Ozzy Osbourne, Scorpions, Def Leppard, Motörhead, Bad News & Warlock
And so my cherry was popped! We won the tickets in a competition in our local paper, they had three pairs of tickets, we entered over 30 times and won twice. Castle Donington is a short drive away from my home, so my Dad is roped in to drop us off: I'm not sure what he makes of the hordes of denim, leather and grease that make up the crowd trudging into the race track though. Armed with two litre PET bottles of Trent Bitter (cheap, nasty but gets you there) we make our way into the arena. Anyone going to a festival today will expect multiple stages, a fun fair, stalls shelling hippy shit, that type of thing, back in 1986 there was just the one stage, you either listened to the band on offer or drank.
We stand stage right for a while, amazed at the number of people there and recognised Xavier Russell from Kerrang! doing the same. It was then that Trent Bitter hit bladder.
Festival toilets are stuff of legend. Without sounding like a grumpy old git, the kids today don't know they're born. It was an unwritten rule that any sanitary facilities should be rendered useless after three uses, so we headed off to the woods to find a quiet spot for a piss. A tree was found and I'm half way through splashing second hand bitter at it when a lass walks by, drops her jeans revealing a mega hairy muff and relives herself. I jokingly tell her that this is the gents, she curses me in German (explaining her hirsute condition) and carries on regardless.
First band is Warlock, fronted by the delightful (pre-cocaine) Doro Pesch, we decide to go down the front and find ourselves next to a bunch of Hells Angels who happen to be passing a strange smelling pipe around, drugs! another first! One of them then decides he's not walking to the woods for a piss, shouts something like “Excuse me fellow concert goers, I am about to void my bladder, you may wish to evacuate the area” and pisses on a few legs in front of him. No one argues, he has bike parts in his beard and sick.
Now as far as spoof heavy metal bands go I'd take Bad News over Spinal Tap any day, but taking up a slot at the most prestigious metal event on the calender? This is being filmed for the show “More Bad News” and having been there, what appeared in the show wasn't really what happened. They got bottled of course, with makeshift toilets flying through the air like brown plastic rain, I even cop one on the head, but musically they were okay. Alan (sorry, Vim) got the crowd chanting “Fuck off Bad News” before announcing the song “Fuck Off Castle Donington” and the rather wonderful “Devil's Spunk Merchants From Hell” is rolled out. We even sang along to their theme song.
A trip to the woods later and it's Motörhead time, touring the new line-up. Someone throws a firework on stage and Lemmy threatens to walk unless the culprit is found. It is assumed he gets a good kicking for his trouble.
Def Leppard make their debut as a nine-arm band and play lots of stuff from “Pyromania” and a couple of new tracks from “Hysteria” which at that point was looking like it would never come out. Very entertaining for a band who went downhill from that moment.
The slot of the day fell to Scorpions, the sun sets behind the stage as they play, and it was an almost note for note version of their “World Wide Live” album. Then it was Ozzy time. We moved further back for this one, the crowd had become increasingly drunker, with cheap beer making way for cheap vodka. I'd like to say I remember a lot about his set, but it's very vague indeed. Ozzy remembers about the same, so I guess that makes it okay then.
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