Ozric
Tentacles at Torpedo Town 86 on the Bramdean Common stage .All Ozrics
photos on this page ©
Baz
|
1985.
My
main reason for this mail is to give you my thoughts on the "Torpedo
Town" Festival held at Brambles Farm, Waterlooville in 1985. I was
there!
In
fact, I was one of the early arrivals, having come up from Sidmouth Folk
Festival to meet up with Alan Rundle having seen a flyer for the event (
Possibly at Elephant Fayre?). I remember the original plan was to use the
land right next to the existing Marconi factory, but the local council had
got wind of it and put a trench round the whole site. So it was decided
to use the (disused) farmland next to the original site - Brambles Farm.
A few of us descended on the farm via a hole in the hedge next to the main
road and quickly set up camp - a few tents and a camp fire was all that
was needed. I remember the police coming round and a few words from the
"squatters handbook" were all that was needed to see them off.
I cant remember what day this was, quite a few days before the festival,
though, and it quickly grew as more people were able to come and lend support.
At one point, the council came and tried to lower a skip (full of grit or
sand?) on the farm side of the main gates to the field we were in, but a
couple of us sat underneath it ( me included!), so they left it outside
the gate, (blocking the public footpath). I went along to see the Citizens
Advice Bureau ( in bare feet and stinking of smoke!) to ask about removing
obstacles from footpaths and they advised me I was in my rights to do so!
So, with the Police looking on, we donned shovels and emptied the skip into
the ditch next to it! "we aren't stealing anything from the skip",
I told the police," just moving it." When it was empty we managed
to roll the skip over and out of the way.
The
council made no other attempts to block the gate, but their attempts had
backfired on them, because it alerted the local press to what was going
on. This in turn led to the local radio and TV stations taking an interest,
and I remember giving a tradio interview in which I asked for supplies of
water and wood to be brought to us. The next day someone turned up with
an inflateable dinghy full of water! I also remember it had beed an incredibly
wet summer, the land was saturated, and any vehicles trying to get onto
the site often got bogged down. When the "Convoy" arrived it was
mayhem, Busses and trucks getting stuck allover the place. We had a whip
round to get a local firm to come on site with JCB's and pull the vehicles
out of the mud, but they ended up getting stuck as well! Eventually they
got most (not all) vehicles moved, and the resulting huge ditches that were
left became the (unofficial) latrines!!! When it came to the organisation
of the festival itself, that too was mayhem. The PA hire company refused
to do the gig having seen the publicity surrounding it, so we had to have
another whip round to hire one from a local hire centre. I think it was
the cheapest rig they had and was probably only 1 gig! (more on this later).
I
must admit I dont remember too much about the event itself, (who does!),
but I do know that the Ozrics turned up (friday or saturday?), and played
an unofficial set from the back of their transit, which seemed to go on
all night! The next day I spoke to Ed and asked him if they could do a stage
set that afternoon, as everyone had been saying how good they were. I remember
him saying they had never played on a "proper" stage before, and
they didnt "do" numbers, they just jammed... Fine I said, it doesn't
matter, just get up there and do your stuff!! I actually was doing the mixing
for them when they played, (as i did for most of the bands that played).
When
Roy Harper turned up, he took one look at the rig we were using and nearly
fainted...and promptly got back in his car and left. I thought he had decided
he couldn't do it, but someone said he had gone to get his own equipment!
Sure enough, a couple of hours later, he returned with his own PA and his
own technician, and I had the pleasure of being his technicians "assistance"
for the gig. He went down a storm, and I certainly dont remember any bad
feelings towards him. The pictures you have posted are NOT the 1985 gig,
so I can only assume they must be 1986. But I can confirm that Roy Harper
was definately at the 1985 festival.
Best wishes and keep up the excellent work!!!
Pete the Bus
(Peter Woodland)
Wickham Festival 1985
I
remember this as my last festival in a nylon nightmare as I got hold of
a truck that Autumn. Luckily the weather was good so there was no tent mudbath
experience. It was a pretty idyllic festival with loads of great music -
several stages - there always seemed to be a decent band on somewhere with
a decent PA on a real stage - pretty together for the times.
