A Night of Summer Magic
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The Knebworth Festival, 9 August1986
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This was my first and only visit to Stevenage and the Knebworth Festival. Having already witnessed Queen at Live Aid and a couple of weeks earlier at Maine Road, Manchester, they were headlining this year’s festival. What we were not to know at the time was this was going to be Freddie Mercury’s last appearance as a member of Queen.
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I headed down the M6 in my Mini Metro, to find when I got there that the car park was a field. Not just any field, but a wet one. Not quite boggy, but who knew what it would be like after all the vehicles arriving at this event were ready to head off home in the middle of the night. The gates opened at 12, and it was going to be another long day with a finishing time of 10.30pm mentioned on the ticket. When you added a crowd of 120,000, which matched the audience for the Stones at Roundhay Park four years previously, getting and keeping a decent place was likely to be a challenge. I did survive the various crowd surges, with my bulk helping on that front, and yet again I can have no reason to complain about the outcome in terms of the “album” I managed to compile.
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Although Queen were headlining, we had another couple of big acts (certainly big back in the mid-80s) as warm-ups. What I had completely forgotten, until reminded when reading reviews of the event, was the first act was a solo artist – Belois Some, who was originally known by the slightly less glamorous name of Neville Keighley! Clearly my lack of photographic evidence of his appearance suggests he was not an act I would have paid to see alone! After a break Status Quo appeared, and in bright daylight I could start with some colour film.
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Quo on their umpteenth comeback, with mainstays Rick Parfitt and Francis Rossi back on tour. Quo would normally have been on as the last act before Queen, but they had another gig to play later in the day, so they went before Big Country. Many years later I checked up on this second gig thing. I had assumed they would be on a bus to some far flung place in somewhere like Scotland. However when I checked a setlist website it referred to 2 other Quo gigs on that day. Yes they were down as having played in Denmark and Switzerland on the same day as Knebworth. I assumed this was an error until I attended a Francis Rossi Tunes and Chat gig in 2023, when he confirmed they had played in 3 different countries that day. I guess Knebworth was a warm up for them as well as us.
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Alan Lancaster had left the band after Live Aid, to be replaced by John "Rhino" Edwards, who remains an integral part of the band.
Between the two support acts we were given sight of the main act as they were coming in to land - "Choppers Ahoy!"
And then Scottish band Big Country entered the stage.
Finally the wait was over. Smoke billowed out over the stage, and then an outline appears—nothing could ever put the main man in the shade, and a figure bursts through the cloud….
The first song? "One Vision". And what a vision it was. Freddie at his "Mercurial" best.
After the finale I returned to my car. That was not a straightforward journey as chaos ensued when all the lights in the park were switched off and everyone had to make their way back in the dark, at least until some car lights started to give a better idea of where things were! The queues to get out of the car park were long, and the slightly boggy terrain was trapping a number of vehicles. I then had a bit of a panic when I found I had left my sidelights on throughout the day. Rather than risk starting and stopping In the queues I decided to shut my eyes for a couple of hours to replenish my reserves ahead of the drive back. When I was ready I was relieved to find the engine fired up straight away and the queues has dissipated enough to allow me quickly out of the park.