You read the Janis Joplin, Canned Heat campfire story under "TrippinDrunk". Most of the festival is still a blur because of the elapsed time, the frantic job of shuffling stage gear during the performances not to mention the altered state of mind. I do vividly remember Led Zeppelins performance. The band, it is rumored, had taken LSD just prior to going on. Evidently they were gearing up to play to the 150,000 fans. The speaker system was provided by Hanley Sound and by todays standards it was fairly small but by 1969 standards Led Zeppelin rarely had so much power at their disposal. They instructed their sound engineer to max it out and he did. After the show that night we took some festival goers back to their campsites four miles away, there were campers that did not attend the show that quoted the songs in the order they played them. We were astounded. They said it was like listening to a car radio from outside a closed car. You could hear the songs but it was hard to make out the lyrics. Again, the LZ boys were on acid, they did a couple of encores and then hit the back stage area with a vengence. Page frantically paced around asking everybody where his guitar was while he was holding it in his hand. Bonham was jumping up and down on the limousine roof, caving it in. Plant sat on a hay bale and seemed to be counting to himself and then chanting something to the stars and Jones was no where to be seen. The only part of this that I witnessed was Page when he came up to me looking for his guitar, the rest was told to me by Bear. Santana killed, nobody knew who they were and Carlos was incredible. Grand Funk Railroad was never one of my favorite bands but they also blew everybody away. Johnny Winter is a freak, a bonified guitar scalding, blues whaling unforgetable freak that put on tremendous shows during that era and he did not waste his opportunity the night he played. Most of the bands hit the stage and then hit the road, probably as it should be. It's a mad house backstage at most big shows and the less crowd the better and certainly the less egos the better. For those that never heard Freddy King, the guy was a monster, a huge talent and probably the nicest entertainer I ever met. He lived in Dallas and I had the chance to see him often before he died. Chicago was new but everybody knew who they were. Nazz had a cult following as do all Todd Rundgren endeavors. Spirit was big during that era but you rarely hear their stuff now. Herbie Mann was too eclectic for a festival crowd but I'm sure there were folks groovin in the crowd. Most all of the bands were nice to the crew but most everybody was stoned and it's difficult to be an asshole when your stoned. The grin gets in the way! After the festival I joined the ranks of the Semi-Professional Pop Festival Workers of America, just kidding, there was no such organization but I did get called to work on other big events and Festivals. Some promoter planned a Festival in Memphis in the spring of 70. Bear called me and asked if I would be interested in coming to Memphis to look at possible sites with him and, of course, I said "Heck Yeah!". I was instructed to go to a specific hanger at Love field and get on a private plane that would deliver me and two other folks to Memphis. We spent a week there before the wheels were shot off of the project by the city. A couple of months later the same thing happened and I was flown to Atlanta and then driven to Byron, Georgia. This small town was 100 miles from Atlanta and 5 miles from Macon. We spent 30 days setting up that festival and it was amazing. I got to visit with Jimi Hendrix in his trailer just before his performance as he asked me about the crowd, the sound system, the stage, etc. When he was satisfied he asked me to carry one of his guitars to the stage with him. My girl friend, now my wife, was back stage but was separated from us by a fence when she saw us she started calling out "Jimmy, Jimmy" I looked at her and waived and she yelled, "NOT YOU IDIOT!, JIMI JIMI", Hendrix looked her way and nodded and asked me "who's that?" I laughed and told him. Angus was at that show as well and he recalled the magical moment at the end of the night when Jimi broke into the Star Spangled Banner and that out of everywhere bottle rockets were going off. From my perspective it was awesome but also made us nervous because, it seemed, they were all being pointed at the stage. Jimi was not amused as he dodged incoming missles while hammering away on his guitar. I remember him being pissed about it after the show. The spotlights prevented people on the stage from seeing the incoming rockets and when you have 200,000 whacked-out fans shooting fireworks in all directions things can get pretty edgy. But Hey! That was a different Festival! When somebody starts an Atlanta International Pop Festival Site I'll send that one in. As I recall more specific moments from the TIPF or get contributions from others I'll be glad to post them here. If you have specific question send them to me and I'll give you my best shot at recalling what ever I can. Thanks for coming by. Jim