If you could go back in time to one gig, which one?

[T-Bay]

For me it would be the RHCP/ Pearl Jam/ Nirvana gig just after the release of Nevermind. Some Sex pistols ones come close, but that one with such a great line up and the buzz around at the time would sell it to me.

[JBP]

For me it would be Rush at Wembley Arena on the Hold Your Fire Tour, with Primus as support... my own personal bass heaven

[Heathy]

David Lee Roth, Wembley Arena 1988.

[Bluewine]

Sly & The Family Stone December 10th, 1969 Madison Square Garden.

Band Of Gypsys New Year's Eve 1969 Filmore East

Blue

[LeftyP]

Fotheringay at Newcastle City Hall around 1970-ish.  Wonderful Sandy Denny with Jerry Donahue on guitar, Pat Donaldson on bass and the incredible Gerry Conway on drums.  It was a magical night and their self titled album is still on of my favourites.

[Dad3353]

This one  ...

Isle of Wight Festival, Saturday 31st August - Sunday 1st September 1968

Apple - Jefferson Airplane - Smile - Harsh Reality - The Move - Orange Bicycle - The Crazy World of Arthur Brown - Halcyon Order - Fairport Convention - Pretty Things - Hunter - Muskett - Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation - Plastic Penny - Tyrannosaurus Rex - John Peel 

Marc Bolan 1968
Sitting cross-legged on a flat bed truck, Marc warbles Tolkein-like fairy tales of elves, magicians and romany soup as half of Tyrannosaurus Rex. The setting is a cold stubble field, near Godshill (where the ley lines meet) to a hippie throng gathered for a now legendary one day event. The first great UK rock festival.
Site Manager, Ron Smith, remembers setting up the event:
Jefferson Airplane
"The IOW pop festivals came about as a result of the Isle of Wight Swimming Pool Association, of which I was a member, wanting to raise funds. It was suggested we employ a fund-raiser. I said I knew someone; that person was Ronnie Foulk. We then proposed, after some discussion with Ray, that we have a pop festival. The committee allocated £750 and we set about putting a festival together."
It was Hells Field, a one hundred acre field of stubble corn, and we paced out with some broken bars that had been left on the site what we thought the arena should be, and then Ronnie and Rikki Farr (the compere) suddenly said, "We're off to London now, see you. Don't forget it goes on in three weeks time, Ron."
"I wondered what I should do, when three brothers aged about thirty came on the scene in a van and said they'd heard we were talking about a pop festival on the Island and could they help. They had called at my house and the missus had sent them out. They wanted desperately to be involved, and had experience in scaffolding, laying bricks, anything."
"So I went off in my van to get some scaffolding poles and we set to build the stadium. We covered it in black plastic. The stage was several low loaders which I had through the good offices of British Road Services, and we got a generator down from Winchester. Water for the site was obtained in new dustbins by my wife, who went round garages in the area, filling them up."
The big day dawns
Tyrannosaurus Rex - Mark Bolan
Publicised as one of the biggest pop festivals ever staged in this country, events got under way early on Saturday evening. An audience of 10,000 congregated on forty acres of barley stubble known as Hayles Field - translated by the press into 'Hell Field' - on Ford Farm, near Godshill but nearer Niton, just off the main road from Newport to Ventnor. The event began at 8pm on Saturday, 31 August and ended at 8.30 the following morning - it was supposed to run from 6pm to 10am, so it started late and finished early!
Tickets were the grand sum of 25 shillings each, £1.25 in post-decimal times.
After weeks of planning the supposedly highly organised, precision-planned gig turned out to be 'sixteen hours of make-do, make-shift and hasty improvisation'.
Technical difficulties meant as often as much as a half-hour break between each group. Organisers and sponsors associated with it had already disclaimed responsibility for anything that happened 'on the night', and the Island's magistrates hit out at them for advertising bar facilities before they had applied for a licence. Pre-publicity promised 'licensed bars, marquee, refreshments and snack bar'.
Geoff Wall recalls the sheer excitement of the times: "The boundary fence consisted of black plastic sheeting - a far cry from the high wooden fences and security guards that accompanied futures IOW events. The loos were a simple trench, again surrounded by some plastic bags. The stage itself was just two flatbed trailers placed together, with plastic sheeting covering a make-shift scaffolding structure. To the right of the stage was a huge screen."
The whole affair was a miniature precursor of Afton, beauty and danger coalescing in a rural setting, with the pop fans like the 'poor bloody infantry' of the Great War, setting out for the trenches. As the Islander reported:
'Hells' Field was a beautiful setting for the Festival, surrounded by rolling green hills and bright, bright sunshine. There was, however, something ominous about the enclosure; it looked very much like a prison camp, a detention compound. An area all round the billowing black PVC walls was marked off with wire, and patrolled by a Security man holding an alsation on a tight lead. The queue at the entrance was very orderly and seemed unnaturally quiet, almost apprehensive.'
Quite who did appear and in exactly in what order, is still a subject of lounge-bar arguments. As someone once said, if you can remember the sixties, you weren't really there!
The poster promised Jimmy Saville - who no-one can remember being there - and a 'lite-show' by a student of the RCA. The only thing that compere and Radio 1 DJ 'Laughing' John Peel, who made a brief appearance to start the proceedings, could remember twenty six years later, was ..
"...one fragile bobitette who was crying because her bare feet were so cold and, overcome with lust, I gave her my socks. She skippety skipped away and that was that. I want my socks back. And I want them washed first, too."
The above extracts are taken from Brian Hinton's "Message to Love: The Isle of Wight Festival 1968 - 1969 - 1970".
Copyright: Brian Hinton, 1995. - See Brian's Books on Amazon

You had to be there. 

