The Archive . updated June 2023
"Could
that many people gather together today with only minimal communal organisation
and such a relatively small amount of trouble but so much pleasure? The question
is irrelevant. They would never allow us."
Stonehenge
Free Festivals chronology.
1980.
June 13th-26th
1980
: The tribes celebrate the solstice with a jam ( Cathy
M holding baby far right - see post below ) © Paul Seaton
|
These
were the years when the festival grew from a gathering of a few thousand hard
core freaks to a major attraction (although still almost exclusively ignored
by the rock press who were too busy hyping the likes of Spandau Ballet and
Bow Wow Wow ) .
With
the increase in size came hassles that had not existed when the festival
had begun. Pressure increased on facilities such as toilets , extra fields
had to be used, which did not please the farmer who owned the land - and
there was an increasing police presence. - strip and search activites increased
and a petition was delivered to the police about this invasion of human
rights , which more or less amounted to harrassment based on appearance
and attendance at a festival.
Tibetan
Ukranian Mountain Troupe buses rest near their tent at Stonehenge
Free festival 1980 © Igor Malaprop
|
The
Pyramid Stage ©
Bodge
|
Bev
a traveller and a strong believer in the sacredness and spirituality of
the Stones, wrote of this period .
'to
me there was an important spiritual journey that was going alongside the
daily life , this it was that gave such power to the midsummer celebration
at the stones .. sadly though as the festival grew so the spiritual side
seemed to diminish, in 77 there were less than 2,000 people at the festival
and 1400 went into the stones - by 84 nearly 40000 were at the festival
while less than 1.000 offered themselves in the circle , though in the prohibition
years 85 up to 99( when the authorities relaxed some ) there was a growth
of spirituality and many hundreds walked to the stones each year... in the
face of harassment and brutal attacks from the police... now the respectable
pagans (Druids and the like )) are trying to do deals for themselves that
will once again deny the wild magic in this holy place and refuse those
who serve a less ordered spirit '
The
late John Pendragon wrote in his newsletter Tribal
Messenger
'The
Stonehenge festival , for myself and thousands of other people . was about
the opposite to commercialism and war. It was about love, peace, sharing,
happiness, ecology, beauty, brotherhood and sisterhood, Yin and Yang, meditation
and celebration, physical and spiritual awareness , Rock and Roll, music
and theatre, sunshine and sun-bathing, alternative lifestyle and cosmic
energy.'
©
Paul Seaton |
Amongst
those who should be acknowledged as seminal organisers of the festival
in the 80s were The Polytrantric Commune,
Nik Turner, Sid Rawle
,John Pendragon and
Big Steve. Others who consistently supported the festival included
Hawkwind, Here and Now and the fabulously
named Tibetan
Ukranian Mountain Troupe whose tent was the venue for a host
of bands over the years- but there are many other anonymous contributors
who we would like to hear from and add to the list .
We
now have been able to include Festival
Welfare Service and St Johns Ambulance reports on the festivals
from 1980-83 . These are fascinating reading for those who are interested
in the logistics and organisation of the festival. |
Barbed
wire surrounded the henge in 1980 ©
Guy Rowe
|
The
weather was vile in 1980 with rain for most of the two weeks .
Numbers gradually built from 200 on the 13th to more than 15,000 for the
solstice. The police created tension through their heavy 'strip and search
' activities, 360 souls being subjected to this arbitary procedure and only
10% being charged with any offence. Despite the declaration by FWS field
worker Penny Mellor that the festival had a "very
pleasant" atmosphere there was one nasty incident which is related
below .
Anarchist
band Crass were prevented from performing
by biker groups who bottled them offstage ( on the positive side,
apparently the biker groups helped erect stages in the early days
).
BIKERS
RIOT AT STONEHENGE
A night
of violence all but wrecked the weekend's Stonehenge Festival. The
trouble erupted late on Saturday night when a group of middle-aged
bikers went on the rampage, attacking every punk they could lay
hands on, and effectively preventing Crass and Poison Girls from
playing their sets.
|
©
Paul Seaton |
The
evening began peaceably with music from Nick Turner's
Inner City Unit, The Mob and The
Snipers, but when punk band The Epileptics
took the stage they were greeted with a hail of flour-bombs, cans and bottles.
Their lead singer was knocked to the ground by a bottle. The bikers then
set fire to The Epileptics' banner, attacked members of Crass
and Poison Girls, damaged the generator and
took over the stage.
