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Not a blade of grass to be seen
MetalTalk celebrates 50 years of the famed Knebworth festival by talking to the Knebworth House custodian, Henry Lytton Cobbold.
Knebworth 1985 saw the legendary Deep Purple concert that holds a special place in the band’s history and in the annals of rock music. This was a massive one-off UK reunion show by Deep Purple (Mark II lineup) as part of their Perfect Strangers world tour. This is one of many shows that Knebworth House custodian Henry Lytton Cobbold covers in his new book, Knebworth – 50 Years Of The Greatest Rock Venue In The World!
Held on 22 June 1985, the Return of the Knebworth Fayre also featured Scorpions, UFO, Mountain, Blackfoot, Mama’s Boys and Meat Loaf. “I was there,” MetalTalk’s Mark Taylor said. “It will be the 40th anniversary in one month’s time. It was my first ever festival, and I remember it like it was yesterday.”
“I’ve got the recordings of all the bands, except for Scorpions, who were not professionally recorded that day because they just released World Wide Live. Scorpions were absolutely superb that day, as were Deep Purple.”
Read more in MetalTalk.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
I was at a great DP concert in August 1985 at Atwood Stadium in Flint, Michigan. That’s an (American) football field: https://youtu.be/lkoz5vvH3yo
May 22nd, 2025 at 02:41Good to see Mama‘s Boys were also there. I saw them later that year in Mannheim supporting Gary Moore. They were always straight forward, no looking back!
May 22nd, 2025 at 05:37For me, those are more like 40 years, not 50.
May 22nd, 2025 at 05:50They started those festival concerts 1974.
It surely is almost 40 years since that rainy (?) DP gig.
My first Purple gig was only in 1987…But it was Big Ian´s birthday that day and all. They sure did have fun at the Jäähalli, Helsinki. Blackmore did the deed to Gillan with his Stratocaster…
…Knocking At Your Back Door….if You guess the rest.
: )
Great times.
(And to be precise, that is spelled Clem Clempson, in the previous story here.)
Have a warm Spring and Summer everyone.
May 22nd, 2025 at 07:34Bloody hell, Woman From Tokyo and Uwe will be pleased we hope. They played the middle section. Thanks for that. Cheers.
May 22nd, 2025 at 08:2050th aniversay of the Knebworth Festival,40th of the Fayre.
May 22nd, 2025 at 09:15Thogh the Bucolic Frolic was 1974, with the Fraternal bands headlinibg, Doobie and Allman
I saw them in late June 85 in Vienna, Austria, was the first of 20plus Purple shows i saw, it was magnifizient…i still recall the pure Joy i felt…was 16 then…ah, them times never come back. Last show was in 2024, Munich….and yes, I do miss Mr Lord and Mr Morse…
May 22nd, 2025 at 11:31Mommies boys, very underrated band of brothers from Ireland, opened for Thin Lizzy during their 1983 farewell tour
May 22nd, 2025 at 12:14I was there !
May 22nd, 2025 at 14:10Absolutely fantastic day !
I actually saw grown men cry around me as Highway Star kicked off !
Be great to hear from anyone else who was there ?
“Bloody hell, Woman From Tokyo and Uwe will be pleased we hope. They played the middle section.”
Je suis totalement baffled – indeed the middle part of WTF or WFT, whatever it is called! 🤯 And Ritchie, while not playing along (“I’m not doing this!”) – likely because he has forgotten the chords to that section, lazy bum he is, yet he doesn’t even play some lead fills -, is at least not leaving stage. You can’t ask for more with him, he must have been in a benevolent and gracious mood, the ole philanthropist.
From the parts I’ve heard that must indeed have been a brilliant gig.
May 22nd, 2025 at 16:10Was that the UFO with Atomic Tommy and the Damned bassist that played at Knebworth?
May 22nd, 2025 at 21:02Karin take note of this web sites name, it isn’t rock or pop, it is powerpop. Uwe, less is more. Blackmore didn’t originally play anything on that middle section did he? Why spoil it, it is there for a reason. Correct me if I am wrong. Anyway it doesn’t matter as it is only powerpop, who cares for that? We would have enjoyed WFT at our Sydney concert but it was not to be. Would have gladly swapped that for one of those PS album songs, Nobody’s Home for starters. Must not moan though, we had George from Liverpool at one of those gigs. Definitely not moaning about that. Cheers.
https://powerpop.blog/2024/08/05/deep-purple-woman-from-tokyo/
May 23rd, 2025 at 01:45I remember taping the whole thing off the radio whilst my brother had the pleasure of actually being there. It was a fantastic show.
