How the world came to Wootton

It attracted just 200 fans, but crucially among them, were teenage brothers, Ray and Ronnie Foulk, from Totland.

The event planted a seed in their minds, and as a result, they went on to produce the biggest music events that Britain has ever seen ­— the first Isle of Wight Festivals.

They started with a one-night event in Godshill in 1968, featuring Jefferson Airplane and The Move.

It attracted an audience of nearly 10,000 and made a modest profit, leading the brothers to think about putting on a larger festival the following year.

But who to get? With all the confidence that comes with youth, Ronnie and Ray thought big ­— how about Bob Dylan?

The rest is history, as they say.

A few years ago, I travelled to Ray’s home in Oxford with my son, Tom, who recorded an interview with Ray for a radio documentary he was producing.

For nearly three hours, Ray gave us his behind-the-scenes account of putting on the festivals; even revealing the little known fact that he had once been an apprentice at the County Press.

Much of the interview remains unpublished, and appears here for the first time.

“Bob Dylan was the big name that we toyed with for a long time, but it seemed impossible because at that time he was one of the top three names in the world.

“He’d last been seen in Britain, in 1966, and then he had a motorcycle accident and disappeared for three years.

“There were some ludicrous stories about how we got him, much to my annoyance.

“It was nothing like people make out ­— we just persevered, talking to his management, and I made the phone calls to his manager, Bert Block, and I would chat with him almost weekly and eventually he said, ‘Can you send us some information? Who else is on the bill? What’s the site like?’

“So literally overnight, through my printing factory which I set up after leaving the County Press, we were able to print a book, and it was in the mail that day to him.

“We waited, and finally we got a telegram saying ‘Dylan and the Band will accept’.

“Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather ­— I had to sit down at that point ­— it was an international coup.

“It was a fantastic thing to happen, and I think without getting Dylan, we probably wouldn’t have had much of an event in ‘69.

“We might not have had an event at all, because we were struggling to make sense of it financially.

“The next thing they said was, ‘He wants to meet you in New York next week to negotiate the contract’.

“I was 23 and hadn’t been abroad before; I had no passport, nothing.

“The next day, I got a passport photo taken, signed by local policeman, PC Drury, then went to the passport office the next day, Friday, and flew to New York on the Tuesday.

“We had a 20-minute meeting with Dylan in my hotel room, which was friendly, and we talked about the event and then signed the contract.

“We thought in terms of 100,000 people once we got Dylan, we knew it was going to be big immediately the news broke.

“Our telephone lines went berserk, with calls coming literally from all over the world, and we had to get more lines in.

“And that was it, we just got on with it ­— we didn’t need a licence, and we had no interference at all.

“Part of the thing selling it to Dylan was that we would give him a family holiday on the Island.

“He boarded the QE2 to come over with his wife and Jesse, their little boy, but Jesse got hit by a cabin door closing and was taken to hospital ­— so they didn’t sail.

“The news came over from his management, and we suddenly felt very vulnerable, that the whole thing could be off in a minute.

“How vulnerable can you get? We had some very tense hours waiting for confirmation that he was going to fly over in a few days, which he eventually did with just his wife.

“A lot of my time was spent looking after the Dylan party.

“There was his manager, The Band, Richie Havens, a group of people from New York, and I was having to have a daily liaison with them.

“We had rented Forelands Farm at Bembridge for Dylan, with a swimming pool and a rehearsal barn and then George Harrison arrived, and Lennon and Yoko, and Ringo and his wife.

“I went to Forelands every day for about ten days beforehand, which really did take up a lot of my time and effort; I was driving back and forth like a mad thing.

“On one occasion, I walked in, and in the drawing room, George Harrison and Dylan were sat together singing the Everly Brothers’ song, All I Have To Do Is Dream.

“It was a beautiful rendition and a tragedy it wasn’t recorded.”

Next time, in part two, Ray talks about looking after Dylan and how the festival came to life.