UK music press reports of the Henge line-ups.

    By the 80s the festival had grown to be a major event attracting up to 65,000 in 1984. Yet brief reports are the only coverage we have been able to find of the festivals in the mainstream press. Since the festival was closely allied to Glastonbury , we have included photos of the adverts for this festival so you can look up the bands who were likely to have played at Stonehenge as well as the mainstream festival. Click on them to see a larger version .

Right : the 1981 poster .This poster is a hybrid . Somebody took the lettering and format of the 1975 poster created by Roger Hutchinson and added the picture of the child and the new dates.

Poster courtesy of Big Steve.

    Stonehenge free festival reaches its musical peak this weekend , with a non -stop succession of bands over the midsummer solstice . The organisers say that among the acts who' ve agreed to appear are The Selecter, The Thompson Twins and Black Widow .(Friday ). Merger, Misty In Roots ,Nightdoctor , African Star and Man to Man ( Saturday ) and the Androids of Mu , Inner City Unit , Andy Allen s Future , Stolen Pets , The Lightning Raiders and The Deaf Aids. ( Sunday )

   Its likely that Spirit, Killing Joke, Ruts Dc and Black Slate will show up , as well as surprise guests - who are likely to b some of the acts from the simultaneous Glastonbury festival , unable to be named in advance because of their contractual commitment to that event. The Stonehenge festival is expected to continue until the middle and perhaps even the end of next week - being a free event , its duration is flexible and depends largely upon bands continuing to turn up during the course of the week .

Krishnas rock it up © Paul Seaton

KH: It sounds corny, but going to the Stonehenge Festival changed my life. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw it. It really was anarchy in action. This thing didn't happen in the U.K.!

Right in the middle of Thatchers reign - an alternative state existing outside of the law of this country.

A free festival has such a different atmosphere to a paying festival. I had already been to Glastonbury, which had given me a taste of this kind of life, but Stonehenge hit me over the head like a mallet.

It was so different to anything I had seen before. It had the feel of a medieval encampment. There was so much going on - stages on every corner - stalls - and people providing weird tripping environments. It was like an activity camp for trippers! And everyone was doing it because they wanted to - not because they wanted to earn money (although it did degenerate into a drug dealers convention towards the end).

The first year I went with Psi we didn't have a drummer, but it didn't matter - we always seemed to find drummers (it was our first hookup with Generator Jon). Again, some of the jams are on the first tape. After being seemingly in a vacuum as far as our musical style, suddenly everyone's band you heard were playing trippy improvised music with echo guitar. I felt I had found my spiritual home.

Used by kind permission of Doug Shaver, visit his great site Aural Innovations to find out more about Nukli and bands of that ilk .

Left : Dusk onsite at Stonehenge 1981 © Paul Seaton

    The infamous pranksters of the Tibetan Ukranian Mountain Troupe were a fixture at Stonehenge during the 80s . Here is an extract from the 1981 Book of the Road, detailing how their busses arrived at the Henge around dawn ......

    And so , after Lunch trek , through the night with the infallible Star Fleet Tib UK , we arrive at Stonehenge. The first rays of the sun have not yet dispersed the early morning mist and as most there are still asleep the Tib UK bus trekkers bus, truck in slow grumble around the site looking for prime pitch . We drop anchor in the first space big enough to accommodate our modest enterprise with a good view of the Stones .
" Naw man the Stones will never turn up here man ,I heard some guy say that Spirit might drop by though .... "
      Its now about 7 am Sat June 12th . The troupe is all totally spaced on no sleep and night driving . I've just gone for a little walk round the site and sold out of lysergic gasket paper. As I look back to where the busses are parked something deep within me stirs as I see half a dozen figures, all in blue overalls with white faces and red eyes and totally blank expressions zipping about putting up the marquee . And all this before breakfast ! We are not alone !
    And indeed we are not alone as by now the rest of the festival is waking up. Stonehenge Freedom Festival 1981 is waking up !

