Last Great Event: With Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison

The Isle of Wight Festival in 1969 famously 'stole Bob Dylan from Woodstock' and was the starting point and benchmark for all rock and pop festivals in the UK. What followed in 1970 was one of the world's greatest music gatherings of all time, attracting musicians and fans from across the whole musical spectrum. The list of performers is a Who's Who of the then music elite, who are now legends: Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, the Who, Joan Baez, Richie Havens, Joni Mitchell, Procul Harum, the Doors, Leonard Cohen, the Moody Blues, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Kris Kristofferson, Donovan, Melanie, Jethro Tull - the list goes on. This was Britain's 'Woodstock' and all on a tiny island off the south coast. It would also be Hendrix's last major performance - 17 days later he was dead. The 1970 Festival was a pivotal event in so many ways. It spanned five days and nights with an audience widely reported to have reached 600,000 (on an Island with a population of 120,000) who were entertained by an unsurpassed galaxy of world famous musicians. But the organisation of such a huge happening was ievitably far from plain sailing.It proved to be a roller coaster ride for the intrepid young Foulk brothers who navigated its course through a year of relentless political buffeting from local reactionary opponents and then from extremist counterculture militants who thought they would prefer a free festival.Just as Island opponents were busily sabotaging the festival site and issuing death-threats, so too an unsavoury cabal of radicals arrived from London under the banner of the White Panthers, intent upon undermining the event. For the first time, Ray Foulk, joint organiser, gives his own full, frank and authoritative account, delving into pivotal texts from all sides of the divide. Many remember this festival as a magical, life-changing experience, encapsulating the sixties trip of sex, drugs, rock'n'roll and a political yearning for a better world. But for others, a question looms large over the history: did this final festival help precipitate the end of the dream of an alternative society, or did it reflect the changes already taking place? This most controversial of festivals was aptly promoted by the Foulk brothers themselves as 'The Last Great Event'.

“"...you will absolutely love this backstage look at a great moment in rock history."”

Authors of the internationally-acclaimed 'Stealing Dylan from Woodstock' continue the story of the Isle of Wight Festivals with this complete history of the ground-breaking 1970 Festival, told in the same highly-readable and entertaining style.

RAY FOULK, now based in Oxford, has fostered many passions since his early days as a promoter. After the Isle of Wight Festivals and stadium events in London, he and his brothers were head-hunted by the Milton Keynes Development Corporation to help plan the leisure content of their new city. Through this, Ray brought the scientist and designer Buckminster Fuller to the project, embraced his environmentalism, and eventually trained as an architect himself at the University of Cambridge. Combining design, education and promotion he spent much of the nineties and noughties as an environmental campaigner, and led the ambitious in-schools project, Blue Planet Day, rekindling the satisfaction and more that the Festivals had brought to his youth. From his home in Oxford, the last few years have been dominated by environmental architecture and writing. CAROLINE FOULK has worked with her father, Ray, for many years, researching, writing, and co-promoting the in-schools project, Blue Planet Day. Together they have recently completed a screenplay for the cinema about the invention of modern art. Caroline trained and worked as a teacher and lives in Oxford with her husband and three children.

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