Stonehenge Free Festival 30th anniversary

FILMING

THE STONEHENGE PEOPLES’ FREE FESTIVAL 1981 to 1984

AL STOKES

filming THE STONEHENGE PEOPLE’S FREE FESTIVAL 1981 to 1985 a stroll through the random memories of a man who spent far too much time in the journalism trade photographing and filming the festval Copyright © Al Stokes 2014 Al Stokes has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be indentified as the author of this work.

This book is available to be read free gratis and for nowt subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent reader.

Or, put another way, please don’t nick the photos without asking first.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR AL STOKES was born into an era of steam trains, when there was a King on the throne & rationing.

Brought up in Greenford Middlesex, he escaped a poverty stricken background and, in that wonderful psychedelic year of 1967, appeared in Anne Jellicoe’s stage play The Rising Generation at the Royal Court Theatre, London. In 1968 Al joined the Film Department as a trainee at BBC Ealing Studio.

After five years at the Beeb, learning the craft, Al left to go freelance as an editor and eventually, after a series of strange misadventures which included a spell as Middle East war (above) Al Stokes, 1982, working on correspondent, he became a film the local news at Yorkshire TV in Leeds director.

In the 1990’s Al went back to acting and appeared in a number of Hollywood films, TV dramas and MTV promos.

Claim to dubious fame: Al was the screaming creature in Chris Cunningham’s 1997 Aphex Twin Come To Daddy promo.

In 2002 art school beckoned for a late degree to upgrade his analogue film making skills to digital. He got a 2:1 BA(Hons), whatever that is?

Currently retired he lives in leafy Norwich, writes copiously about obscure aspects of local history and sings in his band The Trolley Men. “People keep telling me I’ve had an interesting life. I’ve always taken that to mean I’m an unemployable hippie. Anyone calls me a hippie, I’ll flipping nut ‘em.”

Al Stokes, January 2014

he can be contacted direct at: www.facebook.com/Thetrolleymen

TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1, PAGE 6

Employ a Hippie Now While They Still Know Everything

CHAPTER 2, PAGE 11

The 1982 Hot Story That Never Was

CHAPTER 3, PAGE 13

Stonehenge 1982-3 The Film Crew Cometh

CHAPTER 4, PAGE 27

A Midsummer Night Rock Show

THE PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE, PAGE 56

1

EMPLOY A HIPPIE NOW WHILE THEY STILL KNOW EVERYTHING!

PHOTOGRAPHING THE STONEHENGE PEOPLES’ FREE FESTIVAL - BY ACCIDENT 1981 Saturday June 20th I was sent off to photograph the Glastonbury CND28 Festival for the Daily Mirror. Or not as it turned out. Tony Caruana came along as my driver29 and by the time we hit the Somerset county line we noticed a distinct chilliness in the air. Civilian stewards, with no apparent authority whatsoever, were flagging down motorists on the Queen’s highway demanding to know their destinations. We of the press pass persuasion refrained from telling them and instead asked to see the vigilantes’ warrant cards. That seemed to shut them up as we proceeded about our lawful ocafions. Petit-fogging jumped up robber barons defending some misbegotten music festival from people who didn’t even want to be there in the first place, out on the public highway. How is that allowed to happen? What benighted county police state had we wandered into? Things grew darker and more perverse at the festival site. It was if we had stumbled uninvited onto a private meeting of the KKK or a neo-nazi rally for all the waves of bad attitude we were getting from the civilian festival staff. The vigilantes would not allow Tony to park on the public road while I got out and took photos of the hippies, so we did it on the hoof30 with the intention of going back later to photograph inside the festival site for which we had tickets. We never got that far.

A motorcycle cop flagged us down and despite producing our 8-quid tickets and press passes31 he told us we were not allowed to photograph on the roads around the festival site, that he was going to escort us to the county line and if we came back into Somerset we would be arrested and locked up for the night.

Wow! Whatever the heck the coppers were protecting it must have been huge.

It turned out to be John Cooper Clark, Aswad and Hawkwind. I couldn’t help noticing Tony was driving very slowly.

‘Is there something wrong with the car?’ I asked.

‘No. But its very difficult to ride a motorbike at two miles an hour.’

We went on like that for a few miles until the motorcycle cop drew up alongside.

‘Don’t come back or you will be nicked and put up in front of the magistrate tomorrow.’

There was no point in arguing with the man although I was intrigued to find out what the charge would have been. Anything he darn well pleased. All I could manage was a forced cheeriness.

‘Yes, I shall definitely remember to tell my editor the press are not welcome in Avon and Somerset.’

‘You ain’t no f-ing press photographer, now f-off before I nick you for theft of that press pass.’

And with his joyful words ringing in our ears I contemplated what I was going to tell the picture editor about my distinct lack of festival photos when what appeared to be a scarecrow fell into the road ahead of us. Tony slammed on the brakes and, barely missing the bundle of rags, watched in horror as the thing picked itself up from the road and approached the car.

‘Give us a lift to Stonehenge,’ demanded the apparition.

We drove on. Seemingly, according to our new best friend and hitch-hiker, we had gone to the wrong festival32 which was run by a soulless diary farmer.

The festival we should have gone to, the one our new best friend and hitchhiker was directing us to, was the Stonehenge Peoples’ Free Festival. And all life’s plenty was there. Open drug dealing, naked dancers, free bands with every youth cult imaginable co-existing peacefully together across the road from the huge Stonehenge monument. The usual suspects of leftie press were there too including Tim Malyon who I had last seen at an LCC demo in Hyde Park. Mindful of what had happened at Glastonbury I approached the only copper I could find, the only copper who seemed to be policing the event.

‘Do you mind if I take photographs?’

‘Do what you want,’ he said, ‘everyone else does.’

So I did.

It was like being let loose in the biggest candy store in the world. And the rest of the straight-going press didn’t know about that place or, if the did, they ignored it. A bunch of blardy ‘ippes33! The photographic choice was so large Tony and I stayed on-site overnight to capture the full range of festival activity. To show my utter ignorance of festival etiquette I almost blundered catastrophically with a big greasy biker. I was sus enough to know not to show out with a big press camera and, lest it be stomped into the ground by the disaffected who frowned upon us running nose lackies of the capitalist press, left the great thing34 hung round my neck and concealed under a zipped up hoody. However, it was not zipped up enough because the big greasy biker saw a smidge of lens poking out of the neck

regions of the hoody.

‘Les ‘ava look at yer camera then?’ said the big greasy biker.

Ah! This was not good. The camera was the tool of my trade. I was very attached to it. Literally with the strap around my neck. I made excuses, the big greasy biker persisted. I unzipped the hoody and handed over the camera which was still strapped around my neck, he clicked off a few pictures with us tied together like Siamese twins.

‘This ain’ no good,’ said the big greasy biker. ‘Take it off yer neck.’

Oh well, it was a nice camera while it lasted. But as I handed over the camera he took off his reeking, grease encrusted Levi jacket and gave it to me to hold.

It hardly seemed a fair exchange. The big greasy biker took a few more shots and handed back the camera. I handed the stinking jacket back to the big greasy biker.

‘You come to a place like this, man, you gotta learn to trust people. Know what I mean?’ the big greasy biker explained. ‘I was Don Sharp’s assistant.’

As we went our separate ways the name faintly rang a bell. On a last tour of the site we bumped into a few Harrow freaks who were using the festival as their summer holiday then we saddled up to hit the 4pm picture deadline at the Mirror. It had been my plan to drop off the film and slob off home to my pit but the newsroom was agog for festival tales.

‘He actually said he’d arrest you for taking pictures?’

‘They were all naked?’

‘Escorted to the county line? Really escorted?’

‘Openly selling class-A drugs?’

And it takes time for seven rolls of film35 to go through the processing lab. The average tally of photos on any news story was half a roll, about fifteen shots. I came back to Holborn with seven rolls. Seven rolls! Good gawd. I used the time to write up the captions and scribble the invoice to make sure I got paid. As I was leaving the picture editor took me aside.

‘He really gave you his jacket to hold in exchange for your camera?’

‘Yes.’ ‘Then you got the better part of the deal. I’m surprised he let you hold his Colours. They’re like his soul to him. He was letting you hold his soul in exchange

for your camera. He must have really trusted you.’

Which made sense of the ‘... you come to a place like this man you’ve got to learn to trust people,’ comment. The big greasy biker had given me an object lesson in trust at my first Stonehenge People’s Free Festival. I salute him for it. The Mirror story broke two days later with my photo of a woman smoking an enormous hash pipe under the not very inspiring headline of, Stoned-Henge - high noon for hippies at the festival of hash. The provenance of some of the interviews were a tad suspect unless the Mirror sent a reporter to the Festival after I took the photos. My princely fee? 50-quid for the photo and 20-quid from the Evening Standard for a shot of the Druids, which they didn’t use.

FOOTNOTES - taken from an earlier book which is why numbers may not start at zero 28

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

29

to this day I still don’t drive

30

On the hoof = from the car on the move

31

recognised by the British Army, the Royal Navy, the RAF and the Chief Constable

of Constabularies but not, apparently, Avon & Somerset Police 32

get orf moi land!!

33

Translation: a lot of bloody hippies

34

Pentax ME Super with motor wind, 400m lens plus double back converter &

56mm lens for those of you who remember the joys of sprocket holes and nonautomatic aperture settings, Ilford MP4 stock 35

252 frames

*

AL STOKES 1981 STONEHENGE PRESS COVERAGE

2

THE 1982 HOT STORY THAT NEVER WAS

In 1982 I went down to Stonehenge to cover the summer Solstice fesival in the same old way but things didn’t quite work out in the same old way. Mike Boggis, a sound mixer from De Lane Lea recording studio in Soho gave me a lift to the Festival but we didn’t hang around like last time.

‘Go and grab some amusing shots of the hippies and be quick about it, roll around in it with your long-haired weirdo mates’ they said. A base slander!

It was good to have Mike there because he acted as camouflage when I was shooting faces in the crowd on a long lens. We looked like tourists, taking loads of snaps of my mate but actually shooting over his shoulder so as not to upset anyone. Photos had to be severaly cropped later because sometimes Mike’s lomg hair blew into shot on the slight breeze.

We made it back to the newsroom and into the eye of a media storm. Blimey, I knew my photos were good but I didn’t expect this! But I’d miss read the point.

Accosted by a journo, wanting to know where the flipping heck I’d been, was when I realised I’d walked into a debacle of massive and overwhelming proportions.

‘Stonehenge? D’you not listen to the radio? We’ve got more on our hands here than a flipping hippie festival!’

‘What’s afoot, Guv?’ Or perhaps I’d said something more pithily with growing concern.

‘Princess Di has just dropped her sprog, we have a male heir to the throne.

Hippies? Forget it.’

Oh well, that was another tank full of gas shot to hell. But since I owned the neg rights and paid for my own film I wandered off into the inky night with the shots and processed them myself. The pics sat in the bottom of my broom cupboard for a quarter of centuary until I used them as rostrum cutaways in a film about Crusties. They were quite well spoken Crusties. The upper Crusties. (below) Stonehenge Festival crowds queue to welcome the newborn Prince into the world with gifts of splendid water tanks

3

STONEHENGE 1982-3 THE FILM CREW COMETH

THE RHYME AND THE REASON; on the long, long road to Stonehenge.