I remember seeing Ozric
Tentacles play for several hours through the night with a crazy west indian
flautist up front, who kept shouting "unity! unity!" and stuff
like that while they did their usual endless jamming. Webcore played an
amazing set - I think the first time I'd seen them. Very gothic, amazing
bass playing, synth and sax. They played on a pretty featureless stage with
virtually no backdrop while the warmth was draining out into the clear sky
and the chill of the night was creeping in, making the field misty - no
need for dry ice. I recorded a lot of music at Wickham and the tapes were
superb quality - God knows where they are now but I listened to them a lot
so my musical memories are pretty clear. I caught gigs from the Treatment
(songs like Blotted You Out, I've got the Microphone, they even played a
strange psychedelic piece about taking a crap...), a hard core band called
Phoney American Accents and the best of the lot, the Oroonies.
I didn't know who this band was, with their two drummers, crazy guitarist
wailing about "Freda and her best friend Nina", the lead singer
reciting the Hymn to Pan over grunge guitar and growling synth from Ritchie
(of Ozrics fame) and echoing flute & pumping bass thrown in. There were
so many bands doing that space-jam music at the time, but the Oroonies added
that element of bachanalian mysticism and lots of the unexpected.
I chanced on
Roy Harper playing in a crowded tent - he appears on those tapes of mine
so definitely it WAS 1985. I heard him do a great rendition of "Me
and My Woman", singing his own backing vocals through an echo mic.
He was spellbinding - don't remember any other songs so perhaps I only caught
the last song or two. There was some banter from the audience but I don't
remember it getting ugly - they just wanted to know if he would keep supporting
the free gigs - was this connected with his record contract? I don't know
any of the background.
In the daytime,
Military Surplus always seemed to be playing on a stage somewhere - they
had the singer / ranter who later fronted RDF but their stuff was more tuneful
and less of a hard edge. Lyrics typical of the time with songs like "Police
State".
On the main drag there were countless dealers hawking the usual substances
and the festival seemed a throwback to a pre-beanfield era, though the site
had been moved on earlier and we had all had to scavenge lifts off travellers
or fellow weekenders to get there, having arrived at the pre-publicised
site at Waterlooville to find everything shifted up the road to Wickham.
I don't remember
there being the huge and unfortunate divide between site people and those
of us who had come out of towns just for the festival - the following year
at Bramdean that was all too evident, but that's another (much more interesting)
story for another day :)
Garga
We
are suffering from a paucity of information about the early years of this
festival. By the 90s it had mutated into a Rave with Spiral Tribe and other
sound systems attending . Wango
Rileys was reputed to have been the resident stage and Jah
Free was amongst those who helped perform at the festival, but we do
not know in which years he performed.
Roy
Harper at Torpedo Town 1985-86.
Bit
of a mystery here , everyone has Roy as playing at this festival in 1985
, but the newsletter we have been given that list him as playing is dated
1986 ! Did Roy play here two years running or are all the memories wrong
?
Harper
played in 1986, and had a huge row with people in the crowd, 'cause he had
just signed to EMI. There is an audio recording of this set. The Ozric pics
are also from 86, that's the Bramdean Common site.
Kev
Ellis
All
Roy Harper 1986, photos © Steve Tomalin
|
Roy
pokes hisself in the eye !
|
According to Kev Elllis
from the rather spiffing dub-electronika band Bubbledubble
, Roy had a bit of a verbal dust up with sections of the crowd as he had
just signed a recording deal with EMI , who we seem to remember had some
connections with the munitions industry. This fired up Roy no end and he
delivered a very fiery set which apparently was recorded on tape ( can anyone
provide a copy for review ? ).
Roy Harper onstage
1986 at Torpedo Town Free Festival - Brambles Farm stage
|
Roy's
pissed off audience © Steve Tomalin
|
Newsletter
and press cutting courtesy Steve Tomalin
|
Information
on the 85s event is thin on the ground , we know Ozrics attended as there
is an 80 minute tape recorded on 10th August as evidence.
