Bob Dylan – Blackbushe Aerodrome - 15th July1978
I will start this review of Bob Dylan’s performance at Blackbushe Airport on 15th July 1978 with a question which is “what band went on after Bob Dylan” ? The attendance was over two hundred thousand people and I went along with my brother Ken and his friends and we travelled the 20 miles from Windsor by car, tickets were £6.00.
We arrived un time to catch Graham Parker & the Rumour who came out of the pub rock scene in the 70’s and were firm festival favourites who are saw many times without intentionally going to see them. The Eric Clapton Band were next and I along with the majority of the crowd were looking forward to hearing Layla which was a classic even then. Joan Armatrading followed with a sublime set including songs from her acclaimed album Show Some Emotion. Bob Dylan and band performed a 30 song set and was promoting his latest album Street Legal and finished his set with Forever Young with guest Eric Clapton.
Whilst the event was a huge success artistically a big barometer on how successful a festival is did it happen again, which like Woodstock it didn’t due to the large number of people who attended and the infrastructure just couldn’t cope, it took us 6 hours to get out of the car park and we didn’t arrive home until the early hours if the morning and left many people stranded.
Which leads us to the answer of the question ‘which band performed after Bob Dylan which was Sphynx featuring Nik Turner from Hawkwind who entertained people in the car park afterwards as they waited to leave, which after all these years is still rated as one the biggest events on the history of music in the UK.