Amazing to think that Black Sabbath etc would perform at such a place these days.
Anyone from here attend or have any memories from family members that attended?
BLACK Sabbath was there. So were Daddy Cool, Spectrum, Chain and Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs.
And if you were a young person living in Adelaide in the summer of 1971, there's a pretty good chance you were there, too.
We're talking about the Myponga Pop Festival, South Australia's answer to Woodstock - three days of peace, love and music on a dusty dairy farm 60km south of the city.
The event that grew out of the pipe dreams of two young Adelaide promoters and, as Daddy Cool frontman Ross Wilson says, left its mark on Australian rock history.
"I really think Myponga had a lot to do with giving us a springboard for what we became," Wilson said.
"Only having one Myponga concert preserves the legacy beautifully.
"It's well regarded in the mists of time."
In this age of super-organised mega-festivals, there's no doubt Myponga was somewhat primitive.
"It was out in the middle of a wheat field or something, and there was just dust and chaff everywhere," Wilson recalls.
"We were sleeping on straw that they'd brought in from somewhere, but we didn't care."
And while the newspaper reports of the day raised concerns of too much booze, too many drugs and - shock horror - not enough bras, there's no doubt that for a good proportion of Adelaide's baby boomers the Myponga Pop Festival was the best three days of their life.
IT was the summer of 1971, and Adelaide's young people were turning on, tuning in and dropping out. Hair was long, bras were out and the music was loud, man.
Inspired by 1969's Woodstock concert in upstate New York, the groovy youth of Australia descended on the quiet dairy-farming town of Myponga, south of Adelaide, for a concert that changed the Australian rock music scene for ever.
They brought booze, drugs and the "anything goes" attitude of the day and partied for three days and nights to the sounds of some of Australia's, and the world's, best musical acts.
While Myponga has largely been forgotten as a significant moment in Australian musical folklore just two years after Woodstock and a year before the better known Sunbury festival in Victoria - it still evokes vivid memories for those who were there, including Ozzy Osbourne.
"I remember Myponga very, very well," he said. "That was the one on the dairy farm near Adelaide, yeah? Oh yeah, I've got great memories of that show."
The frontman of heavy metal outfit Black Sabbath the headline act at Myponga spoke fondly of the concert during an interview with the Sunday Mail to promote his new album, Scream.
While Sunbury, held from 1972 to 1975, is better known, it was Myponga that got the ball rolling.
Crowd estimates vary, but it's generally agreed that about 15,000 people paid the $6 entry fee. It's also agreed that thousands more jumped the fences.
The line-up read like a who's who of Australian rock, with acts including the recently formed Daddy Cool, Spectrum, Fraternity (led by charismatic singer Bon Scott before he joined AC/DC), Chain and Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs. Cat Stevens was also supposed to appear but pulled out at the last minute to perform in Los Angeles.
The concert received a great deal of coverage in the local media, with reports in the Sunday Mail reflecting the bewildered attitude of Adelaide's mainstream. If Woodstock was about grass and acid, Myponga, it seems, was about booze.
"Festival swills on smoothly", screamed one headline, with a report focusing on the amount of alcohol at the unlicensed festival.
"Ten thousand heavy rock fans at the Myponga pop festival tonight settled themselves firmly in their garbage-strewn pop paddock for a night of love, peace, banshee rock music and booze, booze and more booze," one report read.
"The fans, who have flocked here from all over Australia, have consumed a huge amount of liquor, and are ready for anything the bands can throw at them."
In these days of sniffer dogs and binge drinking, it all seems rather tame, but it points to a more innocent time.
Another report, headed "Bye Bye Bra", claimed Myponga "has turned into the biggest expose of the `no bra' look yet seen in SA".
"There are about 2500 girls at the festival and there does not seem to be a bra between them," the journalist wrote.
"The male pop lovers are dividing their time between the big sound on stage and the females."
The Myponga festival was never held again. Promoters, who were lucky to break even after budget blowouts, were reluctant to put their money back into another event and east coast shows such as Sunbury shifted the focus to Melbourne and Sydney. But for three long days in the summer of `71 Myponga was at the centre of the rock 'n' roll universe.
IN 1971 Alex Innocenti was a big name on the Adelaide pop scene.
The Rundle Mall menswear retailer was one of the city's premier music promoters, bringing in interstate acts like Billy Thorpe and Spectrum to play at The Cellar, his underground (literally) rhythm and blues club on Twin St, in the city. Inspired by the mass rock gatherings of recent years, Alex and fellow promoter Trevor Brien dreamed of staging an Adelaide equivalent. They had the passion, and the contacts, but they were short of one thing money. The funding was found in the form of Hamish Henry, the millionaire son of an Adelaide car dealer.
While Innocenti is rather scathing of Henry's pop pedigree "He was just the money man and and had no idea about the music" there's little doubt that Henry's capital was instrumental in getting Myponga off the ground.
Innocenti tells a tale that perfectly illustrates Henry's desire to fund the venture at any cost.
"We went down to the farm at Myponga in Hamish's great American sports car with no roof, like movie stars," he recalls. "The farmer says, `What do you guys want?' and Hamish says, `I want to buy your farm.' He gave him a $1 deposit and paid him the next week." Innocenti says he has no idea what's happened to Henry.
As was generally the case with early pop festivals, nobody promoters or bands remembers making any money.
"The original budget was something like $12,000. Can you imagine?" Innocenti says.
