Bob Dylan / The Band / The Who 1969 Isle of Wight Two Original Concert Posters. ... (Total: 2 Items)

Description

Bob Dylan / The Band / The Who 1969 Isle of Wight Two Original Concert Posters. A pair of original advertising posters, printed before the big weekend to get the word out, for the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival of Music off the coast of England, most notable for bringing Bob Dylan out of concert hibernation and doing a show with his erstwhile backing group The Band, who were now emerging as stars themselves.

Dylan playing live was so rare and buzzworthy in 1969 that three of the four Beatles, along with their women, were in the audience near the front of the stage. Only Paul McCartney missed it.

Other key rockers performing on the weekend, just two weeks after Woodstock had taken place in America, were The Who, King Crimson, the Moody Blues and fast-rising Joe Cocker.

Dylan's latest album was Nashville Skyline, and he did three songs from it, but the show had nary a country-music murmur to it. It retained the part-solo-acoustic, part-hard-rocking segmentations that his concerts in 1965 and '66 had, although distributed differently. One thing's for sure: with Dylan very rusty, it's generally agreed upon that the show had moments of brilliance and others of travesty. The way Dylan butchered "Like a Rolling Stone," with so many forgotten and faked-in lyrics, that it's surely one of his worst stage moments ever. And yet he & Columbia Records saw fit to include a recording of it on his next long-player, Self Portrait. Then again, the whole point of that album, it came out decades later, was to the get the public, and his legend, off his back.

But his four-song solo acoustic set is fresh and sparkling, with Dylan in fine voice after quitting smoking. "Wild Mountain Thyme" (a trad folk song), "It Ain't Me, Babe," "To Ramona" and "Mr. Tambourine Man" acquitted Dylan beautifully. Then when he came roaring back a few songs later with "Highway 61 Revisited," propelled by Robbie Robertson's searing lead guitar, the crowd knew they were witnessing a rejuvenated Dylan. But then why did he destroy the mood with a dismal, plodding "Minstrel Boy" in the encore?

The answer, of course, is that nobody's ever been able to figure out Dylan.

Meanwhile, The Who performed all of their classic Tommy album, in a performance that The Who - Concert File book (McMichael & Lyons, Omnibus Press) called "tight, hard and frantic." During the set, Pete Townshend gave Joe Cocker and the Grease Band a shout-out practically heard around the world: "I should imagine that he's going to be very, very, very exciting to you all. We played a couple of times with him in the States on our last tour, and I mean he was absolutely incredible. I think he will probably be the high spot of the evening. Keep your eyes and ears open for Joe Cocker."

As for these two posters, these are from a stash of absolutely original overruns that the promoter had left over and never disposed of. They have the look and feel in person of old posters. One is in its original printing size with white border, and the other has been trimmed down to have just the black border.

The larger one with white border measures 20" x 30" and grades to Very Good condition.

The smaller one with black margins measures 19 1/4" x 29" and grades to Good condition with much surface creasing plus three tears in the black at the bottom measuring 1", 1 ½" and 2". From the Fred Weinberg Collection. COA from Heritage Auctions.

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