May 23rd, 2025 at 11:07Thank you, James!
May 23rd, 2025 at 12:02Of course I have it!
https://eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=702187
May 23rd, 2025 at 13:51“The next morning, there was not a blade of grass to be seen.”
Karin Grønne-Hænder 🌿🤲 🍀 to the rescue then!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPSFpaCQEvA
May 23rd, 2025 at 15:55@9 Steve My first Purple gig was at Knebworth, too. What an incredible experience that was.
May 23rd, 2025 at 21:02@ 9 and 17
It is fantastic!
My first only in 1987
May 24th, 2025 at 14:14@12
MacGregor I simply adore “Woman from Tokyo” 💜
It’s my all time springtime song!
And yeah, powerpop! Really a good name for it.
But why is it we need to name the different categories in music?
As my favorit bassist once said (I do know I’ve mentioned this before, but I think Roger really do have a point here!) “no we’re more a country&western band”, when some pesky journalist asked whether Purple was some kind of a heavy band!
And Ian, in the world famous interview with the Great Dane Hans Otto Bisgaard, where Ian says: “it’s your journalists who are making up all the labels” (sorry not word to word but the intention is right 😄)
Why not just say like this:
I love this music, and I really don’t give a tiny rodents wet behind for whatever other people call it!
I am not a fan of heavy-‘anything’, it really rubs me the wrong way! BUT: there are a few numbers I truly enjoy, but actually I’m afraid of admitting it, because then some people immediately say: ohh and you like ‘this’, and you’re a woman, are you completely right in your head…and so on and so forth!
May 24th, 2025 at 17:22Well, never mind, it’s my tiny quest here, and I know I’m doomed beforehand!
I go back to my yummy coffee 😍
@16
Uwe, thank you for the link!
Sparks grow on me 😂 ok that came out wrong, but I guess you know what I mean….
I try to concentrate on my own garden, and the of course of those were I’m actually payed to do my magic 😄
May 24th, 2025 at 17:25I was in London on holiday then and read that the show would be played on the radio one of the days I was there. I sat in my hotel room with my video camera and filmed the hotel radio during the whole show. Not so much download of boots then.
Janbl
May 24th, 2025 at 17:43Stathis and AndreA …it does seem like we were at a lot of the same gigs !
Knebworth was my first Purple gig too ….I had seen all the bands that had came out of Purple…but never, ever had I thought I’d be lucky enough to see the classic mk2 line up !
What a day it was !….it absolutely pissed down with rain but ….no one cared ! ( I was only 18 and it didn’t bother me at all ) …I remember bottles of urine being thrown around ! ..( well you can’t get to the loos in a crowd like that ! )
Do you remember trying to walk over those cattle grids in the pitch black at about 1am , to try
and get out?
I can remember Meat loaf falling over on stage cus he had his leg in plaster ….and everyone laughed !!! …later, he wrote the song ” Rock and Roll mercenaries ” about Purple ….and so began a long running spat between the two .
Scorpions we’re brilliant ( I believe they did their acrobat thing, where they all stand on each other’s shoulders ? …or, is that just my imagination? )
I could be hear all night talking about Purple…they were superb, absolutely fantastic…even Blackmore was smiling ( in his wellies ) …and Jon’s Hammond all wrapped in plastic, to protect it from the rain !
Apparently, Gillan was walking around the campsite the night before and saying hello to fans !
May 24th, 2025 at 18:09happy days for purple fans
May 24th, 2025 at 19:30@ 19- indeed Karin, all the different genres, it is crazy. However, I do prefer Deep Purple being called ‘powerpop’ rather than ‘heavy metal’. Uwe @ 16 – thanks for the lawnmower song, classic. God would have enjoyed that clip, surely. At least in the main part of the lawn mowing clip they weren’t using a catcher, so it all returns back into the earth. St Francis would be relieved. The video of the lady trying to get everything into the car for a weekend away. Forget about trying to fit in a lawnmower, where is the kitchen sink? Cheers.
