37. The Isle of Wight concerts were not made for Fashion TV

(Unpublished)
March 20th 1996

Unfortunately John Haslett Cuff can find nothing “fuzzy and warm” about documentary film revisitations of rock festivals like The Isle of Wight concert in 1970 because (as he admits) he was not there; he did not partake. (Exposing the squalor of rock - March 20th)
I, on the other hand, was glad to be there and proudly - after a day in the sun - slept through both the Doors and the Who. (The I Ching must have warned me that “Tommy”, a future rock opera, would one day end up in Toronto as a commercially successful geriatric musical.)
My Isle of Wight memories were re-ignited last year when bonding with and sharing that first-time excitement my youngest daughter we experienced seeing Hole and others at the equally authentic but less consumer-challenged Lollapalooza festival in Toronto.
Aghast at the visual ‘squalor’ depicted in the Isle of Wight footage, Mr. Cuff should consult a picture library (or the nearest cottage family album) and review the general Canadian male population who, in addition to being seriously fashion-confused, also had bad hair years or months (rather than days) in and around 1970.
We can imagine that some of Mr. Cuff’s predecessors at the Globe and Mail in 1970, at the time of the Isle of Wight concert, probably were barely concealing similar noises of disgust at the then-growing social validation of cultural products and selected ideals appearing to emerge from “wigged-out” hippiedom.
A more revealing fiction for a TV reviewer might be to contrast any local media reviewers then-recommendations of re-heated Shakespeare, Beckett or Chekov at the nearest professional fleapit, with a competing desire for some to attend such “demonstrably dirty”, outdoor sleepover theatricals - thereafter considered by youth, activists, academics, jetsetters, (and even the occasional Prime Minister’s wife) - as more potent opportunities for contemporary intercourse.