By 1983 I was researching a proposed music doco, The Rhyme and Reason. A brisk search of my war and London demo photos disclosed some pictures of use with a suitable CND song. Someone suggested Fixin’ To Die Rag by Country Joe & The Fish which was written for the Vietnam War but the sentiments expressed in the lyrics were about right for Ban-The-Bomb. I sent all the negatives off to Pearce Studios in Hanwell for Rod Lord and Dave Sproxton to put under their 16mm rostrum camera and gave the LP to Cine Lingual Sound Studios to rerecord the song onto 16mm sound for the screen test. This process took a while to achieve in our pre-digital age.

Eventually Rod Lord rang to let me know the Rhyme and Reason test was finished and I took it over to Claire at AZ Productions (my film distributor at the time) to show her the result. It would be fair to say it blew her mind. From that moment the project was set in motion for a massed UMP/Reflex Films/AZ Films co-production to shoot the Glastonbury CND festival and trawl the film archives for suitable material to illustrate the music. The next couple of weeks involved a plethora of meetings with production companies, film labs, record companies, the CND, the Musicians Union (MU) and Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) to get clearance on the songs. My contact at CND was Rob Nicholls, an old school buddy from back in the day, who said he would sort out the Glastonbury CND festival organisors so we could film there. This proved to be over optimistic on his part as festival organisor Michael Eavis had other plans for selling the film rights. I wrote to him direct but didn’t get a reply. Fortunately his was not the only peace festival that summer and we had better luck elsewhere.

Claire organised a dinner party, inviting several film producers, to discuss the proposed TV series. I showed the test film to those there present and before we reached the port and after dinner mints producers were making calls to the US of A to raise funding for the project. My old Mum used to say that something must be wrong if everything appears to be going right and the crash came on March 26th when the MU decided to lay down the law about the use of recorded music.

Seemingly, the ratio of recorded music to live performance in the proposal was too high and against union agreements with the TV companies. We were free to go ahead and make the film, they decided, but no TV company in Europe would

be allowed to screen it. A major re-think was needed. On April Fools Day a call came through to AZ Productions from Michael Eavis in Somerset to say it would take him two weeks to decide if we could film at his CND festival. In fact, we never heard from him again. The budget proposal went into AZ Productions and I started the process of finding camera crews with Bob Spiers as assistant director, Paul Sharkey as sound engineer and John Boulter as director of photography.

The replacement for Glastonbury CND festival was the Nottingham Peace festival.

Dave Clarke at the MCPS claimed he was making progress with the Musicians Union with regards to the use of recorded music. Which goes to prove every major film endeavour always has a colossal muck-up just before everything comes right at the last moment and saves the day. We should all be respectful of the four stages of film production; wild enthusiasm, total confusion, search for the guilty and promotion for the uninvolved.

Just when things were getting interesting Claire went to the Cannes MIP Festival to, amongst other things, promote the Rhyme & Reason project.

We started production at the Nottingham Peace festival in July ‘82. So much to organise, so little time. Bob Jones came in as cameraman with his crew from United Motion Pictures who also supplied the sound engineer. John Boulter and Paul Sharkey were excused duty on that shoot until the main bulk of filming, and therefore funding, began later in the year. According to Dave Clarke at the MCPS we could get round the MU ban by re-recording the disputed songs with session musicians. The downside to this was we wouldn’t have the original artist recordings and I didn’t want us to sound like some cheapo Woolmart compilation album. Short of gathering up all the original artists from around the globe and re-recording them for the film we were stuck with the compromise. There are no problems, only solutions which goes to prove any fool can make a proverb and every fool will follow it. Don’t even get me started on the glass half full brigade.

There were urgent meetings between Dave Clarke, myself and suitable session musicians to re-record the songs. Ted Lemming, former singer with The Bozos, Tony Larnie from Valkyrie and Leeds singer Martin Carter were finagled in to the production to set a schedule for the studio sessions. Dave became our unofficial music producer to oversee the work. This compromise did strange and difficult things to the production budget, yet to be approved by AZ Productions, but

with Claire still in France attending the Cannes TV Festival, the way we saw it, the sessions were the only way around the MU ban and keep the production on track. Claire’s PA told me not to worry about the budget as Claire was due to meet Hollywood producer Bill Morton later that week. With nothing left to do until Claire got back I wondered off home and decided to take the rest of the week off. I had been neglecting the domestic duties and my clothes were demanding to taken to the launderette.

Eventually Claire got in touch to say Hollywood producer Bill Morton had decided Rhyme & Reason was too political for him and he was pulling out of the deal. And to show solidarity, AZ Productions pulled out too. This came as a blow because I already had filming dates set up but decided to go it alone even though the coffers were low. I was rescued by the northern delights of Yorkshire TV who offered a freelance rolling contract on their local Calendar News. There is a God. Not to be confused with St Jude, the patron saint of lost causes.

Meanwhile, I met up with up with journalist John Ayres to discuss a feature article along the lines of whatever happened to the ageing hippies? John agreed to take it on but gave me a long lecture about where my future lay - not with niche hippies stories. Strangely, Paul Sharkey at Reflex Films did the same thing and, fired by these blasts to my ego, I trotted round to AZ Productions and gave them a long ‘talking to’ about supporting young film makers, distributors who live off the backs of independent producers and who never help talent when its down on its luck. It must have worked because three hours later I walked out of their office with a distribution deal for Rhyme & Reason.

On July 4th I met up with the UMP camera crew on the first major shoot of Rhyme & Reason at the Nottingham Peace Festival. YTV let me off for a few days so I could fly down to London for the rushes screening with Claire from AZ Productions and the film crew at UMP. Everyone walked away happy with what they had seen with the first shoot in the can. I flew back to Leeds the following Sunday, fresh and ready for work at YTV and met up with Martin Carter to discuss recording one of his songs, Someplace In Japan, for Rhyme & Reason. When I flew back to London the following Friday John Willis, a YTV producer, was on the same flight.

‘Oh look, I can see your house from up here!’ he said.

John Ayres phoned asking for a follow-up story of the Greenham Festival on the grounds I’d photographed the 1981-82 Stonehenge Festivals and lived to tell the tale. I had a problem there because, geographically challenged in Leeds, I didn’t have transport to get down to Greenham Common. I said I’d see what I could do, making a mental note to do nothing.

AZ Productions were glad to see their wayward young film director returned to the fold and we got straight back into Rhyme & Reason production. Dave Clarke had put up a protest singer, Barry Ford, in Brixton where riots had recently taken place. With the recession and mass unemployment in run down inner city areas, under premiere Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s hard-line government, life was difficult for Black unemployed youth. It was made harder by the constant harassment of random racist stop and searches by the police, the notorious ‘sus’ laws. It took only one spark of resentment to kick the whole thing off again after the major nationwide riots of 1981.

I wasn’t looking forward to filming in Brixton in case something kicked off around us but sat on my fears and met Bob Jones and his camera crew at Osbourne Sound in Soho at twelve noon on November 5th. The sound recordist was Oscar winner Peter Sutton and I couldn’t help noticing Paul Sharkey loading up more gear into Peter’s car than I remembered ordering.

‘What’s all this?’ I asked.

‘You’re going into a hazardous area. You’ll need radios in case anything kicks off,’ advised Paul.

‘Erm, how’s that going to work? If it kicks off and we radio in, by the time the coppers turn up we’ll be hairy lumps of charred grill.’

‘My boss won’t let you have the kit unless you take the radios.’

‘Ah. Right. Carry on loading.’

I looked at our vehicles. Bob’s green Triumph and Peter’s yellow Capri with radio ariels on the roofs looked like something out of The Sweeney with us lot bundled up in woolly hats and wind cheaters as if we were going on a dawn raid.

In Brixton. Paranoia? Riots can kick off by silly misunderstandings which escalate and I didn’t want to get blamed for anything untoward later. Dave Clarke travelled with the camera crew in Bob’s car, I went with Peter. As we pulled into Barry’s street I got onto the new fangled radio.

‘Stay in the car until I’ve gained access to the premises.’

Yea God’s, I even sounded like the cops. There was no response from Bob because he was too busy overtaking us, barreling down the road and doubled parking outside Barry’s flat. The entire crew were out the car and running up the steps to the house. Curtains were twitching.

‘Oh my good gawd!’ I managed was we stopped behind the Triumph.

The crew were fast workers and we got the film of Barry singing his song in the can, wrapped and on our way back to Soho by half past one. As Peter drove round Marble Arch he picked up the radio hand set.

‘Osbourne mobile one to Osbourne base.’

‘Osbourne base go ahead,’ came the radio distorted voice of Paul.

‘We’re ten minutes away.’

‘What’s your pleasure?’

‘Golf Tango.’ Peter looked across at me. ‘What do you want?’

‘What?’ I asked, confused by the question.

‘What do you want to drink?’

‘Oh er … a pint of Youngs, please.’

‘Osbourne base, the director would like a Yankee Alfa.’

‘Will do. Osbourne base to Osbourne mobile two …’

‘So … we had the radios because ..? I enquired.

Peter smiled, ‘So Paul can get a gin & tonic for me and a Youngs Ale for you before last orders.’

Foxtrot Oscar, I thought. It was a new one on me and set the tone for later film shoots and not just for ordering drinks. Those radios would become a god-send working with crews who were out of line of sight or beyond shouting distance. In the pub, I asked Bob why he ignored my advice to stay in the car.

‘Because you didn’t say Osbourne mobile one to Osbourne mobile two,’ chipped in Paul.

‘Ah. I see,’ and asked Bob, ‘Did you know that?’

‘Yeah,’ said Bob, ‘You could have been anyone.’

‘Right,’ I wondered, not entirely convinced.

Radios were a new tool to learn and worth knowing. Never stop learning about new technology. Next day Bob and I went back to Brixton to film the cutaways

of urban decay, him driving and me operating the camera out of the nearside passenger window. The following week was spent editing the Barry Ford material at UMP and viewing Atom Bomb tests archive film at the Imperial War Museum.

My former assistant came for a visit to see how the film was progressing.

‘Slowly,’ I told him, ‘because I don’t have an assistant.’

I asked if he wanted to do it, as he had assisted on the music film Ice Cream Dream a few years before.

‘I’d like to but I’ve got a lot on. I don’t think Joy quite approves of you.’

‘Thanks. What a shame.’

‘Why don’t you ask Gobbo? He’s young, jobless and he’ll probably enjoy learning the trade.’

‘That’s a thought. Get ‘em while they’re young. And cheap. D’you think he’ll do it, though?’

‘I’ll make sure he’s down The Roxborough pub tonight. Ask him.’

And that’s how Gobbo became my assistant for about three years, off and on, working on various music films. He started as a trainee assistant on November 12th and met Dave Clarke for the first time, in at the deep end, learning the craft. Dave was brash and in yer face while Gobbo was quiet, thoughtful and nobody’s fool. I think Gobbo handled him quite well considering Dave could even frighten me sometimes. The following week Dave, Ted, Gobbo and I were at Mekon Studios, recording Martin Carter. I asked if we needed another run to double track Martin’s vocal but before anyone could move, Gobbo hit a button on the desk and Martin’s voice came out of the speakers double tracked.

