4. By The Time We Got To Bickershaw

Wigan's Woodstock is remembered for being muddy and wet. The original UK Mudstock was held on a slag heap. Forty thousand hippies descended on the coal mining village of Bickershaw, near Wigan over the weekend of May 5-7 1972. It was only twelve miles from our house. 


Promoted by Jeremy Beadle before he achieved fame as a television presenter, the festival is musically best remembered for legendary performances by Captain Beefheart and The Grateful Dead. Woodstock veterans Country Joe and The Incredible String Band appeared alongside John Peel favourites Family, Stackridge and Al Stewart. 


I went with my brother and our cousin, Mark, the three of us squashing into a one man tent, pitching camp near the swamp at the back of the field. 


The rain pounded down on the first night. A gale blew the sound away. We shivered on the the foul, muddy coal wasteland as Dr John tripped the night away. He threw sackfuls of silver glitter into the pitch dark sky. The goofer dust twinkled Ju Ju in the cloying coal mud. 


He was followed by Hawkwind. They were the hottest new band in the land at that point and about to race up the charts with "Silver Machine". I guess we went to our tent soaked, cold, but contented that first night.


The next morning, I wandered the festival site. It already resembled a war zone. The rain and forty thousand pairs of feet had churned the coal field into a black mudbath. 


Things had already started falling apart. The fences were down and anyone could walk in. I bought Jamaican patties for breakfast. They were yellow Cornish pasties with heavily spiced filling, the most exotic food I'd encountered at that point in my life. A hippy offered me some acid and several more were selling hash. I didn't buy anything, I still wasn't taking drugs then. Looking back now, I think that we were the only festival goers who weren't tripping that weekend. 


Donovan and the Incredible String Band played gentle acoustic sets in the afternoon, Family rocked the night and the Kinks played pissed. On Saturday night, we sat shivering until 3am eternal. We were waiting for Beefheart. 


"And this is the master of fake, cold as a snake", he growled as the band finally launched into that fabulous set. 
Legend has it that it was this show that inspired Joe Strummer to form a band. A few years ago I managed to acquire a bootleg CD. Its mastered off a cassette recording and is average quality. 


I made a copy of it for my brother and when I gave it to him, I told him that it wasn't the best quality, but in places you could still smell the mud. There's a terrible earth loop that makes the amplifiers hum on a lot of it, but its still got the vibe. The hum gets so bad that the band have to stop playing in the middle of the set. 


"I have an electric lighter and I wouldn't take it out right now, for nothing", the Captain grumbles during the interruption. 


They were promoting "The Spotlight Kid" album, Beefheart's attempt at rock n roll super stardom. "The Spotlight Kid on spotlight", he says when introducing the band. Panned by the critics and hated by the Magic Band, I loved the album and had played it to death. This was a band on the edge, light years ahead of their time. As Melody Maker journalist Richard Williams put it, “The first impression is amazement that they aren’t actually hovering two-feet above the stage as they play, for their music doesn’t seem to be bound to the earth in any way.”   


If you'd like to hear what Beefheart sounded like that night, click here
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When dawn broke the next morning it felt like something special had happened. A spaceship had landed and abducted us. Exhausted, we spent that day waiting for the Dead to appear. It was a cold day and the site stank of wet coal mud by this stage. The last semblance of order had broken down. We were filthy, tired and hungry. It was a free concert by this point. The locals arrived in droves that afternoon, the straight people in their Sunday best came out to stare at the freak show. 

The Grateful Dead were in the middle of their historic Europe 72 tour. As the sleeve notes on that album say, "There is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert." Their recordings of this period show them at their peak. The pioneering Godfathers of the jam band world were legend for their marathon sets. Fusing rock 'n roll, folk, bluegrass, blues, country and improvisational jazz; they forged a new psychedelic space 
rock with sets that lasted four or five hours or more. One song alone could last for half an hour. They always improvised and it is said that in the 2,300 concerts they played during their career, no two Dead sets were ever the same. 


The Summer of Love was reborn in Wigan that day. The sun came out when they started playing. People lit bonfires. The band commented on the stink they caused. 
"I don't know what you're burning out there, but it smells rotten."  
"It must be my shorts " 
"Everybody's burning their old socks (laughter) and its disgraceful, disgraceful." A young Elvis Costello stood in the mud amazed by the performance and was convinced he should start a band. I also stood in awe as "China Cat Sunflower" and "I Know You Rider" carried me away. It was a long strange trip. I would have stayed there forever, but then my mum appeared, demanding I leave. I didn't want to go. We argued. I wanted to stay until the end, but she insisted I come away. I had to prepare for school in the morning. We had a row in the car going home. I was furious with her. I sulked and didn't speak to her for weeks. Which was often the way between me and my mother back then.  

If you want to hear what The Dead sounded like that afternoon, click here