Saturday August 26th, 2000 (Thirty years ago today . . .)

Dick Taylor(right) and the Sparkle Brothers
30th Anniversary of Afton gig at Dimbola Lodge, Freshwater
By the time I got to Afton
She was Cuban, 26 years old, warm brown skin, dark eyes and jet black hair and she clung tightly to my waist as the Lambretta climbed out of Freshwater Bay bound for Compton. At sixteen I was more used to going to holiday camp discos to dance with Northern girls visiting with Mum and Dad. Her warm sensuous scent of musk lit my senses.

She spoke no English and I spoke no Spanish and Saturday I'm thinking of her again as the old slam door train rumbled towards Lymington harbour. It was the talk of Lambrettas that had done it. That and today's date, Saturday, 26th August. 30 years since the Afton Festival, Woodstock-On-Sea as Johnny Black called it in Que back in 1995.
The shaved head scooter afficiniado from Dorchester wasn't old enough to be at Afton and in line with the 6,000 coming to the Isle of Wight today for their annual rally he was probably more into ska and reggae than anything else. But we talked of Lambretta's. He reckoned if I still had my old 150 Green Lambretta imported from the Turin factory, even if it was a rusted heap it would fetch a couple of grand. I didn't have the heart to tell him I traded it for a Japanese motorbike . . .
I'm coming with my son Robert today and a ferry boat is waiting as we climb out of the train. Across the water the town of Lymington is in full swing despite the cool gray skies. The harbour is lively today with boats big and small. The flat bottomed car ferry pulls out slow but sure getting close to the tail of a yacht ambling out between the mudbanks to the open sea.
The old adage steam gives way to sail won't wash here. Robert and I on the bridge above the car deck watch with interest as the gap between the ferries bow and the yacht's stern closes. Suddenly a huge boom from the ships claxon says 'get outta my way' and Claude at the helm pulls over to let us through.
Crossing this piece of water takes but half an hour from the busy harbour of Lymington to the bustling harbour of Yarmouth alive with boats and summer visitors too.
The crossing of the bar which inspired Tennyson to write his famous poem on a scrap of paper is this stretch of water. Tennyson jotted the idea down on such journey as ours today, Lymington to Yarmouth, kept it in his cabinet at Farringford in Freshwater until he was nearing death. When he'd finalised it he asked his son to put it at the end of all his poetry.
30 years ago this tiny harbour at Yarmouth was over run with hippies, skinheads, Hells Angels and just about every other social deviant/miscreant grouping you can hang a label on. They were headed for Afton in their droves after the Foulks success of the previous year in bringing Bob Dylan out of nearly five years semi retirement.
The Foulk brothers from Freshwater plus a few friends literally hijacked the Isle of Wight Tourist Board to put this diamond Wight Island on the World map. The Foulks career in rock promotion starting from a request by local fundraisers for money to build a swimming pool. A nifty idea that resulted in getting the Jefferson Airplane, Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Marc Bolan, the Fairports, the Move and a few others to a field near Godshill.
From small beginnings, their efforts mushroomed into grabbing the collective conscious with peace, love and tons of that filthy capitalist lucre in black plastic bags. The swimming pool never did get built and legend has it they rode off into the Sunset after the last Isle of Wight Festival at Afton in 1970. Well sort of.
When they let that bow down thirty years ago Neil Young came roaring up the concrete jetty in a Bentley and got waylaid by the cops for drugs. The thin blue line found some weed and as the word goes Young and his manager took the wrap, turned the Bentley around and left the Island by the next ferry.
Joni Mitchell stayed on to go up to Afton and play that Saturday afternoon. I can still hear the opening piano notes of Woodstock playing anytime I go up to Afton and close my eyes. Just wafted across that wide field packed with bodies sweating in the beautiful sunshine as potent as any ritual magic. It hooked me in an instant and recorded music has paled into insignificance ever since. I want music to be Afton on a hot Saturday afternoon ringing in my head like those piano notes continue to reverberate.
First off today Robert and I are taking the open top bus driven by Brian and one Keith Gore, migrant songwriter and bus driver/conductor to the Needles Battery.
Tribute to Jimi - Robyn Hitchcock
It was up at the Needles that Marconi wired the first transatlantic communication. Surrealist songster Robyn Hitchcock still makes trips up there on Keith's bus. He'd been over the other week Keith tells me. Taking time to go out to Compton too, a beach with dinosaur footprints and a clear view of Tennyson's Freshwater. You don't need much more than a walk on Compton beach to inspire the muse. Robyn Hitchcock held his tribute to Jimi Hendrix gig on Yarmouth Railway Station back in 1975.
So out of the yacht town of Yarmouth across the Yar Bridge, on past Colwell, down to Totland Bay, on up to Alum Bay and finally up the battery road to the Needles where the sunsets are World renowned. Some kind of preparation for a little gig at Dimbola Lodge this afternoon in celebration of the 30th Anniversary of Afton.

