Part One

Windsor Free Festival in 1972 and '73 was a fairly minor affair. Come summer 1974, rumours are flying around. This year, it's going to be massive. Missing out isn't an option. August Bank Holiday Saturday comes round, and it's time to head off.

The very notion of holding a free festival jam-packed with heads, freaks, hippies, countercultural heroes of all description, on land owned by the Royals, just up the hill from Windsor Castle itself, is so fantastic, so audacious, that it's worth attending for that reason alone. 

Before setting up tents in Freak City, there is the little matter of getting to Windsor Great Park in the first place. Cycling all the way from Oxford loaded down with tents, sleeping bags, and provisions I find hard-going. The long pull up the Chiltern escarpment is especially tough. I am by nature a walker, not a cyclist. Canalside towpaths, grassy fields, hills and mountains: these are my natural habitat, and I enjoy travel on foot. My commune companions are more at home on bikes; Mottie, in particular, loves his bicycle, and seems totally in his element on the long, long, road haul to Windsor. Even Liberty Fox, on his predictably shaky two-wheeled steed, seemingly held together by bits of sticky tape, gets on better than me.

We finally arrive, and it's true: Windsor Free Festival is vast. Entry to the body of the festival proper involves a long walk past lines of scruffy freaks selling their wares to hopeful festival-goers. 'Dope for acid'; 'acid for dope': little signs held by traders sitting on the sun-burnt grass, or hanging outside simple tents. There are, I note, plenty of the latter type of sign. LSD is in plentiful supply, it seems. Not that it bothers me: I have my final little blue microdot on board, stashed away with my toothbrush and hand towel.   

A motley assortment of folk are on display in what is more of a city of tents than anything. Liberty and I pitch our home-for-the-moment on a small grassy rise overlooking the mass of the festival. It's not long before another person turns up and begins to erect his tent. With his short, conventionally-styled hair, rambling clothes, and nervy demeanour, he looks more like a solicitor out for a Saturday stroll on the North Downs than a freak festival attendee. A somewhat troubled soul, I infer.

Early afternoon comes round, and finds Liberty and I chilling out in the warm late summer sun. Suddenly we spot a figure approaching. With long, chestnut-brown hair and beard, he looks the part. Three things, however, mark him out: he is running full pelt in our direction; there is an expression of complete pop-eyed terror on his face; and he is completely naked. He looks petrified behind at something that is pursuing him mercilessly, then continues until he up-ends himself on the solicitor's tent, which collapses under his considerable weight. Unheeded, he picks himself up, and continues his nightmare flight.

What he is fleeing eludes me. It is not until years later that I read about the ocean of brown microdot acid of unprecedented potency that descended upon the Windsor Free Festival of 1974. Brown microdot that was to turn up in my own life story a little further down the line....

In the meantime, our hapless solicitor is packing up the remains of his shelter, preparing to head home. A look of weary resignation - about the tent, his fate, life in general - is etched across his face. It was an incident which had to happen to him, rather than any other festival-goer. Liberty says that Solicitor Man is exaggerating, and could patch things up if he wanted to. He is probably right. Still, I am left disturbed....

The afternoon wears on, and the summer sky soon dissolves into a fantastical dance of cumulus clouds, melting, morphing, re-forming in tune to the music from the main stage. This is the fourth time I have taken LSD, and I am becoming familiar with the stages somewhat typical of a trip. It is enjoyable but largely unspectacular, and I am coming down when evening begins to fall.

As the four of us sit in a circle before sundown, a small yet portentous event occurs. An early evening breeze gets up across the festival site, and it's jackets or jumpers on in the chill. Apart from me, that is. By now, I have started to develop the 'separate reality, different and possibly superior' ego which can come to characterise many-a psychedelic enthusiast. "I'm detached" I announce, demonstrating my grasp of basic Buddhist tenets. "No your not" comes the rejoinder from Dave. "You're just numb."

It's not Dave's remark in itself that gets to me: it's his tone of voice. Dismissive, scoffing almost. It is becoming clear that he has little time for psychedelic insight. He is looking at me as just another LSD-addled brain, drowning in druggy delusion. We could talk and discuss, but he never tries. I let it go; but don't...

Part Two

If anybody were to search for a climactic moment of the countercultural movement of the 1970s, that Saturday evening at Windsor would need to be it. The atmosphere of the collective was electric, astounding. In his book 'Acid Drops', Andy Roberts recounts one story from that magic few hours that is not at all out of place. 