‘How did you just do that?’

‘Ah, trade secret,’ replied Gobbo, slyly.

Sound recording was my weak point in the scheme of things and I was impressed the pupil was teaching the master. There were smiles around the control room and I could see trainee Gobbo had impressed a lot of people, he was that kind of guy and made friends easily. Years later I found out how Gobbo had known how to double track Martin’s vocal. While I was out of the room, emptying meself, Gobbo had seen the engineer push the multi-track button so when I asked if we needed another run he knew what to do. The little scamp.

Dave said he had set up John Cooper Clark for filming but he was unavailable at

the time and we couldn’t hang about. The screening of the Barry Ford sequence was held at UMP on November 22nd with the full cast, crew and Claire from AZ Productions. It went down well and, as we retired to the pub, Claire took me aside.

‘How would you like to edit the Glastonbury Festival film? she asked.

‘Um, yeah, probably. As long as someone’s paying,’ I responded.

‘I’ll set it up.’

Editing a big festival film would mean taking time out from Rhyme & Reason but, I knew, the financial reward outstripped the delay. I could do with earning a few quid to supplement future filming. Later, in the pub, I found a quiet spot with Gobbo.

‘I may have to hold off production for a while. I’ve been offered another film.’

‘Oh,’ said Gobbo, disappointed that he was soon to be unemployed.

‘I want you to come with me if you’re available,’ I reassured him.

‘What’s the film?’ he asked, cheering up.

‘The Glastonbury Festival.’

And he cheered up considerably at that.

‘But its not signed on the line yet so don’t tell anyone,’ I continued.

It never did get signed on the line because there were confusions behind the scenes, shenanigans about the film. An industry friend claimed the crew had seized the Glastonbury tapes, for non-payment of their invoices, and I should tread cautiously.

‘The Union are involved in recovering fees,’ my source continued, ‘and the Glastonbury management might try to get another editor on the film to bypass paying up. My advice is, don’t touch it with a barge pole.’

Yes, that could have got lively. In a trade union, of which I was a member, I could end up not getting paid and thrown out of the Union for crossing the line.

There was a meeting with Luke Jeans and John Lee at Atmosphere Studios who had the full story about the dispute on the Glastonbury film and I decided the better part of valor was to steer clear. I told Claire I wasn’t interested unless they paid a third up front, a third on the first day of editing and a third on completion but the Glastonbury management weren’t prepared to do that. The worse bit was having to tell Gobbo his dream hadn’t come true. He took it quite well.

Yorkshire TV offered a month’s contract back in Leeds. I told them I was working on another picture and had filming dates in December. They said they could work around them. Being a sucker for a paid job I agreed. I guess I was missing Leeds more than I thought. It was a drama with John Thaw, Killer Waiting. Back into the routine of 16mm film, Tetley’s ale and curries at the local Taj restaurant.

I served out my time at YTV until the last day of 1982. The end of a contract and the end of an era in my life. Or so I thought.

More Rhyme & Reason followed with John Boulter at Aldermaston weapons centre and Greenham Common when 10,000 people linked hands around the bases. Because I wasn’t insured to drive John’s car this involved him driving while I pointed the camera out of the passenger window in a sort of slow drive-by, filming the protestors. John got into the melee at the front gate of Greenham where the Women held a sit-in singing merry, happy-clappy protest songs. Well that should keep the Musicians Union off my back. Keep music live!

Gobbo mentioned a CND concert was to be held at Brockwell Park in south London and should we film it for Rhyme & Reason? I said I’d enquire of Dave Clarke. At the back end of April Dave

said yes we should and he had already made arrangements, clearing the rights, for us to film Clint Eastwood. There then followed a lengthy confusion until we realised Clint Eastwood was an AfroCaribbean singer with a band called General Saint. Or possible the other way around. Crews were scurried together with John Boulter and Stuart Bennett on camera and Bob Nightingale on sound.

Just when I thought it was safe, YTV Calendar News called me back to Leeds for a month so I left the last minute preproduction details between Dave and Gobbo. Well he’d got to learn to take responsibility some time. There was just time to scoot down to London on May 7th to film the Brockwell Park CND Concert before scooting hastily back to Leeds the following Monday. With my final contract at YTV ending, I scampered back to London to get on with Rhyme & Reason.

I hired a cutting room at UMP, with Gobbo assisting, and jolly well got on with editing the Brockwell Park material and making the final cut for the long, overdue pilot programme. Enough is enough. At some point Dave Clarke showed up in the cutting room to check on progress and went nuts when he saw what I’d done with the Greenham Women sequence.

For some reason he thought Yoko Ono, who at the time owned the rights to all

the Beatle’s music, would sue us. I honestly didn’t know what I’d done wrong. I shrugged. Dave had cleared the music, we’d recorded a cover version and Yoko Ono would get the publishing royalties. I looked at Gobbo. We both shrugged, bewildered.

‘What’s the problem?’ I asked.

‘You can’t use Give Peace a Chance with film of the Greenham Women!’ shrieked Dave, ‘Yoko One will sue you for defamation!’

He was becoming so strident, other directors were wandering into the corridor to see what all the fuss was about. I oddly wondered if we’d been transported to a different planet where the laws of logic no longer applied. Dave looked like he was about to have a seizure. I tried humour.

‘Well she’s welcome to sue me, of course. I don’t have any money so it won’t be worth her while in the long run.’

‘She’ll sue you precisely because you don’t have any money. As an example to other film makers for misusing Beatle songs.’

‘I don’t get where you’re coming from,’ I tried, ‘it’s a song about peace set to film of the Peace Women. How is that in some way wrong?’

‘If you can’t see the blindingly obvious staring in the face then I’m longer prepared to help you,’ he shouted and flounced out of the cutting room.

He got an ironic cheer from the other editors who knew a twit when they saw one. A moment’s hiatus. I looked at Gobbo.

‘I know you’re only a lowly paid trainee, Gobbo, but on this one special occasion I’d like you to tell me what I missed just then?’

‘Oh that’s easy,’ said Gobbo. ‘The man’s an asshole.’

‘Oh thank god for that. I was beginning to think my head had come undone.’

Totally fazed we adjourned to the pub round the corner for a swift half. Bob Jones and his crew joined us and we were quietly supping when Dave Clarke, whom we hadn’t seen in a corner of the pub, came steaming over to give us his wisdom.

‘I’m trying to help you out here and this is how you repay me, you’re an amateur who won’t take advice and you’ll never make it in the film business with your naïve hippie ideas.’

Wow. That told me.

‘I’ve known this guy for years,’ Bob tried. ‘He’s a known professional film director.’

At which point Gobbo stood up. I got the distinct impression he was about to lamp Dave but instead looked down at me and said, calmly, ‘Coming?’

Which was the right thing to do. Leave. Don’t make the mistake of arguing with an angry person. Especially not in a pub which could so easily be mistaken for a drunken brawl. I couldn’t stop myself from making a leave-taking comment, though.

‘By the way Dave, you’re sacked.’ It was heartfelt.

We were halfway along Fitzroy Street when we heard Bob Jones scampering up behind us, full of anguished woe.

‘We’ve had a word with Dave, set him straight on a few things here and there and he wants to apologise.’

I looked at Gobbo, my barometer of people’s moods, who shrugged.

‘You’re the guv’nor, guv.’

Back in the pub I kept it low key and let Dave talk his way out of the deep pit he’d dug for himself. Always give an angry person an avenue of escape. The upshot was, he claimed, the film business was different from how the music business works and, yes, the film director is the guv’nor of the production and he agreed not to call the film director’s professionalism into question again, but without actually apologising. And that was as good as it was going to get. Inside the tent pissing out.

Just when I thought we’d finished the pilot episode for Rhyme & Reason, AZ Films decided we needed more youth cult cutaways for the final edit. We all knew the Stonehenge Peoples’ Free Festival was coming around again so I fell back on the easy option and got a crew together to shuffle off to Wiltshire for Summer Solstice. Cine Lingual Sound Studios asked if I’d take a couple of their lads with the crew, to gain location experience, in return for a discount on my next studio session. Fine by me. Andy Snowley was attached to the sound department and Steve Brooke-Smith on the camera crew with Stuart Bennett. We weren’t interested in filming the bands just the crowds of festival goers.

Steve and I left sleepy Harrow on the afternoon of June 17th, with a van full of camera kit & local freaks, and arrived unmolested at the Stonehenge Festival site by early evening. We parked up at the back of the site, well away from the

hurly-burly and let the freaks out, who practically fell out amid a haze of blue fug.

The plan was to take a look around the site, to see what we could film ready for when the main crew turned up next day.

Armed with an Osbourne Sound walkietalkie I stood in a lay-by on the A303, calling the crew who had the other radio so we didn’t get lost in the crowd. Then I remembered Brixton and who a person could look, standing there with a radio in his hand. I wasn’t getting any reply but the crew saw me by line of sight anyway and stopped.

‘Why didn’t you respond to the radio?’

I asked.

‘Oh, I forgot to turn it on guv,’ said Stuart, innocently. They will have their little joke.

The crew spent the morning driving up and down the A303, with Stuart perched precariously through the sun roof of Andy’s car, filming tracking shots of the festival site and the monument. I have to say I was slightly reticent about taking Stuart on the crew. He was a lot older than me and worried he might have trouble taking direction off a hairy whipper-snapped. Actually, he proved to be an easy going guy whose experience was worth having. Nothing phased him.

Including lying on his back between Nick Danger’s legs, as he juggled, with Stuart’s

groinal area being in exactly the right position for injury if Nick dropped a club.

Up on a barrow mound, Stuart produced an awesome collection of filters which turned the Stonehenge monument into a series of gorgeous beauty shots. In fact, Stuart produced such beautiful pictures it was hard to know why I hadn’t employed him before. Oh yes, I remember, ageism.

We wrapped the Rhyme & Reason final edit just in the nick of time but by late April a major catastrophe occurred at AZ Films when the management vanished off the face of the earth. There was a mad scramble by producers & directors to grab their films before they ended up in a skip. What also went into the skip were all our expectations of selling our product and, in some cases, losing our life savings. Back to scrabbling about on the bottom end of the market, I was asked to make a short film of the anarchist Stop The City demonstration in London. As was the trade custom back in the day, we held onto the film until we got got paid.

We didn’t get paid so we held onto the film permenantly which had been shot at our expense. It went into the archive, aka the broom cupboard.

*

4

A MID SUMMER NIGHT ROCK SHOW

THE 1984 STONEHENGE PEOPLES’ FREE FESTIVAL The subject of making a film of the Stonehenge Peoples’ Free Festival over the coming Summer Solstice was broached by film producer Vance Goodwin. After all, I’d filmed there before and knew what we would be up against. Feelers were put out and Festival Welfare Services10 responded positively. I never really intended to film the 1984 Festival and I can’t rightly remember whose idea it had been originally to do so. I have a feeling it was Gobbo’s idea but just to test the water I got onto Penny Mellor at Festival Welfare Services put us onto Keith Bailey, band leader and bassist for Here & Now. A London meeting was arranged with producer Vance Goodwin, Gobbo, Keith and self in a Soho preview theatre to run Rhyme & Reason, to show Here & Now what we were about. Keith loved it and agreed to let us film his band at the Festival. After that the film production just sort of snow-balled with a mind of its own.