When
I was 17, I played in a band called ACT. We gigged around the south coast
and could draw a crowd of a few hundred people, sometimes more in Southampton,
Winchester and Portsmouth.
During the summer of 1985 we were invited to play a festival called 'Torpedo
Town' on the outskirts of Portsmouth. So called 'Torpedo Town' because at
the edge of the festival site there was a Marconi factory which made guidance
systems for cruise missiles.
The headline band were Hawkwind on Saturday night. Onstage at midnight.
Rock n' roll!. We played on Saturday evening (around 8pm) and again on Sunday
afternoon. There were maybe 7 or 8,000 people there. We rocked. Large.Most
of the crowd were travellers ( or 'crusties', or 'new age travellers' or
cyber-hippies). They had dropped out of society and travelled the UK and
Europe in beaten-up vans and minibuses and the like.
My
very first introduction to Roy was at a peace festival, in the '80s - nicknamed
the "Torpedo Town" festival, it was held at Brambles Farm, near
Waterlooville, Hants, in protest against a weapons factory being built on
the site. One of the organisers, Alan Rundle (though back then we were acutely
aware of avoiding hierarchy - no one person was ever identified as a main
organiser) arranged for Roy to play - this was the era of Ozric Tentacles
and the Poison Girls, if memory serves me right - and of course, for many
of us young 'uns, we had no idea who Roy was. "Who's Roy Harper?",
we'd ask. "Just wait and see" was all Alan would say.
The rest, as they say, is history.
As a footnote, I recall Roy turning up and taking a look at the PA, he immediately
turned his car around and left the festival. He drove all the way home,
which was in Clapham, London, I think, and returned with his own PA, which
he lent for the duration.
I
went to the Torpedo Town festival in ’86. It was the first festival
I ever went to. I had just left school and was working in a meat pie factory
that summer. I didn’t know anything about festivals really except
that they were the place to see Hawkwind.
I hitched down to Waterlooville with a couple of mates and hung around until
we met some likely looking people. The previous year’s site, Brambles
Farm, was a no-go so we ended up camped up with a load of other people somewhere
above Waterlooville.
Next
day we got a ride in a bus and we all set off in convoy of vehicles. I’m
not sure if we knew where we were going but eventually we got to a big field.
As we had been in the back of a bus I had no idea where we were but we were
told it was called Wickham Common.
The
vibe was great. I saw Ozrics, the Oroonies, Military Surplus (who later
became RDF, I think) Purple Worm and loads of different bands playing different
types of music. It was sunny and there were lots of people there including
plenty of locals.
Roy
Harper played and he got some grief off a punk who was shouting “only
stupid bastards sign to EMI” which was a slogan at the time. (EMI
had a subsidiary company that manufactured weapons parts). Anyway it didn’t
stop him playing and the crowd wasn’t particularly on the punk’s
side as I remember. I bought an Urban Guerilla fanzine and a Green Anarchist
magazine and took acid for the first time so obviously when I got home I
ditched my job at the pie factory!
Lucky
Dave
Its stated
that Hawkwind appeared in 1987 , perfoming at least twice on the 8th August.
there were no festivals held in 1988-89.
1987-1992
Thought I'd drop
you this line about my memories of 3 Torpedo Town festivals:
I went to 3 Torpedo
Town festivals which according to your archive, must have been either 1989
or 1990, 1991 and 1992.
I remember the first Torpedo Town festival that I went to as having a particularly
friendly vibe to it. I went down with a group of friends and we had a great
time. Even the local police were very friendly, directing lost festival-goers
(ourselves included) to the festival site. Either before or after that festival,
I got to know a really nice bloke called Kevin who was involved with organising
the festival and the next year, he invited us to go down there with a PA,
lights and loads of flouro décor and we ran a soundsystem all weekend
as Club Dog.
Spiral Tribe set up a massive soundsystem elsewhere on the site which I
remember, pissed off some of the more 'old school' non-ravey travellers,
particularly as the Spiral Tribe rig ran 24/7 for all 3 days at full pelt!
