Only in Wigan: the weekend Grateful Dead, Jeremy Beadle and a waterless dive made rock history
Wigan isn’t usually the place you’d pin as a hotspot for rock history. But in 1972, for one muddy, chaotic, slightly unbelievable weekend, it completely was.
From the 5th -7th of May, tens of thousands of people poured in from all over the UK for The Bickershaw Festival. Trains were crammed, roads were jammed, and plenty of people just gave up and walked. All of a sudden, Wigan found itself hosting something that felt far more like California than Lancashire, a full-on acid rock festival landing right on its doorstep.
And here’s where it gets even better. One of the people helping hold the whole thing together was Jeremy Beadle. Yes, that Jeremy Beadle. Long before the TV fame, he was right in the thick of organising the festival, stepping in when things started to wobble behind the scenes. It’s not the connection anyone expects, which makes it all the more brilliant.
The line-up at Bickershaw Festival wasn’t exactly small either. Grateful Dead made the trip over from the State, which says everything about how big this event was aiming to be. Known for their long, free-flowing live sets and a fanbase that would follow them anywhere, their presence alone turned Bickershaw into something massive.
The line-up also featured other heavyweights of the era, including The Kinks and Captain Beefheart, adding even more weight to an already surreal bill in a muddy field outside Wigan.
Out on the site, things were… messy. The weather turned the fields into thick mud, so just getting from one place to another was a challenge. But the crowd didn’t seem to care. If anything, it added to it. People stood there, ankle-deep, watching huge bands play like it was the most normal thing in the world.
And then there were the bits you couldn’t make up.
At one point, a stunt performer known as The Great Rondini was set to dive into a tank of water. Simple enough. Except the tank situation didn’t quite go to plan. Depending on who you believe, it either wasn’t filled properly or ended up being emptied, turning what should’ve been a dramatic dive into something a lot more awkward and, for everyone watching, unintentionally hilarious.
That pretty much sums the whole weekend up. Big ideas, slightly chaotic execution, and moments that stuck in people’s minds for all the right and wrong reasons. For a few days, Wigan wasn’t just getting on with business as usual, it was the centre of something completely different.
Around 40,000 people showed up in the end. It didn’t all run smoothly, and financially it had its problems, but that’s not really the point. What people remember is that, for one weekend, Bickershaw became the heart of the UK’s acid rock scene.
You had the Grateful Dead playing a muddy field, Jeremy Beadle helping keep the whole thing from falling apart, and a diving act that didn’t quite have any water to dive into.
Only in Wigan.
Gutted I missed this! I was too young, but if you have any Wigan memories or good stuff you want to shout about, please drop me an email. Let’s fill the internet with everything that makes Wigan shine.
