From Donington To Download

by Ian Carroll

  1982

  Status Quo,

  Gillan, Saxon, Hawkwind,

  Uriah Heep, Anvil, Tommy Vance

  This year was an all British affair with the exception of the Canadian opening act Anvil.

  Anvil were heavily influential on the up and coming ‘Thrash Metal’ scene which has since been covered in great depth in their successful movie ‘ANVIL: The Story of Anvil’; Metallica, Anthrax and Slayer all cite Anvil as a big influence on their careers. Not a hugely popular opener as they were mostly unknown at the time and so had a lot of ‘stuff’ thrown at them, but would increase in popularity when they were on the bill for the following years Reading Festival.

  Two stalwarts of the ‘prog rock’ scene were also included in the shape of Hawkwind (not a usual MOR band) and Uriah Heep who were gradually evolving into a classic British rock band.

  Saxon, now more popular than on their previous appearance, had leap frogged up the bill to sit in the 3rd place slot which in previous years had been held by Scorpions and BOC, both major league players; this showed how Saxon were now contenders. There latest album ‘Denim And Leather’ included the hits ‘Princess of the Night’ and ‘And The Bands Played On’, the latter reaching the top 20 in the UK.

  Gillan were in the second place spot this year, now featuring new guitarist Janick Gers (the former White Spirit guitarist) who had replaced Bernie Torme the previous year; Janick Gers is now one of the three guitarists in Iron Maiden and has been since 1990.

  Gillan at the time were extremely popular, with Top Of The Pops appearances and chart hit singles, but this was not to last as Ian Gillan (ex Deep Purple vocalist) split the band the same year and left to record the ‘Born Again’ album with Black Sabbath, who headlined the ‘final’ Reading Festival in 1983.

  Headliners Status Quo were regulars at Reading Festival over the 70’s, but this was their only appearance at MOR, perhaps they weren’t heavy enough? Quo churned out the hits and the denim and leather clad punters lapped it up and for a change the weather stayed fairly dry.

  Third year in a row and still great line-ups, how long could this go on for? A long time as the bill was getting better each year and the amount of ‘big’ American was due to increase as the festival started to become well known overseas.

  Ticket prices had now risen to £10 in advance or £11 on the day and Tommy Vance was still playing records between bands and introducing the acts on the stage.

  "Saxon was onstage as we pulled up and it was a mudfest. People were throwing mud and bottles of piss at the stage.

  Someone had taught him how to speak to an audience and they finished a number and Biff was saying 'let's calm down, we are Saxon and we don't need all this'. He eventually got them calmed down and he said 'now what we are going to do is our new single and we want you all to go fucking potty' and it all started up all over again. We were 'side-splitting' in our car, watching the entire goings on."

  Ian Gillan (Gillan - Vocals)

  “The second time we played was great, but not as special as the first one.

  A lot of people around the world, we’d just come back from Japan, are interested in the first Donington, especially the younger journalists.”

  Biff Byford (Saxon -Vocals)

  “One year later we were on tour with Rainbow and we were asked to play Donington again and this made Saxon the ‘First band to play it TWICE’.

  We were in Texas on Thursday with Rainbow, left Friday to fly to UK and arrived Saturday morning in Gatwick, where a private plane took us to East midlands airport. Before we landed the pilot took us over the crowd as the first band was playing. We landed though totally knackered and we were all bronzed with Texas tans.

  But the gig was not as good as the first due to a combination of things plus the Quo’s crew were very unhelpful to put it politely.

  I remember talking to Gary Bardon and Mr Schenker in the drinks tent then we were taken to hotel for an early flight back to the USA and Sunday night we headlined the NY Palladium with Frank Marino as Support; that was a tough schedule for any one but we rose to the challenge and did a great set.”

  Graham Oliver (Saxon – Guitar)

  “The bill for Donington Monsters of Rock in 1982 was Anvil, Uriah Heep, Hawkwind, Saxon, Gillan and Status Quo. Donington for Uriah Heep was fantastic.

