The inspiration behind the first Deeply Vale festival was another free festival held locally in the summer of 76. 'Basically we had had a good summer ' recalled Andy Burgoyne, one of the originators of the festival ' We'd been to a free festival at Rivington Pike , Horwich and we just thought , lets have our own '. Fortunately , they had a pool of ready made talent to call on , as Rochdale band Tractor and their manager Chris Hewitt were keen to be involved , with members of the band Steve Clayton ( drums ) and Dave Addison (bass ) getting stuck in improving the access roads and helping bulid the stage . Chris Hewitt also had a great PA system that was made available for the festival.

    After only a few weeks frantic planning the dream was a reality and in the woody region of Ashworth Valley , Deeply Vale played host to a gathering of musicians and fans alike , peacefully enjoying themselves and generally being at one with Nature . The brains behind it were understandably jubilant when after only three weeks of planning and with a stage built the night before ,there were several hundred attendees and the overall organisation proved to be successful.

    Rochdale is not only birthplace of the Co-op and home to two Nobel prize-winners and Don Estelle, it has a crucial place in the genealogy of modem music. Gracie Fields aside, it was also the site of the North-west’s own Woodstock, at a place called Deeply Vale, an unfeasibly beautiful natural amphitheatre on the borders of Rochdale and Bury. In four years in the late Seventies, the festival was transformed from a gathering of local youth into a Stonehenge with black pudding. With its eventual mix of punk, new wave and hippie it gave birth to the proto-crustie.
   The origins of Deeply Vale reads like a social history written by Vic Reeves. Chris Hewitt, who owned the only hippie music shop in Rochdale, also managed a prog-rock band from Rochdale called Tractor, signed to John Peel's Dandelion Records label. Hewitt had the business acumen and the hardware that allowed the first festival to take place.

   A group of hippies in a commune in Rochdale decided they wanted their own Glastonbury. But because there was no money,this small group got on their bikes, hustled, and became experts in stage construction, electrics and lighting. And above all else they would go round each year to the local farmer,Frank Turner get him drunk and persuade him to sign a contract to rent out the land.

The Independent. 1996

    The first festival attracted only a few hundred people, which the straight world would see as a failure , but who gave a damn, no one was in this free festival business to turn a profit anyway, that was the whole point , to prove that it could be done outside the normal set of rules . What mattered was that the seeds of the idea were sown and it was sufficient to inspire the organisers to do it again and to do it bigger and better .

Jim O'Neill

Cliff Jackson

Frank Turner the landowner.

    Does it always rain in Lancashire ? It was my first visit there for many years and it was wet the whole time .The pre-arranged site turned into a bog and the three miles of pot holed dirt track was enough to put off the most hardy and acclimatised festival goers . Yet 1000-2000 of them turned up, bringing with them their fair share of welfare problems .

   These problems weren't the fault of the festival organisers- they were very together people. They had made very good toilets made from 40 gallon oil drums sat on the ground with a hole in the top and a seat, surrounded by a canvas shelter. They had supplied plenty of plastic rubbish sacks and water was obtainable either from a nearby stream or from the heavens . The local farmer too was very helpful and he spent much time towing cars out of the mud, bringing cinders for the track and he helped to clear up the site after the festival.

Home office report.

    All along the Watchtower is getting to be something like the theme song for 1977s burgeoning free festival movement. Several bands and ( slightly better but still uncomprehending )several solo folk singers sang it like NOW it meant sense at this Northern (near Rochdale ) festival in picturesque Deeply Vale. .Are these anarchic Aquarian happenings the blueprint or perhaps the vanguard of a bright and golden new age ? . Or are they merely degenerate drug orgies for disordered redundant hippies ?

    And what does it mean when the music is uniformly basic and dreary too ? Seventeen different bands played versions of Jumping Jack Flash . Twelve played Route 66. The recorded sound favoured 1972-ish post acid downer sounds like Aqualung, Paranoid and Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters. DJ Emperor Gordino and the stage manager maintained a constant argument/dialogue over the PA occasionally interrupted for up to date bulletins on OD's , epileptic fits, cars turned upside down in the river, rip offs and plugs for the rough cider pub the Frog and Coathanger .