Reading Festival Day Trip

The Reading Festival, originally known as the National Jazz Festival started up in 1961 and then morphed into the more recognised rock festival in the mid 70’s. It linked up with Leeds Festival in 1999 to create a dual festival with a rotating bill at different sites over the same weekend.

My one attendance in 1995 was primarily because Neil Young was on the bill and thus, we obtained a Sunday day ticket.  There were five of us in attendance and the weekend started with me and Gill heading down to Nottingham on the Saturday evening.

My brother’s current beau Fiona had managed to purloin a transit van for the trip, and we had the wacky but novel idea of roping a settee into the back of the van. It felt like we were in the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine.

It was infinitely more comfortable than some PNE trips to the North East in the late 80’s when we travelled in a variety of rust buckets with no seats in the back over the windswept A66 and I will never forget the Reg Childs van where they probably paid us to hire it!

There is a pub on the A61, it is called the Busby Stoop (I was humming the intro to the House of the Rising Sun as I typed that, go on you know you want to!) The pub was located somewhere west of Thirsk. It was named after an old owner Thomas Busby who was hung opposite the pub for murder in 1702.

It was very memorable for many reasons including the owners gracefully allowing us to have an afternoon lock in with the curtains closed prior to a Freight Rover semi-final evening game at Hartlepool and cooking us some pizzas on the way back after the game. The last I heard is that the Stoop closed into 2013 and was converted into an Indian restaurant called Jaipur Spice.     

From memory, the festival site was situated close to the town centre and we met up with Fiona’s brother James on arrival, who was living in Oxford at that point. The main stage bill had a heavy grunge reliance that day.

First on were Babes in Toyland followed by a mildly interesting set by Pavement though their sound was always a little off kilter and obtuse to me. We thoroughly enjoyed a Tourette littered set by White Zombie, a swampy heavy metal band from New York founded by Rob Zombie. They could almost have been a natural precursor to Slipknot.     

I took pleasure in catching about half of Buffalo Tom’s set. We wandered off to the Melody Maker stage and caught an impressive portion of a set by a very young Ash. The main support act was Soundgarden from Seattle who didn’t really float my boat.

It was getting rather cold by the time Neil Young hit the stage and continuing the grunge theme his backing band was Pearl Jam.  It was a decent set, but it wasn’t the same without the calibre of Crazy Horse supporting him. Highlights were ‘Mr Soul’ and ‘Hey Hey My My (Into the Black) and ‘Rocking in the Free World’ as his encore.

We headed back with my brother upfront in the van to stay awake with Fiona the driver. I recall a stop at a random service station for coffee refuelling and it seemed a long way back. The sofa seemed to understand that we had hit the outskirts of Nottingham and with a loud creak released itself from its moorings.

A late rising the following morning preceded a chilled day before a few pints in the local pub and the weekend was rounded off with some tucker and the latest episode of X-Files.