Filming the Stonehenge Free Festival was a new departure for Pixie Productions because normally we lifted the track off an album, did a deal with the MCPS and laid the music in with the film archive material. I was not a festival virgin but the Stonehenge Festival had a reputation of violence towards the press by Hells Angels & travellers with a deep suspicion bordering on the paranoid of anyone carrying a camera. Let’s face it, they had a lot to be paranoid about. There were illegal drugs being sold on site and not all the long haired photographers were journalists. We at Pixie Productions didn’t fancy our chances if some wandering dude got the wrong idea of who we were and decided to take action with extreme prejudice. If that sounds overly cautious you have to understand that a 16mm film camera, back in the day, was worth around £25K and not an asset to be put at needless risk. Insurance companies had a fit of the vapours about rock concerts and insisted on expensive hazardous assignment policies which could person’s brain could turn to the consistency of warm oatmeal just to contemplate.

But Gobbo was most insistent that we Pixies should not miss the opportunity to film live at Stonehenge. Looking back, ever the cynic, it has since occurred to me Gobbo just wanted to go to the Festival and be paid for the privilege.

I don’t think either Vance, the producer, or I saw the film of the festival as a massive money spinner, more a positive record of an alternative event which was

barely noticed by the general media. If we broke even it be a plus but sometimes films need to be made for their own intrinsic artistic value. Dave Clarke came in as musical director to sort out the contractual arrangements with the band.

Sometime around early spring of 1984 Gobbo mentioned he had a contact, a friend of a friend an’ all that, who knew Nik Turner of the band Hawkwind. And since Pixie Productions were taking a film crew to Stonehenge anyway ... yes, you can just see where this one is leading, can’t you. So Gobbo and I, along with stills photographer Clive Moore, toddled off to deepest Wales to see the great man. It was a surreal journey, not quite into the heart of darkness but it came pretty close at times.

Clive had a Morris Minor van but he didn’t think it would survive the round trip to Wales so we hired a car from Hertz. The vehicle was brand new, it had about twelve miles on the clock; it had a lot more than that by the time we got back.

I always felt safe when driven by Clive but that hire car brought out something in him which the sluggish Morris van had previously concealed. Clive drove like a banshee. I hadn’t realised quite how fast he was driving until he hit the level crossing just north of St. Clears. The tracks of the main railway line were slightly raised above the level of the road, with an up ramp. Normally one would slow down but for some reason Clive speeded up. He claimed later we were travelling at 75mph when the car reached the crossing. The upshot was the car became airborne, flew serenely over both tracks and landed on all four wheels on the other side. At some stage during the flight Gobbo became weightless in the back, hit the roof and when gravity took over he bounced in his seat and hit the roof again. After a long silence I let out a nervous giggle. Gobbo wanted to go back and do it again. To my extreme relief, we didn’t. Instead, we got lost.

Due to a complicated misunderstanding, to be found amongst the denizens of the rock music industry, Nik didn’t actually live in the village of Cwmbach itself but down a half hidden track bounded by overlapping brambles. That brand new hire car sure looked sorry for itself by the time we rolled up at Nik’s farmhouse.

We brought a VHS copy of Rhyme & Reason, so Nik could see what we’d been up to, but he didn’t possess a video player so our merry crew set off on a grand tour of the countryside to root out one of Nik’s mates who did. A very beautiful part of Wales, stunning in the spring twilight but not easily appreciated from the

crowded back seat of a speeding car. Upon viewing the rough cut Nik understood the concept of the movie and cleared us to film Hawkwind at the Stonehenge Free Festival. Back at Cwmbach, Nik offered us a spare room for the night but Clive was eager to get back to his beloved Moggie. It was only when we were about to drive off we noticed where Clive had chosen to park the car, under a gigantic tree. which resulted in the vehicle being covered in bat guano. We got back to London at dawn and parked the excrement covered, brambled thing between two vans lest the Hertz people saw what the freaks had done to their nice new car.

Next day I got straight onto Dave Clarke to get the contract underway for Hawkwind and settled in for the long haul known as hunt the film crew. Difficult as this may be to believe but there were people out in the World who had an even more jaundiced view of the Stonehenge Free Festival than I did. It was quite hard to entice camera crews to come and work at a rock concert once they knew the location; two days at the largest free festival in Europe. Gobbo was promoted to the role of production assistant for the duration to spread the load of organising the multi-camera shoot; it was decided we would film with five cameras for best coverage but the teeny-weeny budget would only allow for three. I had a meeting with Paul Sharkey, at Osbourne Sound, to discuss how we should record live sound at a rock concert. Well, I knew how it should be done but trying to arrange access and facilities with the ever illusive anarchist festival organisors was like trying to nail jelly to the wall. Every time we thought we were talking to the right people it turned out we weren’t. It could be pretty frustrating and I came close to pulling the plug but we hammered out a deal, through the good offices of Penny Mellor and Big Steve, whereby we would have an exclusive clean feed from the mixing desk straight into our stereo Nagra quarter-inch tape recorder. The sound engineer, Ian Voight, would have to take a second Nagra to record the clapper boards, each of which would have a radio mic attached because of the expected PA volume, to record the editor’s guide track. The crew were to experience many sound difficulties later but for now, in preproduction, everything seemed to be on track. As it were.

The production was getting bigger by the day and, reluctantly, I was forced to farm out the crewing to UMP. From there we hired in Bob Jones as a camera operator with Ian Voight as the sound recordist plus sundry logistical support. And

word was getting around. I’m not really sure how but via some exotic connection Dave Clarke had, through his record industry contacts, he signed up Roy Harper for filming at Stonehenge. This was seen as a bit of a coup at the time because, Roy had been overseas for some years and the Stonehenge Free Festival was to be his first major performance back in the UK. Dixie Dean, who had been a camera operator on Granada TV’s 1969 film Stones In The Park, came in as director of photography with Steve Brooke-Smith as his camera assistant. I largely left the camera operators to find their own assistants partly to take the load off the production team but mostly so they would feel comfortable working with people they knew. At some stage Ivor Alison joined the crew as Bob’s assistant and Clive expressed an interest in being Ian’s sound assistant. Stuart Bennett, who had worked with Pixie Productions on previous Rhyme & Reason film shoots, came on board as third man to film the crowd atmosphere.

By late May it occurred to me that the production had arisen with a life of its own, far from a one band shoot band we were now facing an entirely separate film. It was not exactly running away from us, more straining at the leash. Vance, it turned out, had awesome connections to Channel Four and it was heavily hinted that he could place the finished product with them. Vance and Dave Clarke had a healthy cynicism about freak festivals and they were good to have around to keep my feet firmly on the ground. Which is how come I didn’t get to film from a helicopter. It was Vance who solved the supply of 16mm Eastman Colour by doing a sale or return deal with UMP; it had been calculated that for a fifty-two minute TV concert film with three cameras, the crew would need sixteen rolls of high speed film, plus a bit for contingencies which was not leaving much of a margin.

With Vance’s deal the camera crew could take double that amount and feel less constrained. But with the production beginning to take on epic proportions there were casualties; Gobbo was bumped back down to trainee as the big budget suits came in and took over. I didn’t feel too bright about that, since it was Gobbo who had kick started the whole project, but as Vance was oft to say, ‘business is business.’

Dave Clarke pulled off one last deal when he brought The Enid into the movie.

He had tried to inveigle the band Man too but their management were not keen on them being filmed at a free festival. No, I don’t understand the logic of that

either. There seemed to be an underlying misunderstanding amongst some people as to what was free at a free festival and what wasn’t. So far as the Pixie Productions team were concerned everything had to be contractually cleared, bought and paid for but to a sizable number of festival goers free meant free.

There were raging debates about how we Pixies were contaminating the free festival ethic with contracts and fees. Although I agreed with the sentiment, I also knew that if we didn’t do this thing legally right from the outset, we’d be on the shit train to oblivion when all the musicians tried to collect their Performing Rights fees. The way I saw it, back then, was from the edge of the stage out into the audience everything was free but from the edge of the stage back, where the bands worked, it was business as usual. That concept would later come back to haunt me for years.

Reports were filtering back that preparations were well under way at the Festival site; work was progressing on erecting Nik Turner’s pyramid main stage and the New Age Travellers were setting up camp. No turning back now, the film crew were committed. Gobbo announced that he intended to go to the festival as a punter but he would come and help out, backstage, if needed. The way he was treated, demoted, he looked like a kicked puppy. Vance did another one of his awesome deals, this time with regard to payment for the film processing; UMP would put the exposed film through the processing laboratory on their account but they would not bill Pixie for ninety days thus giving us time to hassle up income on pre-sales. UMP were later to become the first of many who turned into hungry greedheads by the simple expedient of putting the words rock and concert into the same sentence. Whenever I went to their office, to arrange production facilities, I got the eerie impression they were fairly dismissive of the whole project. One of the deals they had to negotiate involved the camera crews’ fees. Under Broadcasting Entertainment Cinematograph & Theatre Union (BECTU) rules the crews were on straight time from 9am to 6pm, time and a half from 6pm to midnight and double time for every hour worked thereafter, the infamous and highly lucrative golden hours. Because the bands didn’t start playing until late, I wanted to move the crew start time to 6pm. I just didn’t see the point of paying the guys to sit around for nine hours doing nothing. The Union were reluctantly okay with that, so long as we put the film crews up in a 3-star

hotel as compensation, but UMP wanted the full monty. It was only the prospect of losing the entire deal that changed their minds. With only a week to go before the shoot that was not the time for tantrums. My last dealings with UMP was to give their bookings clerk the all important crew call sheet; dates, times, equipment and the plethora of miniature that makes a film shoot work. Everything had to be planned like a military operation because, in those pre-mobile phone days, once the camera crews were on the festival site they were incommunicado. To be sure I made UMP sign for the call sheet schedule, to dissuade them from any last minute surprises, before I headed home to Harrow for the last full night’s sleep I would get for days.

June 19th 1984, Steve Brook-Smith and I headed off to the Stonehenge Festival site, to iron out any last minute glitches which might arise with main stage manager Big Steve. Enroute we stopped off at a Soho pub for a final meeting with Vance before the off. Steve and I found him in the Intrepid Fox pub in Wardour Street, the hearth and home of Soho’s film district, with Paul Sharkey curled up with laughter at the sight of us.

‘What? What’s wrong with going to a freak festival wearing patchouli oil, an afghan coat, pink flares and love beads?

We want to blend in, don’t we?’

By the time Vance and Paul stopped laughing, I got the distinct impression that Vance was not expecting to join our sartorial excesses any time soon.

