Hollywood music festival
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The Hollywood Music Festival was held at Leycett near Newcastle-under-Lyme on 23rd and 24th May 1970 in the grounds of a farm. It was notable for being the first performance of the Grateful Dead in the UK and also for the triumphant performance of the band Mungo Jerry (of In the Summertime fame) and featured such notable bands as Free, Ginger Baker's Air Force, Colosseum, Family, Black Sabbath and Traffic. Red Bus was the company responsible for the festival and Ellis Elias and Elliot Cohen were the promoters.
This was the first of the major festivals held in the summer of 1970 and part of the festival was supposed to be filmed by the BBC but the crews were unavailable.
Wild rumours circulated in the music papers about the supergroup that Lord Sutch was supposed to be fronting, Eric Clapton, John Lennon, and others were supposed to join in a super jam, but none of these luminaries showed up, nor did scheduled acts such as the James Gang and the Flying Burrito Brothers which tended to dilute the overseas offerings to a large extent.
Although the festival has generally tended to be eclipsed by the larger, better known festivals of 1970 such as the Isle of Wight Festival and the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music 1970, it deserves to be remembered for its excellent organisation and lack of hassle as well as a great deal of memorable music. Traffic, José Feliciano, and Air Force more than made up for the no shows and overall around 40,000 made the pilgrimage to Leycett to hear some great music by some of the eras best UK and US bands.
