The most impressive music festival you’ve never heard of
No secret...it is "Knebworth 1990"
In a newsletter many months ago, I linked to a Phil Collins video where he performed a live rendition of In the Air Tonight. Like Collins or not—and I do—this was a great number.
But, more importantly, it got me digging and I wanted to find out what actual concert it was from, because the turnout was massive. Literally people as far as you could see.
I found out that the concert was called “Knebworth 1990,” and I looked at the lineup and figured I needed to watch this thing in its entirety, or as much as I could find. Listening through the concert would have been great too.
We’ll get to the lineup in a moment, but to be sure it was a murderer’s row of British rock ‘n’ roll acts.
I couldn’t find anything on YouTube other than the occasional video of one song here and there.
I saddled up and bought the DVDs of this thing. Live at Knebworth, Parts 1, 2 & 3
I also got the album on Amazon Music. Live at Knebworth 1990
The main problems with both the concert film and the album is that the order of the concert was monkeyed with in a big way in both productions.
With the video version, this event appears to be a three-day affair, although by watching the three-hour concert film, you wouldn’t exactly be able to say that for sure.
Far as I can tell, from doing a bit of research some 32 years later, it was really a single day concert festival.
But the three volumes of the concert film make it appear that we are dealing with three separate days.
June 30, 1990, by all accounts I’ve seen, was the day it all happened. It was broadcast by MTV, back in the days of Music Television showing actual music on their channel.
As far as the film goes, each volume starts in the daytime and ends at night, so that is how we are going to deal with it: Volumes 1, 2, and 3.
Twenty-two tracks make up the double album. It’s not the same thing. You get some songs on the DVD that you don’t get on the album and vice-versa.
Most artists played longer sets than what made it on to the official film. Pink Floyd, for instance played a seven-song set, not the two songs—their opener and their closer—that we see on the video.
Pink Floyd’s LP version of their turn on stage called Live At Knebworth 1990 was not fully released until last year—2021!
The festival took place on the grounds at Knebworth House in Knebworth, Hertfordshire, England where regular festivals at the venue were held from 1974 to 2014.
Fans of cinema may be familiar with Knebworth House in such films as:
The Big Sleep (1978) standing in as General Sternwood’s country mansion.
The Great Muppet Caper (1981) as the exterior of the Mallory Gallery.
Batman (1989) some exterior and interior shots as Wayne Manor.
The King’s Speech (2010) several scenes.
And dozens more…
The official title of “Knebworth 1990” was The Silver Clef Award Winners Concert.
The Silver Clef Awards are an annual UK music awards lunch which started in 1976.
The luncheon eventually became an important date in the social and business calendar of the music industry in the UK.
Members of the Royal Family even attend as guests of honor on occasion.
In 1990, these former winners appeared:
Cliff Richard & The Shadows (the 1978 Silver Clef Award winner)
Dire Straits (1985)
Elton John (1979)
Eric Clapton (1983)
Phil Collins (as a solo artist, 1986)
Genesis (1977). Collins is, of course, the bandleader of Genesis as well.
Paul McCartney (1988)
Pink Floyd (1980)
Status Quo (1981)
Tears for Fears (popular band from the 1980s, not a Silver Clef winner…perhaps there to replace another act)
Robert Plant (the 1990 award winner, Jimmy Page would eventually win the 2014 award)
The only other acts who won the award up to that point but did not appear were:
The Who (1976)
The Rolling Stones (1982)
Queen (1984)
David Bowie (1987)
George Michael (1989)
This thing was way more than a luncheon for the prim and proper of British society. It was a full day of rocking and there were approximately 120,000 people on hand for it.
It was also a benefit concert for the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Charity, a program designed to use music to help those affected by life-limiting illness, isolation, or disabilities.
The artists reportedly gave their time and performances for free to support Nordoff-Robbins.
Volume 1
The event starts early in the day with Tears for Fears. They play two numbers and then end their set with Everybody Wants to Rule the World. Terrific song.
Next is Cliff Richard and The Shadows. John Lennon credited the 1958 release Move It by the band—originally called Cliff Richard and the Drifters—as the first British rock record.
Furthermore, Lennon also declared
“Before Cliff (Richard) and The Shadows, there had been nothing worth listening to in British music.”
If you’d never heard or seen of Cliff Richard before, think Donny Osmond. The outfits alone…Cliff and his horns section were all in technicolor.
Drummer Brian Bennett was thumping the skins as usual for the Shadows. I think we have a newsletter lined up in the next few weeks dedicated to the genius of Brian Bennett, FYI.
