Event / Festival
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The original (The Great South Coast Bankholiday Pop Festivity) event was held on Hell Field, Ford Farm, near Godchild - promoted and organised by the Foulk brothers (Ron and Ray Foulk) under the banner of their company Fiery Creations Limited and their younger brother Bill Foulk.
The first event was on 31st August 1968, 10,000 people attended and the line up included: Jefferson Airplane (headlined), with The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, The Move, Smile, Blonde on Blonde, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation, Plastic Penny, The Mirage, Fairport Convention and The Pretty Things. The one day festival was compered by John Peel and had a mind-blowing continuous light show by the Royal College of Art.
In 1969, the festival attracted nearly 150,000 people with a line up including: Bob Dylan, The Nice, The Who, Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and Joe Cocker. Many celebrities of the day also attended the Festival, including John Lennon and Yoko Ono, George Harrison with Pattie Boyd, Ringo Starr with Maureen Starkey, Keith Richards and Jane Fonda.
The 1970 event was by far the largest of these early festivals; indeed it was said at the time to be one of the largest human gatherings in the world, with estimates of over 600,000 people on an island where the normal population was only 100,000. It also surpassed the attendance at Woodstock which had taken place a year earlier.
2018 saw over 72,000 people attend - with the festival winning the award for Best Family Festival and Headline Performance of the Year for Fleetwood Mac.
In 2019, the festival took place between Thursday June 13 and Sunday June 16 and was attended by approximately 90,000 people. Headliners at the event were: Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, George Ezra and Buffy Clyro.
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