It's 2am, Saturday night - Sunday morning. Along with girlfriend and other friends, Andy is in his tent after a psychedelic afternoon, when conversation is heard outside. Curious, they exit into the night, to find two females and a male sitting on the ground and staring into the sky. A few stars are out, nothing special, or so it seems. But the tripping trio are engaged in talk. They see something in the sky, a light, a bright light. It comes closer, and reveals itself to be a UFO. By now, a considerable crowd has gathered to watch and listen as the three relate what they see. 

The UFO lands nearby, and the body language of the three demonstrates the reality of the experience for them. Taking turns, they describe how a ramp comes down, a woman, an ET, approaches offering a hand as if to greet them..... and then Andy's memory fails him.

Nobody else sees a thing. But the three psychonauts share an alternative reality that is consensual, identical, for each and every one of them; as real as the simple night sky dotted with a few stars is for everybody else.

My own experience of that unprecedented night is more prosaic, yet high calibre nonetheless. In among the largely incomprehensible ramblings in the diary-cum-journal I kept at the time, there is this entry from that evening:

"......nearly down now, my friends have gone to listen to the band, and I'm here looking after the bikes and tent, but I don't feel alone. It's dark now, except for the camp fires, and lights in the sky we call stars. The cool night breeze blows up, rustling the canvas, but I do not mind.... Some people nearby are shouting at each other around their camp fire.... and I know they haven't been tripping today, although it occurs to me that I am being presumptuous about the whole affair......

"I have learnt to feel no regrets about imperfection, at least for today. I am totally calm and at peace, yet at the same time feel the possibility of my weeping profusely at any time, tears of anguish and tears of joy and thanks. The wind blows my tangled hair once more, and I realise that, although ultimately all is meaningless on the cosmic level, I also have to deal in human terms..... I am suddenly overwhelmed by the breeze, the stars, the shady silhouettes of the trees, and sense the awe and beauty of nature, its simplicity and harmony, and know that this is my home, my home, for ever."

Just in case anybody was wondering what the end of an LSD trip on climactic Saturday evening in Windsor was like. And, warning: spoiler alert! During this time I was somewhat preoccupied with 'the ultimate meaninglessness of things.' This will be resolved in due course.   

There's only so much time that can be spent fruitfully at a festival. Only so many camp fires to sit around into the depths of night; only so many stoned freaks to be greeted with a bleary smile and an exclamation of 'Far out, man.' 

After a while, sleep becomes a serious issue. Live music plays loud and late. Even when the bands have packed away, there's an electric buzz in the air. Then, just as you are finally dropping off to sleep, they start. The shouts. "Wally!" "Wally!" "Walleee!" 'Wally' is Wally Hope, super hero of free festivals. At first it is funny, but this turns to irritation, before a half-exhausted, quiet despair sets in. I want to sleep. Just want to sleep. Please let me sleep.

Then, at seven in the morning, it all starts up again. Obscure recorded music from obscure rocks bands begins blasting out of enormous speakers all over the festival site.

One blurry morning - Tuesday, I guess - we cast one another a look. By now we are synched up, and little needs to be said. Time to go home. There's nothing more for us here. What's more, there's an edgy feeling. Something's not right, not good. It really is time to go.

Back in Oxford two days later, Dave comes home for lunch and slaps a copy of the newspaper on the kitchen table. "They busted the festival. The pigs busted the festival." Our premonitions had been spot on. All hell's let loose on the Wednesday, as the forces of outlaw and disorder descend on the festival. Fists, truncheons, you name it, hail down on the remnants of Windsor Free Festival, pulling it to pieces in an act of predetermined viciousness and brutality. Indiscriminately males, females - including pregnant ones -, children, and babies are attacked, beaten up. Horrible, horrible, horrible. 

A storm of indignation ensues, when ordinary decent people recognise what has happened. I don't think the authorities mind one inch. Mission accomplished. It's the chop for Windsor Free Festival, that's the thing. One was definitely not amused; the show could not go on. 

Resources:

The best website: www.ukrockfestivals.com/windsor74.html  There are plenty of good write-ups and photos here. Gives a good idea of what it was like.

https://psychedelicpress.co.uk/products/acid-drops-by-andy-roberts

Images from ukrockfestivals. Central one, panorama of festival, by Roger Hutchinson.