We have, over the years, pressed for a flagpole or something similar from the promoter to fly a ‘lost people’s’ flag, but in the face of continuing failure we may have to ourselves explore the cost of a large banner saying for instance ‘Lost People’s Meeting Point’ which we can fly over the Festival Welfare Service tent. Given sufficient warning it may be possible to approach local scout groups, etc. in the hope of borrowing flagpoles.

JAN HITCHENS, Local Welfare Groups Report, Knebworth Festival, 29th June 1978

Somewhere among these excursions, I finished my exams and left school. I was still fifteen, the youngest in my year. On my last day I walked home instead of catching the bus, knowing that this was a moment I wanted to concentrate on and remember. I knew I would not have done well; I had made sure of that. One morning, a distressed art teacher had called me in to show me that someone had sabotaged my exam work. They had drawn little stick figures all over it. She could think of nothing to say when I explained that it had been me, and neither could I. When the examiner arrived he said that he wanted to give me a better grade but I had produced so little. He needed to see more and was prepared to come back. Did I have any work at home? I was sent for but wasn’t in my Russian class, having played truant to get my hair cut. I took no notice of the teacher’s consternation and was indifferent to the lost grade. My exams were happening without me.

That was the last of a number of ways in which certain teachers tried to help me or to wake me up, but I didn’t understand this till later.

My experiments with older boys had finally led to a boyfriend, David. He was tall and graceful, a handsome man rather than a cute boy. He was far more grown-up than me, so much so that it astonishes me to think that he was actually only eighteen.

Before David, there was a run of boys who lasted a couple of weeks each, partly because when they asked me out I found myself unable to say no and so endured an awkward night in a pub. I did this with Mike, whom I saw the next night at a party, staggering about drunk.

‘Idon’twanttogooutwithyou,’ I said by way of greeting.

‘Wha – ?’ The music was loud.

‘I DON’T WANT TO GO OUT WITH YOU!’ I shouted.

Mike staggered and grinned, ‘Sfine, sno hard feelins, sfine …’

That was easy, I thought. I was direct, he was fine. It was fine. The next day, Mike appeared at the front door.

‘Hello?’ I said.

‘Are we off then? It begins at eight.’

‘But –’

‘But what?’

‘Don’t you remember what I said last night?’

‘Last night?’

Somehow with David I didn’t feel trapped. He let me set the pace and he did grown-up things such as sending flowers and taking me out to dinner and planning excursions. I received his kindness and courtship not so much as gifts but as facts, in the way I received the facts of my own lost state. It did not occur to me that I could actively change myself or that I could, let alone should, get actively involved.

So I’d left school and acquired a boyfriend, but it was still only June. Life would not begin again until sixth-form college in September. I relied on David, who organised two trips – to Knebworth Festival and to see Bob Dylan, who was playing at Blackbushe, an aerodrome in Surrey, that July.

Knebworth was two days with sixty thousand other people in a field in the rain. We slept four to a two-man tent, and spent our time trying to get dry or queuing for lavatories which were so overwhelmed that most people took one look at them and headed off into the fields. The atmosphere was hippyish, with people being strenuously trusting and mellow. The only ones who got hurt were a pair who’d gone to sleep on a track wrapped up in dustbin bags and who’d been run over as they were impossible to spot in the dark, and even they were just badly bruised. The real threat was the food:

After the birth of a baby at the 1976 Festival, first aiders were given a crash course in midwifery, but most of the medical problems came from the Hare Krishna free soup kitchen.

Outlets listed their prices in the programme: ‘(Examples) Soft Ice Cream 15p; Yoglace (Iced Yoghurt) 15p; Fish and Chips 70p; Chicken and Chips 75p; Beef Burgers 65p; Hamburgers 35p; Tea 13p; Coffee 15p’. Despite the cheapness of what was on offer, the welfare officer’s report noted people running out of money and requiring free food.

At about 11.00 pm the Welfare/Information point in the arena started dealing with cases of people who were distressed because they had lost friends. This was especially the case with people who had not made arrangements for where to meet up with friends if they became separated in the crowd. This increased until well after the concert finished, when enquiries then related to where stranded or exhausted people could find somewhere warm and dry to sleep.

The real problem was people getting lost. Information signs were few and small, as if no one wanted to do any shouting. That would be uncool. No one had a plan. We didn’t know why we were there or how we were going to get home. The music had got lost too, not only because it wandered off on the wind so most people could barely hear it, but because of the bands on the bill. The headlining act was Genesis, who had lost their lead singer Peter Gabriel. There was Jefferson Starship, whose singer Grace Slick failed to turn up. There was the jazz-fusion outfit Brand X and after them the Atlanta Rhythm Section and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, famous for not quite making it here.

Up to this point, I had been more interested in being at a festival than listening to the music. I was cold, damp and exhausted and as I couldn’t really hear anything, I lay down next to David and slept. Then a band came on who had nothing to do with rock festivals or rain.

Devo wore surgical outfits, as if setting up a sterile field in order to protect themselves from these filthy English hippies. They had short hair and sang in clipped syllables, and their music and dancing were restless, aggressive and smart: ‘Are we not men? We are Devo!’ They were a wonderful irritant, especially when they did a cover version of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Satisfaction’, which stole the song entirely, turning its machismo into neurosis. The audience were enraged and for a moment actually reacted, pelting the band with beer cans.

This was the group I’d wanted most to see and watching them now I wondered where they came from. They were absolutely new. I don’t remember seeing any punks at Knebworth but there must have been hundreds of people like me, who didn’t think of themselves as hippies and didn’t like rock but were trapped by the fact that those were the only languages available.

The new language was evident in the difference between set-lists.

Genesis: ‘Eleventh Earl of Mar’, ‘The Fountain of Salmacis’, ‘Burning Rope’, ‘Deep in the Motherlode’

Jefferson Starship: ‘Ride the Tiger’, ‘Wooden Ships’, ‘Dance with the Dragon’, ‘Pride of Man’, ‘Sweeter than Honey’

Devo: ‘Wiggly World’, ‘Pink Pussycat’, ‘Too Much Paranoia’, ‘Uncontrollable Urge’, ‘Mongoloid’, ‘Jocko Homo’, ‘Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA’, ‘Gut Feeling/Slap Your Mammy’

In front of these bands was a mass of lost English youth, confused by music which was on its way out and music they had yet to grasp and the complete lack of connection between the two.

Two months later, David took me to see Bob Dylan at Blackbushe. We caught a train to London and then travelled by Tube to Victoria. As the Tube pulled into the station, I began to panic. The place was full of people who were evidently also going to Blackbushe. I was back in the mass of lost youth. We inched towards the platform and were herded onto an already crammed train. I apologised to David but could offer no explanation as I jumped off just before the train departed, and fled.

* Festival Welfare Services, Field Worker’s Report, Knebworth Festival, June 1978