In last month's UNCUT, our writers, friends and favourite musicians reminisced about their favourite gigs. Well, in this month’s issue we’re looking back on the worst gigs we’ve ever seen - including The Stone Roses, Bob Dylan, Kevin Rowland and David Bowie - with rare photos from the shows t...
In last month’s UNCUT, our writers, friends and favourite musicians reminisced about their favourite gigs.
Well, in this month’s issue we’re looking back on the worst gigs we’ve ever seen – including The Stone Roses, Bob Dylan, Kevin Rowland and David Bowie – with rare photos from the shows too.
We’re also going to publish one of the worst gigs every day, with online exclusives, so feast your eyes on this, and be glad you weren’t there!
*****
10 | ROLLING STONES
Knebworth Fair, Herts, August 21, 1976
CAROL CLERK: In 30-plus years of seeing the Stones, they’ve been good, great, occasionally indifferent and sometimes transcendent. At Knebworth, though, they could’ve been performing like gods and I’d never have noticed.
We’d set out with huge expectations, myself and some friends who’d flown in from Northern Ireland. Knebworth was horribly overcrowded. By the time Todd Rundgren’s Utopia came on, we realised that to leave our pitch meant literally walking on top of people squashed together on the ground. Trampling over random legs and feet in the hike to the nearest stinking toilets, queueing, and then desperately trying to relocate our home base occupied the interval and half of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s set. We decided, miserably, against striking out again to find food or drinks.
The next big problem was 10cc, whose sound problems caused massive delays. The Stones finally came on, more than two hours late, about the time the concert was supposed to finish. The mood turned ugly in places. One particular fight near us led to a terrifying backward stampede, the sort that could cause serious physical damage, so we kept on retreating, all the way out of Knebworth. I have no idea what the Stones were playing as we left. That night, we really didn’t
give a shit.
*****
plus WERE YOU THERE?
Not even UNCUTs war-weary gig-hounds have been to every show in history – but you lot probably have.
Email Allan_Jones@ipcmedia.com to share your memories, of the ones we’ve published or any which we have missed, and we’ll publish the best in a future issue