  We took to the stage after Anvil a Canadian band that were very glam rock and were pelted with mud and abuse so taking to the stage after that reaction we were very unsure of how the audience would react. Also we had not played in the UK for quite a while and thought that we had been forgotten.

  We did not need to worry as the roar from the crowd as we took the stage was fantastic. I clearly remember having a small tuning problem with my Les Paul Guitar and at the end of the show on the crescendo I rubbed the guitar up and down the scaffolding that was holding the P/A and broke off the headstock. I was so high on adrenaline that it did not matter.

  It was a brilliant day and one festival that I will always remember from the many we have played over the years.”

  Mick Box (Uriah Heep – Guitar)

  “I have very vivid memories of my first festival!!! It was probably one of the most meaningful yet troubling experiences in my entire career.

  Playing first was frightful....to say the least. They were still plugging in speaker cabinets when we began our set. Our live show was very stressful but OK.

  My memories or at least the ones I want to have are of the backstage. It was an extravaganza of rock stars, playing there or otherwise. I had the opportunity to have been friends with Howard Johnston from Kerrang! Magazine and he began introducing me to various people to my complete amazement. Some such people were Gary Barden, the ex singer of the Michael Schenker Group, who a week later ended up playing with Michael at the Reading Festival. Other guys like Dee Snider or old acquaintances like the guys from the Diodes an old punk band from Canada. It was very exciting for me.

  I remember the photographers came to take pictures of us at our trailer and I distinctly remember our producer Chris Tsangarides and John Sykes being inside the trailer laughing as I was making all kinds of dog noises as they took the photos of us standing outside the trailer. I also remember some very funny moments as I watched Saxon playing from the VIP section. I noticed Lee Kerslake (Heep drummer) quite buzzed out and a fan asked him for his autograph and he quickly said hold this and he swished his glass of beer all over the guy!!! I was shocked and so was the fan!!! But in the end they were shaking hands and laughing about it.

  Another great person I met there was Lord Philip Harvey. He was many of the rock stars personal friends at that time. We ended up doing quite a bit of partying with him during our stay in the U.K. in 82 and 83.”

  Lips (Anvil – Vocals/Guitar)

  "There’s a few never forgetting memories from that moment in time.

  Ya sure I remember, at like 10..am in the morning being backstage and going out up to the stage to see what it was gonna be all about, only to walk at the side stage area and look first out at the ocean of people and thinking to myself ‘Fuck I’ve never seen so many people up this earlier waiting for a show to start’, (there was at that time already over 30.000 head bangers and then turning my eyes towards the stage and being in total shock, being that the stage was totally covered in fresh ripped up grass all over it, and tons of wet mud everywhere on the stage and the backline. And nobody at all was bothering about any of it, to stop it or clean anything. At this moment I thought, this is gonna be more than just another gig. Like, are we even gonna be able to start never mind finish? It was totally fuck from anything I had ever seen to that point.

  Right from the start of the set to the end, there was endless amounts of shit flying non-stop...was simply next to retarded to perform under those conditions, let alone plastic bottles half full with fresh warm just filled urine, being tossed per second spaying anything and everything within it's reach...ya how could anyone forget all that.

  Remember though
watching and finally getting to see bands like Uriah Heep and Saxon. Was up lifting.....but spent most of the time getting stoned smoking hash and real enjoying getting away from home (Canada).

  Robb Reiner (Anvil – Drums)

  “We can remember Saxon getting more than a fair share of crap thrown at them on stage.

  Vocalist Biff Byford stopped the band playing and said:

  “If you don’t stop throwing we ain’t gonna play anymore, calm down”

  Status Quo were always the Monsters of Boogie. If you didn’t have a denim waist coat and a pair of white trainers where we lived you weren’t a rock fan.”