 Ignoring
the plight of the punks, the Druids got on with their timeless ceremonies
© Paul Seaton.
|
Penny
Rimbaud , a member of the band, wrote
Our
presence at Stonehenge attracted several hundred punks to whom
the festival scene was a novelty, they, in turn, attracted interest
from various factions to whom punk was equally new. The atmosphere
seemed relaxed and as dusk fell, thousands of people gathered
around the stage to listen to the night's music. Suddenly, for
no apparent reason, a group of bikers stormed the stage saying
that they were not going to tolerate punks at 'Their festival'.
What followed was one of the most violent and frightening experiences
of our lives. Bikers armed with bottles, chains and clubs, stalked
around the site viciously attacking any punk that they set eyes
on. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to escape to; all night
we attempted to protect ourselves and other terrified punks from
their mindless violence. There were screams of terror as people
were dragged off into the darkness to be given lessons on peace
and love; it was hopeless trying to save anyone because, in the
blackness of the night, they were impossible to find. Meanwhile,
the predominantly hippy gathering, lost in the soft blur of their
stoned reality, remained oblivious of our fate.
|
Ugly stuff,
yet another instance of biker boorishness spoiling an event , yet not the
first instance of bad feeling at a free festival, as I have heard of punk
bands being bottled at Deeply Vale. Yet most writers do not even mention
this event .Collective amnesia ?
©
Bodge
|
©
Bodge
|
Thandoy
at Stonehenge Free festival 1980 © Janet Thompson
|
The Tibetan
Ukranian Mountain Troupe ran their tent. Amongst the artists were Thandoy
and the You ,Hawkwind and the Torpedoes.
Paul
Trew from the Torpedoes has these recollections
I've
played stonehenge festival with The Torpedoes I think it was 1980
.As I recall Crass played .We had our own PA and marquee and loads
of bands played on the saturday night including THE VULGAR BROS
,ANIMAL MAGIC,ROCKING TIMBO, THE ROUSTABOUTS and I know Larry
Millar of the LARRY MILLAR BAND definitely did the benefit gigs
that we set up to get the dosh to pay for everything.
The Torpedoes also played on the Friday night on the main stage
before Nik Turner as our PA was hijacked by Sid Rawle and the
teepee people who thretened to run us off the site unless we gave
up our pa .We reached a compromise which allowed us to use our
gear at our stage.
On
the next night Crass came up to our stage next day and asked to
borrow our gear , we declined but said they were welcome to play
at our site .
|
©
Paul Seaton
|
As
we only had an audience of 500 or so they said no thanks, the rest is history
. I have to say Stonehenge that night was a magical gig , the bands played
all the way through till Sunday evening .The pa ,genny and marquee all had
to be back Monday. I just remembered, Martin our bass player was 14 and
friday night on the big stage was his 1st gig he stood with his back to
2 or 3 thousand people for the whole set despite mine and the crowds exhortations
to turn around.
Teepees
in front of the Stones 1980 © Bodge
|
Mark's
extensive report on this festival provides an excellent recount of the nasty
incident between the bikers and punks.
All
roads lead to the Henge -eventually © Paul Seaton
|
STONEHENGE
80
A friend from school turned up on my doorstep, having deserted
from the Navy! We put him up for a week or so & decided we
would smuggle him to Stonehenge, at which point he decided that
he would be better off taking his chances handing himself in.
As
luck would have it, the day I set off, the dole office decided
they had underpaid me & sent me a giro for £100+.
I had arranged to meet people on site, having found the tents
& a message that they where in the pub in the local town.
Of course by the time I got to the pub, they had gone.
As you will remember there were two roads leading to Stonehenge
– the main road, which took a mile extra, but more cars,
or a back road, which was shorter but less traffic.
|
As
it was getting towards dusk, I decided to take the short route. After
getting a short distance from town, I saw a car approaching me in
the distance. Standing there hopefully, I stuck out my thumb &
glory be, the car stopped a short distance up the road. As I ran towards
it all the lights flashed on – it was of course a Police patrol
car.
I have to say, the DS bloke was pretty nice, after the obligatory
search back at the Station, they gave me a cup of tea, a fag, an apology
(!) & a lift back to the site. Funny thing was he reckoned that
'nobody smokes on my patch, we’ve busted them all ' – yeah,
tell me another one.
The
following day I scored some most excellent acid – orange barrel.
As the rush kicked in, all I could do was sit down on the Iron Age
hillocks at the back of the site, listen to some Rachmaninov been
played at maximum volume from a sound system & watch this magnificent
psychedelic sunset. (At one point the line of trees turned into a
silhouette of a herd of elephants, which started to run round in this
gigantic wheel). |
Sunset in the carpark © Paul Seaton
|
March
of the Druids © Paul Seaton
|
At
some point round midnight, (having discovered that I could still walk!)