Freshwater Bay taken from Afton Down (Postcard)

Freshwater Bay isn't much more than the few buildings it was in Tennyson's time with his down rising to the West up to the monument where he liked to go and shoot the breeze and write about the blood bath of Balaclava.

Dimbola thirty years after Afton (Vic King)
Back from the bay is Dimbola Lodge, former home of Victorian photographer Juliet Margaret Cameron. Here in the converted chicken run the lady set up her photographic studio flogging pictures to passing bohemians like Lewis Carroll.
Today not only are Linda McCartney's rock photographs on display but Dick Taylor and the Sparkle Brothers are giving a lunch time gig to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Afton. My friends and two thirds of Isle of Wight Rock are here, Pete and Vic.
Dick Taylor, the original Rolling Stones bass player and Pretty Thing's lead guitarist is huddled in the top corner of Juliet Margaret Cameron's front parlour (now a tearoom).
Amongst the sepia photographs and the collection of old cameras, Dick has set up his electric amps and is seated cradling his jet black electric guitar. Robert takes a seat right in front of the band and we have drink and fruit cake.
Why Dick Taylor went back to art school instead of staying with his old school mates Jagger and Richard is not something that Dick ever regrets. In a recent County Press interview, the Island's only newspaper he concluded that he doesn't envy Bill Wyman. He says to some degree you can get trapped in a certain mould by public perception and become a living jukebox endlessly grinding out your old hits.
Dick Taylor prefers to sit and play with Island musicians between stateside tours of the Pretty Things and stretch his music anyway he feels. The early conversation about Keith Gores song Last Night in Eastwood (birthplace of DH Lawrence) sparks an interjection from Dick 'JC has a song called Last Night in Rookley . . .' JC Grimshaw being one of this Diamond Island's trade secrets still playing out of his tree in tiny bars on the Isle of Wight.
Dick Taylor and the Sparkle Bros
Today when Dick plugs in the electric guitar and his mate Stuart picks up the Gibson acoustic they deliver Big Boss Man, a pile of blues tunes and two Free classics from the 1970 festival The Hunter and Wishing Well. Dick wails away on electric lead as though Afton was only yesterday, blurring notes, searing runs adding reverb and echo and I reckon somewhere up in heaven Julie Margaret Cameron and her esoteric crowd were digging it too.
At the break Dick Taylor will have a couple of fans come out of the audience with vinyl copies of the Pretty Things SF Sorrow and the first Hawkwind album, the original gatefold sleeve version, not the cheap Sunset re run that Dick Taylor produced.
Dick wasn't at Afton but he played at the first festival in 1968 and the Dylan festival in 1969 with the Pretty Things. The Sparkle Bros are joined by their third member who I can never remember the name of and they try to find a reason to play Proud Mary but Creedance weren't at the festival but no matter its a great song and it rocks around the tea room.
Organiser of today's gig, author Brian Hinton is sat right in front of the band, tape recorder whirring, head nodding to Dick's solos and signing copies of his Message to Love book about the festivals.
Ron Turner Smith remembers Afton
Earlier Ron Turner-Smith the Foulks right hand man at Afton has got up and recalled memories of that wild week in 1970. Ron is 75 now, his massive frame standing awkwardly from probably arthritus or something, his rugged bearded face making him positively Tennyson straight out of a Juliet Margaret Cameron sepia print that adorns these walls. Here at Dimbola most days as a volunteer in his shorts and permanent deep sun tanned complexion.
It was Ron who was at the thick of it fighting the Admirals and Colonels in 1970 who chattered and schemed at cocktail parties over the planned festival. It was they that cornered the Faulks into the site at Afton. Try as they did they couldn't persuade Farmer Clarke to relinquish the idea of letting them use his land.
