I was in the public bar of our hotel, The White Bear in Masham the other day with a pint of Theakston Best, when the framed poster advertising our one and only Theakston Music Festival which took place on the August Bank Holiday weekend in 1982, almost exactly 42 years ago, caught my eye. It reminded me of one of the most thrilling six months, organising from scratch, a folk music festival which seemed so perfectly to illustrate the delight and natural harmony of bringing beer, pubs and music together.
It all started when, in the November 1981, I received a phone call from Rick Bayles, the then Manager of Lindisfarne, one of the greatest bands to emanate from the north east of England. He asked me if we would donate a cask of Best Bitter for the band members to enjoy after appearing at their nightly performance at Newcastle City Hall during December as part of their Christmas concert season. Rick mentioned the band’s collective love of our beer, particularly Theakston Best. Flattered, I replied that this could be done but on one condition, namely that the band come down to Masham for a lunch, to meet our brewing team, to show them around our brewery and to sample the Best Bitter at source. They duly came and the deal was sealed.
We had a wonderful day with them all during which the seed of an idea was planted that one day we should arrange for the band to feature at a Theakston sponsored music festival. And so began an adventure which culminated over the August bank holiday weekend the following year in the grounds of the magnificent Stately Home of Nostell Priory just down the road from Masham near Pontefract, in the Theakston Music Festival.
We were lucky also to know Simon Nichol and Dave Swarbrick, former members of Fairport Convention, another of the great folk bands of the time, both regular visitors and performers at the White Bear Hotel and great friends of the licensees Neil and Lesley Cutts. Together we all began to build up the dream of the festival into reality part of which was to create a line-up of bands. Happily, the former bass player of Fairport, Dave Pegg had recently joined yet another giant of the folk rock scene, Jethro Tull. Through Dave we were able to secure his new band to also appear. Later, the signing of this particular contract involved me appearing live on stage with Ian Anderson and Jethro Tull at the Hysel Stadium in Belgium as a backing singer to their track ‘Watching Me Watching You’, as featured on their Broadsword and The Beast album, an electrifying experience, the memory of which will stay with me for ever, but that’s a story for another day.
Other performers over the weekend included, Earl Okin, Mike Chapman, Huang Chung, Marillion, Ralph McTell, Paul Jones and the Blues Band, Swarbrick and Nichol and of course, Lindisfarne and Jethro Tull. We hired a huge stage which the previous week was used in Birmingham to host an open-air Mass given by His Holiness Pope John Paul II and two huge speaker stacks together with all the paraphernalia required for a weekend concert, food and clothes stalls, art and craft stalls, all the required services plus of course, a Theakston Music Festival Bar which featured a range of our cask beers.
The weather was set fair and with the beautiful setting of the grounds in front of Nostell Priory, to raise the spirits, the festival commenced. It was a wonderful success. The 18,000 crowd were enchanted by the quality of the music and bands. We sold nearly 35k pints of beer over the weekend and created many life-long fans of our company and beers. Our bar consisted of 48 handpumps on a 60ft bar. The hand pumps drew beer from six Hogsheads (54 gallon-casks) in which we had especially adapted with a ‘ball and cock’ system enabling beer from our 120 barrel tanker to keep flowing through them to the hand pumps on the bar. Half of Masham came to help man the bar, it was a wonderful opportunity to share this extraordinary experience with our neighbours and friends from the town. During the Jethro Tull set, Ian Anderson unexpectedly invited me on stage to say a few words. He passed me his cordless microphone in the shape of a dagger, an image that was captured by camera and now hangs, framed, as a treasured memory on my office wall. I thanked everyone for coming, the bands and especially the great Jethro Tull for making it such a great success. A related memory is of the Marillion band who, the following weekend was appearing at the Reading Festival and on the cusp of receiving a major recording contract. On the Friday night of our festival, they had nowhere to stay and asked if they could stay in the ‘Riggers’ tent behind the stage. I agreed and several weeks later received a handwritten note from Fish, the lead singer of Marillion thanking me for giving them somewhere to stay and to let me know that they had indeed secured their recording contract. They have never looked back.
Apart from the poster in the White Bear, I have just one memento of that weekend 42 years ago, the stage set Broadsword, a huge item that formed the backdrop of the Jethro Tull set.
We were tempted to repeat the first Theakston Music Festival the following year in 1983 but decided not to. My father pointed out that it had cost a huge amount in time and money and we had only just managed to break even, despite the glorious weekend when the sun shone throughout. I was to focus on promoting our beers and to gaining more customers, in retrospect probably very sound advice but they were some of the happiest days of my career!
One thing that for many years eluded me was a copy of the festival programme. Such was the demand for them over that weekend, everyone was sold leaving none left for ourselves. However fifteen years or so ago and much to my delight one came up for sale on eBay. What was even better news was that no one had bid more than £10 for it. So I thought I’ll have that and made a bid. However someone else apparently had the same idea and before I knew it, I was in a bidding war! I cannot remember the final figure, but it was pretty close to £100 before I finally secured it. It’s now framed, hanging next to the Festival poster in the pubic bar of the White Bear. The under-bidder for the programme was one Ian Anderson. I never found out if was the Mr. Anderson of Jethro Tull fame, I like to think that it was, perhaps and hopefully one day, I will!
In subsequent years we have maintained our connection with folk/rock music, we like to consider it part of our Theakston DNA, our folklore. For the last twenty years we have been proud sponsors of the Ripley Blues, a venue in Ripley, North Yorkshire that hosts some fantastic bands including some that performed at our own festival all those 42 years ago. Today we also further our connection with the world of music working hand in hand with Colin Oliver and his company Future Sound Events. Colin organises a wide variety of hugely successful festivals including the Slam Dunk Festivals at Temple Newsham near Leeds, Hatfield Park in London as well as the Castle series of Festivals at Kirkstall Abbey, York Museum Gardens and Ludlow Castle, at all of which we are proud suppliers of a selection of our beers.