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The Weeley Festival.
Clacton On Sea . Essex.
August 27th-29th 1971.

Listening to Barclay James Harvest playing Mocking Bird. The music wafting across the Weeley crowds made all the waiting worthwhile. I don’t mean the time it took to get Barclay James Harvest and the orchestra on stage but the months of planning and work that went into getting the stage, P.A. System and lighting in place.

I was in partnership with three friends, Paul Normand, Jan Pegram and Nigel Olliff. We were young, ambitious and had formed Lytton Sounds in 1970.  Lytton Sounds operated mobile discotheques using the name Heavy Light.  From operating mobile discotheques the company moved on to operating lightshows with a regular gig every Sunday at the Roundhouse in Camden Town.

Early in 1971, Nigel Olliff and Jan Pegram spotted a short agreement to design the stage, supply the P.A., stage lighting and lightshow.  The contract was for one thousand pounds.


From starting off as a music event for a few thousand people, the festival started to grow and grow. I think the reason for this was that there wasn’t going to be an  Isle of Wight festival that year and that bands had started to realise that playing a large festivals was a very good way of promoting their records. I do remember there were plans for another large festival on the August bank holiday organised by John Reid, Elton John’s manager, but it didn’t get the necessary financial backing. As a result more bands wanted to be on the bill at Weeley and the number of festival goers kept on rising as more top-line bands were added to the adverts in the music press.

 

t soon became apparent that Lytton Sounds would not be able to handle the size of the P.A. needed. Through intermediary, Dave Simonds, we were put in touch with Joe Brown who ran a small P.A. company. Joe approached Jim Marshall to see if his company would supply the necessary equipment to create a P.A. system big enough to cover the now proposed large Weeley arena. Up to that time, WEM P.A.s were used by most small and medium sized bands.  Jim Marshall was keen to break into this market.

Jan and I travelled up to see Jim Marshall at his factory in Milton Keynes. Jim told us that he was prepared to supply a large powerful P.A. system for the festival. We came to an agreement that Joe Brown would receive half of our contract fee, five hundred pounds, to supply and operate the P.A. System. Everything seemed settled until King Crimson said they wanted to use their own P.A. system. Vic, their road manager came round to our office to discuss the matter. I say discuss but really it was an ultimatum. King Crimson were going to use their P.A. system or they weren’t going to play at Weeley. As King Crimson were managed by the same company as T Rex, E.G. management, Mark Boland and co would also use their system.

We had to make sure that there was room on the stage to accommodate King Crimson’s speakers. King Crimson used a Kelsey Morris P.A.. This was the system used by Pink Floyd and was considered the ‘Rolls Royce’ of the P.A. world at that time.

The problem was that King Crimson system was not very powerful. The system consisted of a very well designed mixer, built by Bill Kelsey and Jim Morris, feeding a unit that contained 8 x Quad 303 100watt Amps. These were connected to a number of Martin Audio Bins. The P.A. was nowhere as powerful as the Marshall system. When King Crimson came to play their set, the people at the rear of the arena could not hear the music, so the Marshall system was used to boost the Kelsey Morris P.A.