Festivals Britannia Page #2

---

You know, the young people that had grown up during the war

had had a pretty frightening time.

This new generation in search of a taste of freedom

initially gathered in the nation's dance halls.

But their hunger for an escape from convention

led them out into the country in search of something different,

even a young Rod Stewart.

You couldn't have a rave-up in a dance hall.

You had to walk across the floor and ask a girl to have a waltz or something.

But if you were in a field,

you felt free.

The lawns of Palace House were given over to the sixth Beaulieu Jazz Festival.

It's the event at which the fans forget the conventional life, let themselves go and dress like crazy.

In 1956, an aristocrat by the name of Lord Montague

began to put on a yearly jazz festival at his home in Hampshire.

He had the facility of doing what he wanted to do at his own estate -

no neighbours with their innocence and so on.

And he fancied having a jazz do,

and he would have the ability of doing it.

And it was just a larger jazz concert.

They were a bit like the art-school dance taken to the country,

and people would dress weird.

It was the Chelsea arts ball decanted into a meadow.

It kind of shocked the locals and upset the sheep.

It became very, very successful.

And, sadly, sort of petered out

because of the inability of certain people to behave themselves

when they got a few pints into them.

In 1960, a mixture of youthful overenthusiasm, tribalism and cider

caused what would become known as the Battle of Beaulieu.

Britain was about to catch its first glimpse

of the anarchic potential of festival culture.

The point about the battle, if there was a battle, a genuine battle,

in Beaulieu, was between so-called trad fans and modern-jazz fans.

But the theory was that the Acker Bilk fans got annoyed cos a modern-jazz band was on,

and maybe they expected Acker to be on earlier, and he wasn't, or no-one told them.

Maybe they didn't know Acker was on later.

And they pushed and shoved, and they knocked down a television tower, a tower

holding lights for the television people filming it, you see?

What damage, in fact, do you think was done to BBC equipment?

- We've lost something like seven or eight microphones.

- Just stolen?

Vanished overnight, virtually.

Where they are, well, goodness only knows.

It really become quite impossible to go on satisfactorily broadcasting?

We had to come off the air five minutes early.

The Battle of Beaulieu, we called it.

And they all rushed the stage at one time and

got on a piano to get up onto the roof.

And the piano collapsed.

People were trying to lift it up, to get it level.

I said, "No, leave it, leave it, it's all right. I can manage like this."

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes