Fabulously Flamboyant Fridays: A Postcard From 1976 Pt.3

It was fifty years ago today. Well… Not quite – but close enough for rock ‘n’ roll.

This article was originally scheduled to appear over the recent August bank holiday weekend. But, as is so often the case, life decided to get in the way. And so, with that explanation and apology out of the way…

Greetings pop pickers and please be welcome to another edition of Fabulously Flamboyant Friday – our occasional Campari and soda drenched probe into the rainbow and glitter world of contemporary – and in this case very un-contemporary – culture. For tonight, dear reader, we shall travel back in time for our third and final visit to the long, hot summer of 1976*.

*Trigger Warning: this article contains scenes of Phil Collins, which some viewers may find distressing.

As before, we must set aside the strictures of the Trades Description Act, because the music of ’76 was neither louche nor fey, neither limp of wrist nor light of loafer, and in short does not meet even the most limp-wristed of puddle-jumping criteria for a fabulously flamboyant Friday. My musical tastes back then were hirsute of chest, smelly of denim, stained with engine oil, soaked in Newkie Broon – and quite probably garnished with a side order of Hai Karate and Brut as well. It was ’76, the skies were blue, the land was scorched and the music was loud.

In part one of this series, I made brief mention of my trip to see Rory Gallagher play at the August 1976 Reading Festival, and as this year marks the 50th anniversary of that splendid event, I thought I’d take a fond look back and see what recollections can be dredged up from the addled remnants of my (then) chemically altered and (now) fast-fading memory.

A group of us had only just returned from seeing The Rolling Stones play at the truly humongous 1976 Knebworth Fayre, and we quite fancied rounding off the summer with a sun-scorched trip to the Sixteenth National Jazz, Blues and Rock Festival. This was better known as the Reading Festival, an annual, three day music festival, to be held, as usual, over the August bank holiday weekend on the banks of the Thames at Richfield Avenue in Reading.

The 1976 Festival was a much smaller event than the Reading/Leeds festival into which it would eventually evolve. Just thirty thousand punters, if memory serves. As we’d just survived the appalling festival conditions of what many believed was around a quarter of a million people at Knebworth, an end-of-summer event with just thirty thousand people felt like we attending a gentile garden party by comparison.

We decided to meet up on the night before the festival at a boozer in Leigh-on-Sea called The Carlton. The pub is still there (on Leigh Broadway) but I believe it now has a new name. We had originally planned to beat the masses by setting off nice and early, but of course we all got absolutely hammered in the pub and overslept. However, by about 7am, the more compos mentis of our group had managed to cajole and berate our rag-tag bunch into a semblance of consciousness and we all stumbled, blinking and bleary-eyed, into the bright and relentless morning sunshine. It was already hot, even at this early hour of the day. It was August ’76, we were in the middle of a long, hot, record-breaking drought and clouds, it would seem, had decided to play very little part in our blistering summer. As a result, once we’d pulled our rucksacks and camping gear onto our backs, we were all soon sweating like Fred West on Ground Force.

For our recent trip to Knebworth, we had organised a small and suitably battered convoy of semi-legal cars and semi-stoned drivers to ferry us to see the Rolling Stones. However, unlike Knebworth, Reading was very well served by the finest service that British Rail could offer, and as the M25 did not yet exist (although bits of it were already under construction) we decided to take the sage advice of Jimmy Savile and let the train take the strain.

I’m pretty sure we caught the train into Fenchurch St, travelled by underground to Paddington, and then on to Reading. My memory of the journey is quite hazy, but I do remember the astonishing heat and malodorous smell of our London Underground trip. The battered and clattering old tube carriages (that are probably still in use today) were as hot as ovens, rammed to the gunwales with punters and everyone was sweating like Jimmy Savile in a paediatric morgue.

Eventually, we arrived at Reading and promptly made our first significant tactical error: Instead of going straight to the festival site and pitching our tents, we headed straight into the nearest convenient boozer (The Traveller’s Rest? The Traveller’s Friend? I can’t quite recall) and got absolutely hammered. When we finally did get around to the serious business of erections, our little circle of tents, a triumph of booze-fuelled optimism over engineering, bespoke of limp and flaccid, rather than proud and erect. It was hard work in the baking sun. By the time our tents were complete, I was sweating like a glass blower’s arse.

We also suffered our first casualty of the weekend, as we lost one of our brave chaps for the entire festival. He’d managed to pull a Stevie Nicks clone in the pub and she wisely persuaded him to retire to her tent (i.e. well away from the rest of us). One look at her and you knew his fate was sealed. He thoroughly enjoyed his festival weekend, saw almost no bands at all, and didn’t stop grinning for weeks.

