Great Gigs #1 Midsummer Music at Wembley Stadium 21st June 1975
I’ve been to countless gigs over the years since seeing Mungo Jerry and Hawkwind on consecutive Saturdays at Guildford Civic Hall in 1973. Since then, there have been some wonderful experiences, a few disappointments as well as many that have faded from memory.
The most important gig I’ve ever attended though took place at Wembley Stadium under blue skies on a scorching Saturday on Midsummers Day in 1975. It was one of those moments that was an amazing experience at the time but, with the benefit of hindsight and history, has rightly entered rock legend.
The date was announced on the 1st May which I know from the understated entry in my 1975 diary ’Oh my God, the messiahs of music are coming. The Beach Boys are going to be over here for a concert with Elton John. Absolutely incredible – I'm sending off for tickets tomorrow.’ I was a huge fan of Elton John but my passion for The Beach Boys knew no bounds and not much has changed since those days. Two tickets duly turned up in the post and, along with my sixth form friend Bob Wheeldon, we took the train up from Camberley to London.
By any standards, the line-up was special:
Stackridge
Rufus featuring Chaka Khan
Joe Walsh
The Eagles
The Beach Boys
Elton John
All of this for £3.50 which, using the Bank of England calculator, translates to around £25 in 2023. Quite what that says about current ticket prices for both festivals and top acts is not a subject for this blog but suffice it to say that it would be difficult now to see a decent tribute band in a local theatre for £25.
Apart from the music, my overriding memories of that day was the heat, the experience of being amongst an official audience of 72,000 and the view from our seats just below the Royal Box to the row in front of us where a dozen or so French ladies decided to spend the afternoon largely topless. The audience number that day was contentious. A review written by Robin Denslowe for the Guardian the following Monday stated that ’Officially there were 72,000 people there but, by my estimate – and that of several worried stewards – the true figure was probably nearer 100,000. Every inch of the stands and arena was covered by a be-denimed mass that with rain or trouble would have proved unmanageable. But it was sunny, the music mostly glorious and the good humour was contagious.’
Elton John had personally selected the line-up and, for some of the bands that afternoon and evening, being part of this event would be a defining moment and it’s best to look at each band’s set in order to consider that.
The first act onstage at Midday was Stackridge, a band who had formed in 1969, released several critically acclaimed albums that veered between prog-rock and folk-rock and had toured with the likes of Camel, Lindisfarne, and Wishbone Ash. They were opening the show because they were the first band to be signed to Elton John’s recently formed label Rocket Records. The reality is that I remember nothing about their set but that may be a combination of the excitement of the bands to come as well as the French ladies. Their albums though are worth listening to.
Next up was Rufus featuring the flamboyant Chaka Khan, a singer often compared with Tina Turner. They were big in the States but largely unknown in the UK. I remember their set which was largely laid-back funk, which was perfect on the day and did little for me, but Chaka Khan would go on to a successful career in the 1980’s.
When Joe Walsh took to the stage Bob and I, along with the now packed stadium, really started to take notice of the music. Walsh’s 1973 album The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get, recorded with his then band Barnstorm had been a constant in our sixth form common room and on stage he certainly did not disappoint. His set included favourites such as Meadows, Days Gone By and Turn to Stone and finished with the classic Rocky Mountain Way, the first song of the afternoon to have the whole stadium rocking. He was the first act to be called back for an encore (back in the days when an encore was earned) and kept us bouncing around with his version of the Beatles Get Back, though this would not be his last appearance on the Wembley stage that day. A pretty accurate impression of his set can be found on You Can’t Argue with a Sick Mind, the live album he released the next year.
Excitement certainly ramped up with the anticipation of the next act, California’s latest superstar band The Eagles. Ironically, for a band dripping with West Coast Country-Rock credentials, their first two albums had been recorded in London and produced by Glynn Johns. The third album, On the Border, was recorded in Los Angeles in 1974 and spawned their first US number one single Best of My Love.
