Shindig! #166 – Peter Daltrey, Fairfield Parlour
“I OPENED MY BONE-DRY MOUTH…”
WHO: Peter Daltrey, Fairfield Parlour
WHERE: Isle Of Wight Festival, Afton Down, The Isle Of Wight
WHEN: Friday 28th August 1970
Who is the first group on stage tomorrow, Dave?”
“You are.”
The apres-breakfast discussion was subdued. Our bassist Steve Clark, he of the nervous laugh and nervous trembling leg, was unusually still; not at peace within himself, more frozen with apprehension. Eddie Pumer – my writer-brother, guitarist – avoided my eyes. We dared not look at each other for fear of what we might glimpse in there. Only Dan Bridgman, our drummer, was anything like normal, grunting encouragingly.
The roads were clogged with other cars and hippy vans and hordes of people. Unlike the vocal locals, they all looked so happy. So relaxed. Indeed, very relaxed. We saw people still asleep on the grass verges. Policemen waved us on into the melee of human forward movement, all drawn as if by some cerebral magnet to a communal dream.
We drove through a dusty cloud into the backstage area, officious officials growling like gorillas, already losing control of the unwieldy wave of humanity that poured off the approach roads. It was mid- morning, already stiflingly hot, yellow dust rising like steam from the pathways. I looked up and Joan Baez wandered by. She wore a beatific smile on a smoothly tanned beautiful face. Gone in an instant. Unreal.
My girlfriend had made me a white cotton Jesus outfit specially for the gig. I put it on, momentarily feeling more confident. We couldn’t eat. We gulped water in copious amounts, the heat inside the tent unbearable. At one point [organiser] Rikki Farr shoved his ugly visage through the tent opening. He scowled, said nothing and disappeared. Everyone was checking watches. Two o’clock came and went. Guitars were tuned and retuned. Our manager dived in and out of the tent. Then: “Over the top!”
We left the safe world of the tent and were confronted by a film crew; a camera shoved in our faces. We walked towards the stage. A flight of stairs led up to the high stage. The film crew bustled around, cameras shoved this way and that, a furry microphone wielded like an intimidating weapon in our faces, ready to eavesdrop on our every word. Rikki Farr suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs. “Twenty minutes!” he barked. “We’re running late. You’ve got 20 minutes. Get on with it!”
In the time it took us to climb 12 stairs we had to chop our carefully constructed set in half, desperately trying to calculate which songs would give us 20 minutes running time. It was an impossible task. Our minds wouldn’t work. Those bloody cameras were on us again. We were on the stage.
The breath left my body in one sustained gasp and failed to return. Dan thumped a drum. Steve pumped a bass string tentatively. Ed retuned. I approached the microphone, my breath returning, my heart disappearing in the opposite direction…
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