May 24th, 2025 at 23:38Objection, you Tasmanian Honor, I wouldn’t call DP Power Pop though you could have WFT (or Call Of The Wild) well fall into that bracket. But real Power Pop is to me something like these guys here:
https://youtu.be/jfgnc6Ey0q0
https://youtu.be/N4NXero2HGQ
https://youtu.be/Rqnw5IfbZOU
https://youtu.be/k8ePSJ44Fiw
https://youtu.be/GfHyA0kjltQ
https://youtu.be/-qgpewMCVjs
And of course my favorites (without whom there would have been no Bon Jovi according to Jon Bongiovi):
https://youtu.be/lIAS9mygJi8
As a matter of fact, Bon Jovi are mostly Power Pop too.
Mott the Hoople/Ian Hunter pretty much fitted the bill for Power Pop as well:
https://youtu.be/zvFpX98EOPo
https://youtu.be/tJzcS-mEfOg
Not to forget:
https://youtu.be/Zh6H8vO6hsg
May 25th, 2025 at 01:03@24
So no one is with Roger and me regarding the country&western?
I am a bit disappointed… 🤣
To me Purple is pure, genuine, brilliant, phenomenal, mood-lifting, comforting, heart-warming, fun, intelligent and energizing ROCK!
Not more, nothing less 😊
May 25th, 2025 at 15:40@26
Just for you, the world’s best (IMO) C&W record:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTYoxZxy7kA&list=PLsD2R45KIq5hWpHwIzMR7ABy0jN_5CIRr&index=2
May 25th, 2025 at 19:45@26
Oops… wrong link. Meant to do a link for the whole playlist.
Should’ve been this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRszqE5m1sc&list=PLsD2R45KIq5hWpHwIzMR7ABy0jN_5CIRr&pp=0gcJCV8EOCosWNin
May 25th, 2025 at 22:40@ 26- Anyone’s Daughter from the wonderful Fireball album will be about the closest you will get Karin. Probably not a lot of ‘western’ in that though, more country. Cheers.
May 25th, 2025 at 23:22Many memories there Uwe with those 1970’s bands. Badfinger, say no more there and a couple of very good songs they wrote. I do remember that Greg Kihn band song, it was posted here not long ago from my memory. The Romantics song I remember clearly, a good hit that was. Ian Hunter and Once Bitten Twice Shy was a favourite of mine. I had that debut album and the double album of Ian Hunter on vinyl, Welcome to the Club. Plus Cheap Trick I do remember too. I have a ‘pop’ fondness for that song Turning Japanese by The Vapors. I always liked that song, very ‘bouncy’ and good guitar riffs too. I do own the XTC English Settlement album, like that very much. I also have a few others songs of theirs from the Black Sea record. They would fit into the ‘Powerpop’ genre. Cheers. Turning Japanese song below. I hope it is bouncy enough for Karin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWWwM2wwMww&t=24s
May 26th, 2025 at 04:46@28
“Should’ve been this one:”
Ok, thank you!
May 26th, 2025 at 08:15I enjoyed the first link, but look forward to this 👍🏼
@29
“Anyone’s Daughter”
– actually a favourite of mine!
I really like the recorded song, but oh man I dig it at “the Hell or High Water” tour dvd too.
Even though I do have a tiny problem regarding the guy throwing a brick, mind you a BRICK!, at the young girls window….
Have been discussed in here before, but MacGregor I can tell you, had that happened at my windows at the first floor, EVERYONE would have been awake, including the two dogs, and whatever young man who would have liked to enter the house, would have been thrown out and bit in the derrière by the dogs (German Shepherds) 😁
For future episodes where young men like to get the attention of young girls, I will strongly suggest small pebbles! They don’t break any windows and they don’t alarm the house 😉😊
May 26th, 2025 at 08:42@29 MacGregor
May 26th, 2025 at 09:56Instead of, I love more Painted Horse than it 😊
Russ, that David Allan Coe guy is interesting, thanks for the link! I’ll have to dig deeper with him. Anybody performing Country with a DEAN Dimebag Darrell Signature heavy metal axe is something!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/David_Allan_Coe_%285454565631%29.jpg/1280px-David_Allan_Coe_%285454565631%29.jpg
*************
Are we really talking about DP and C&W and no one posts this here?! Shame on you!
https://youtu.be/iRodNrrkQc0
A song our German readers know by heart.
https://youtu.be/oKrCmj22XUo
May 26th, 2025 at 13:12AndreA, what‘s C&W about Painted Horse? 😳 That vocal line of Ian (which drove Ritchie mad) is about as un-countryish as it gets!
