The way the tradition lent itself to political sentiments should come as no surprise. When the students fell on Kent State campus, or the marchers surged into Grosvenor Square, they weren't singing rock anthems, but We Shall Overcome. The hard political edge that cut a swathe through Paris in '68 was whetted by traditional values of solidarity and idealism. Revolutions, large or small, depend on the rediscovery of a sense of communal history to overcome contemporary alienation. It crosses borders and transcends personal boundaries. The people rising need a people's music. However stimulating or inspired pop music became in the late sixties, I believe its only contribution to political upheaval was confined to fashion, aura and sensation: the clothes on the body. What was within had feet set firmly in a revival of much older means of protest and expression. The clothes turned to rags under attack from exploiters. The body remained substantial.
For all that, I don't believe, with the poet Yeats - paradoxically - that 'there's more enterprise in walking naked.' The most potent force comes when coat and song are indivisible. And so it was at the Isle Of Wight with Jethro Tull, at a still moment in time. It's not that the rich interchange between old and new was confined to one band. Dylan himself soon armed himself with rock musicians to fire his message. There were a whole number of such experiments here that proved more effortless and, in their own terms, successful. From Pentangle, founded by Bert Jansch, the most musically accomplished, to Fairport Convention, graced by Sandy Denny's mellifluous voice, contemporary rhythm and instrumentation accommodated the folk idiom, and reinvented it with integrity. The Incredible String Band - carried away by their powers of improvisation - delved into myths and legends, and emerged with their own inimitable mythology. Such bands were rarely open to corruption. The big moneymakers had their eyes elsewhere. And thanks to benevolent and original producers, like Joe Boyd at Hannibal, the best work was put down in the studio, and, like the tradition itself, an era was captured. The Stones may have commandeered Hyde Park. So what? Principal Edwards' Magic Theatre was travelling free festivals across the country. A whole movement went with them.
It was this that hit the Isle Of Wight and reduced the organisation to a shambles. And it couldn't have been more appropriate that it all disintegrated while Jethro Tull were waiting in the wings. The band are the complete fusion of folk and rock idioms, song and coat together. There is little obvious musical reference to the past, yet in their narrative pieces the influence is continually at work. The electric force makes no concessions, yet the sound of the flute is always at the core. The moment Anderson introduced them on that stage in a voice entirely unaffected by transatlantic intonation, and they cracked into their own legends and mythologies, subversive and authentic, we knew we had come home. We were into the woods

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