Looning
front of stage Torpedo Town 1987© Steve Bubble.
|
The 'rave' element
was made more noticeable by the addition of a large contingent of straighter
'ravers' (the outdoor rave scene and the free festival scene were still
pretty much mutually exclusive at that point) who arrived
on the Saturday night in droves in their cars, wearing clean trendy clothes,
but then departed on the Sunday morning/afternoon leaving loads of rubbish
in their wake (empty food and drink containers).
Despite the slight
antagonism between the festival old guard of spacerock-loving hippy travellers
and the younger dance music enthusiasts, I remember the weekend as being
a lot of fun, again, with a really nice vibe.
The 1992 festival
was a whole different story. By then, the 'brew crew' contingent had become
a large and increasingly visible aspect of free festivals and I remember
encountering lots of seriously drunk and out of it, very abusive and quite
menacing people all through the weekend of the festival. Soon after I arrived,
having asked after Kevin, I was told that he'd got into an argument with
some crusty travellers earlier that day, someone had set a dog on him and
that he'd had to go off to hospital. I don't know if this was true , but
I don't remember seeing him on site that year. That news sort of set the
tone for the weekend and what with the various punch ups and arguments that
I saw over the three days, my outstanding memory of the festival was of
it feeling like a dangerous place to be.
It was such a shame
as the first 2 Torpedo Towns that I went to, particularly the first, still
rank amongst my most favourite of free
festivals.
Michael Dog
MO
Blues Band play on a very low stage at Bramdean common 1987©
Kev Ellis
|
Bramdean
1987© Kev Ellis
|
Torpedo Town was
another festy of the time – our friends band were booked to play,
so we pootled on down. Police were good as gold, but refused to give us
a lift down to the site in return for beer ( surprisingly). There was a
lot of buggering around band wise, as there was a rumour going round that
certain people wanted a rave instead and if any bands tried to play, they’d
get their stuff trashed. In the end nothing seemed to get sorted, so band
went home and we kipped in the van.
Hope this helps
Cheers
Flounder
Hawkwind
play Torpedo Town Free Festival at Bramdean common 1987© Steve
Bubble
|
Steve Bubble was
involved in organising the festival in its later years , here are his memories
of the festival from 1987-1991
Having moved to Portsmouth
in 1987, I met some people, in Cholderton Woods funnily enough, who ran
the Solent Free Information Network, or F.I.N., part of a network of "F.I.N."
publications, who published festival lists and news etc at festivals in
the local Portsmouth area. A couple of the people involved organised the
Torpedo Town Free Festival which was traditionally held on or near the site
of the Marconi arms factory in Waterlooville a few miles outside of Portsmouth,
and grew out of a protest against this company.
I had been to the
Torpedo Town Free Festival in 1986, my first free festival in fact, and
was blown away by the nature of the event. People living in the most amazingly
decorated old vehicles and busses, a feeling of togetherness, an appreciation
of music and art and an anything goes attitude. I saw an amazing mixture
of music, from punk bands to folk bands weird bands, unlistenable bands,
it was all there… an impromptu town of around 4000 people, mostly
off their heads on acid I think.
Hawkwind
are there somewhere ! Honest !
Torpedo
Town Free Festival at Bramdean common 1987 © Steve Bubble
|
1987
site © Steve Bubble.
|
I
loved it and wanted more, and got more, starting to go to more festivals,
I was hooked! The following summer saw Torpedo Town on the road, police
were out to prevent another happening, rumours saw Butser Hill blocked
off, whist a phone number announced Bramdean Common was the actual
site. We raced off for a 40 minute drive to find vehicles struggling
to find the site tucked behing a village on the A272. An ancient common
where gypsies used to gather, indeed there is a little tin church
at the edge of the woods, built in 1883 for the gypsies who used the
common. This could have been a fantastic festival, if not for the
violence that marred the event.
