MYTHICAL PLACES

"Isle of Wight" - England

Towards the end of the 1960s, the counter-culture was in full swing in England, the Hippie movement was at its peak and it was on the small Isle of Wight in the south of the United Kingdom that the 1st edition of the famous festival.

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After a second edition in 1969 marked by Bob Dylan's performance, it was the following year, in 1970, that the Isle of Wight Festival saw renowned headliners such as Jimi perform from August 28 to 30. Hendrix, The Who, Joan Baez and The Doors.

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Morrison and his band will offer that evening, one of the group's last performances in front of nearly 600,000 spectators.

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The 1970 edition will however be quickly overtaken by its success and its attendance, to note several problems including the contestation of the price of the entrance ticket as well as the difficulty for the organization to pay the artists.

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The Festival will nevertheless be one of the last great meetings of the Hippie community in Europe and the enthusiasm for this one falls fairly quickly after the death of artists such as Jimi Hendrix (September 1970), Janis Joplin (October 1970) and Jim Morrison (July 1971)

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After a long period of inactivity, the English Festival rose from its ashes in 2002 to focus on a program centered more around Rap and Pop.