Weeley Festival, August 27-29, 1971 was a weekend all day all night event and anyone going would need real stamina to see it through. Few ever saw all the bands having been overcome by exhaustion. By the Monday morning surviving fans left the site looking like refugees. There had been fights with Hells Angels, tents set on fire, acid casualties and as with most festivals then, a new born or two.. but despite what sounded like Armageddon itself most of those distractions were events not witnessed by the 130,000 odd that had crammed into the site at Clacton-On-Sea, Essex.
Weeeley had been an assemblage of mainly British progressive bands of the time, King Crimson, Barclay James Harvest, Van Der Graaf Generator, Rory Gallagher, The Faces and T Rex, there's a long list somewhere.
Weeley was also notable for being the first performance of Marc Bolan fronting T-Rex, his new pop group. Infamous on this occasion as the newly assembled band were confronted with a tetchy sleep deprived mass who really weren't in the mood for "pop music". Cans were hurled, abuse was abundant from artist and audience but both sides saw it out and nobody was really the worse off. Bolan went on to be a pop idol. The hippie audiences went on to be left behind in the coming years.
But, the most endearing and possibly audacious performance of all had to be from Barclay James Harvest who in their infinite wisdom had decided to tour and play the festival with a full orchestra ! A task few would dare take on even today with full commercial sponsorship, but Barclay James Harvest manfully stepped up to the plate at Weeley and after a wait of a couple of hours, which most of the audience slept through, the recognisable sounds of an orchestra tuning up began. Which given they were outside is no easy task in itself. Classical stringed instruments and weather do not go well together.
Then quite unbelievably in the middle of the warm night a wave of sound began and kept growing that had to be the strangest of dreams or trips for the many that were still asleep or completely out of their faces.
It was Barclay James Harvest playing "Mocking Bird".
