![]() The performance wasn’t quite the collaboration fans had hoped for, or the glorious return to live shows that Dylan had wanted, but many of the fans in attendance were blown away, including the section of VIPs. To return the favour Dylan had arranged for “Hare Krishna Mantra” to be played over the PA before he and the Band went on stage, much to Harrison’s delight.īob Dylan and The Band topped the star-studded festival line-up which also included Joe Cocker, who covered The Beatles’ song ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’ live at the festival, and Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band who had recently appeared in The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour film performing ‘Death Cab For Cutie’. Yet when the American eventually made it onto stage he delivered, albeit nervously, and brandishing George Harrison’s vintage Gibson J-200 acoustic guitar that the Beatle had gifted to him just moments before the show. The crowd was dying on their feet by the time he got on." – John Lennonĭylan was due on stage at 9pm, but technical delays meant a two-hour wait, and as tensions within the crowd built, the out of practice Bob Dylan grew more anxious. We would have jammed if it had been earlier. And although the price would likely have been gigantic to get The Beatles to perform, even if they wanted to, John suggests it was only a matter of timing as to why an impromptu jam session didn’t take place: "We went to the Dylan show, and if there had been a jam, we would have got up. ![]() By then, The Beatles had already stopped touring, with the 1966 concert at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park marking their final planned live performance, but this didn’t stop fans calling for a collaboration to take place between Dylan and The Beatles. It was going to be Dylan’s first gig in over three years following his near-fatal motorcycle accident in July 1966.įounded in 1968, the Isle of Wight festival was only in its second year when it became graced by the presence of the world’s most popular band amongst its 150,000 attendees. It was the festival organisers, the Foulk brothers, who convinced Dylan by showing him a short film of the island’s cultural and literary heritage, which appealed to Dylan’s artistic sensibilities as the singer was enthusiastic about combining a family holiday with a live performance in the homeland of British poet Lord Alfred Tennyson. The singer however decided to shun the New York-based option and left the city on 15th August, the day Woodstock was due to begin in favour of the Isle of Wight. In 1969 Dylan was living near Woodstock, upstate New York City and was believed to be performing at that year’s Woodstock festival. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band album but written many years beforehand, when McCartney was just 16 years old. The island could well have already influenced the young Beatles, as they reference it in their song ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’, taken from their 1967 album Sgt. Whether that holiday in 1960 was the inspiration for ‘Ticket to Ride’ remains a source of conjecture amongst Beatles historians. In his autobiography Mike McGear – Paul McCartney’s brother – describes how Paul and John supposedly hitchhiked from Liverpool to the Isle of Wight to holiday with Mike who worked in a pub near Ryde. Paul McCartney was unable to attend due to the birth of his and Linda’s first daughter, Mary, on 28th August, but he had been to the Isle of Wight before. One year later, The Beatles watched Bob perform at London’s Royal Albert Hall during their filming sessions for Help!, and in May 1966 Bob released ‘4th Time Around’, a song speculated to be a response to The Beatles’ ‘Norwegian Wood’ as either a playful homage or satirical warning to Lennon about co-opting Dylan’s style. The Beatles were already huge fans of Bob Dylan, having first met the American singer on 28th August 1964 in New York City, a night which is said to have altered the course of rock ‘n’ roll music forever. It was one of the largest counterculture events of the 1960s and came only weeks before the Beatles broke up, but the Fab Four’s association with the small island in the south of England involves much more than the 1969 festival, in fact, it goes back to before they were famous. 50 years ago, in the summer of ‘69, The Beatles visited the legendary Isle of Wight festival, not to perform, but to watch one of their favourite musical acts, Bob Dylan, make a return to live shows.
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