Jon Blake, award-winning author and son of the electrical contractor for the 1969 festival, has written a novel about the event. On May 24 2011 (Dylan's 70th),his novel about the festival, 69ers, will be published

Extracts from this, and rare archive material, can be found at his site www.dylan69.com.

Part of the 1969 crowd down front of stage . Note picket fence , but no sign of a shrubbery .....

photo courtesy Sue

   The 1969 Isle of Wight Festival was a far more ambitious affair than than the previous years bash , which only had the Airplane as the overseas headliner and not a lot of other big names to back them up. The 69 line-up was far more heavyweight . With the BIG Z as the drawcard , none other than Bob Dylan himself ,  and bands like The Who and The Band taking support roles , this festival was guaranteed to draw many more punters than the earlier festival. 

  These pages contain parts of the program , articles , photos and information regarding recordings , performances and set lists where they are available. We are always looking for more first hand accounts as well as new archive material, particularly photographs taken by audience members. If you have any info you can contribute to the site, such as details of recordings. recollections, programmes, tickets, pix or articles  please Contact us

Copyright is ALWAYS retained by you and we seek no commercial gain . NB : this is an advert free site which generates NO revenue and as such we do cannot pay you to use your material.

Photo courtesy repfoto © 1969 click to see more IOW 69 pix at their site. You can also view more here onsite in the program pages .

The Band

Blodwyn Pig

Blonde On Blonde

Bonzo Dog Dooh Dah Band

Edgar Broughton Band

Joe Cocker

Aynsley Dunbar

Bob Dylan

Eclection

Family

Gary Farr

Fat Mattress

Julie Felix

Free

Gypsy

Richie Havens

Marsha Hunt and White Trash

Indo Jazz Fusions

Liverpool Scene

Mighty Baby

The Moody Blues

The Nice

Tom Paxton

Pentangle

The Pretty Things

Third Ear Band

The Who. 

we now have exclusive photos of most of the performers onstage - go to the Photogallery to check them out

Cover of the 1969 Isle of Wight programme

 

    This was a BIG festival, estimates of up to 150,000 attendees, compared to 10,000 the previous year. Also, it appears that this was also a smooth running operation. Despite the Island status ,which normally means restricted access, the tourist connections to the IOW ensured that transport was able to cater for fairly large numbers of people .The island is close to the mainland and there were numerous large ferries as well as excellent train connections from Southampton and Portsmouth , major rail hubs close to the Island itself .

    Fortunately for the promoters, there was none of the dissent that occured in 1970 between the promoters and the forces of the anarchists and underground activists who demanded free access to the site . This may however, have given the promoters a false sense of how much profit was to be made out of such an event .Instead of keeping the festival within a reasonable size , in terms of audience numbers , the following year they booked even BIGGER and even MORE acts than in 1969.

    As a result the 1970 festival was so ambitious that its logistics became unmanageable and the promoters were allegedly ruined financially . However, all that was down the track , after this show , the Foulk brothers had reason to believe that they were onto a winner .

Right: queueing up © David Kohn