{"id":3106,"date":"2016-08-07T13:12:00","date_gmt":"2016-08-07T12:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kennywilson.org\/?p=3106"},"modified":"2016-08-07T13:12:00","modified_gmt":"2016-08-07T12:12:00","slug":"bob-dylan-was-10-feet-away-from-me-isle-of-wight-festival-1969","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/2016\/08\/07\/bob-dylan-was-10-feet-away-from-me-isle-of-wight-festival-1969\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Bob Dylan was 10 feet away from me\u2019: Isle of Wight festival, 1969"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Ringo Starr, George Harrison, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were sitting behind us. The talk of the festival was that they might join Dylan on stage.” <\/strong><\/p>\n

Penny Warder<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Bob
Penny Warder, front right, waits for Bob Dylan at the Isle of Wight festival, 31 August 1969. Photograph: Medina Publishing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

T<\/span><\/span>he organisers of the 1969 Isle of Wight festival, brothers Ronnie and Ray Foulk, had managed to pull off the amazing coup of getting Bob Dylan to headline. Woodstock, which had taken place two weeks earlier on his doorstep in upstate New York, had tried to persuade him but he\u2019d turned them down. He\u2019d been in semi-retirement for three years after a motorbike accident, and this was his comeback.<\/p>\n

In this picture, we\u2019re waiting in the VIP area just below the stage for him to come on; it took about two hours because there were some problems with microphones. The chap sitting next to me is Vernon Warder, my boyfriend of the time. He had long holidays from art college and was working at the festival, doing artwork for the signs on the front of the stage, and helping with security and management. As a result, he had a VIP pass and, being his partner, I got one, too. Otherwise it was \u00a32 for a ticket.<\/p>\n

I was aware that Ringo Starr, George Harrison, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were sitting behind us. The talk of the festival was that they might join Dylan on stage. It never happened. I was a huge Beatles fan, but had not seen them live; I kept turning round to look at them. We were about three rows from the front and could smell the hash that someone was smoking behind us.<\/p>\n

When Dylan finally came on, he was barely 10 feet away from me. It was so exciting. He played for only an hour, for which he got some stick in the press, but it was incredibly exhilarating. He did two encores.<\/p>\n

After he finished, I went back to my parents\u2019 house on the island, where I grew up. Even though I had been away at college for two years, there was no way they would allow me to stay out all night. I remember it was a real struggle trying to find a lift, because we didn\u2019t have cars and couldn\u2019t afford taxis.<\/p>\n

Throughout the festival, I went back and forth between the VIP arena and backstage. I once bumped into Lennon and remember thinking, \u201cOh, he\u2019s not very tall, is he?\u201d I remember being really excited about going into a portable toilet after Ono had been in there. I wasn\u2019t even aware of the celebrities: Jane Fonda, Elizabeth Taylor and Eric Clapton were all there. That\u2019s how young and naive I was.<\/p>\n

I first saw this photo last summer. Some friends of mine who live on the Isle of Wight went to the launch of Ray Foulk\u2019s book, Stealing Dylan From Woodstock<\/a>, his account of the festival. One of them texted me: \u201cWere you sitting in front of the Beatles at the 1969 festival?\u201d I said yes, and she wrote back: \u201cYour photo\u2019s in the book!\u201d<\/p>\n

This was my first festival. I went to the Isle of Wight the following year, when Jimi Hendrix played shortly before his death. I\u2019ve been to others since, but nothing will match those two experiences.<\/p>\n

Interview: Erica Buist (Guardian 5\/8\/16)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Ringo Starr, George Harrison, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were sitting behind us. The talk of the festival was that they might join Dylan on stage.” Penny Warder The organisers of the 1969 Isle of Wight festival, brothers Ronnie and Ray Foulk, had managed to pull off the amazing coup of getting Bob Dylan to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13,34,35],"tags":[114,127,256,317],"class_list":["post-3106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beatles","category-counterculture","category-mods-and-hippies","category-music","tag-beatles","tag-bob-dylan","tag-isle-of-wight","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}