h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My family had arranged to be on holiday on the island that week so I paid out almost half a week's wages for a £3 weekend ticket. On the Thursday we walked over The Hill and watched Black Widow's set (which I thought was quite good).

The next day I queued at the entrance clutching ticket and bag packed with sandwiches. At this point the crowd decided to break down the fence. Given the choice of being trampled to death by rampaging anarchists or going through the fence I chose the latter; my bag, however, chose to remain caught on the broken fence. Anxious seconds passed as I faced the prospect of losing my precious food but the dilemma was resolved as the fence totally collapsed and freed the bag.

This set the tone for that day - the atmosphere of intense suppressed rage in a crowd of that size (I don't know where the 700,000 figure comes from - I can't imagine anyone can say for sure how many were there - but I wouldn't dispute it) made it very unpleasant compared to, for example, the Bath Festival a few months earlier.

As a consequence the music struggled to make any impact, not helped by the wind and the 4,000 watt pa system (later in the day they managed to add another 3,000 watts making it "the most powerful pa system in the world" but I couldn't hear any difference).

I stayed to see Taste perform brilliantly (I was and still am a big Rory Gallagher fan) and then walked back to the hotel where the family were staying, thinking I could see Hendrix some other time (...).

On the Saturday I walked up to The Hill again and watched Ten Years After then spent the rest of the holiday on the beach and wandering round Osborne House and the other tourist places.

A few weeks later The Who played at the college where I was studying and I can confidently claim that they were the best live band ever, in a totally different league to any other act...