Shadows guitarists Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch, who also figure into the Bennett story, were witnessed shredding their respective axes.
As for the songs…
We Don’t Talk Anymore…I totally remember this song. Never knew the artist. I consider it a staple of soft rock, perhaps getting a nod from the Yacht Rock folks. I’ll have to check in with Today in Yacht Rock to see if it is indeed deemed “essential yacht rock.”
Used to think that life was sweet
Used to think we were so complete
I can't believe you'd throw it away
…
It’s so funny
How we don’t talk anymore
But I ain't losing sleep and I ain't counting sheep
It's so funny how we don't talk anymore
Oh, we don't talk, ooh
Immediately after Cliff signs off, Phil Collins emerges from backstage, business casual—90s style—to the opening beats of In the Air Tonight. The venue is absolutely slammed.
Seeing the Collins performance is what got me so intrigued about this concert in the first place.
Phil begins singing the song sitting down toward the front edge of the stage—feet hanging off an upper platform with an insouciance akin to Kermit the Frog.
Guitar player Daryl Stuermer is in the background, gently picking at his electric axe.
Phil eventually rises and manages to get through the first few verses of the song, nonchalantly meandering around the stage. He wanders some more, singing into the microphone on his headset the whole time.
A little screechy feedback interrupts a couple of times until the sound engineers appear to figure it out. But it’s all setting the stage.
You think Phil Collins wanders around without purpose? No sir!
He sneaks up to his drumset near the back of the stage like a fox, then…
Collins picks up his sticks and, in the middle of singing his part, without skipping a single beat, proceeds to thump the everliving noise out of his kit, performing the drum break that amounts to the signature crescendo you hear in the final chorus.
Collins continues to flat-out rock, wailing away vocally as well as on the drums.
As the song develops, Stuermer is also at the top of his game, ultimately melting the faces off the entire crowd.
We also need to mention Lee Sklar, the bassist for this permutation of the Phil Collins band. Look up this dude’s CV. By day, an unassuming bassist…on stage, an absolute wizard. And, seriously, if you look up his credits, he’s got to be amongst the top 3 of the most prolific rock 'n' roll/soft rock bassists ever to exist on the planet. There is even a good amount of country music in his discography, for good measure.
Cue Sussudio…
The nonsensical title notwithstanding, Sussudio is a staple of the Collins canon. With shades of Prince, the Miami Sound Machine, old-fashioned rock 'n' roll, and rhythm & blues, Collins delivers.
The throng of British festival attendees are going bonkers.
And then Paul McCartney, his Mullet of Kintyre flowing in the Knebworth wind, gets up to play a four-song set.
No biggie…former Beatle in the house.
Paul starts with Coming Up, a decent enough song, but also a sign of the times in many ways, both sonically and visually.
In what looked to possibly be a modified version of Wings, his backing band was—as I found out—by then his regular lineup as a “solo” artist. His wife, Linda, is the throughline from Wings until Knebworth and beyond, playing keyboards for Paul in these first two-plus decades of ex-Beatledom.
Knebworth was a phenomenon. The crowd was really hard to fathom—120,000 people in a big parkland setting—and it was ostensibly a benefit concert, after all, for Music Therapy.
In an interlude between songs, McCartney reminded the crowd what the real purpose for the event was.
“Helping retarded kids reach out and touch the world!
Something we all take for granted.”
I think Macca may want a mulligan if he were to revisit that call to arms, now 32 years later. Perhaps massage that language a little bit?
He nevertheless moves right into Hey Jude.
Of course, it was good.
Then Can’t Buy Me Love…the ballad of Ronald Miller.
The crowd eats out of Paul’s hand. They love him.
It’s now dark.
McCartney’s set ends Volume 1. “Day 1” is over.
Volume 2
Volume 2 starts with the band Status Quo, veterans of 1985’s Live Aid, who I was generally unfamiliar with otherwise.
Unbeknownst to me, Status Quo was a huge act in British rock.
And, yes, they do rock. They also exhibit a strange and unique Britishness that is almost unexplainable unless you watch the concert.
Then … hang on…
We get, in succession: Eric Clapton, Dire Straits, and Elton John to finish “day 2.”
Steve Ferrone, who we now know as the last drummer for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, as he replaced the great but cantankerous Stan Lynch in 1994, thumps the skins in all three of these acts.
An aside…Stan Lynch’s drumming on Even the Losers, from the Heartbreakers third studio album 1979’s Damn the Torpedoes, is some of the best rock 'n' roll drumming of all-time. I consider that song one of the top 5 rock 'n' roll songs period, as it relates to execution within the genre. It is a near perfect rock 'n' roll song.