Like anyplace
where a large group of people gather, you always get your idiots,
in the late 80’s it was the "brew crew", a bunch of
alcohol soaked thugs who stole peoples drinks, property and made a
proper nuisance of themselves via intimidation – this was probably
the worst time that the festivals experienced. I remember seeing "Rubbish"
Martin ( Martin was the guy you were guaranteed to see at the end
of just about any free festival – clearing up people’s
rubbish that the minority had left behind) getting beaten senseless
by a gang led by a girl with a cricket bat at Bramdean Common in 88,
he’d exposed a bender full of gear stolen from other festival
goers and paid the price…
1987
was going to be the last Torpedo Town – the organisers were
so disillusioned by the theft and violence and the air of intimidation
that prevailed at some of the festivals at this time, they called
it a day and this was understandable.
I’d met
Kev, one of the organisers, by this time, and the following summer
had seen my trying to persuade him to carry on and not be defeated
by a minority, but he was having none of it. Again, the following
year, 1989 and he was not convinced… maybe, he said.. but it
wasn’t going to happen, and didn’t. I told him that I
was going to advertise it for 1990, so he’d have to sort something
out then. |
Courtesy
Steve Bubble.
|
3rd
– 6th August 1990 – Bramshot Common.
Paradox
play in the great outdoors - Torpedo Town 1990 © Mandy Price
|
I designed a poster
and sent it off to Festival Eye, where it duly appeared, listed as a "mystery
festival", despite having happened for years. I don’t think Kev
was that impressed, he didn’t say as much, but he did nothing to make
me think he was going to be organising anything, so I started phoning people
up, starting with Bob Dog at Club Dog (a London haven for festival goers
in the colder season). Bob, rather helpfully gave me a list of bands most
likely to want to appear at a free festival and helped by spreading the
word too, but it was all a bit last minute. People and travellers were gathering
near Petersfield and I’d sent out maps to many people via the “Friends
of Torpedo Town address” that had been traditionally used for correspondence,
for a site which, rather stupidly, I hadn’t realised was an S.S.S.I
(Site of Special Scientific Interest) due to the rare flowers and fauna
found there.
The
site 1990 © Steve Bubble .
|
|
I
was working right up until the start of the festIval, listening to
local radio who were keeping listeners up to date on the numerous
encampments of festival goers springing up as the weekend drew nearer.
On the Friday morning, a number of vehicles attempted to gain access
to the initial, badly chosen site and it was getting pretty intense,
I was getting calls saying we desparately needed somewhere else to
go! A traveller mate Nick was checking out alternative sites nearby
and eventually found a large Common that hadn’t previously been
looked at, right on the Hants, Sussex & Surrey border. Ideal,
as the police couldn’t quite seem decide who’s area it
was in, each force just wanting us out of their own particular county.
Another friend who was with a massive breakdown truck, who just happened
to have one of the early mobile phones was up near the A3 with a convoy
of traveller vehicles, I gave hime the name of the new site –
and people headed up there, by this point I’d hopped in the
truck and bombed up the A3 myself.
There were
vehicles everywhere all somehow heading to the same point at about
2pm – people where at the site entrance and having to dig to
make it wide enough to get the coaches in – the main site entrance
was on the actual dual carriage way. Police, meanwhile had coned of
one of the lanes to allow vehicles to queue and enter. The site was
massive, about 650 acres I seem to recall, a huge dustbowl of a site
and it was one of the hottest weekends of the year, and a great little
festival was had. There were a couple of sound systems there, the
first I’d ever seen at a festival, booming house with some nice
lights flickering around the valley, mesmerising onlookers as the
darkness closed in – it was a new sound to many!
There was a
bit of agro between travellers and the young free party goers, especially
when it emerged that some young entrepreneurs where charging an entrance
fee to unsuspecting arrivals in cars, the was a rumour that a couple
of coaches arrived for a rave that they’d paid 25 quid for,
whether this was really true I never found out. |
| There
was a massive amount of fine wine and port on site, liberated from one
of the large houses wine store at the bottom of one of the large gardens.
