The Archive.

For information on today's festivals see eFestivals.co.uk

Created December 2007

Updated July 2023

The Reading Rock Festival.

Richfield Avenue. 
Reading 
August 28-30th 1981.

Crowd basking in perfect weather at Reading 1981 © Phil Teague

Setlists and recordings

Steve Hackett 8-28-81


 

 

1. Intro
2. The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
3. Every Day
4. Ace of Wands
5. Funny Feeling
6. The Steppes
7. Overnight Sleeper
8. Slogans
9. A Tower Struck Down
10. Spectral Mornings
11. The Show
12. Clocks

sbd or Fm

Samson 8-29-81

 

1 Big Brother
2 Take It Like A Man
3 Nice Girl
4 Earth Mother
5 Vice Versa
6 Bright Lights
7 Walking Out On You
8 Hammerhead
9 Riding With The Angels
10 Gravy Train

FM released on disc

Bruce Dickinson: Vocals
Paul Samson: Lead guitar
Chris Aylmer: Bass
Mel Gaynor: Drums

Rose Tattoo 8-29-81

 

Gillan 8-29-81

Greg Lake and Gary Moore 8-30-81

  • Fanfare For The Common Man
  • Nuclear Attack.
  • Long Goodbye
  • the Lie
  • Lucky Man
  • Retriution Drive,
  • Parisienne Walkways
  • Court of the Crimson King
  • Love You too Much
  • 21st Century Schizoid Man
  • You Really got a Hold on Me.

 

 

Greg Lake (guitar, lead vocals)

Gary Moore (?lead guitar, vocals)

Tommy Eyre (keyboards, vocals)

Tris Margetts (bass)

Ted McCracken (Drums)

 

 

Reading 1981 Pages

Policing reading 1981
Can we get a witness ?

We need more info on this and the other Reading festivals, we are now in the curious situation of having better documentation on some of the earlier festivals, so c'mon headbangers, get yer photos out and fire up whats left of the aging braincells .Send your recollections and scans to us NOW ! !! Contact us

Thanks to photographer Alan Perry for allowing us to use his excellent photos of Reading 1980, you can purchase copies of these pix at his website where he has oodles of top photos of metal bands from the 70s to date.

Reading in the 80s to date- Fat Regs excellent site covers Reading from 1982 onwards

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

 

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