Rolling Stone rated Even the Losers as merely Petty’s 19th greatest track. Clearly, I’m in disagreement.
But the Heartbreakers are not in this package show. This is all-British, all-day and all-night (except for some of the side players like Americans Sklar and Stuermer).
It’s as if all these guys were familiar with each other or something.
In the late-1980s Eric Clapton played with Ferrone and Phil Collins on drums with Mark Knopfler on guitar in a group that wasn’t an official band, but that played out occasionally. Royal Albert Music Hall for one.
This day, the bearded Clapton appears in the mid-day sun, replete in a pink pastel suit and a black t-shirt with shoulder-length wavy brown locks. This may be my favorite of Slowhand’s distinct eras. He was making great music, and a lot of it, around this time.
Also, the way I figure, if you cleaned up his whiskers—either completely shorn or into a short stubble—and slick back his hair, along with the outfit he’s wearing, he could have teamed up with Crockett & Tubbs and chased down the cartel network in Miami, no problem.
Clapton starts his set with Before You Accuse Me. He shreds. The song rocks.
Not much more to say about Clapton’s performance, other than a total aside—when I was watching The Beatles: Get Back documentary, I was unaware of how close Clapton came to replacing George Harrison on guitar for the Fab Four during the “Get Back sessions” …for reals.
Clapton ends the shred-session and simply announces to the crowd, “Dire Straits,” and walks off.
Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler comes out with a royal blue button up shirt and a suit in the shade of Texas Longhorn orange. Mind you we are in Great Britain and the “1980s” are still a recent memory.
But wait…Clapton just went up stage to grab another axe. He stays on to play rhythm with the Straits. Pretty sweet.
They finish their three-song set with Money for Nothing, the MTV staple from the 1980s.
Knopfler ends the set and then gives an unenthusiastic welcome to Elton John.
The crowd either loves the indifference or Elton himself. Hard to tell the motivation of 100,000-plus.
Elton John is a creep, but he is a darn good singer.
The Straits plus Clapton et al. stick around to play behind Elton. Decent “backing band” for the Rocket Man.
First song is the late-80s ballad Sacrifice. Terrible song, but musically sound with Elton’s keyboards and Knopfler & Clapton doing some low-key shredding in the background. Elton sings it well, even though he misses a note or two early in the song.
In the world of musical mathematics, more schmaltz-plus-keyboarding equals Sad Songs, the second tune we see Elton deliver. This sappy tune is somewhat saved by the drumming of Ferrone and the guitar work of Knopfler, Clapton, and the rest of the band on stage. Elton also tickles the ivories well enough to save the song from total disaster.
Day has turned into early dusk.
I eject Disc 1 in favor of Disc 2. The final “day”/final volume is on another disc as the whole thing doesn’t fit on to just one disc.
Volume 3
We begin "day 3" with 1990 Silver Clef Award winner Robert Plant (featuring a little Jimmy Page on guitar for good measure on the last half of his set).
I’m not particularly a big fan of the whole Led Zeppelin thing—which might make me anathema to a lot of the folks out there—but I do admire that they rock hard and don’t stop rocking.
While I have never sought out Zeppelin albums or songs to play, I don’t sprint to turn them off either. Plant et al. are admirable as musicians, but they are, at their true essence, top-notch rock stars and they earn their money and their deserved reputation as such.
Collins returns with Genesis for a couple numbers and then they belt out a giant medley of “jukebox hits” spanning the decades.
It’s getting darker, windier, and it’s beginning to precipitate.
It’s almost completely dark. It’s raining. On comes Pink Floyd. A half-moon is peeking out of the evening sky betwixt the rainclouds.
At this point, Roger Waters has now been out of the band for about 5 years.
Shine On You Crazy Diamond starts the set.
It’s windy. The festival is now in the midst of a light show—mostly indigo-hued laser beams—and the requisite effects of a fog machine to augment the Pink Floyd set.
Candy Dulfer, a young Dutch saxophonist, appears as a guest soloist toward the end of the first number. She absolutely blows it out of the water.
The blue lights turn into a full-blown laser show as Floyd wraps up the festival with Run Like Hell.
The whole thing kicked ass.
I am comfortable in saying that watching this concert festival was, and probably will be, my favorite exclusively British thing of all-time.
The television show The Detectorists (2014-2017) is up there as well.
The 13 original colonies should probably be in the mix, too.
But, see for yourself if you don’t believe.
Edit (9/24/23) : We’ve set up some resource pages. The Knebworth page disappeared, but you can get to similar resources here:
We’ll do our best to get it back up.
As always,
Brian O’Leary