I came across these little red dots floating around this campfire,
closer inspection revealed all these people dancing round a fire &
waving joss sticks about.
Later
on, we all sat watching satellites/shooting stars/UFO’S zipping
across the sky whilst I became earnestly involved in conversation
with two (tripping) young women, that "yes, the universe really
was an inverted pudding bowl, painted black & if you looked closely
enough, you could see the strings the stars were attached to".
Just
one of those little, spontaneous events, which made Stonehenge so
unique.
|
The last memory I have of that particular trip was standing round a
campfire at 8:00 am (ish) some 13 or 14 hours after dropping the tab, still
too wrecked to speak, watching blue, red and green squares, circles and
triangles appear on peoples faces.
The
Solstice, a week or so later, passed without incident – bar somebody
grabbing the mic, as literally thousands of cars were entering the
site & shouting:
"The
revolution has started, Downing St is under attack, Stonehenge has
been declared a refugee camp, and the ley lines will protect us …"
A
friend of mine later related the story of how he heard the broadcast
just as some Orange Barrel was peaking. He spent a rather confused
night…
Band wise, Inner City Unit played a couple
of sets, Nik Turner played flute with a band called Entropy &
a couple of Hawkwind bods turned up & played as an ICU/Hawkwind
crossover – WindHawks??. |
©
Paul Seaton
|
©
Paul Seaton
|
Bar
that, ain’t got a clue who I saw, bar Spacemen
3 & the wonderfully monikered "Psycho
Hamster meets the Killer Doughnuts from Mars". If memory serves
me correctly, the latter played something like an all night, five-hour
set, as nobody else would take the stage.
I
think I saw Ruts DC do a set, though after
being on site for three weeks or so, everything became a little blurry
round the edges.
Pertinent
to this story is the biker gangs – mainly from the South West, who
would turn up in force & colonise a section of the festival for themselves
& woe betide anybody wandering into it . |
During
the latter part of the festival Crass turned
up & were listed to do a set on the Saturday night. Rumours started
to circulate that the biker gangs where making noises about it being
"their festival"& the punks could er, "go away".
There
was probably a fair amount of politicking going on between the groups.
I remember talking to a guy from Release who where considering leaving
before the Saturday night (can't remember if they did or not ).
At
one point, whoever was organising the main stage made an announcement
that "we needn’t be worried by Crass,
you can easily recognise them, and they are older than us & dressed
all in black". I "dined out" as they say for months
afterwards with a couple of Crass fans of my acquaintance on the fact
that I had chatted to the band round a campfire.
In retrospect, rather foolishly, I scored some Ying Yang blotter, on
the following Saturday.
|
The
ceremony at the Stones Sat 21st
photo © Kevin and Ruth Dear
|
| 
The
ceremony at the Stones Sat 21st
photo © Kevin and Ruth Dear |
I
knew it was going to be good when after about an hour, I got that
electric taste in my mouth & similar to "Fear & Loathing…
" the sky suddenly rendered open....... On good acid, I always
had this thing that the sky was made out of jelly & the horizon
was the jelly skin, & all these Pterodactyl type creatures started
flowing out of the hole in the sky.
Some
friends had accidentally acquired this guy (from Manchester I think)
who latched onto them. He was spending the whole day scoring anything
& everything in sight. I think his intention was to take his stash
back to Manchester.
I
bumped into them all, my friends also having decided to take some
acid & needless to say, this bloke, who had never, ever done hallucinogenics
before had scored some orange barrel… and taken two tabs…
|
|
| I
have some synapses destroyed - memory of stumbling round yelling about the
"fuckin bats man, fuckin skies full of them" & one friend
shouting, "fucking forget the bat’s man, look what’s over
there…" At which point we decided to have a cup of tea.
May
I assume many readers will have experienced this – deciding to get
together a cup of tea when the initial rush is just peaking on some good
acid. Good, then I can leave the ensuing shambles to your imagination
After
been chased off the tea stall by some hippy kids shouting what’s
"three times six, five times seven", kids having some inbuilt
radar to spot what condition we where in by then, we chanced upon a stall
selling amyl nitrate at 20p a hit. To his credit, the guy selling the
stuff did explain exactly what is & what it did. Did this put the
Mancunian off? I think not, indeed he took this MASSIVE snort (getting
his moneys worth). |
©
Paul Seaton
|
©
Paul Seaton
|
Ever
seen anybody get pole axed? This must be the nearest thing to it I have
ever seen. Poor sod never knew what hit him.
I
met him the next morning, me in some appalling comedown state, (never
could handle the day after a good trip all that well) whilst he was still
white faced & looking pretty shaken. He reckoned that he spent the
rest of the night hiding out under a van, too scared & paranoid to
move as all these creatures & slithery things ran around the site.