  The Bailey Brothers (Mick & Dez Donington Comperes)

  “Our job started maybe six months before the event, building up to it and then arranging photo calls and supervising interviews and TV crews on the day. We were fielding requests right up to the last minute with Kerrang! always managing to talk their way into passes for every member of their staff...20 and counting. The thing about Donington was it attracted press from all over the world so we frequently had to put the photographers in relays in the pit. Getting them in was easy, getting them out much harder, particularly if they only had two songs each. My assistant Carmine, who came back to work Donington for me even after she’d left my company, was a dab hand at that. We marched ‘em in and we marched ‘em out. And there was always the inevitable photographer who just turned up from France with no pass (I’d usually let them shoot the photo calls even if we couldn’t give them photo pit access).” Judy Totton (Monsters Of Rock PR)

  “I don’t think that 1982 was one of the best years in the history of Donington.

  The main problem for the headliners Status Quo was the sound. Rolled down in front of the speaker stacks either side of the stage were two massive reproductions of (I think) the ‘Just Supposin’ album cover, whether this caused the sound problems I don’t know, but none of the other bands on the bill suffered the same fate. After about an hour of ‘Quo we decided to make our way home. This was the first of only two times that I left early. Because we only live approx 30 minutes from Donington we even managed to get back to the local for a pint.

  Therefore the band of the day was probably Gillan, just edging out Saxon. The highlights of Gillan’s set were a new song called ‘Bluesy Blue Sea’ and a ‘new’ old song called ‘Black Night’. Also I remember Janick Gers emblazoned all in white climbing up the speakers during his solo spot.

  The best of Saxon’s set was the song that they had written about their appearance at the 1980 Donington show ‘….And The Bands Played On’.

  The best merchandise of the day was the Uriah Heep red ‘Abominog’ t-shirts.”

  Paul Hartshorn (Chesterfield)

  1983

  Whitesnake,

  Meat Loaf, ZZ Top, Twisted Sister, Dio, Diamond Head, Tommy Vance

  From 1983 the world of rock and metal music sat up and definitely started to take notice of the Monsters Of Rock festival. For the 4th years festival, the line-up included four bands from the USA and two British bands.

  This was the second appearance of Whitesnake, but this time they were on the top of the pile; another British band gets to headline Donington and what better than the ‘bluesy rock’ of Mr Coverdale and co. The line-up of Whitesnake had changed radically; out were Ian Paice, Bernie Marsden and Neil Murray and their replacements were Cozy Powell, Mel Galley and Colin Hodgkinson.

  The Whitesnake video ‘Whitesnake Commandos : Donington ‘83’ was released on video the same year, covering most of the headline performance; with a camouflaged theme running from the programme and t-shirts to Cozy wearing a camouflaged t-shirt and Mel Galley in a khaki coloured jumpsuit on the day. A stand out moment was the Cozy Powell drum solo to the ‘1812 Overture’ and ‘633 Squadron’ theme accompanied by helicopters with searchlights and the crying women during ‘Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City’. Whitesnake would be a considerably different breed of band when they made their return in 1990.

  Diamond Head were the opening band on the day and the favourites of Lars Ulrich played ‘Am I Evil’ as their opening track; Metallica would later cover this song and make it a staple of their live shows. Merv Goldsworthy played on bass at this time, prior to leaving to join British AOR legends FM.

  One of the most anticipated sets of the day was from Dio. Ronnie James Dio had played in Rainbow and most recently Black Sabbath, before leaving them in 1982. This performance by Dio was one of his first shows with his new band, featuring Jimmy Bain on bass (ex Rainbow), Vivien Campbell on guitar (ex Sweet Savage; after Dio he joined Whitesnake and is currently in Def Leppard) and Vinnie Appice on drums (ex Black Sabbath, now with Heaven & Hell); basically a rock supergroup in the vein of Rainbow and Whitesnake. The ‘Holy Diver’ album had just been released and so the set was heavily based around this with a couple of Rainbow and Black Sabbath songs thrown into the mix.

  If any band was going to get stuff thrown at them it was Twisted Sister; looking like a bunch of builders dressed in fluorescent clothes and makeup they were an obvious target and get things thrown at them they did. The audience ‘lobbed’ everything at the band that they could, but they didn’t expect the kind of reaction that they got from Dee Snider (lead singer). Dee invited anyone who was throwing stuff to come up on stage for a fight, of course there were no takers and they won the crowd over.

