Memory of a Free Festival by David Bowie is a song I've known for years - it's on his 1969 Space Oddity album - but I've only recently discovered it is a true South London song.
Bowie's Beckenham connections have been
documented here before, but I didn't realize that this song was apparently inspired by the Free Festival held in Beckenham Recreation Ground, Croydon Road on August 16 1969. The festival was put on by Bowie and others involved in the Beckenham Arts Lab held on Sundays at the Three Tuns pub in Beckenham High Street. As David Bebbington recalls at
Beckenham History, 'Bowie played solo, and the bill also included singer-songwriters Bridget St John, Keith Christmas and Toni Visconti'. Comus and The Strawbs also played.
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I've never really been able to verify it, but I've heard from a couple of word-of-mouth sources that the Three Tuns in Beckenham was also one of the first London venues to put on a regular reggae night - possibly on alternate weeks from Bowie's Beckenham Arts Lab. There may be some chinese whispers involved in this version of events, but it would be pretty interesting if Bowie's thing and early London/JA soundsystem were both developing in parallel in the upstairs room of the same pub in Beckenham.
Yes, this seems to be true, with the reggae night on Friday and the Arts Lab (which was originally the folk club) on Sundays. At Beckenham History Forum someone posted this a while back: 'At the Three Tuns beckenham at the back of the pub in the 60's there use to be every friday a reggae club, the sounds were by 'Galaxy Sound', it was mixed with skinheads, bluebeaters anyone remember it?'
This song takes me right back to my teenage idealism - interesting to unearth these south London connections too
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