By
that point the acid was really kicking in & I decided that this guy
was going to do my head in with antics like that. So I wandered off down
to the main stage. ICU where just starting a set, I remember a couple
of us climbing up the inside of the Pyramid stage & sitting at the
back, looking down on the band as Judge Trev Thoms kicked into "(who
stole the fucking) Gas Money" |
The
next couple of hours, I think I just wandered around until for some reason
I ended back at the main stage, round midnight where a band, I thought it
was Crass, but evidently I'm wrong, were playing & a couple of bikers
jumped on stage, punched the singer and commenced to smash everything up.
The
rest is pretty confused; I can recall seeing people being chased across the
field & beaten up – some acquaintances from the Islington gay punk
contingent were pretty badly hurt. I later heard that they, the bikers (to
be fair I suppose, a group of them) just set about attacking anybody with
short hair who looked vaguely punkish.
I’m not to sure if this played a part, but some enterprising farmer had
brought (at least) a tanker full of really potent home made, (cheap; he was
selling it by the gallon)- "scrumpy" on site.
One
of the many disparate groups attending the festival was the squaddies
– who would sneak in after dark (I’m sure that the Commanding
Officer would have banned them from a 100 yards of us lot). The squaddies
took to the scrumpy, well like ducks to water. Quite often round dawn,
you would see squaddies frantically trying to wake up comatose mates from
round dying campfires.
Mega
freaked by this turn of events with the biker gangs, but hey, I survived
tripping in Kings X , in the company of this guy who would fight anybody
if they looked at him the wrong way. The dilemma being do I grab my stuff
at 1:00 am & beat it (& into the arms of the local constabulary
who were gathered on mass outside the perimeter & I guess that DS
guy was just waiting for me to foul up) or stay?
As luck would have it, I bumped into a bunch of hippies running a "chill
out" session (long
before clubland got in on the act), whom recognising my freaked out
state called me over & calmed me down by feeding me rice & beans,
a joint & a cup of tea – to whom I shall be eternally grateful
for their kindness & if they ever read this A BIG COSMIC THANK YOU.
Really appreciated.
|
Barbed
wire and megaliths do not make good companions
©
Paul Seaton
|
Round
4:00 or 5:00 am, I found myself back at what was left of the main stage. Some
guy, who deserves the most enormous respect possible, (& again a big thank
you mention on the website) had pulled together a scratch band, got the generator
working & started playing again.
Whoever he was, he deserves respect for having the courage to get on stage
& sound off on "how this was the people’s festival & we
don't want no fascists wrecking the place".
|
Braver
man than I (at that time, a veteran of several 1970’s anti Nazi rallies
& pitched battles with the NF), I have to say. I remember coming down,
sat on the stage as the sun rose, thinking "fucking hell, I’ve
really fucked up this time"
Not
all the bikers were like the above. A couple of days before, I wandered
past a group of bikers (from South London) as dawn was breaking.
The
bikers were prising open some car batteries with an axe. A biker came
over & said "excuse me man…" leading me to assume he
was going to say "have you got 10 pence"– you could not
travel 10 ft without been stopped by somebody asking for cash/fags/drugs.
However,
to my pleasant surprise, he said "would you like a try of this"
producing a MASSIVE home made bong – with a double headed pipe to
boot, from behind his back.
Turned
out they have just arrived (round 5:00 am to avoid the police) complete
with several weights of some extremely good quality Red Leb & freebies
were the sales pitch.
I was sooooooooo stoned I was hallucinating……………..
But
back to the biker gangs beating people up. I managed to grab some sleep
& woke up to a drizzle, the bikers had departed en mass & the
whole site was a smelly tip – compounded by a comedown hangover.
There was a really awful band – " White Feathers" (?) Playing
in the rain at 10:00 am to nobody & a fistfight broke out round a
campfire - over who owned a pan. So I grabbed my stuff & hitched back
to London.
Left: the
Intrepid photographer Paul Seaton -stricken by dysentry |
One
of the lifts was from a "geezer" type bloke from "sarf Lundun
mate", who had spent a couple of days on site, checking the place out.
He held forth on Thatcherite free market principles (& selling various
substances & goods at mark up prices to the assorted mass’).
I guess him & his mates moved in pretty quickly once they realised the
opportunities.
Stonehenge
Free Festival site 1980 © Bodge
|
Wow,
I was amazed to see a pic of my face in one of the ''1980'' pics, ''gathering
of the tribes''..I am at the far right at the edge of the pic, holding my
friend's baby [who would now be in her 30's!!!!!!!] hard to believe I am now
51...