  ZZ Top were on a new high, with massive success in the UK with the album ‘Eliminator’ that had been released that year in March. One of the most popular bands of the day and the first of three appearances at the festival.

  Meatloaf came and went and again had a vast amount of items thrown at him; not a popular choice with the metal masses, but a good filler before Whitesnake.

  It was quite a sunny day and unlike other Doningtons there was no mud bath! Tommy Vance yet again provided the banter and in between bands music.

  “We played in ’83 with Cozy and we shot the video for ‘Whitesnake Commandos” also with Mel Galley, God bless his soul; God bless both of them. They’re all good memories, all positive, playing at home isn’t it.”

  David Coverdale (Whitesnake – Vocals)

  “I remember it being a spectacular event and something we were really proud to take part in, especially since it just after the release of our first album so it was a very special time to present it to an audience, especially a British audience, which was very cool.

  Having known the guys from Whitesnake for a long time it was nice to see them again of course and it was the first place that I met the guy who would become our drummer for ten years and that was Simon Wright.

  It was the first time that I met Simon and he had just gotten the gig with AC/DC, he was only 18 years old at the time and I knew his wife, she came over and introduced me to Simon and I loved him from the off, what a great kid, just the best. Here was a guy who had played with some other bands, but had never really played with anything of that scale and suddenly he was thrust into the fore of one of the biggest bands on the face of the earth. He handled it so well, he was in awe of them, and he was just a regular person, so that was one of the things that I remember the most of Donington.

  It was one of our first gigs; I think that we had played a couple of shows before then, I think we had done some small American tour of some kind and then came over to Britain, so it was our first time in Europe for us.

  There was some mud thrown on the first show and it hit a lot of people, but they didn’t throw any mud at us and being that we were second on the bill we should have been a good target; those people certainly respected what I had done before with Sabbath and Rainbow, so they gave me the same kind of respect that I always give them.”

  Ronnie James Dio (Dio – Vocals)

  “We came to Donington and now we’ve had hit records out. Out of 40,000 people, 90% loved us, but 10% of the crowd can throw a lot of shite.

  So we were up there and we were getting bottles and shit flying all over the place and we got to a break and I
thought I’d call them out again and I said ‘YOU MUTHA FUCKERS, MEET ME AT THE SIDE OF THE STAGE’, but they had already heard that one at Reading so they went ‘YAAAAAAAA!!!!!!’

  So we did another song and we were ducking pebbles and bottles.

  So, I said ‘Have we got any friends here? Do you know what, if I was out there and my friend was onstage and someone was throwing things at him I would BEAT THE PISS OUT OF THAT MUTHA FUCKER?’ So I then said ‘if you’re my friends then kick this Mutha fucker’s ass and if he’s too big, get a whole bunch of you and bring him down to the ground.’

  We started the next song and it was like Altamont with the Rolling Stones, you could see fights all over the audience. There were people beating people down, awesome!

  Meatloaf was on the bill and he was just fuckin’ drunk off his ass. I’m not going to get into the conversation that we had, but he passed the ‘baton of rock’ to me, I didn’t ask him for it, but apparently he had it! But, he went out onstage and he was shit faced and he was getting angry at all the shit being thrown. He walked to the edge of the stage and said ‘ARE YOU MUTHA FUCKERS THROWING STUFF, C’MON’. They buried that sad fuck!

  I saw Meatloaf outlined in litre plastic bottles! I was at the side of the stage and I said ‘NO’, and he staggered back and the bottles fell to the ground.

  How drunk have you got to be to tell an English crowd to throw shit at me?”

  Dee Snider (Twisted Sister – Vocals)

  “We’d already known about Reading and knew that Donington was more of a heavy rock show, so we knew that people who came to see lighter acts wouldn’t be pissed off, because there were some heavy bands on the bill, us, ZZ Top, Whitesnake and Meat Loaf, back when he was really popular.

  I remember we went over great, the show itself was spectacular, there were about 70,000 people there, and I remember thinking ‘wow that was different to Reading’. Everybody loved it and we didn’t get anything thrown at us, but Meatloaf?