have attended over the years more than those of any other group.
That is me looking down tending to the fire. On the way up I had dropped off my motorcycle at the Triumph dealership in Coventry so I am wearing my British Belstaff waxed cotton rainsuit. Although I was otherwise the straightest looking person in our group (there were nine of us from the base including two wives) and had only been in-country three months, I was the only one that was not an obvious GI to the blokes at the festival. I just looked like a Brit with relatively short hair and most in the crowd were noticeably more friendly toward me than toward the rest of our group. Or maybe it was my Welsh DNA (Griffith) shinning through. Several months later that rainsuit (and a white helmet) was enough for me to be mistaken for a French motorcycle policeman at an accident scene on my way back from the Munich Olympics - but that is another story.
ClickHereFor-by-time-we-got-to-bickershaw
I was unaware that this (my first rock festival) was that big of a deal in the annals of rock festivals but there is a lot of information and images on the internet including the above account which I found to nicely capture the spirit of the whole thing. I seem to be the first to post the above Melody Maker ad from the April 22, 1972 issue. Afterward everyone called it Mudstock which certainly summed up that early May weekend.
Hawkwind's
In Search of Space
