Early Byrds

On Saturday night I found myself reminiscing about the Bath festival in June 1970. If you follow this blog, you will know that I went to it in rather unusual circumstances, my friend and I having persuaded the nuns who ran our boarding school that it was essential for our Duke of Edinburgh Award. In the course of the conversation I realised that there were people on the bill that I have no recollection of seeing, though there was only one stage, and as we had no tents, sleeping bags, food, water etc etc, I was under the impression that I stayed awake and watched everything from under a piece of clear plastic sheeting, handed out, refugee camp style to the inexperienced festival crowd. There was a lot of rain. So much rain that the running order was disrupted, due to the danger of mixing rain with electricity on stage. As the sun rose on the last morning, I was down the front near the stage, watching the Byrds play an acoustic set. I was wearing a Nigerian Fulani blanket my dad had brought back from Northern Nigeria a couple of years before. I still have it. Pure magic. At the weekend my friend James William Hindle posted a link to the Byrds 'Get to You' from the Notorious Byrd Brothers. As I listened, I was in floods of tears, happy to hear the song again, but overwhelmed by emotion I had no idea was there. Bath was my first ever festival. This weekend I'm off to No Direction Home at Welbeck Abbey - if it rains I'll come home. I'll take food and water and tents and air beds and sleeping bags. I know it will be a great experience, but there's still a bit of me that wishes I could be that totally unprepared 16 year old again.