In 1970, Richmond Park in Inchicore, Dublin, hosted Ireland’s first ever outdoor rock music festival. An audience of 1,500 paid to see a one-night bill headlined by Mungo Jerry and also featuring a handful of emerging Irish ‘beat groups’, a nascent Thin Lizzy among them. Run by a group of enthusiastic amateurs, the event was a commercial disaster.
But by the end of the decade, following examples set in the U.S. and in Britain, a handful of other rock music festivals had taken place across Ireland, most notably at Dalymount Park in Dublin, Macroom, County Cork, Lisdoonvarna in County Clare, Leixlip, County Kildare and Carnsore Point in County Wexford.
This documentary looks at the evolution of the festival circuit in Ireland during the 1970s, a decade in which rock music – national and international – began to take real root here. Against a back-drop of political instability, the greater penetration of popular culture into Ireland saw, by the end of the 1970s, the development of an nascent national scene and the emergence of a golden generation of local bands primed for export.
Featuring rare archive footage and stills, the documentary includes exclusive interviews with festival favourites, rockers and rebels, moonlight dancers and chancers, key figures who created, documented and promoted the 70s sounds of Ireland. Among those who recall those seminal days are Eric Bell [Thin Lizzy], Barry Devlin [Horslips], Christy Moore, Moya Brennan, Donal Lunny. Donal Gallagher [brother and manager of the late Rory Gallagher], Mike Hanrahan [Stockton’s Wing], Pat Egan and Fachtna Ó Ceallaigh, manager of The Boomtown Rats.