It is debatable if anyone who has ever been to the Stonehenge Free Festival really gets over their first sight of that vast encampment sprawling over the rolling grass lands of Salisbury Plain. A magnificent tent city and, at the epicentre, the pyramid stage rising above a vista of the great stone monument itself. The Rainbow Warriors, the brightly painted buses and trucks of the New Age Travellers and the signs advertising exotic wares for sale. Well, that’s enough poetic pontificating for now. We Pixies were professional film makers and had serious stuff to do.

First item of business was to track down the stage manager, Big Steve, to let him know we’d arrived. Big Steve, sporting a gigantic plaster on his arm from a

recent bicycle accident, had been running the main stage at Stonehenge since 1981 and seemed to be the only person who knew what was going on. He allotted the Pixie crew a space to camp backstage and left us to get on with it. I found Gobbo wandering down the main drag, with a silly stoned grin on his face, and he took us back to where he and Clive were camped. The entire massed ranks of the Harrow Freaks had drawn their Morris Minor vans into a circle, topped them off with a tarp and had herded inside. They looked like a wagon train of settlers waiting for the natives to attack. Or possibly the Cavalry depending how you view the thing. Bring us your teeming hordes of Gareth and Kiwi Ian and Sparky and Elliott and Mark and the gang’s all here. I, on the other hand, still had my own tent to erect. We left Gobbo, the giggling freak, to his nefarious devices and gave Clive a call sheet to remind them when to turn up back-stage next day.

I have never been good with tents; there always too many guy ropes and not enough tent pegs to be hammered into rock hard ground. Steve, meanwhile, had his spacious abode up with no trouble at all. The Travellers had it right; buy a bus and sleep in a bed. Settling down to tiffin, Steve and I were approached by whom we took to be a band but actually turned out to be another camera crew.

It transpired that the Pixie’s exclusive coverage of the event, wasn’t. Jettisoundz were under the same impression and were as perplexed by the situation as us. I didn’t see the video makers as competition at the time since they were shooting on domestic S-VHS whilst we were using broadcast standard film. However, it did mean we were both using the same sound clean feed. The cable connection was run out of the festival mixing desk, right through the audience, round the back of the stage, past the generator, into the Jettisoundz recording truck, out of their desk via another cable and into our recording truck. Which is a long way for a signal to travel in a fairly hostile environment. I decided to wait for our sound engineer, Ian Voight, to arrive before getting into a conversation about who had first rights to what had been negotiated between Dave Clarke and the bands anyway. This was not the time for fisticuffs.

At noon on June 20th 1984, Summer Solstice Eve, the Pixie Productions film crew arrived on site; Vance with Dave in his Volvo and a big white Transit van bursting at the seams with technicians and aluminium flight cases. I walked them up the access track to the backstage area, lest some hapless hash-headed freak

should wander aimlessly under the truck wheels. Finally the van doors were flung open and the travel weary crew tumbled out - into Babylon. There is a long held tradition amongst camera folk of playing merry japes on young film directors, especially at his first major rock concert, which ensures bonding. So it was of no surprise when Ian Voight sought me out to announce, ‘I hope you’ve got the sound recording equipment because we haven’t.

‘Hohoho. Most amusing.’ I opened the back doors of the van, fully expecting to see the missing flight cases but all I saw was - they were missing. ‘Okay, a joke’s a joke but where is it really?’

But the sound equipment really wasn’t there. Despite having furnished UMP with a call sheet, detailing who and what equipment to pick up along the way, their production office had not bothered to pass it onto the guys. The crew were eighty-five miles from London with Roy Harper due on-stage in a matter of hours and, with the sound equipment supplier Osbourne Sound due to close up shop for the day, the crew found themselves without any tape recorders. And mobile phones had not been invented yet. Time for producer Vance Goodwin to take command! The crew gave him every ten pence piece they possessed so he could drive into the nearest town, phone Osbourne Sound to see if they would stay open until he arrived and hopefully get back to the site in time for Roy Harper.

And even if this endeavour was a success, there was no way for Vance to let the crew know if this had worked until he got back to Stonehenge.

As we waved Vance away in his Volvo, Gobbo and Clive turned up back-stage.

They could see straight away that something was wrong by the pall of gloom which had descended around the crew but, being of a naturally sunny disposition, they would not allow us to descend any further into the slough of despond. Gobbo treated me with kid gloves while Clive gave the guys, all of whom outranked him in age and experience, a pep talk about professionalism. It seemed to do the trick; suddenly everyone burst into action as the sound bollox-up, if not entirely forgotten at least not referred to, as everyone carried on as if nothing was wrong.

What we did in time of stress was what we always did in times of stress. We went of lunch.

The crew found a pub with a good restaurant, close to the banks of the River Avon near the village of Salterton, just south of Amsbury. We rolled up in the

great white Transit van and were about to wander into the pub when Gobbo espied a big sign on the door which read, “no hippies.” Good job too, who wants to sit next to a bunch of dirty, smelly hippies when savouring the culinary delights of a quaint olde worlde English hostelry. The crew looked at the sign. They looked at me. I looked at the sign. It was a good sign. They were still looking at me. Ah. Right. Ian went in to ask the landlord if as he would kindly allow this dirty, smelly hippie film director to have lunch in his 5-star dining room, what with the dirty, smelly hippie in question holding the cash float and all. The landlord said as he would make an exception this time so long as the dirty, smelly hippie film director didn’t start ripping up the seats. I can recommend the trout.

On our way back to the site, near Great Durnford, we encountered a white police van travelling towards us. There were the usual hilarious comments of “stash the hash boys’” and “they know we’ve got Al in the van” when the police van flashed its headlights at us. My heart sank. Nobody spoke. We just knew we were going to get a tug. But nothing happened. The police van continued on its mysterious way. It was a real conversation killer. At Pixie Productions we had a hard and fast rule; no drugs. This was not meant judgmentally, as a life style comment, but our film shoots often took us to places where the police lurked. Being busted for drugs would hardly do our reputation any good if we were caught with something we shouldn’t have.

Back on site, Dave steamed into the bands to get their set lists of which songs could be filmed while the guys set up their camera gear on-stage. The crews worked out what areas of the stage the various cameras would cover. Dixie & Steve stage right, Bob & Ivor stage left whilst Stuart roved. The plan was to cue, by radio, each camera to start rolling two minutes apart; this was to avoid all the cameras needing a magazine change at the same time and create gaps in the coverage. Also, the crews were under strict instructions not to stop filming unless directed to do so. This was to help the editor, later, who wouldn’t know one song from another. But truth be told Stuart was not keen on roving with a camera amongst a mass of anarchists so a friendly biker offered to go along as his minder. Indeed, later we got a visit from a whole bunch of friendly bikers who said they would mind the entire camera crew from the ravaging hordes of the travellers, if they were kept them in wine all night. I was half expecting a scam

like this but since Gobbo knew some of the bikers concerned and, working on the theory it was better to have them on our side than not, we hired them. Of course, like bikers everywhere, they were cuddly teddy bears underneath it all really. But I don’t think they’d be very pleased if I told you that. Nobody wanted to mention Altamont either.

Meanwhile, this is what happened to Vance; he managed to bluster his way to the front of a very long queue at a callbox in Amsbury, loaded down with every ten pence piece the crew gave him, stuffed into them into the coin box and called Osbourne Sound. Paul Sharkey wanted to know if Vance was aware that the crew hadn’t picked up the sound equipment. Vance said that he was. Paul, in one of those rare moments of uncommon valour of the sort that gets people mentioned in dispatches, offered to drive up the A303 until he met Vance driving in the opposite direction, to hand over the equipment. So Vance shot off, headlights on peddle to the metal, in one direction while Paul loaded up his MG sports car with flight cases and, headlights on peddle to the metal, shot off in the other direction.

They met in a lay-by near the town of Hartley Wintney, where the exchange took place. Business concluded, due deference given, Vance turned his car around and, headlights on peddle to the metal, shot back down the A303 to Stonehenge.

He arrived just in time to see the stage crew changing the back line for Roy Harper. Everyone grabbed a flight case and the sound gear was set up and ready to roll with minutes to spare. I knew that without Vance the crew would have had to pack up and go home in a grey shroud of total embarrassment.

Vance couldn’t quite understand why I had a huge hairy biker trailing around after me.

I explained, ‘This is Timothy. He’s my minder.’

Vance thought this was a tad over the top until moments later when he was approached by what appeared to be a 10-year-old boy. He was a Convoy Kid. I knew something of their toxic back history, as did the biker minder, but Vance didn’t. Although the crew had the permissions required to film on-stage, the Convoy Kid decided Vance should pay the travellers £250 by way of a facility fee.

The facility? To not trash the cameras. Vance made the error of treating this lad as though he were a rather naughty child and promptly told him so. Wrong!

‘If you don’t give me the money I’ll tell my dad you tried to touch me up,’ the

Convoy Kid responded.

This brought a look of blanched horror to Vance’s face. At which point Timothy, the biker minder, stepped in and told the Convoy Kid to feck off. Which he promptly did, of course.

According to Vance, ‘In all my years as a film producer I have never encountered anything like that from a child.’

‘Welcome to Stonehenge,’ said my biker minder.

Although the film crew arrived early enough to make sure their camera equipment was working, because of the late arrival of the sound gear this luxury was not true for Ian and Clive who had to jerry rig the system whilst Roy Harper was performing. One of the items included in the sound package were the walkie-talkies and, unbeknown to the film sound engineers, the site stage crew were using unshielded cables so every time I tried to use a radio to cue in the cameras my voice came out of the PA system like the voice of God. Only much, much louder. I abandoned the radios for fear of dire consequences at the hands of an irate Roy Harper, later, whose show I was interrupting. More worrying was that, although the radio mics attached to the clapperboards were transmitting merrily, the signal was not being received on the tape recorder. Apparently two vital

pieces of equipment were missing, the banana clips, which meant Ian could not connect the radio receiver to the recorder.

This was to cause endless hours of grief later when it came to the edit. The sight of Clive bending over the recording system, a red hot soldering iron close to his dangling long hair, gave me a near fit of the willies.

Heath and safety at work? Not in those far off days.

In the break between Roy Harper coming off and Hawkwind going on, I was approached by Nik Turner who wanted to let us know the band had something special planned for his entrance. Nik and his wife had been rehearsing the song Ghost Dance all afternoon with a group of female dancers he would only describe as The Vestal Virgins, who were to perform a rite for the Summer Solstice.

Meanwhile Dave Clarke was deep in conversation with guitarist Dave Brock who told him to beware of the Tibetan Ukrainian Mountain Troupe fire eaters who were going to be juggling at the front of the stage. Vance took me aside and casually asked what insurance cover we had regarding accidental damage by fire. Not enough, obviously, if the look on his face was anything to go by.

Hawkwind came on and played an incredibly long intro; it took a while to figure out why. It was because Nik was wending his way through the audience, perched on the shoulders of the stage crew whilst the jugglers juggled.

Finally Nik made it to the stage and The Vestal Virgins did their thing. Indeed, they carried on doing their thing long after the song finished and I got the distinct impression Dave Brock was not a happy bunny about being upstaged by a bunch of virgins, vestal or otherwise.