And so onto the music. Friday night belonged to the glorious, space-cadet ensemble known to we earthlings as Gong (by this point headed up by Pierre Moerlen rather than the thoroughly loopy Daevid Allen). I had always considered them to be a reasonably amusing bunch of pot-head pixies, with a severe tea pot fetish and delusions of competence. So their performance that night came as quite a surprise – they were, quite frankly, magnificent.

I stood there, gobsmacked, nodding along as if I understood every poly-rhythmic twist and turn (I didn’t) and became a lifelong devotee on the spot. The primary reason for my Damascene conversion was the unbelievable plank-spanking I was witnessing. I had assumed the legendary Steve Hillage was still playing guitar with the band, but I was wrong. Steve had moved on to pastures new and his replacement was Soft Machine’s plank-spanker par excellence, Allan Holdsworth. That night was my first experience of seeing that astonishing musician perform and the visceral shock of witnessing his musical ability has stayed with me to this day.

The other thing that struck me that Friday night was the shift in atmosphere at the festival. Unlike ’74 and ’75, Reading ’76 was a curious mix of leftover pot-head hippie goodwill, emerging hard-rock muscle, and the faint sense that something new and angrier was just around the corner. LSD was falling out of fashion, amphetamines were fast becoming the drug du jour and the slightly edgy atmosphere of the crowd seemed to reflect that. In retrospect, ’76 feels like a tipping point. A time when our drug use shifted from being used to enhance (or at least shift) our perceptions of reality, to being used simply as a tool to blot out reality. The much-vaunted counter-culture had failed to improve society and the grim economic realities of Blighty in the mid-to-late ’70s didn’t seem to offer much in the way of hope. In retrospect of course, when compared to the UK of 2026, we were living in a veritable paradise. Paradise, however, much like youth, is perhaps wasted on the young.

Anyway, that’s quite enough navel-gazing bollocks for this evening. Back to the music. Of the other bands that performed that day, only Mallard has stayed with me. Basically, Mallard were Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band, without Captain Beefheart. I had bought their eponymous debut album the previous year, was suitably impressed and was very much looking forward to seeing them play live. Happily, they did not disappoint. They were splendid that night and I honestly believed they would go on to great success. Sadly fame and fortune eluded Mallard, but I’m very glad I was able to see them perform (the only time I saw them play) on that hot and sticky August night. Eventually, full of warm beer and appalling festival food, the air filled with the plaintive cries of “Wally!”, I retired to my hot and humid tent and spent the night sweating like a Geordie in a spelling test.

Saturday morning arrived, blisteringly hot, and we all went for a cooling swim in the Thames. We splashed about, spat fountains of river water at each other and I’m pretty sure we all came out dirtier than we went in. However, in the naive and foolish ignorance of youth, we knew nothing of Hepatitis A or Leptospirosis (Weil’s Disease), so we all survived, hale and hearty, and headed to the beer tent for breakfast libations. The temperature in the beer tent was unbearable, the cooling effect of our river swim was long gone and soon – sweating like priests in a playground – finding some midday shade to enjoy our breakfast beer became our primary concern of the day.

Once the arena opened, Saturday brought the untrammelled joy of watching our local heroes, Eddie & the Hot Rods, perform on a proper stage. I was living in Leigh-on-Sea at the time, or had possibly just moved down the road to South Benfleet (it was a long time ago) and Eddie & The Hot Rods (from nearby Westcliff-on-Sea) really were our local heroes. A great bunch of lads, full of proto-punk and pub-rock energy, they felt like the future. Much like our other local pub rock heroes, Dr. Feelgood (from nearby Canvey Island), they quickly hitched a ride on the emerging punk rock scene, but sadly, unlike the Feelgoods, the Rods never really hit the big time. Nevertheless, they were on fine form that day and we cheered them until out throats were hoarse.

I also remember being hugely impressed by both Pat Travers (a fine rock guitarist) and a young Gary Moore (wot an plank spanker!), as a sweaty Saturday afternoon gradually morphed into a full-on prog-fest: Colosseum II, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, Van der Graaf Generator, Phil Manzanera and Brian Eno’s 801, and the mighty Camel – a prog rock banquet of epic proportions indeed. I was happier than a politician betraying their populace – which, of course, means very happy indeed.

The only sad part of Saturday is that it would prove to be the last day of summer, as the great drought of ’76 came to an end halfway through a magnificent set by Manfred Mann’s Earthband. At first, it was just a light sprinkle of rain. As I was sweating like a blind lesbian in a fish market, it felt invigorating, refreshing, cooling – and after the long dry months of summer, almost magical (cut me some slack – we were all stoned out of our gourds). However, the sprinkles soon became a veritable downpour and none us were dressed for it. The immediate upside of this sudden downpour was the cheerful realisation of just how many girls in tee-shirts and cheesecloth shirts were operating without bras. That was most invigorating!

