The Last Two Rock Concerts To Be Held At The Oval

In a recent article, I told the story of when The Oval became the venue for the Goodbye Summer rock festival that featured The Who, Rod Stewart & The Faces back in September 1971.

When The Who & Rod Stewart rocked the Oval

The Rock at the Oval Concerts – September 1972

In 1971, Surrey County Cricket Club had hosted the festival as a way to raise valuable funds to keep the club alive. The event proved to be so successful on all fronts that they agreed to 2 further concerts the following year – This time under the title Rock the Oval

Two more concerts took place a year later on September 16, 1972, with Hawkwind and Frank Zappa headlining the first – poor weather kept the audience numbers down – and a fortnight later a more successful venture featuring Genesis, Focus, Wishbone Ash and Emerson Lake and Palmer.

Rock the Oval – 16th Sept 1972

with amongst others: Jeff Beck, Frank Zappa & Hawkwind

The program – http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/rock-at-the-oval-program.html

Unlike the last Oval gig, this took place on a cold and wet day. The event overran by two and half hours, and there were long waits between bands.

First of the big acts to appear was Jeff Beck, making his first British appearance with the ex-Vanilla Fudge rhythm section of Tim Bogart on bass, and drummer Carmine Appice.

Jeff Beck, playing a Fender Stratocaster guitar, performs with rock supergroup Beck, Bogert & Appice at the ‘Rock At The Oval’ festival, London, 16th September 1972. (Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images)

The following is a bootleg recording of that performance:

Frank Zappa

Next up on stage was the legendary Frank Zappa, with a new band a lineup that featured a 20 piece Jazz Orchestra. Because of the size of the group, there was a long delay setting up equipment and doing sound checks, which was to have a disastrous knock-on effect to later performers

The Tour went under the title of The Grand Wazoo Tour. Frank was still wearing a leg brace and was walking on crutches following breaking his leg after being pushed off stage by a crazed fan at the London Rainbow Theatre the year before.

At a press conference held on the day before the Oval gig, he was presented with a £15 bouquet of flowers by Susan North, the girlfriend of Trevour Howell, his Rainbow assailant.

‘You don’t know how sorry I am for what my boyfriend did. I hope this can go some way towards apologising.
Susan North, girlfriend of Trevor Howell, his Rainbow assailant

Later on, Frank learnt that she was put up to it by the promoters. Later writing in his autobiography

I discovered the depths to which the British will sink in order to sell a concert ticket
Frank Zappa, from his autobiography

The following is a bootleg recording of that performance:

Hawkwind

Hawkwind were added to the bill following their success with the release of Silver Machine and managed to boost sales of tickets. On the eve of the concert, both bands managements were still demanding to go on last. In the end, it was agreed that Hawkwind would close using a full light show and fireworks.

By the time Hawkwind took to the stage the original curfew of 10pm had expired. They got to perform 4 tracks (including Silver Machine) before the concert closed and the planned fireworks display was cancelled.

Watch Hawkwind and Lemmy bash out a great performance of this classic

The last ever Rock the Oval Concert

Just two weeks later the Oval was to host the last major stadium concert. This was the Melody Makers Poll winners Concert featuring Fudd, Focus, Genesis, Argent, Emerson Lake and Palmer and Wishbone Ash.

Surrey made good money from both ventures. However, a death at a concert at Crystal Palace in 1973 resulted in Lambeth Council introducing a regulation that the number of tickets sold could not be more than the number of seats available, and in one stroke the staging of concerts at The Oval become unviable.

There is a good report on the report on the concert here: http://paulandval.blogspot.com/2008/02/oval-1972-truth-will-out.html