June 1975 was certainly a pivotal moment for the Eagles. Eleven days before the gig they released their fourth album, One of These Nights, which would go on to become a huge number one in the US as well as reaching number eight in the UK. More importantly in terms of the gig, the single, One of These Nights, was released on the 19th May and was enjoying significant airtime especially with London’s influential Capital Radio.
It was to this background that the Eagles took to the stage under the mid-afternoon sun and played fifteen numbers that included songs now regarded as classics such as Take it Easy, Desperado, Peaceful Easy Feeling, Already Gone and Witchy Woman. Not surprisingly, One of These Nights was a crowd favourite but they played it safe by only including one more song from the new album and that was Too Many Hands. That decision meant that we didn’t get to hear Lyin’ Eyes and Take it to The Limit, both of which would become Eagles standards.
Whether or not they had already decided to encore, the audience wanted them to do so, and they came back to play a cover of Chuck Berry’s Carol and finished with Best of My Love. For these two numbers they were joined by Joe Walsh who, within a few months, would become a full-time member of the band and help propel the Eagles into legend.
There was an aspect of that hot afternoon that is unique in my experience. I’ve been to quite a few festivals and those bands preceding the headliner are usually a disparate collection. On this day though there was an almost seamless progression. In fact, the Eagles were the perfect support band for what came next.
For a long time, the Beach Boys had been appreciated more in the UK than in the USA. In fact, beginning with the legendary album Pet Sounds in 1966, every subsequent album had achieved a higher position in the UK than in their homeland. From the late sixties and into the early seventies the band had matured and left their surfing and hotrod origins far behind as they explored American folk, country, and rock with extraordinary albums such as Sunflower, Surfs Up, Carl and the Passions and Holland.
During the late sixties though, their live act had reached a nadir with audiences in America sometimes numbering just a few hundred. The Beach Boys had become the antithesis of cool for a new, socially conscious and rebellious generation. The turning point came in 1970 when the band hired Jack Rieley, a DJ and record producer who encouraged the band to write songs about their environmental concerns, honed their live act to include these new songs and worked tirelessly as a publicist. Then, in April 1971 and in light of their new, environmentally conscious album Surfs Up, the Grateful Dead invited them to co-headline at the Filmore in New York. The gig was a huge success and the Beach Boys were suddenly cool again.
The result was that by 1975 they had been, for two years, the highest grossing live act on the planet and this was the band that took to the stage under blue skies and temperatures that, for a couple of hours, seemed to transport Wembley Stadium to Southern California.
To say that their set was a triumph would be an understatement though, for me, their entrance to the stage was a mixed emotion. For much of my young life I’d considered the Beach Boys to be my own personal band and it was a considerable shock to realise that so many thousands that afternoon felt the same way that I did. Opening with Wouldn’t It be Nice, I can Hear Music, Do It Again and Help Me Rhonda, the twenty-three-song set perfectly combined the recent tracks from Surf’s Up and Holland with all of the greatest hits. By the time they finished with Good Vibrations I remember looking around the stadium in awe at the sheer noise and the ocean of raised clapping hands. They came back, of course, for Dennis Wilson to sing an unaccompanied version of Billy Preston’s You Are So Beautiful, a song that he’d been involved with the writing, before the band joined him in getting the stadium up dancing and singing along to Surfin’ USA, Barbara Anne and Fun, Fun, Fun.
Robin Denslowe’s review in the Guardian stated that ‘The harmonies were perfect, but with this band, a bubbling inventiveness was overlaid on everything from the early, cheerful surfing songs to the the later compositions. To perfectly reproduce Good Vibrations and Heroes and Villains was one thing, but to keep the vast audience on their feet and joining in so loudly that they occasionally swamped the band was extraordinary. Nostalgia and adventurous musicianship have rarely been mixed so excitingly.’
It seems to me unlikely that any support line-up has ever so perfectly set the stage for the headlining act. By 1975 Elton John was probably the world’s premier rock and pop star and he had decided that Wembley would be the perfect venue to unveil the whole of his autobiographical new album, Captain Fantastic and the Dirt Brown Cowboy, along with his new and expanded band.
