THE DEVELOPMENT OF LARGE ROCK SOUND SYSTEMS – INCLUDING WEM AT THE ISLE OF WIGHT, BY CHRIS HEWITT. (Review by bill bradshaw)
CHRIS Hewitt should right now (AUGUST 2020) be standing in the legendary Isle of Wight Festival field at East Afton Farm putting the final preparations in place for EXPERIENCE 1970, the three-day celebration to honour the 50th anniversary of the ‘Last Great Event’….Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, The Who and all that.
The pandemic has forced a postponement from the first weekend in September until next year. Instead Chris, who picked up promoting duties for the event from the All Wight Now group, is instead launching a new book on the very SOUND of rock festivals, with the Island very much to the fore.
The Development of Large Rock Sound Systems – Including WEM at the Isle of Wight is a must-read for anyone with a serious interest in the Island’s original three festivals – especially 1969 and 70 – because it reveals just how those rudimentary gatherings got their voice. How it was possible to amplify the sounds from some distant stage across a field packed with the tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of inquisitive fans, straining to hear their heroes perform.
Hewitt has made the sound of rock his business. CH Vintage Audio, his company, has acquired much of the original 1969-70 IW Festival PA sound gear created by Charlie Watkins’ company, Watkins Electric Music. For the last two years, Chris has exhibited this historic WEM gear - used by Hendrix, The Who, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen et all on the Island - at the All Wight Now 50th anniversary events. He got so hooked, the 2020 anniversary of the 1970 event became his baby… but that big celebratory gig will have to wait.
Instead, his book details how Charlie Watkins, a London music shop owner, went on a crusade to improve sound gear after an initial stab at providing the sound for The Byrds’ British tour in 1966 ended in failure. “I had tried to get the PA system louder than the new very loud instrument amplifiers they were using,” said Watkins. “The attempt was a failure and after the tour I was determined to solve the problem of instrument amps being louder than PA.”
Happily for Watkins, his development of what became the slave amp for his PA coincided with a mushrooming of the embryonic live rock festival scene. WEM PA gear became the must-have solution for all the top British bands of the day: Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and – perhaps most notably as the reputed “best live band in the world” - The Who.
Even top American acts such as Bob Dylan’s collaborators The Band and Janis Joplin used WEM for their big live shows.
WEM was the first company to build sound systems with multiple slaved solid state amps driving various speaker stacks. All the big events of the late 60s and early 70s featured WEM amplification, including The Rolling Stones in Hyde Park, the 1969 “Dylan” IW Festival and the remarkable 1970 Island event when the crowd was estimated at anything between 400,000 and 600,000 strong.
And the informative and well-illustrated book reveals Watkins was as popular with his rock clientele as his equipment, often providing sound gear without charging as he figured bands displaying his hardware would provide the best possible advertising for WEM gear.
Hewitt’s book reveals a young David Bowie finished writing Space Oddity at Watkins’ London office; Pink Floyd were ardent fans of the equipment and Pete Townshend and The Who’s famed Tommy rock opera live shows also showcased what WEM had to offer.
The 1969 IW Festival featured WEM gear including The Who’s own collection, combining to produce a 2,500 watt output. It was claimed to be the loudest system ever assembled at the time with festival-goers said to be able to hear the music at Wootton as they boarded the Portsmouth ferries. But that was dwarfed at Afton Down the following year when a 5,000 watt WEM assembly put the output from a stunning bill of rock deities at another level.
WEM’s famous twin red parabolic reflectors, sitting atop the 1970 festival stacks, were said by Watkins to “send 1kHz to 3kHz for a distance of five miles in reasonable conditions”.
On the festival stage, Pink Floyd roadie Peter Watts had been recruited by Charlie Watkins to mix the sound for bill-topper Jimi Hendrix but Watts was incapable as he was “too nervous or too stoned” so the job fell to Pink Floyd’s then newly-recruited guitarist David Gilmour.
“I went down (to the IW Festival) to go to it – I was camping in a tent, just being a punter,” Gilmour recalled. “I went backstage where our main roadie guy, Peter Watts, was trying to deal with all the mayhem with Charlie Watkins of WEM. They were very nervous, they were going to have to mix Hendrix’s sound.
“I did some mixing stuff in those days and they said ‘Help! Help!’ - so I did.”
The 1970 ‘Last Great Event’ on the Island represented the high-water mark for WEM, although Gilmour and Floyd went on to utilise the company’s sound gear at the much-vaunted Live at Pompeii performance, filmed in 1971, as documented in the book. The equipment remained popular but as the 1970s ticked by, newer developments in Britain and the USA meant WEM’s domination was over.
But for some five years or so, from 1967 onwards, WEM ruled the festival waves and provided the soundtrack for the Island’s most famous rock events in 1969 and 1970.
Hewitt, a former WEM dealer, began collecting the company’s vintage gear about seven years ago and he now owns “about 80 per cent” of the original 1970 IW Festival WEM gear. His intention, to mark the 1970 anniversary, was to deck the stage at EXPERIENCE 1970 with the very gear used by Hendrix and Co running in tandem with 21st century equipment. He still intends to do so at the rescheduled event next year.
Chris told me: “Charlie was rather like DJ John Peel who gave so many bands a break by plugging their records and booking them to appear with him when they were on the way up. Once they had made it big, the acts often forgot him and they, in turn, were not left-field enough for him.
“Charlie was similarly supportive and often gave bands gear for little or no reward. He was happy just to see them using his equipment and providing them with the best possible sound. The Isle of Wight Festivals of 50 years ago would not have been the same without him and WEM.”
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