Isle of Wight

In august, 1970, 600,000 people, the largest audience in the history of pop music, attended the Isle of Wight Festival and experienced the debut performance of a new "supergroup," Emerson Lake & Palmer. With a spectacular stage show that included real cannons being fired over the heads of the audience, they became overnight stars with the press raving about their virtousity and daring. Intercut with the live footage from the show, this film also features brand new interviews with Keith Emerson, Greg Lake and Carl Palmer, as well as their then-manager John Gaydon and creates a vivid portrait of the birth of a band.

This rock documentary includes the complete concert performance of The Who at the third and final Isle of Wight music festival. Playing to 600,000 ravenous fans on August 30, 1970, Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle, and Keith Moon outdid themselves with a towering set. They even went so far as to play the rock opera TOMMY in its entirety, giving audiences yet another reason to shout…

This 118 minute video features the debut of the entire performance of Hendrix at the legendary Isle of Wight performance. Special DVD features include picture in picture, providing multiple camera angles, a behind-the-scenes segment featuring director Murray Lerner and a Memorabilia section, which provides everything from original tickets and posters to Hendrix' own handwritten directions to the festival sight.

This release is a bit like stepping into a time warp – before they were a folk-rock band and before they were a progressive rock or art rock band, Jethro Tull were pretty much a loud rock & roll band working from a blues base, with a few elements of jazz and folk thrown in, and that's mostly what you've got there. The dominant instrument is Martin Barre's heavily amplified, chord-driven lead guitar playing, which crunches and slashes with the best of them on most of this performance – Ian Anderson's vocals, flute, and acoustic guitar are present, to be sure, and they find a balance on the then-new song "My God," but even at the their folkiest and droning-est, Tull were still a hard rock band in those days with an irresistible propulsive force in their work.

August, 1970: With Jim Morrison's ongoing Miami obscenity trial casting an ominous shadow over the band, The Doors flew to England to play the Isle of Wight Festival. Waiting for them at "The Last Great Festival" were over 600,000 fans who had already torn down the barriers, crashed the gates, and enjoyed performances by the world's top acts such as Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Miles Davis and Joni Mitchell. The Doors took the stage at 2 am, playing with the weight of the trial on their backs, and showed fans they still had the magic that had propelled them to the top during the Summer of Love. "We played with a controlled fury and Jim was in fine vocal form," said Doors organist Ray Manzarek. "He sang for all he was worth, but moved nary a muscle. Dionysus had been shackled." Less than a year later, The Doors were no more.