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

The charity gig at the Grove Tavern in South Wimbledon one Sunday afternoon about 10 years ago, but this time there will be people in the car park waiting for the scrote(s) that broke into my car while I was on stage.

[Cato]

This would have been a good night in New York.

If you stayed for another month you could also have caught an early Blondie gig at the same legendary venue.

Edited December 12, 2017 by Cato

[chris_b]

I'd go back to any Cream gig between August and October 1966. For that brief period of a couple of months they were the best band the world has ever seen.

Possibly to the Blue Triangle in Ealing Broadway. Then I wouldn't have far to walk home.

[drTStingray]

Rose Royce - Birmingham Odeon circa 1978 - close second - The Brothers Johnson - same year same venue. 

[barneyg42]

ELO at Wembley 1978......Out of the Blue tour. Amazing musical and visual performance for it's time! 

[bartelby]

Tricky one. Maybe the Metallica gig I couldn't be bother to go to in Birmingham 1986. A week before Cliff was killed.

[lowdown]

Wembley Arena 1984 - Al Jarreau with Support from The David Sanborn Band.

Lead Vocal: Al Jarreau 
Bass And Vocal: Nathan East
Percussion: Malando Gassama
Drums: Ricky Lawson
Keyboards And Vocal: Bobby Lyle
Saxophones And Flutes: Michael Paulo
Trompet And Flugelhorn: Michael Stewart
Keyboards And Vocal: James Studer

 

Support Band:

David Sanborn/Marcus Miller/Steve Gadd/Hiram Bullock/Greg Phillinganes/Perc ?

 

Absolutely amazing gig from top, top players. (Recorded for CD and Video as well).

 

[SH73]

Iron Maiden Live After Death Long Beach Arena October 1984

[Cato]

3 minutes ago, SH73 said:

Iron Maiden Live After Death Long Beach Arena October 1984

Best live album ever.

[JBP]

1 hour ago, SH73 said:

Iron Maiden Live After Death Long Beach Arena October 1984

 

1 hour ago, Cato said:

Best live album ever.

So very very true, but remember side 4 was recorded at Hammersmith Odeon, I was actually there for that bit, that was my second ever 'big' gig blew my mind at 14 years old.

[kendall]

2 hours ago, bartelby said:

Tricky one. Maybe the Metallica gig I couldn't be bother to go to in Birmingham 1986. A week before Cliff was killed.

This one.

[Barking Spiders]

Liked to've been at Van Halen's debut in the UK in 1978 at the Rainbow in Finsbury Park when they supported Black Sabbath. I was only 7 at the time so might've been stopped from going in. Reputedly they blew BS off the stage.  Besides  at that age i was more into  the Junior Choice scene rather than heavy metal.

[SH73]

11 minutes ago, JBP said:

 

So very very true, but remember side 4 was recorded at Hammersmith Odeon, I was actually there for that bit, that was my second ever 'big' gig blew my mind at 14 years old.

Aware. It sounds different too. I was at The Seventh Tour of a Seventh tour in August 1988 at age of 15 in front row. 

Edited December 12, 2017 by SH73

[pbasspecial]

Donington 1988 Monsters of Rock

Iron Maiden, Kiss, Dave Lee Roth, Megadeth, Guns n Roses, Helloween.

First ever gig.  Bit like popping your cherry to Salma Hayek.  

[Coilte]

For me, it would be one of Miles Davis' last concerts in London in 1991. Miles was not known to ever  look back musically, and always played material from his current albums at gigs. 

On this gig, he must have known that the end was near, because his band comprised of past members, and the music was retrospect.

Nonetheless, it was an amazing concert...the ticket to which I still have...and treasure. 

The great man passed away soon afterwards.

[KevB]

Either Woodstock or the Isle of Wight one where the Doors played.

[bartelby]

51 minutes ago, SH73 said:

 I was at The Seventh Tour of a Seventh tour in August 1988 at age of 15 in front row. 

There's a brief glimpse of me on the front row on the Maiden England video.

[T-Bay]

2 hours ago, SH73 said:

Aware. It sounds different too. I was at The Seventh Tour of a Seventh tour in August 1988 at age of 15 in front row. 

That tour was my first experience of a big group, I was 16 and at the Assembly rooms in Derby with my then girlfriend. I was right at the front and my ears didn’t stop ringing for a few days (not good). They were supported by Wolfsbane with Blaze Bailey up front.

[JBP]

2 hours ago, SH73 said:

Aware. It sounds different too. I was at The Seventh Tour of a Seventh tour in August 1988 at age of 15 in front row. 

I saw them at Donnington and Wembley Arena that year. I think I have caught them on just about every tour since, except during the 'Bailey' years, I only saw them once without Bruce and it just was not the same. They have essentially been doing the same show for years and I will  never get tired of seeing it, I would gladly go back a revisit any Maiden gig. But saying that next August cant come quick enough!