I was taken aback recently to read that Richmond Park, home of Saint Patrick’s Athletic, hosted what was supposedly Ireland’s first ever outdoor Rock Festival on September 4, 1970. The event was headlined by Mungo Jerry, but also included a performance from Dubliners Thin Lizzy. Researching it further, I found some interesting newspaper reports from the time which suggested that there was a real fear of what kind of element would be attracted to outdoor music festivals in the capital.
Irish Press. September 4 1970
Reports like the one above from The Irish Press appeared throughout the media in the days and weeks leading up to the festival. The Irish Independent reported that something in the region of 4,000 people had been expected to attend the festival, and that the ground could potentially hold double that. Repeating the sort of tone of The Irish Press piece, the paper wrote that “fears of rowdyism” were dispelled by officials at Saint Patrick’s Athletic.
In the end, the festival proved to be an absolute disaster. “I’ve been to better wakes” was a quote from one discontented young punter in The Irish Times, which ran with the headline ‘Open Air Festival Hardly Pops’. The paper noted that only several hundred young people had attended the festival, perhaps unsurprising giving the scare-tactics in the media in the run up to the event.
Gig line-up from http://www.thinlizzyguide.com/
Mungo Jerry headlined the show, yet The Irish Times did not have much to say of their appearance, noting that “they appeared finally, like post-Christmas tinsil, on a shabby stand.”
Of course while Thin Lizzy are a legendary Dublin band today, at the time they were a new prospect having only formed in late 1969 and released their first single The Farmer/I Need You only two months prior to the Richmond Park performance.
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Click on the book for more.
Donal
Ciarán
Sam
Come Here To Me! 
So when did the rock sessions in the Bandstand at the Phoenix Park start, also there was Blackrock? I don’t have the year but I suspect we were at them in 70, although it could have been as late as 73.
Fascinating. You sometimes forget there was music/gigs before 1976 (!).
I saw an all-dayer (ish) in Blackrock Park, pretty sure it was summer of ’72. The bands played on the island in the lake. The headliners were Gryphon, the British band who played Tudor-style music on crumhorns and the like (still going) – a strange choice, but they were good. The opening band was tremendous – proper early Seventies hard rock, covers mainly, including tremendous versions of Mountain’s Mississippi Queen and Jethro Tull’s Hymn 43. I taped it all on my new cassette recorder (wish I still had it but in those days of no money you had to recycle pretty quickly!). My dad was with me – he had us rolling in the aisles after the first tune by hairy, all male Gryphon when he asked “Is she tuning up?”