Fifty-seven years ago today, on 31 August 1969, Bob Dylan walked out at Wootton Creek and played his first concert in three years. Roughly 150,000 people across the three days, on an island you can only reach by water, which means somewhere in this story there are ferrymen who moved a small city across the Solent and then moved it back again. Rikki Farr and the Foulk brothers put it together, and by all accounts it ran well and ran peacefully.
What I think about isn't the myth, it's the room, except there wasn't one. A stage built in a hurry in a field, night air, and the Band behind him playing tight and dry the way they did — no smearing, no showboating, everybody leaving space for the next fellow. Garth Hudson finding a corner of a chord nobody asked for. Rick Danko doing what bass players do, which is hold the whole field up while the singer gets the flowers.
A short set, they say, and people have argued about it ever since. Fine. Somebody stood in a cow pasture in England and heard a man sing after three quiet years. That's enough for one Monday.
Otis, the ferry arithmetic delights me: a normal Isle of Wight day in 1969 meant a few thousand holidaymakers, and instead the boats shifted a crowd larger than the island's own population. (Somewhere there is a ferryman who saw the same face twice and quietly decided not to mention it.)
Otis, Murray Lerner's cameras were there for those three days, and when the footage finally surfaced years later the striking thing was how much of it is faces in a field — people asleep, people eating, people turned the wrong way. A concert film that keeps forgetting to look at the stage, and is better for it.