Rhino Historic Tours: Van, Tim and the Doobies Do Knebworth
43 years ago today, an event known as the Bucolic Frolic took place, and let's be honest: this is one of the greatest names any music festival has ever had. Unfortunately, that name fell by the wayside over the years in favor of just using the name of the festival’s location, so in the name of simplification, what was once a frolic filled with bucolicism – which may or may not be a word – is generally now simply referred to as…Knebworth.
The lineup for the Frolic – that’s what it was called at the time, dammit, and that’s what we’re going to keep calling it within this piece – consisted of The Allman Brothers, Tim Buckley, The Doobie Brothers, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Van Morrison, and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band. This, as you might imagine, made for a pretty darned diverse day of music, and that’s something that's been a hallmark of the Knebworth festivals throughout the years.
Clearly, it struck a chord with concertgoers from the get-go: this first event on the grounds inspired 60,000 people to come forth and listen to the music.
There hasn't been a festival every year at Knebworth, but there have been more than 30 major concert events on the grounds over the course of the past 40+ years, including - just to spotlight that aforementioned diversity - Monty Python, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Devo, Frank Zappa, Led Zeppelin, Mike Oldfied, Chuck Berry, Cliff Richard, the Scorpions, Queen, Tears for Fears, Lisa Stansfield, Oasis, Manic Street Preachers, Jamiroquai, Robbie Williams, Kelly Osbourne, Hot Chip, Linkin Park, Metallica, Gary Numan…yeah, you get what we're saying: you never know who might turn up at Knebworth.
In celebration of the festival’s anniversary, we’ve put together a playlist featuring the three artists from Rhino’s catalog who were performing at that very first concert, and although the end result is a title which sounds like the best ‘70s movie never made, we can assure you that the music that these three artists made truly was the best.
