The Archive.

Updated June 2021.

The Fourteenth National Jazz ,Blues and Rock Festival.   Richfield Avenue.  Reading  August 23rd-25th 1974.   After two years of miscounting the number of festivals there had been since 1961, the NJF finally twig that they have left out 1971 in their figures and they realise that this is the 14th festival, NOT the 13th as would be logical if 1973 was correct ...... Doubters need to look back to 1970 to see that the 10th festival took place in that year. Thus , 1971 was the eleventh , 1972 the Twelfth ,1973 the Thirteenth and 1974 was the 14th festival . Thus any flyers, tickets and promo stuff from the 1972-73 festivals are wrongly numbered . Dates and year are correct.

1974 festival Line-up

There seems to have been a number of line up changes, as you can see from the documents below.

     In addition to a nice but fairly ordinary  line up , Focus being the only overseas act of note - there was an epidemic of can throwing (unfortunately -the first of many ones to come ) - and a fish and chip shop was trashed by angry punters- annoyed at excessive prices. Eric Burdon and Ronnie Laine were no- shows, which considerably weakened the overall appeal of the weekend -although the addition of Procul Harum and 10CC went some way towards repairing the damage . There was the usual festival dampener..... RAIN...... but I expect the energetic acts of Alex Harvey , Traffic and Thin Lizzy would have warmed things up and made the weekend a worthy one .

Steve Harley © Vin Miles

Procol Harum onstage Reading 1974 © Vin Miles

Band photogalleries

courtesy Vin Miles, Phil Newson and Lindsay Young.

Reading 74 pages.

• Memories of Reading 1971-75- by Richard Novell, with more photos of the 74/75 festival
• Reviews -Friday and Saturday reviews.
• "Jesus" at Reading
• Reading 74 crowd photos
• Reading band Photogalleries
• The trashing of the chipvan
• The View from the Mud- recollections of Festival attendees
• Procol Harum at Reading photos (external link )

If you have material that will help build these pages,memories, photos, recordings, setlists, anything, please-contact us

The early festivals.

You can find out the complete line ups of the first festivals if you follow the links below .

1961

1962

1963

1964

Festivals 1965-1990

Most of these have fairly complete documentation .But new contributions of any sort are always welcome regarding any of the festivals.

Richmond 1965	Windsor 1966	Windsor 1967	Sunbury 1968	Plumpton 1969
Plumpton 1970	Reading 1971	Reading 1972	Reading 1973	Reading 1974
Reading 1975.	Reading 1976	Reading 1977	Reading 1978	Reading 1979
Reading 1980	Reading 1981	Reading 1982	Reading 1983	Reading 1984/5
Reading 1986	Reading 1987	Reading 1988	Reading 1989	Reading 1990

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