I
do not remember any punks being attacked, but as a ''hippy'' the bikers tended
to leave me alone...at least, I had no bother with them at all, but it must
have been terrifying if they were attacking you.
There
was a lot of opium/heroin on site that year, and a definite 'change of vibe'
which was edgier...the begging was a real pain in the butt, and yes, all the
requests for ''have you got 10p''...previous years didn't seem to have such
a begging problem.
The orange acid was wondrous strong, and we persuaded a very straight christian
friend to take ''half a tab'' with us...she said she would, if she could treat
it as an ''experiment'' and could take it in a churchyard to feel near to
God.
So
into Amesbury we walked, and waited for the acid to come up in the churchyard
at Amesbury...Alice, bless her, was very good....she was ''amazed'' by the
acid, and all she would say was ''it's incredible!'' and was then quite lost
for words.
We
found our way back to the site, and Alice by now had given up all hope of
writing her experiences down [she had insisted on writing down her acid-thoughts,
but as the stuff came on, thought it was a pointless idea.]
There
was also more alcohol on site, which disappointed me, and really, in that
one year it seemed to change vibe from being a hippy stoner event, to being
a harder edged place...I did not feel entirely at ease with the changes.
Petty thefts occurred, and it just seemed less magical than other years.
I
do remember the stupid coach trippers, though, gawking at us through binoculars
as if we were wild animals....hoping to see sex acts and ''free love'' I heard...hahhah!
I have never ever seen such things at a festival....the festival goers were
far too stoned to bother ''getting it on''....and goodness knows what the
coach trippers wanted to see.
Sid
Rawle was rapidly losing his hair, and seemed impossibly old to me at the
time.....but how old would he be now if alive?? he used to try to have ''groups''
with him doing the majority of the talking, and I would dissolve into fits
of stoned laughter..it seemed so odd that at a ''free'' festival, someone
was trying to lay down the law!..oh well, his heart was in the right place.
I
have very fond memories of Stonehenge, esp of 1979, when a wonderful supply
of Indian opium was available.....it felt like lying in the sun, on a pink
cloud, despite the fact I was actually lying on a blanket on a groundsheet
in the pitch dark!
Wonderful memories!
Cathy
Stonehenge
Free Festival © Bodge
|
Thandoy
again © Janet Thompson
|
Hi guy's -
I love your free festival site-I really do, its good
fun and a great cultural resource-but also because I was at a lot of these gatherings
but remember so little about them, it's good to at least now see how things
looked.
One thing I do remember clearly from the 1980 festival at Stonehenge was an
incident involving the police.
It happened one morning when everything was very quiet at the entrance to the
site. I'd wandered over to go to the stones but paused by the entrance to talk
to this guy with long dark frizzy hair who looked like a hardcore free festival
type. I was at that point still, technically, a schoolboy. We got chatting and
he asked me if I had anything to skin up with-i told him that i did but was
a bit worried about the group of coppers standing around doing nothing about
20m from the entrance. He shrugged, 'Oh don't worry about them'. He seemed confident
so I made a bifda and we smoked it with these coppers all, by this time, out
of the white transit and looking at us.
After
we'd finished and thrown away the roach one of the coppers came striding over
to us, right up to me first and demanded "Were you just smoking drugs!?"
I freaked and just pleaded "No, no, no!-it was just smoking a rollup-honestly-please
don't arrest me" etc etc. Then he turned to the hippy guy and asked, "Have
YOU been taking drugs?" The guy looked the copper up and down and replied
with utter contempt in his voice, "Of course I've been taking fucking drugs."
At which the copper immediatly signalled to his collegues who ran over from
the van, picked this guy up by the arms and legs, ran back and threw him into
the back of the van which zoomed off away from the site and over the horizon.
It shook me up a bit-but I was, and still am, hugely impressed by the guys defiance
of unreasonable authority.
one love
blub
Tibetan
Ukranian Mountain Troupe buses and the Tibetans famous Marquee at
Stonehenge Free festival 1980
© Igor Malaprop
|
The last free festival in the saga found me made redundant
on a Friday. There was really nothing to do but smoke a big spliff, jump on
my trusty MZ and head off down the M3 to Stonehenge. As I got there it started
to drizzle and by late evening was genuinely raining. The only shelter I had
was the survival gear I was already wearing as a motorcyclist and a space blanket.
I spent a miserable night in the woods and got back on the bike and rode straight
back to London. The actual festival was clearly going up market as all I really
remember was a big car park full of real cars and not the ramshackle collection
of vans and buses of the mid 70s.
Henge
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Henge
History :1972-1984