Before the days of video assist for film cameras, where a director can see via a video monitor what the camera operators are doing, there is very little for a director to do once everything was rolling. Plan ahead, get the best photographers you can afford and trust them to turn in the goods without unduly hassling them but there was something the highly paid camera crews had not seen. Great balls of fire! It is not unknown for photographers to get tunnel vision whilst looking through a view finder and to not actually see the environment around them.

Generally camera assistants act as spotters but if they are in the middle of some complicated lens fiddling they can miss things too. What they missed were these enormous great fire balls erupting out of the audience. And since I could not use the radios there was no easy way to alert the crews, either. So the only thing I could do was lunge at Steve Brook-Smith and slap him hard on the leg, whilst jabbing my finger towards the fire. Finally Steve got the message and nudged Dixie in the right direction.

There is something else that can happen to camera crews; they can freeze in the face of apparent adversity. When the crews first started filming in the early evening there were a few thousand people in the audience. By the time the fire eaters got going for Hawkwind that number had swelled to the tens of thousands. And, of course, the camera crews had been too busy to notice. But now, illuminated by the fireballs, Steve had a grandstand view of thousands of people staring at him. Staring at them. He froze. The production crew at the side of the stage could see this happening to him but were powerless to help because in their own sweet way they were mesmerized by the fiery scene too. It was Dixie who broke the spell by the expedient of slapping Steve really hard until he snapped out of it. I always wondered if that was some kind of a record; Steve Brooke-Smith, the first camera assistant to be thrashed within an inch on his life,

live on-stage in front of 100,000 freaks.

What also caught the crews unawares was that, strange as this may seem, even in summer it gets cold at night. It was midsummer, it had been a hot day and most of the guys were wearing shorts. I had carefully explained to them beforehand that, no matter what, they were stuck on that stage until The Enid came off at approximately 2am. They could take comfort breaks between the bands and only one at a time or the camera probably would not be there when they got back. What they didn’t have time to do was get changed. Gawd, it got cold. Suddenly people were not making stupid jokes about my furry afghan coat anymore. Now they knew why I was wearing it and why shorts were not such a good idea. It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it, thirty year on. Us Pixies filmed the songs Ghost Dance, Watching the Grass Grow and Social Alliance. Hawkwind finished just after midnight and The Enid played through until 2am as expected.

My gallant film crew got the equipment stashed in record time and shot off to their nice, warm comfortable hotel in Amsbury. The production team, however, were under canvas backstage. To this day I can’t help feeling we’d got that the wrong way around. It had been a long and strange day and fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow. And, since I had no intention of arising until the sun was well over the yard arm, I gave the Pixie Productions official English Heritage press passes for the dawn Solstice Ceremony to Jettisoundz. The Pixie crew couldn’t film it without getting into an heinous overtime claim, anyway.

Gobbo, it transpired, had other ideas.

At Stonehenge dawn doesn’t so much come up like thunder, it more sort of seeps into the landscape. Nothing was going to seep into me, bundled up under an igloo of sleeping bag, duvet and afghan coat. I definitely wasn’t expecting an earthquake, the ground shouldn’t have been vibrating like that. Just a dream, burrow deeper under the igloo and ignore the madness going on outside the tent.

Let the children play. A hand was on my shoulder, gently rocking. To sleep? I was I ready asleep. Somewhere in the deep recesses of slumber, I got the distinct

impression I was not alone. There was a Gobbo sitting cross legged beside me. It spoke.

‘It’s dawn. Vance says you’ve got to get up. We’ve got to film the Druids.’

‘Can’t, haven’t got a camera. The cameras are with the crew at a hotel in Amsbury.

Go away,’ said the sleeping bag.

‘And Hawkwind are playing again,’ said Gobbo.

‘Nice for them. Leave me alone. Mumblemumble.’ ’Where’s your stills camera?’ asked Gobbo, pushing his luck.

Which is how come Gobbo went up to the Stones at dawn and took photographs whilst I lay dead to the world in a cocoon of duvets.

By the time I finally surfaced, in the late morning of June 21st 1984, the camera crew had already turned up which was odd because Here & Now were not due onstage until 11pm; it was a full twelve hours before the madness was due to break out again. But the guys had come early to bundle the production team, who had endured a chilly night under canvas, into the truck and take them to lunch. As the waifs clambered aboard I couldn’t help noticing a strange dent in the roof, a leftover from the night before when our biker minders had climbed atop the vehicle to get a better view of Hawkwind. Ever resourceful, Gobbo braced himself atop a seat and kicked upwards. There was a boing-ing sound as the roof sprung back into shape. It reminded everyone of Rolf Harris’ wobble board.

We went to the same pub restaurant as the day before and, spookily, saw near Great Durnford the white police van travelling towards us which flashed its headlights at us. My heart jumped. Nobody spoke as the police van continued on its mysterious way. It was a real conversation killer, though. And faintly eerie.

We arrived back on site, bulging with food, to find that Jettisoundz had packed up and left. Their spot on the landscape was now occupied by Here & Now who had arrived whilst we were feasting elsewhere. It was the first time I had actually met them and they didn’t seem to fit my mental image of anarcho-punks. But, as experience tends to show, looks can be deceptive. A long chat with Keith, discussing how to film the band, was interrupted by an impromptu game of five-

a-side football which had broken out between the band and crew. A good bonding exercise. I liked the idea. Not built for hectic sports like football Clive, Gobbo and I sauntered off to find a quiet spot to bask in the sun. Talk turned to a dissection of the show so far; Roy Harper’s amazing guitar technique, Nik Turner’s costume, the Vestal Virgins, The Enid’s guitarist who reminded Clive of a moth for some reason and the sight of Steve Brook-Smith being thrashed by Dixie. And the drugs. Gobbo couldn’t understand how I could come to the biggest free festival in Europe and not get stoned.

I told him, ‘Getting stoned was not an option; all that miswired energy coming off the freaks in waves, the spirituality of the ancient Stone Circle, the responsibility of a massive film crew, why, a person could wind up with a serious personality disorder trying to keep all that lot together with a head full of chemical amusements.’

We were joined by Clive’s brother, Elliott, and Gobbo’s flat mate Nick Mersch, aka Nick Danger. Elliott had been reading Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas and wanted to know the meaning of a word Thompson kept using; atavistic. I thought it meant a reversion of an ancestral peculiarity which seemed quite relevant considering where we were. Who needs drugs when there’s an Elliott to keep everyone entertained. Nick Danger (nee Mersch), playing drums that year with the Wystic Mankers, said he and Glen from the Tibetans were juggling with Here & Now later that night on the main stage and was it true the Pixies were filming them? I told Nick not to worry, as we would edit out the bits where he dropped his clubs. The afternoon wore on into evening which meant it was time to get the crew together for a pre-shoot meeting. Ian said he had got the sound system sorted which meant we could use the radios. Vance had to return to London and gave Dave Clarke a ride back with him. Stuart Bennett had another job next day, with an early call, so he was excused duty for the night with Steve taking over his camera. The motley crew were breaking up. Keith and I agreed on the three songs we could film - Secrets, Theatre and Glad You’re Here. That night I sat on the edge of the stage, wedged under Dixie’s tripod, with a note pad in

one hand and a radio in the other to cue in the cameras.

The whole thing went off without a hitch and the crew were wrapped and off the site before midnight. As the crew were packing up the lead singer from the band Man, who were due on next, asked if I would film them. Too late, he was told, we’re out of film and our musical director had been told we were not allowed to film them. Looking back, if there are regrets of that night, not filming Man rates pretty high on my list of great lost opportunities. It was their farewell gig and we missed it. Hey-ho. Steve and I spent the night backstage before returning to London early next day.

I arrived at UMP studios and walked into a defecation storm of greed and recriminations. The sound department, instead of using twin-track 16mm magnetic sound, had transferred the quarter inch master tapes twice therefore doubling the cost. When told to re-do it properly they informed us we would get charged for the extra run, thus tripling the cost. Before I could take the tapes to another studio, UMP retaliated by saying we could not remove the masters from the building because they owned the tapes. Actually they didn’t, as the tapes had been supplied by Osbourne Sound. When pressed, the sound technicians claimed their boss had belatedly realised I had been filming at a major rock concert and the boss “wanted some of it.” On the way out of the door a minion, minioning, gave me an envelope which it contained the bill for the crews’ fees, at full union rate, plus a copy of the film processing invoice.

‘What happened to the wages deal? What happened to the ninety-days before invoicing? Do contracts mean nothing to you?’

Not only had they stuck Pixie Productions with an outlandish wage bill, according to them their guys were still filming at the festival while Steve and I were driving back to London. UMP were trying to wrest control of the movie from the Pixies by spouting gibberish about ownership. It got pretty ugly; at one point the company tried to seize the original negative from the film lab. When the lab realised what was going on they switched the processing bill straight to Pixie Productions, cutting UMP out of the whole deal. To add a final insult UMP never apologised for screwing up the sound gear debacle. As for the missing banana clips, Paul Sharkey found them in the flight case where they had been all along.

Gobbo and I decamped to the leafy environs of Norwich where we spent a blissful

month editing the movie at a film makers co-op. Apart from the occasional visit from Vance we were left to our own devices which was fine by me because we were free to meld into the vibes of Stonehenge as it was and not how it was perceived to be by the straight-going media. To make up for bumping Gobbo back down to trainee, in prep, I gave him his head and let him edit some of the Roy Harper sequences. I loitered in the cutting room to dive in if he needed help but my presence seemed to be putting him off. He was holding a strip of film in each hand, undecided which one to use. ’Do you mind if I make a suggestion?’ I enquired. ’Do you mind if I make one first,’ said Gobbo.

He didn’t actually tell me to feck off but could feel the unsaid feckishness loitering in the air. I decided to wander off for a while and leave him to it. When I came back he had a gleam in his eye and a smile on his face with a job well done and, after looking at the film he had cut, I decided I should give him his head more often. Credit where it is due; well done Gobbo!

The final master sound mix was recorded on my thirty-third birthday at Cine Lingual Sound Studios in Berwick Street, engineered by Aad Wirks with Keith Bailey and Nik Turner supervising their individual bands’ sounds. We took the show print to Trillion Studios to have the end credits added to the master U-Matic video and made a few VHS copies for the bands. I have a vague memory of a post production party afterwards, in The Intrepid Fox, but it all seems a tad hazy for some reason. I remember ending up in Gobbo’s flat but beyond that - nothing.

After the final print was made Gobbo and I took the train down to Axminster, to be met by Dave Brock who took us back to his palatial home set on a headland overlooking Seaton Bay. While a meal was being prepared, Dave suggested we explore the garden after regaling us with the tale of while Hawkwind were on tour part of the cliff and their back wall had collapsed into the sea. It was getting dark and I had this horrible feeling my next step was likely to be my last before the long drop ended with a faint splash. We ran the Stonehenge ‘84 VHS, for approval

purposes, and after making a few suggestions Dave cleared it. We asked what time the next train ran back to London. Tomorrow morning. Oh dear. Dave put us up for the night to the sounds of the sea and, as I thought, ominous creaking and groaning from the house. Maybe it was my imagination but there seemed to be a crack in the wall which I didn’t remember seeing the night before. With all due thanks for his hospitality, Dave dropped us back at Axminster station.

