Something reminded me of this this morning, so I did a search at Newspapers [dot] com…
I don’t recall how I heard about this festival… perhaps through my long-time neighbourhood friend and co-worker at Commercial Aluminum Cookware (now Calphalon), Frank Hullinger, or maybe through our friends (also co-workers) Tony Fecso or Donald Kretzer, but the four of us (and maybe John and Matt Fowler, as I recall two cars making the trip) made the trek from Toledo to Cincinnati for this festival. We drove down the night before and stayed at a motel, and we bought a cooler’s worth of beer to take with us.
When we arrived at the festival site that morning, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the sun had already started to beat down on us. We learned at the gate that we would not be allowed to bring our beverages into the festival, so at about 11:00 we started downing beer. We would still be outside the gates when the music started, and as I recall, we decided to abandon undrunk beer and enter the festival grounds.
I hardly recall the music at all. I recall having a headache most of the day. I recall wanting to find some pot for my headache (despite that I generally had no interest in the stuff). I recall witnessing what I thought was someone experiencing a drug overdose, which I duly reported to the people at the First Aid booth. I recall thinking that the person (assuming he survived) would tell his friends what a great time he had at the festival.
For the longest time, I had a t-shirt commemorating the event, but beyond that and the few things I’ve mentioned, I have little memory of that day. In fact, it’s kind of weird that I’d actually forgotten that I’d seen Fleetwood Mac. Because of that, I’ve wondered if this indeed was the same festival I attended, but I can’t find references to earlier or later festivals in Cincinnati-area newspapers, and the reported line-up (with the exception of Fleetwood Mac) is pretty much as I recall it.
It’s weird, but I’m having doubts about which year this occurred, but the fact that I can’t find any other news items about it from previous or later years indicates that it might have been a one-off event. I drove my 1974 Super Beetle, which I’d bought used, so it had to be either 1975 or 1976 (I was at school in 1977). But still… I can’t find news articles about a 1976 event.
