The other night I decided to play Whitesnake Live At Donington 1990. This was one of the first of many visits to Castle Donington in my younger years. Also the first Rock Festival I had ever been to. I started going to concerts in 1989, and just could not get enough of them. At the time I was only earning £50 a week as a photographic lab technician, so money was not flowing the way I would have liked, but I managed to go to hundreds of gigs over the next ten years as I changed jobs and my salary increased.
The concert recording brings back so many memories of being there, the smell of the burning rubber as people had bonfires, the smell of all the different foods from hot dogs and burgers to falafels and other vegetarian delights. The hot sun filled day slowly turning colder, and above all the exhaustion from a full day of music, beer and fun.
One of the many memories was the flying plastic bottles, usually full of pee, yes, pee. Imagine a crowd of 72,500 people, three quarters probably men, needing a pee, and having large bottles that had beer in them, then instead of queueing for the toilet which would be miles away, then the bottles came to hand and were refilled. Certain songs would make people go a little mad and the throwing of the bottles began, with NO lids on them, so I am sure you could imagine the carnage, and how wet we ended up. I admit, I often used a bottle, and of course joined it. It was all part of the experience of a rock festival. It never put any of us off either, we all had changes of clothes with us in the cars, so could bag all the smelly muddy ones. Each year we went we knew what would happen, but this never dampened our spirits or enthusiasm to be there, however, it did dampen our clothes.
So, I share with you the headline act from 28 years ago that invokes so many good memories, and somewhere in that crowd is me.
Mr Knitter 