People kept coming – probably 8-1000 at any one time, as the tv
and radio stations stated clearly where the site was. Sarah Greene apparently
owned one of the nearby houses and stories of people using her swimming
pool circulated.A few bands played, notably the Dicemen, a punky ska
band, who were excellent! The festival actually lasted a fortnight,
police insisted we had another week, as they didn’t want the whole
site crossing the county for the Cissbury Ring Festival the following
weekend – the second weekend’s party was entitled, Tornado
Town, and the site filled up once more for a second celebration, splendid!! |
Paradox
at Torpedo Town 1990 © Mandy Price
|
Torpedo
Town 1990 © Steve Bubble
Torpedo
Town Free Festival 1991
9-12
August 1991 Liphook, Hampshire
Crowd estimates
ranging from 10,000 - to 25,000 attend the festival on MOD land
.
More details
at the Spiral Tribe archives link above .
|
|
Free
festies stalwarts Mark, Colin & Kev Nukli on the Wangos Stage
: Torpedo Town 1991 © Drue Zell
|
1991
: Jean & Tony standing, Colin & Mark Nukli and John seated
© Drue Zell
|
It
was a good year for festivals, the numbers were picking up a crosspollination
was occurring between the travelling and rave posse’s.The buzz
was amazing, and I started work on the next year’s event before
the year was out, already thinking that this was a great site, but
unlikely to be accessible the following year. I was right, the site
was blocked almost as soon as the last vehicles had moved off, but
there were plenty more open spaces that we’d already looked
at. Spring saw many visits out to various commons, and as we visited
the previous year’s site – we crossed the road to look
at some M.O.D. land, a reasonable space we thought!
Bands were
contacted, another list from Bob Dog, they themselves were hoping
to bring a small stage and p.a. with them, Wango Riley’s Travelling
Stage were keen to come, having recently been acquired by Elm and
Ash, bands were phoning up, stalls, a circus, soundsystems, it was
feeling like it was going to be a good one! A small low log barrier
was the only thing blocking the site, so I bounced on one of the logs
which snapped like a dry twig, and I hastily put it back together
and it looked good as new, it was easy to pull aside on the day of
the festy.
This time I’d
persuaded Oxfin to run a phone line, a single number, to tell people
where it was going to be, a few people knew in advance, but I’d
stressed on the posters that the site would only be announced at mid-day
on the Friday, it was at 1pm when we actually arrived at the site
to find large festival vehicles heading up and down the A3 once more.
We ducked in and removed the already broken pole as vehicles began
to stream in, the police duly arrived, a couple of high ranking officers
who seemed slightly impressed that by the time they’d found
out where it was, dozens of coaches and trucks were already onsite
– "so you’re the advance Party then", the more
senior one asked, " yep, the rest will be here shortly",
I replied with a grin that stretched from ear to ear! I stayed on
the gate by the main road for hours, watching people and friends arriving,
a never ending procession it seemed. When I walked round the corner
back into the site a festival had begun, Wango’s were there,
and Spiral Tribe had turned up picking a wonderful circular clearing
behind and to the side of the main stage and the club dog stage, there
were smaller party rigs all around the site, and still the vehicles
kept coming. I recently found a newsletter from the spiral Tribe on
their archive site written by Charly Hall, one of the many dj’s
onsite!
right:
Mark Nukli Torpedo Town 1991 © Drue Zell |
|
Wango
Rileys stage at Torpedo Town 1991 © Steve Bubble
|
Knackered
after taking all those photos , Drue has a fag beside Kev's truck.©
Mark Huxley
|
Posters
for the 1991 festival courtesy Steve Bubble, image left © Angus . Right
© Steve Bubble and Chocks
|
A
fantastic festival was had, no trouble, bar a coach catching fire
by a candle – no injuries though, and all round good press in
the media, there was footage of parents dropping kids off for the
day on the local tv news!
Sadly, Dinah McNichol went missing on her way home from the festival,
found recently having been mudered by her lift, that was the only
downer on the weekend…. I thought at the time that it didn’t
look good for her, very sad!
The
1992-Otterbourne Hampshire
festival has its own page, travel there now ......
|