As the various planned sites faded away as Farmers were 'cajoled' into not having them 'damn hippies on our Island' Clarke proved he was made of sterner stuff. The festival went ahead. 'We knew as soon as we set it up it would be a disaster for us because anyone who didn't want to pay could sit on Afton down and watch for free,' recalled Ron.
And two years after Afton, the last festival on the Isle of Wight, the triumph of the sitting MP, Mark Woodnutt and architect of the Night Assemblies Bill which effectively stopped any future festivals dead, came home to roost. Like so many politicians he'd had his fingers in various money making scams that tainted his image but the one thing that a vast majority of Islanders got steamed about was the banning of the festivals.
I was 20 in 1974 and I waited four years to get my own back. The MP died soon after a broken man having lost a substantial majority and his party one of its safest seats. And in the cold light of day now with an Island economy struggling with high employment and lack of cash flow even the local Chamber of Commerce is calling for the kind of entrepreneurs that the Foulks were and the kind of organisation that Ron Turner Smith embodied.
It was Ron Smith who engineered the political downfall of the sitting MP and brought a new man in. It was Ron Smith who was the last man to leave Afton. The Foulks sequestered in their mothers big Victorian house, Englefield at Totland Bay, Ron Smith on site clearing away every last piece of debris. 'If you go up there now, you won't find anything as much as a bottle top to say we'd had a festival there,' he smiled.
Dimbola embodies Ron Smith's free market philosophy. While the lottery money goes elsewhere volunteers like Ron Smith and Brian Hinton give their time and efforts to raising funds for Dimbola. It beggars belief that this national treasure isn't prized more than the peacocks in the art finger cake cafes.
To have tea at Dimbola in the same room that once entertained Tennyson, Lewis Carroll and Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin is priceless.
Ron has a pile of great stories today including the building of the arena's permiter fencing to keep the freeloaders (like me out). It was hauled in from all over our land, they went as far as Northern Ireland to get it.
The supply tent was one of the biggest marquees in the world at the time chocked high with a million coke cans, a million mars bars and a million packets of crisps, 'we ordered everything in millions,' he said. Great story about the police ready to go swing fists with the Hells Angels and Ron going like a Cavalry scout to parley with an Indian chief and settle the differences which was a rip off merchant selling hamburgers from a van. Ron said he smoked the pipe of peace, took two big policeman and a Hells Angel with him and gave the roque merchant half an hour to clear off the site.
Amongst the crew that built the stage at Afton were some people that built the stage at Woodstock. Ron said when he asked them how the two festivals compared they said that Afton was better organised and bigger.
Linda McCartney photos
At the half break it was time to take a look at Linda McCartney's photographs which had been combined with a local photographer Doug White's Afton pictures. Some pictures we've never seen in his collection including a great one of Richie Havens who virtually played the last set at Afton, or at least the last official set.
Lots of Linda McCartney's pictures of the Beatles and Stones in New York are well known and I tend to just pass over them becuase I've seen them before but its here less well known that made me stop and smile today.

Appropriately Tim Buckley, the Tennyson connection
(Linda McCartney)
On the stairs going up to the exhibition is a picture of Tim Buckley. Quite fitting that here was a Tennyson connection too. At Buckley's funeral in 1975 Larry Beckett included Tennyson's Crossing the Bar in the service. Here was Buckley in all his innocence of 1967 before the heroin took hold.