1n 1993 Dave left a message on my answer phone; ‘I heard you’ve made a film of us, none of us have seen it, get in touch because we’d ready like to see what you’ve done.’

I wrote back to him, that we’d met at his home with an approval copy of the film but I never heard from him again.

Vance came back with bad news from Channel Four. They weren’t interested in screening a film which featured unknown hippie bands produced by an unknown production company. Hawkwind? Unknown? Which was a bit of laugh at the time because that was precisely what Channel Four were, supposedly, set up for. In an obscure way it was a sort of back-handed compliment that we were not left-field enough for the arty glitterati of Channel Four.

A C4 insider, who begged not to be named, told us, ‘The general view at C4 is they don’t want to be associated with a bunch of dirty smelly hippies who, having probably borrowed their mum’s 8mm cine camera, banged off a few shots of some nameless bands between acid trips.’

How quaint.

The movie was signed to distributors Glenbuck Films in 1985 but by the early1990’s cinema bookings were down and it was deleted from their list. Apparently, Glenbuck were not planning to invest in VHS copying equipment as they saw no future in the home video market. Famous last words. In 1993 I had a letter from the British Film Institute with news the Stonehenge film had been screened at a film festival in Bratislava and the jury panel had voted me a cult music film maker. In the BFI’s own words, ‘... that word is spelled C.U.L.T.’ At least they had a sense of humour.

Wandering off the timeline; over the thirty-years since ‘Stonehenge 1984, a midsummer night rock show’ was made there was a weirdness about that film, a

mill stone around my neck, which attracted some quite unsavory people who tried to variously pirate the film for their own unspeakable ends or demand money with extreme menaces; one Stonehenge band (name deleted at the insistance of my agent) known here as Band-X, later accused me of pirating my own film. Quite often these shenanigans were driven by a general misunderstanding of how the copyright laws work, coupled with musicians not registering their music with the Performing Rights Society then wondering why they weren’t getting any royalties when the film was in distribution. Copyright seems complicated but really it isn’t.

I own the film rights. I do not own the music publishing rights which is why Dave Clarke organised contracts between the producing company, Pixie Productions, and the individual bands giving the production company licence to use their live music in the Stonehenge ‘84 film. Whenever this film is shown on TV, cinema screening or DVD sales the Performing Rights Society collect royalty fees on behalf of the bands who appeared in the production. These fees never come to me at all and are dealt direct to the bands which is just as well, for them, because Stonehenge ‘84 never made it’s production costs back. It didn’t break even.

Sometimes stuff doesn’t happen and we the film makers have to stand the loss.

I never made the film expecting to make my fortune; it was a good thing to do, at that time with those people and stands as a slice of mid-1980s socio-political archive. Which is why it grinds my gears when people who were not contractually involved in the original production slither out of the woodwork, demanding a slice of the action. Bah! Humbug!

In the mid-1990s a regional college of further education was caught bangto-rights selling VHS copies of Stonehenge ‘84. When challenged the technician concerned disappointingly assumed I was a stoned brain-dead hippie, a common misconception of confusing who I am as a person with the nature of the product.

What often gets people into trouble, who don’t understand the legal position for copyright theft. The college administration were rather bemused when they received legal papers demanding they cease & desist selling VHS copies of the product forthwith from their college library and pay restitution. They tried to bluff it out but were caught in a tangle of their own inexactitudes. We settled out of court and the technician almost lost his job, the fact of which he bemoaned to anyone who would listen of what a heartless swine I was for putting a stop to him

illegally making a profit off our backs. I pity the students who are being taught in that college who think it is okay to rip off someone’s copyright because the chances are they won’t get caught.

At the turn of the new millennium a conman tried an old century robbery. A guy calling himself “Mike” phoned claiming to be Hawkwind’s biggest fan.

‘I heard you’ve made a film at the Stonehenge Festival and I’d like buy the Hawkwind sequences from you,’ he claimed.

‘Sorry,’ I explained, ‘the film runs an hour and I’m not cutting it up to sell in bits. You buy the film rights of the complete product or nothing.’

‘I’ll give you two grand for it ‘No,’ I said laughing, ‘That won’t even cover the original production costs.’

I mentioned a figure to him which he found outrageous.

‘No one will ever pay you that amount for a Hawkwind film,’ he spluttered with outraged indignation.

‘Well that’s okay then because I not selling it.’

“Mike” hung up with bad grace pertaining to my parentage, or lack thereof, but called back a few hours later with what he considered a better offer. Five thousand pounds.

‘You’re not getting this are you. It is a complete film and I’m not cutting bits out to sell separately. The film is not for sale.’

He eventually rang off in a rather angry mood to be replaced a few hours later by an irate Nik Turner demanding to know why I was trying sell him his own product for £20,000 when he could get a VHS from me anytime for nowt. What we presumed to have happened was “Mike” tried to buy low from me to sell high to Nik. The flaw in his plan was Nik & I knew each other and could spot a fraudster when we saw one. Since the coming of the internet there have been various attempts to put the Stonehenge ‘84 film up on Youtube but all, so far, have been dashed. Mostly the people concerned were hippies who thought it was cool and amaaaaaaazing ma’an to put the film out to the greater world with no respect for my copyright or the bands’ PRS. In 2002 I went to Norwich School of Art & Design for a late degree, upgrading my analogue film making skills to digital. Digital vision technician, Liam Wells, had the knack of teaching new technology in such a way as to make the process easy

and enjoyable, showing us softwares we needed to know in the real world. One of which was learning how to produce a DVD which made the road to distribution a whole lot easier. Liam had seen my Stonehenge 1984 film and gave endless encouragement to get it out into the World. I wasn’t so sure of that because every time I tried to re-release the film Band-X, alone amongst the other featured artists, would jog up and make wild accusations of copyright theft even though they’d signed a contract way back in 1984. They consistently misunderstood that I didn’t make money from their published work. Which was why the film never went back into distribution; too much trouble for very little or no return and a whole lot of agro from one band.

In 2004 I met up with author Chris Stone and photographer Alan ’Tash’ Lodge at Stonehenge for summer solstice. Between us we had a vast wealth of background knowledge, photo and film archive material on the alternative scene.

We discussed writing the definative traveleresque festival book or documentary film on the subject. And what better place to talk about it than at the Stonehenge monument. The 2004 event was a disappointingly watered down version of the solstices we knew from our youth, over managed by English Heritage with huge numbers of police in attendance. I video’d a young woman fire juggler who was wrestled to the ground by a dozen officers and frog-marched off the site in handcuffs. We were not, it seemed, into free expression at Stonehenge anymore.

It was 20-years to the day since I’d filmed Roy Harper, Hawkwind & The Enid and the world had moved on to something less appealing. The spirit of the free festival scene was crushed and lay in ruins. Andy Worthington had just brought out his book Stonehenge Celebration and Subversion which caused Chris Stone to decide there was no mileage in our proposed collaboration. Andy Worthington had said it all, Chris decided. I tried to revive the idea of a TV documentary, using Stonehenge 1984 as the basis, but there was no interest.

Liam Wells, my hero, encouraged me to put Stonehenge 1984 out on DVD to test the waters, as it were, and we made limited edition copies which went into a local independent record store. Amazingly they sold out in a week. There was obviously a market there but I couldn’t possibly afford to put it out with only a teeny-weeny student loan to live on. It was a fine idea, a gallant attempt but fell at the first fence through lack of funding. Over the years several people popped

up to say there was a huge untapped world market out there for Stonehenge ‘84 but nobody wanted to back that up by financing the project. A master DVD alone cost over 200-quid, plus the outlay for bulk copies in an unknown market.

To me it was a nice bit of art I’d made a quarter of a century before but too troublesome to seriously re-release. According to the Musicians Union and the Performing Rights Society there would be no problem in re-releasing my product because Dave Clarke had the foresight back in 1984 to make signed contracts with the bands. I had a feeling it wasn’t as simple as that and it would take just one musician to object and I’d be left with a lot of DVD stock and deeply in debt.

The other rather spurious argument folk used, to get the film into DVD distribution, was I somehow ‘owed it’ to the new generation of alternative youth to show them the way we were. I didn’t think I owed anyone anything for making a live concert film long-long ago in the ancient mists of time.

BBC4 made a documentary about the band Hawkwind and Nik Turned put the producer Tim Cummin in touch with a view to licensing a 90-second clip from my 1984 film. If there was any doubt how the copyright system worked, here it is; the BBC paid two fees, one to me for the use of the film and another PRS fee direct to Hawkwind. There was absolutely no copyright misunderstanding between myself, the BBC and Hawkwind. Later Tim and I got together and put a documentary proposal to the BBC to produce a complete history of the Stonehenge Peoples’ Free Festival from 1974 to 1984. This was to be achieved by a nostalgic trip to Stonehenge in a travellers bus, taking the scenic route to interview the main protagonists who organised or appeared at the festival, using archive film of to illustrate the narrative. Research with the British Film Institute revealed over six hundred clips in their vast film library. The BBC said they’d think about it.

By 2009 Voiceprint were keen to take Stonehenge ‘84 on but knowing Band-X could kick off about my alleged plundering of either their copyright and/or the ethics of the free festival scene, I wanted to cut them out of the final DVD version.

They gave me brain ache. Rob Ayling at Voiceprint claimed Band-X couldn’t cause distribution problems because I had a contract with them and what would be the point of putting a stop on the DVD anyway since they were entitled to their PRS fees. Their stop on a DVD re-release would cause the other artists to lose their potential fees from the film too. It made no sense. Who said rock’n’roll had to

make sense? To solve the prospect of trouble ahead with Band-X I decided to waive my fee from the proposed distribution and license the DVD rights (only) to Big Steve who had managed the Stonehenge main stage. I would retain the film rights and take my fees from future, if any, television, cinema or archive screenings. All I needed was a signature on a Voiceprint contract. It never came.

Several things were happening in 2010; the BBC4 licensed another 90-second clip, this time of Roy Harper playing on the Stonehenge ‘84 film for their Festivals Britannia documentary which included interviews with Nik Turner, formerly of Hawkwind, and Keith Bailey, of Here & Now fame, which was transmitted on December 17th. Both Tim and I were disappointed BBC4 had rejected our Stonehenge Festival documentary as we felt Festivals Britannia was a watered down broad overview of the British festival scene but by then I had other things on my mind. I was due to start an MA creative writing course in September at the University of East Anglia and was also up to my ruddy elbows getting Stonehenge 1984 DVDs mastered, the latter needing a major director’s cut with added rostrum photos of my 1981 foray. Voiceprint said they would release my band’s DVD, Back From The Beanfield but with strings attached; we had to include an interview with The Levellers on the spurious grounds that our guitarist, Paddy Stratton, had written songs for them eight years before. The Levellers were a very hard band to track down and it was probably going to cost us a fortune to film a short interview with them. It took months for their tour manager to get back to us and the best she could offer was my crew paying to get into one of their gigs, not allowed to film any of their set but wait until the end when the band did a Q&A session with the audience where I could ‘interview’ them, if they had time. I could see that becoming a very expensive non event if they didn’t like the questions I might ask in front of their devoted fans. Frankly, I couldn’t see what was in it for The Levellers either as they had no connections to my band. Eventually, with the clock ticking away, we Trolley Men decided to scrap the whole Levellers idea. This did not go down well with Voiceprint who, we thought, might be trying to use us as a conduit to The Levellers’ so Voiceprint could re-release their back issue. Rob Ayling became rather fractious on that subject and decided he wanted nothing more to do with either my band The Trolley Men or me. Nik Turner later told me I’d probably had a lucky escape as Voiceprint had a dodgy reputation when it

came to coughing up royalties. Since I hadn’t signed a distribution contract with Voiceprint for the Stonehenge ‘84 DVD it kept that project safe. Or so I thought.