It’s important here to repudiate a myth that has grown up around Elton John’s set and that is that no-one had heard these songs before and that much of the audience walked out early on. The reality is that the album had been released on the 19th of May, a month before the Wembley gig. The mistake that he made was the decision to play the album as a set piece much later in the set. In fact, Captain Fantastic was aired later on, and he was well on the way to an accustomed triumph when he opened his set with the likes of Funeral for a Friend/Loves Lies Bleeding, Rocket Man, The Bitch is Back, Candle in the Wind, Philadelphia Freedom and Bennie and the Jets. There’s no argument though that Bob and I watched many make their way towards the exits during Captain Fantastic who consequently missed the encore of Saturday Night and Pinball Wizzard.
Elton John himself describes the experience in his excellent autobiography Me: ‘It was the biggest show I’d ever played. Everything was perfect – the sound, the support acts, even the weather. And it was an unmitigated disaster. Here’s something I learned. If you’ve elected to come onstage immediately after the Beach Boys – whose set has consisted of virtually every hit from one of the most incredible and best-loved catalogues of hits in the history of pop music – it's a really, really bad idea to play ten songs in a row that no-one in the audience is particularly familiar with, because the album theycome from was only released a few couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, I learned this lesson three or four songs into the album performance, when I sensed a restlessness in the crowd, the way schoolkids get restless during a particularly long assembly. We ploughed on. We sounded wonderful – like I said, we were a shit-hot band. People started to leave. I was terrified. It was years since I had lost an audience. I was taught both a lesson in the perils of artistic integrity and that you’re never too successful to fall flat on your arse.’
Footnotes
Captain Fantastic became the first album in US chart history to debut at number one and it stayed there for seven weeks, reportedly selling 1.4 million copies in the first four days. In the UK it reached number two and spent thirteen weeks in the top ten. On a personal note, Captain Fantastic has been my all-time favourite album since 1975 and will certainly be a subject for a future blog.
Specifically regarding the performance of Captain Fantastic that day, Elton John stated that ‘We sounded wonderful - like I said, we were a shit-hot band.’ I think that’s absolutely right but you can make your own mind up by listening to Live From Midsummer Music at Wembley Stadium 1975 on Spotify.
A year after their Wembley triumph, and in the middle of the 1976 heatwave, EMI released the Beach Boys’ 20 Golden Greats, a compilation that spent eighty-six weeks in the UK charts and peaked at number one where it remained for ten weeks. Wembley 1975 was quite probably responsible for a turning point in the Beach Boys history in that, for many fans including me, was regrettable. At the same time as 20 Golden Greats was selling in vast numbers, the band released their first new album in three years,15 Big Ones, which entirely abandoned the progressive, environmentally conscious folk-rock that had culminated with Holland in favour of a collection of songs that rooted itself totally within their mid-sixties pop. The Beach Boys did not come back to Britain until the summer of 1980 when they headlined the Knebworth Festival, this time under drizzly skies. I was there and, considering the conditions, it was another great performance and the last filmed gig that included all of the original band. Sadly, by the time I saw them at Wembley Arena for their 20th anniversary tour in 1982, the Beach Boys had become a rather sad parody of themselves and I’ve never had the remotest interest in seeing them since.
One of These Nights became the first Eagles album to reach number one in the US and was followed by three consecutive chart-toppers as the band became one of the biggest in the world. In the UK it reached number eight, spending eleven weeks in the top ten. The three singles released were successful on both sides of the Atlantic, and for me personally, the single Lyin’ Eyes was my single of the year in 1975. Joe Walsh joined the band a month after Wembley in time to be part of the legendary Hotel California album. Before that Their Greatest Hits (1971 – 1975) was released in February 1976 and, to date, is the fifth highest selling album of all time having sold over 45 million copies. The album Hotel California followed in December 1976 and is currently seventh on that list. The Eagles broke up in considerable acrimony in July 1980 but have performed many reunions. I was there at Wembley Stadium again for the first, the Hell Freezes Over tour, and that remains as one of the worst gigs I’ve ever seen, but perhaps that’s the subject for a future blog.