"I didn't make any money. I thought I would and that's why I put all my savings into it. Luckily we got out pretty well, without much loss."
While a lot of the media coverage focused on drugs and alcohol, Innocenti claims you could "find more drugs in Rundle Mall today".
"Basically people had a good time," he says. "Some girls took their clothes off, but there was nothing wrong with that. There was plenty of booze, too."
Innocenti says Myponga was "as close as you could have got" to pulling off an Australian Woodstock. "We had people from all over Australia come here, and the groups were all big time."
Black Sabbath & Ozzy Osbourne
OZZY Osbourne isn't famous for his sharp memory, but he has no trouble recalling Myponga.
The Black Sabbath frontman and his band were the headline act after Cat Stevens pulled out (the other overseas act was Hungarian prog-rock band Syrius).
"I remember Myponga very, very well," Osbourne said over the phone from his home in Los Angeles. "I remember I asked them to supply us with Marshall amps and they didn't turn up. And there were barbecues everywhere."
Osbourne says he also has vivid memories of a party in Adelaide his introduction to the no-nonense approach of Australian fans.
"We were invited to a party at some guy's house," he says.
"So we went along and this guy comes up to me and says, `Hello, mate, are you in that band Black Sabbath? I bought your album yesterday.' I was like, `Oh, great'. Then he says `I took it back today, it was f--ing crap'. All I could say was `Thank you'.
"What I like about you guys is that you don't f-- around. If you don't like something you'll just say it's shit, you know."
Black Sabbath played straight after Fraternity, Bon Scott's band at the time, but Osbourne was unaware of how close he came to meeting the late singer.
"Really, was he?" he said. "I know we had AC/DC open for us on one tour of Australia, and they were f--ing great. I don't think they'd be opening for me any more.
"Yeh, we had a f--ing good time down there. Everyone seemed to get into it."
Daddy Cool
MELBOURNE band Daddy Cool have probably done more to preserve the memory of Myponga than any other act, although most people are unaware of the fact.
Log on to YouTube and download the clip for Eagle Rock, however, and you'll some of the best footage of Myponga in existence.
"A lot of people think that footage is from Sunbury or something, but it's actually from Myponga," lead singer Ross Wilson said.
"I think it's a really great document that shows a really true reaction, with people going nuts and us going nuts."
Daddy Cool was a new band at the time, and yet to even put a single down on vinyl.
Myponga was a litmus test for the band and its upbeat style of rock music. It was a test the band passed with flying colours, with many at the festival remembering Daddy Cool as being the standout act.
"For us it was a really big deal," Wilson said. "We did our very first gig ever as Daddy Cool in Adelaide as part of the Glenelg Blues Festival at the town hall. That was a few months before Myponga.
"I really think Myponga had a lot to do with giving us a springboard."
Wilson remembers watching Black Sabbath, whose heavy metal sounds had never been heard live in Australia.
"I'd never heard of them before, but all of the Poms out at Elizabeth knew about them. We actually thought they were kind of funny.
"We were like, `Look, he's nailing down his drum kit to a big piece of wood and then when they started i realised why.
"Then they got hold of every single amp they could find and strung them all together and played real loud.
"It wasn't really down my alley it was the first time I'd struck that heavy metal with attitude. They were the antithesis of what we were doing." Wilson agrees that Sunbury has, perhaps unfairly, eclipsed Myponga in the country's music psyche.
"Well Sunbury had Billy Thorpe to talk about it every chance he could possibly get," he said.
"And it had a very successful three-album set that was Mushroom's first big seller. Those things tend to put Sunbury at the forefront. " Wilson remembers the facilities at Myponga as being basic at best, but says bands didn't expect much in `71 and the fans didn't seem to mind, either.
"It was out in the middle of a wheat field or something, and there was just dust and chaff everywhere," he laughed.
"We were sleeping on straw that they'd brought in from somewhere, but we didn't care.
People expect more for their money these days; they want a clean toilet and they want good food and all that.
"Back in Myponga and Sunbury days people were still learning. They were like, `Oh, they've had this thing over in Woodstock, we could do that'. Then they found out that it was actually quite hard to organise all the facilities.
"But I think that movie Wayne's World summed it up: build it and they will come.
"People just said `Oh, it's at Myponga in a big field in the middle of nowhere? Great, let's go!' These days everyone would just go `Huh?" No way."
MIKE Rudd, singer from popular `70s act Spectrum, shares Wilson's memories.
"I seem to remember it as being a fairly bleak location, just a farm with no trees or anything and a pretty ordinary stage and facilities," he said. Spectrum was riding high on the back of a No. 1 single, the Australian classic I'll Be Gone (Someday I'll Have Money), with its instantly recognisable harmonica intro. "Yeah, I'll Be Gone was at it's peak in `71," Rudd said. "And Myponga was one of the first of the outdoor festivals in Australia.
`'I remember there was quite a buzz with all the musicians, and I'm sure we all enjoyed ourselves."
WHILE next year marks the 40th anniversary of the Myponga festival, Innocenti believes that it would be pointless to attempt to recreate the concert.
"Would I try to do it again? No. The time is not there for this concept," he says.
"We talked about it for the 25th anniversary of Myponga but agreed that it wouldn't work, and Woodstock tried to do it again and it was a terrible bomb. These are unique things."
Wilson agrees: "Only having one Myponga concert preserves the legacy beautifully. It's well regarded in the mists of time because they didn't ride it into the ground."