The Polytantric stage

   The Polytantric pyramidical stage on the left was something of an institution at many of the free festivals of the 80s . Originally used by the band Sphynx in the late 70s, and designed by Harry Williamson who played with Mother Gong.

   The Sphynx set was based on the Egyptian book of the Dead, thus the pyramid shape of the stage .The stage with its highly distinctive shape, which echoed the much larger structure used at the second Glastonbury festival of 1971 - survived several lightning strikes and was used by Nik Turners various bands throughout the early 80s as well as at the Stonehenge free festival.

Photo kindly provided by Big Steve -

click and it gets bigger !

Some idea of the size of the 1981 festival can be judged by the warped photo left ,which is of the main drag.

Nik Turners stage can be seen centre left, although just what Jerry Garcia is doing there on the right I can't say, as he was supposed to be in the states playing Alaska at the time of this festival , musta been a doppleganger ! :-)

You can view three separate versions of this photo. A 750 pixel version of the complete photo (click on the photo on the left )- or the photo split into two sections which shows more detail .

David Nobbs- Stalwart St Johns Ambo person at Henge 1980-84- holds Jodi Luna -the baby girl he delivered at the festival in 1981.

click to read article and to see bigger photo

  The presence of the bikers always made the possibility of violence a real one- as happened at Weeley in 1971 . Fortunately , there were only two incidences of large scale violence by biker gangs,but these were more than enough and they really clashed with the ethos of the organisers and the majority of the festival patrons.

  However, measured against the hideous football violence of the era and the epidemics of large scale can throwing ( often when full of urine ) that were going on at the Knebworth and Reading festivals at the time, the Henge was relatively peaceful and safe.

"Stonehenge again plays host to its midsummer free festival this month and although the music runs for just five days , from tomorrow -( Friday 18th June ) to Next Tuesday (June 22nd) crowds have already started to assemble last weekend. The 1981 event attracted 35.000 people and , if the weather holds, a larger turn out is expected this year.

Three platforms have been erected to allow continuous music and over 40 bands are expected to lay on the mainstage alone. Hawkwind,. who were one of the star attractions to appear last year, return to the 82 festival - and among other confirmed bands are Inner City Unit, Here and Now, Amazulu , Deke Leonard , Treatment , Miles Over Matter and Inner Force.

But a number of big name acts who'll be appearing at Stonehenge won't be known in advance, because they'll be coming over from the near by Glastonbury festival this weekend and for contractual reasons they can't be named. "

Click on the Glastonbury advert to see a large version

This was also the year that hippie band Ozric Tentacles were formed, the members meeting at the festival and deciding to form a band as they sat around a campfire . The Pink Dots also had the inspiration to form their combo whilst watching an impromptu jam session by an unknown electronic band in the early hours of the morning .

   Whoever else played that night, I don’t remember. What I do remember is that Eat Alley had become Drugs Alley. You could still buy Hash Cakes etc, but not at individual tents: where there used to be a central thoroughfare selling revolting hippie food (diarrhoeia-inducing vegetarian doner kebabs, for example), now the food vendors were outnumbered by drug dealers. Most of the drugs on sale were harder than in years gone by. I bought some speed and snorted it on the back seat of an old Morris Minor, but it was no problem to get harder powders than that. There were rumours of bad acid flying around, that somebody had OD'd on smack earlier that day…amazing how much changes over 3 or 4 years.

    I also dropped acid at the festival in 1982. In common with the changed ambience from the late 70's to the early 80's, the acid was no longer the dreamy hallucinogen of days gone by, but blotter acid: speedy stuff. After dropping it at about 11pm in the evening, we sat around a campfire talking non-stop (about ley lines and such) till the early hours, and then walked home at 3am. I couldn't sleep at all and couldn't sit still either. So in the morning I dressed and went to work, still tripping….it wore off at about lunchtime the next day….