In March 2011 we took my band’s Back From The Beanfield project to Highlights Video in Boston for DVD mastering. Whilst there company director Harold Houldenshaw asked me to pay for the eighty Stonehenge ‘84 DVDs Rob Ayling had ordered but couldn’t use because Voiceprint had gone bust. We all tried very hard not to hold our sides with mirth about his misfortune. Harold was told to erase the Stonehenge ‘84 files from his computer hard drive so the they didn’t accidentally escape into the wider world. To my otherwise relief the day after Rob dumped us a local alternative record store took up the slack. Phew! A nasty accident neatly avoided there. Or so I thought - squared. Life went on.

Then graphic designer Martin Cook got in touch to congratulate me on the success of the Stonehenge ‘84 DVD. ‘What? I asked, almost fainting clean away. I had a horrible feeling I knew what was coming.

‘Its all over the internet like a rash,’ claimed Martin.

There was no way that could happen because Harold had wiped the files off his system and I held the master. Upon checking via Google search it came to light the DVD was indeed being sold hither and yon by Voiceprint, with a rather cheesy unauthorised sleeve. But that was impossible. I never signed a contract with Voiceprint. There then ensued a crowded few days, contacting Big Steve to ask if he’d received any royalties. He hadn’t which meant no one else had either.

Visions of an angry Dave Brock turning up on my doorstep demanding money with extreme predudice loomed large in the not too distant future, closely followed by an irate Band-X demanding restitution in a self-satisfied I-told-you-so frame of mind. The thought of undue repercussions caused a Cease & Desist notice to be sent to Voiceprint, Highlights Video for supplying illegal DVDs and a company called Gonzo who were selling the DVDs in their shop.

A plethora of emails followed from Harold at Highlights Video who claimed ill health. ‘I am bipolar and your threatening email could bring on attack.’

There’s nothing particularly threatening about a Cease & Desist except it was a legalese version of, “stop doing what you’re doing or you’ll end in up in court.”

Harold persisted with lame excuses about all the favours he’d done for me in

the past. He hadn’t done any. I had to pay him for the eighty DVDs Voiceprint shouldn’t have ordered and, anyway, Highlights Video had been told to erase my Stonehenge files from their system back in 2011. They were all in big trouble and they knew it. The best course of action for them was to settle out of court and cough up the royalties. But they chose not to do that. Voiceprint remained silent.

Gonzo took a more mature attitude and agreed to stop selling the DVDs. ‘They’re not exactly flying off the shelves,’ they said, agreeing to take the remaining DVDs to a local charity shop and give them away.

Just when I thought it was safe a woman (name withheld at the insistance of my agent) claimed Big Steve wasn’t the 1984 Stonehenge Peoples’ Free Festival main stage manager and shouldn’t be allowed a royalty. She claimed she was the main stage manager in 1984 and demanded a percentage of royalty payments from DVD sales. The flaws in her suspicious story were quite interesting; why had she waited twenty-six years to make herself known as someone who needed to be paid for work done at a free festival and since the film wasn’t in distribution she had a snowball’s chance of ever seeing any fees from me anyway. Her emails became persistent, demanding and faintly threatening.

‘I wonder what the Peace Convoy would have to say if they found out you are making money out of their Festival?’

Their Festival? It was everyone’s free festival. The Peace Convoy didn’t own it although some of them may have thought they did back in the mid-1980s. I didn’t own it and had to make contractual arrangements with the bands for the use of their music. The bands didn’t own the Free Festival either. One wonders what the ageing members of the Peace Convoy had to say if they found out they were being used as a blunt instrument and I asked a few old travellers what they thought. They were not best pleased. The thing, the main thing really, is you can’t threaten someone with an empty gun. I don’t have this alleged DVD money to be blackmailed out of. Since email communications weren’t calming her hostile attitude I called the phone number on her email. Well, it made me laugh.

The number turned out to be her place of work at one of the HM Government’s unemployment training companies in the west country. The alleged former free festival stage manager probably thought that after bullying the unemployed back to work, unpaid in non-existent jobs, I’d be a push over. Oh dear me, no.

Turned out she’d taken a day off and I ended up speaking to her office manager and appraised him that further threatening calls from his staff demanding with menaces would be reported to the police. Not to be intimidated by a man offering to call the police, the training manager offered to call the police on me for making threatening phone calls. So I called the police who thought we were the most hilarious bunch they’d come across all week and advised that if the Peace Convoy actually turned up at my house to give me a good kicking then the best course of action would be to wait until they’d battered their way into my home before phoning the police. Their advice did put the possible former free festival stage manager’s rant into perspective but having to deal with strangers demanding money based on that flipping film could be quite frightening. You just never knew when one of them is going to explode in your face.

I decided never to put the Stonehenge ‘84 film back into distribution again partly because I didn’t see a market for it but mostly because of the cost. The DVD inlay & sleeve printing and packaging would involve more outlay poured into the original production black hole. So much for peace loving free festival hippies.

“Give us yer fecking money!” However the whole sordid Stonehenge ‘84 business blew up again in 2012 when Floating World Records were caught bang to rights selling DVDs via the internet.

I did managed to put a stop on New York City Library selling copies of the DVD after they received a Cease & Desist, explaining the bands were receiving no royalties from their sales. Emotional blackmail rarely works in these cases but New York City Library must have had a conscience. Both Amazon and HMV refused point blank to stop selling my product because, according to them, I couldn’t prove I was the legal owner even though my name was on the end credits as director and I had documentation. Legally, it turned out, none of the Internet companies were taking this seriously precisely because they was no contract between myself and whoever it was distributing the DVD. There was a definite ‘you and whose army’ attitude when dealing with HMV. Floating World Records received a Cease & Desist and I happily grassed them to the PRS for non-payment of band royalties. Emails ensued. Floating World’s version of events went like this; after Voiceprint went bust they, Floating World, bought up all their redundant stock from the liquidator, including the Stonehenge ‘84 DVDs (which

I technically I owned because I’d paid Highlights Video for the eighty DVDs Rob Ayling had ordered without a contract from me. But I digress). Floating World said they didn’t know there was no distribution contract between me and Voiceprint for Stonehenge 1984 and were an innocent party. Since emails were getting us nowhere I used the telephone to get to bottom of who did what regarding the product. At last there was someone sensible who was prepared to talk. The upshot was, the better part of valour, to put the DVD on a formal contractual basis between Floating World Records and myself as the only winners in a legal action are lawyers. The 1988 Copyright, Patents & Designs Act is there for a reason, to protect our original product, but we have to be rich enough to implement it. At least with Floating World the bands will get their royalties and, in that respect, it was legally off my hands. The contract lasts for three years and if Floating World don’t make their artwork and packaging overheads back in sales then I’ll have to cough up the difference. So my advice is get on the internet right now and buy a copy or I’ll end up in penury. Again.

The cruel defamations from Band-X bubbled up again about six months after the Floating World contract was signed, claiming on their website that Voiceprint, Floating World and I were making a fortune (hah!) from the DVD while the featured artists were receiving no royalty payments. There is an easy answer to that; contact the Musicians Union and PRS to find out why they aren’t getting their royalties. It is a constant amazement to me that Band-X claimed they didn’t know the DVD was in distribution when (name withheld) had been interviewed along with Nik Turner and Robert John Godfrey of The Enid by Prog Magazine (issue 30, September 2012) promoting Stonehenge ‘84.

oOo

5

THE PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE

(above) Tony Caruana 1981 Stonehenge minder/ driver

(below) John Boulter Pixie camera operator at Greenham Common Peace Camp

(above & below) the man with the Shakespearian nickname, Gobbo, Pixie Production’s assistant film director and person of surprizing hair styles

(left) Pixie camera operater Bob Jones (above) Gobbo takes an al fresco tiffin before surjourning to the Pixie crew bus (below) Al ‘Mr Pixie’ Stokes having a quick Omm on a beach before filming starts

Some of the 1984 Stonehenge Pixie Productions film crew: (top left) Dave Clarke, Al & Steve Brooke-Smith (above) film director Al Stokes (below) Steve Brooke-Smith & director of photography Dixie Dean (middle left) Al, Pixie stills photographer Mark Foster & Gobbo

(above) August 1985, film director Al Stokes stops off for a quick juggle at Stonehenge en-route to Wales (top right) Pixie camera operator Bob Jones and director Al at Greenham Women’s Peace Camp (bottom right) Dixie Dean (below) 1985, Al’s suspicious new hair style after spending too long filming new age travellers

Dixie Dean, front left of stage, filming Roy Harper

(below) Mr. Gobbo, 26-yesrs on, almost collapses with shock having jost been handed his overtime back pay from 1984.

Left of picture, Esther Thorn

1984 first edit running order

(below) It sometimes paid to have an amusing company name as evidenced here when David Newman at Cinelingual Sound Studios discussed monies out standing with director Al Stokes for the 1984 Stonehenge film

film director Al Stokes tries to impress the Pixie Productions trainees that he still knows which end to look down a 16mm Arriflex view finder.

JUST WHEN YOU THINK IT’S SAFE ... 2014 is the 40th aniversary of the first Stonehenge Peoples’ Free Festival and the 30th aniversary of the last. To that end am organising a commemorative gig on June 7th 2014 in Ipswich with Nik Turner’s Project-9 headlining, plus support and a showing of this film. More information on that will be forthcoming at: www.facebook.com/Thetrolleymen.

Anyone with personal memories and photos of the 1984 Stonehenge Peoples’ Free Festival and would like to get back in touch with old heads should check out: http://www.facebook.com/groups/stonehenge84/

ACKNOWLEDGEMEANTS With grateful thanks to all those who helped make the Pixie Productions 1984 live concert film of the Stonehenge Peoples’ Free Festival possible: Penny Mellor, Big Steve, Roy Harper, Nik Turner, Robert John-Godfrey, 100,000 festival goers, Timothy and our biker/minders, stills photographers Mark Brooker & Mark Foster, the Hippie Harrow Massive who kept us all amused and the Pixie Productions crew of Ivor Alison, Andy Anscombe, Stuart Bennett, Dave Clarke, Dixie Dean, Gobbo, Vance Goodwin, Bob Jones, Vic Neve, David Newman, Steve Brooke-Smith, Aard Wirks and everyone who gave moral support to what was at times a very difficult and dangerous film shoot. Good blessings upon all there in love, light & peas.

And to all those who have tried to swindle, defraud, pirate and defame the Stonehenge film over the years - tough buns! Exits to the sound of a very large raspberry being blown.

mam