Stevie Winwood (looks like Traffic's cottage to us . . .)
(Linda McCartney)

Traffic at their Aston Tirrold cottage (Linda McCartney)
Here was Neil Young, Bob Wier of the Grateful Dead, John Cipollina of Quicksilver, Traffic in front of their Aston Tirrold cottage and one picture I told Brian Hinton that if it wasn't nailed to the wall I was taking it home. Hinton laughed and told me that one of the lady's at Dimbola had said 'why do we want this one and who are they?'
The Island's former head librarian, just gave a wry smile, probably the kind of wry smile he'd given questions as to why Love's Forever Changes, Country Joe and Fish's Electric Music for the Mind and Body, the Dead's Anthems of the Sun and Quicksilver's Happy Trails all found their way into the libraries record lending collections . . . 'Oh we have to have this one,' he told her.
I'm looking at a picture of the Youngbloods taken in the woods of Olema or maybe Central Park, New York, stood up in a big tree hanging with moss. Pete has been ragging Hinton about finding a Youngbloods single, Get Together for next to nothing in a car boot sale and we are about to recite the words to Darkness Darkness. The mixture of an old wooden Victorian house brimming with antiquarian delights and echoes from America's pyschedelia seem to make perfect sense.
We go back down the old wooden stairs to investigate the Juliet Margaret Cameron pictures in her parlour. Here is another world of delights, Juliet Margaret Cameron seems to have done several studies of Alice Liddle aka Alice in Wonderland and I have a conversation with a lady there obviously on holiday with her kids who knows a bit about Lewis Carroll and Cameron but was unware that Carroll wrote the Hunting of the Snark on Sandown beach along the coast.
Amongst the idylls of kings and queens, cabbages and sealing wax is a picture of Charlie Darwin looking vacant and for all the world like an absent minded professor "Here nipper here's a picture of that bloke what wrote the 'The origin of the species' . . ."
Robert insists we investigate the Juliet Cameron Library which turns out to be a small bookshop piled high with first editions and second hand books. Oh boy given more time I might have spent some time in that tiny room crammed with books. However today Robert has been exceedingly patient with me and instead of going back to listen to Dick's second set we walk again to Freshwater bay to throw more rocks into the water.
Doug White's Afton photographic exhibition
Then Pete takes us to one more photographic exhibition this afternoon in Freshwater Memorial Hall. As we journey up to Freshwater I get a blast from the past. 'Nipper its the place where I dropped the Cuban girl with the film', I'm looking at a backyard which I've failed to spot in thirty odd years.
Vic reckons its the back of an old photographic shop in the high street. Which kinda solves a thirty year mystery as to where and why a role of movie film was being taken from an Italian film crew down to Freshwater and how I came to have a beautiful Cuban girl on the back of my Lambretta. I wonder where that film is now and what happened to that lovely lady on the back of my scooter.
Local photographer Doug White has got a room full of his Afton photographs and many of them we've never seen before including a couple of crackers of Shawn Philips at the festival. Vic has his cheque book to buy some copies for our archive. There's a stunning piece of art done by someone at the festival which I've never seen. It might pass as Victoriana erotica involving as it does a lady with legs open and the Isle of Wight between them.
One final piece to add to the Afton jigsaw . . .
Later that afternoon Robert and I are taking another ride up from Yarmouth to the wild winds of the Needles again and then to Alum Bay Amusements.
Our migrant songwriting friend Keith has a final story 'Eere I only found out today from Brian, you know that fire onstage at Afton?, well Brian's dad was the one that ran on and put it out . . . '
Mike Plumbley
By the time I got to Afton . . .
Thirty years ago, gone without a trace
No debris at Afton not even a bottle top
memories of the last great festival
that all the grumpies tried to stop

It should have never been allowed
we certainly don't want anymore
LDL cars lined along the road
and naked ladies on Compton shore

Into the valley of Alfred Tennyson
where the hippies made their stand
the voices of Joni, Jimi and Joan
wafting across Farmer Clarke's land

Timewarped at Dimbola, lest we forget
Miles Davis sweet horn as the sun set

- Mike Plumbley