May 26th, 2025 at 15:26@ 29
May 26th, 2025 at 16:17Sorry, i wanted mean that I appreciate Painted Horse more than Anyone’s Daughter.
And I find it more country..
“Have been discussed in here before, but MacGregor I can tell you, had that happened at my windows at the first floor, EVERYONE would have been awake, including the two dogs, and whatever young man who would have liked to enter the house, would have been thrown out and bit in the derrière by the dogs …”
I am trying to process this, Rapunzel, you mean to say that you wouldn’t have let your hair down for a young Ian Gillan?!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0kszci6GRY
What a great band J. Geils were. I saw them in a club in Germany when they were already filling arenas in the States, but they didn’t let it show: They played four encores, the last one after the house lights had already gone up and people were shuffling for the exit with a lanky Peter Wolf jumping to the mic stand and yelling: “Wamma jamma SOME MORE?!” Oh yes we did!
May 27th, 2025 at 13:58@37
“I am trying to process this, Rapunzel, you mean to say that you wouldn’t have let your hair down for a young Ian Gillan?!!!”
– Yeah! I am hard to get 😉
Or don’t you think a bit of discretion is required?
I mean, what’s the fun if the whole house is alarmed, the dogs are barking and one’s parents and siblings are chasing the poor guy?
May 27th, 2025 at 15:36“Or don’t you think a bit of discretion is required?“
(startled) Me?! I generally avoid thinking as much as I can about these matters, but now that you ask Denmark’s fine naturalist beachwear practices and traditions had me expecting something different. You’re still the only European country where Adam’s costume – the Bible again! – bathing is not prohibited anywhere, right?
And that’s the naked truth. No wonder Ian Gillan is such a pivotal figure in your Kingdom then. A pillar of cultural influence.
Anton, no sausage chasing!
May 27th, 2025 at 19:22@39
“You’re still the only European country where Adam’s costume – the Bible again! – bathing is not prohibited anywhere, right?”
– well I believe it is frowned upon at certain beaches!
But I do not drop dead if people around me at the beach are skinny dipping! (As long as I’m allowed to wear my winter coat, woollen socks, big boots, hats, scarfs etc 😂)
May 28th, 2025 at 06:55@34 (& 31 too)
Sorry for the tardy reply…
DAC is quite a character (although it is problematic trying separate the truth from fiction; I think he prefers it to be that way) but he’s one hell of a songwriter and he’s always had top-notch musicians backing him. Say what you want about the guy (take some of the more controversial stuff with a grain of salt) but he’s got a knack for making good music.
Even his two “adult oriented” albums are in their own way every bit as good as his regular stuff. As controversial as they are, he had his reasons for making them and I don’t blame him. I may very well have done the same thing if I had been in his shoes at the time.
I enjoy turning people on to good music that they would have otherwise overlooked. I hope you enjoy your DAC endeavors.
June 1st, 2025 at 07:49Post Script…
Uwe, I checked out your link for Continental Drift. I was gobsmacked… I had given up on the Stones some time ago but that one has made me want to check out their post Some Girls stuff. It’s on my to-do list.
June 1st, 2025 at 07:54The Stones are mostly not known for making albums that are consistently great front to back (yet I‘d count Sticky Fingers among those), but among the hits and fillers are always at least one or two choice cuts per album. But with their huge back catalog weighing down their live sets, those songs often get forgotten.
This was another one of their late classics, hidden on the otherwise not very remarkable Bridges To Babylon album:
https://youtu.be/MHlxGg0QIqE
June 1st, 2025 at 13:40@41
“I enjoy turning people on to good music that they would have otherwise overlooked. I hope you enjoy your DAC endeavors.”
It’s very good actually 😊
June 1st, 2025 at 15:36And no I haven’t heard them before!
I was there…weather was shite,Purple were not much better. Skorpions were good,, But of the 20 odd times I saw the Purps,this was defo the low spot
June 4th, 2025 at 20:36