Page 8 - September 2021

BOB DYLAN
ON THE ISLE OF WIGHT
By Rob Atkins
The night of Sunday, August 31st, 1969: September Eve. A vast crowd waits restlessly in an open field, bounded by makeshift shacks and tents, near the village of Wootton on the Isle of Wight. Squatting on the dew-damp grass, huddled against the chill of the late summer air, they crane their heads forward to stare curiously at a specially-erected compound at the front of a distant, canopied stage.
In the compound are gathered a host of celebrities, rock illumni of the late 1960s, including guitar legends Keith Richards and Eric Clapton; rock/ folk entrepreneur, Albert Grossman; British actors, Terence Stamp and Peter Wyngarde, American actress, Jane Fonda; singer and musician, Elton John (not so well-known then as he was to become later), and writer and film director Don Cammel. Also present, are French singer/composers, George Moustaki and Francoise Hardy; painter and musician, Syd Barrett (late of Pink Floyd); as well as three members of the Beatles: Ringo Starr, George Harrison, and John Lennon -along with their respective wives- and a throng of others.
All have come to witness the rock event of the year -the first full concert, after a self-imposed absence of three years, by former folk and protest singer Bob Dylan.
The appearance of this legendary singer, songwriter, guitarist, and poet, at a venue on the little-known Isle of Wight, was regarded, at the time, as something of a coup.
The brainchild of three brothers: Ron, Ray, and Bill Foulk, (who lived locally) and colleague, Rikki Farr, working under the collective name of ‘Fiery Creations’, it had been pulled off by a mixture of audacity, optimism, blatant daring, persistence, clever use of marketing, and a hell of a lot of luck.
The idea of booking Dylan as the ‘Big Name’ to headline the festival had been hatched as early as the preceding January. Repeated messages to his
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management over subsequent months, however, had met with initial refusal, followed later by a series of prevarications, coupled with constant advice to ‘call back next Friday.’
Eventually Ray Foulk had flown to Woodstock, where Dylan -following a traumatic motor cycle accident- was currently residing in semi-seclusion. The determined Englishman called at Dylan’s residence, and, when the man himself answered the intercom, was invited in. Furthermore, he was allowed to stay as a guest for the next four days. This was doubly lucky for Foulk, Fiery Creations had only just managed to raise his air fare and taxi money. There was nothing left in the kitty to keep him in food and lodging while in the States.
Once ensconced in the Dylan household, the personable young man was able to put forward the marketing plan, deftly-constructed by Farr and the brothers. A package marked ‘For the attention of Bob Dylan’, it shrewdly displayed sundry factors likely to appeal to the great man’s imagination and interests. It ‘sold’ the Isle of Wight -a small island off the southern coast of England- as a place of pilgrimage and enchantment, highlighting its natural beauty, literary and cultural associations -and its historic tendency to attract writers, poets, and mystics, to its shores. A voyage across the Atlantic in the QE2 was included in the itinerary, as was a privately-hired hovercraft to the island itself, farmhouse accommodation, (with swimming pool) and access to sites of spiritual and artistic significance -including the home of Victorian Poet Laureate: Alfred, Lord Tennyson. And -oh yes. He was to be offered a fee of 50,00 dollars!
News that Bob Dylan had been approached to play the Isle of Wight leaked out very quickly. It was regarded as an open secret on the Island by early summer, and was announced as an ‘undisputed fact’ at a rock gig in the nearby city of Portsmouth in late May. Throughout June, rumours such as