Saturday night was closed with a magnificent performance by Rory Gallagher, giving his usual masterclass in how to make a Stratocaster sound like it was being strangled and tortured to death. On the way back to my tent, I tripped over a guy-line or something and face-planted into the mud. I was sufficiently drunk and stoned to think, oh this will do, and promptly fell asleep. I only know this because some burly bugger woke me up and sent me on my way. Apparently, my drunken snoring was proving to be somewhat irksome – although he didn’t express his displeasure in quite those terms. I eventually found my way back to my tent, which was flooded.

By Sunday morning, I was done: damp, exhausted, smelly, hungover and done. However, by the time I’d re-positioned my tent (to avoid the possibility of additional flooding) the weather had cleared and it seemed like we might have a nice day in prospect. So I girded my soggy loins and headed for the festival arena. I’m very glad that I did, because Sunday delivered the goods – big time. Not only with some pretty decent weather, but also with an absolutely unexpected string of magnificent musical treats.

The first surprise of the day was The Enid – a band I knew nothing about. To my astonished delight, they delivered the finest set of symphonic prog it has ever been my privileged to witness. They took to the stage and were greeted with almost complete indifference. By the time they wrapped up their set, with rousing renditions of The Dambuster’s March and Land Of Hope And Glory, the crowd were on their feet, howling, stamping, cheering and roaring for more. It was quite possibly my favourite performance of the weekend.

The next surprise was Back Door. Once again, a band about whom I knew bugger all. They turned out to be an unusual jazz trio: drums, bass and saxophone. They didn’t go down particularly well with the crowd, but I was mesmerised by their bass player, Colin Hodgkinson. As a bass player myself, I was staggered by his ability. He seemed to be playing bass, lead and rhythm parts all at the same time. As with Allan Holdsworth on Friday night, I became a hopeless devotee on the spot and have remained so to this day.

Next up – it’s Phil Collins Time!! Yay! This, of course, was long before Phil became a globe-straddling super-dooper superstar and all-round Friday night Puffin favourite. He was there with his jazz rock outfit, Brand X. I had already seen Phil perform with Genesis and was aware that he was a fine drummer. However, unleashed from the rhythmic restrictions of Genesis, his drumming ability was an absolute revelation. Brand X delivered a cracking set, Phil thumped the tubs with tremendous aplomb and, for a while at least, critics began drawing comparisons between Phil’s tub thumping ability and the great Billy Cobham. High praise indeed.

Next up were the band we’d all been waiting for: AC/DC. They’d been garnering rave reviews and were tipped by many as the next big thing. When they took to the stage, with Angus Young in his ludicrous schoolboy uniform, there were sniggers a-plenty. By the end of their set, they had completely won us over. They were an irresistible force back then. Their performance hit you like a smack in the face and it never let up. It was exhausting just watching them and they truly lived up to all the hype. They were destined for stardom, and by the end of their performance we all knew it.

Ted Nugent delivered a Ted Nugent set as only Ted Nugent can. His out-spoken political views have made him very unpopular with many in the media and the music business, and his views have undoubtedly harmed his career. Nevertheless, he turned in a tremendous set – as he always does – and the crowd lapped it up, as did I,

Osibisa drew the short straw and had the difficult and thankless task of closing the festival. If they had played on the hot and steamy Friday night, they might have gone down a storm. But on a cold and damp Sunday evening, with a cold a tired Sunday crowd, they struggled to engage the audience. Sadly – because they really were very good – by the time they finished their set, the festival arena was almost empty.

The following morning, bright and sunny (as it always seemed to be, once a wet and soggy festival was over), we were packing our camping gear and preparing to head home, when the distant strains of some rather splendid jazz music started wafting our way. On closer inspection, it turned out to be a much smaller, one-day, satellite festival (about 300 people) of acoustic jazz. The music sounded great, the bank holiday BBQ food smelled mouth-wateringly good, there was a much better range of beer than had been available at the main festival and the sun was shining brightly.

It was a no-brainer. In we went and we had a tremendous day. The headline act was The Humphrey Lyttelton Band. Lyttelton was best known, to me at least, as the host of Radio 4’s comedy quiz, I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, where he was famous for his dead-pan delivery of double entendres, once described as “the filthiest thing on radio”. I was aware that he was a musician, but it came as a bit of a shock to realise just how bloody good he was. His vocalist for the day was Elkie Brooks – and she was no slouch, either.

We all headed home after that. I caught a train to Cardiff, where my parents had settled (I guess somebody had to) and I believe I fell asleep and woke up in Swansea. Though, to be brutally honest, that could have been after any number of festivals.

Fifty years on, the mud has long since dried, the tent is a distant memory, and that weekend in Reading has faded into comfortable, sepia-tinged nostalgia: damp, slightly foolish, utterly unforgettable and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It was the perfect coda to that glorious, almost magical, long, hot, summer of ’76.