Fifty years ago this weekend, some of the biggest names in rock — then and since — gathered at Wisconsin State Fair Park for a three-day music festival.
And it was three whole weeks before a little thing called Woodstock.
Held from July 25-27, 1969, the Midwest Rock Festival had a lineup almost as star-studded as that bloated upstate New York event. Among those playing State Fair Park that weekend were rock gods Led Zeppelin. Blind Faith, the short-lived English supergroup, including Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood. guitar hero Johnny Winter; the First Edition with Kenny Rogers. folk star Buffy Sainte-Marie; SRC? Pacific Gas & Electric; and the Bob Seger system.
And like Woodstock, the Midwest Rock Festival had to deal with gatecrashers, storms, unruly performers and a young promoter trying to hold it all together.
“I had never done anything in the music business before,” said Peter Knapp, then the 22-year-old president of Midwest Festivals Inc., which organized the 1969 event.
Knapp, now 72, said Milwaukee's Woodstock had its genesis in his desire to see the real thing.
At the time, he ran a leasing business for a Chrysler-Plymouth dealership in Milwaukee. When he told his boss he wanted to take a few days off in August 1969 to see this big music festival, Knapp said, his boss saw a business opportunity.
“He wrote me a check for $10,000 to get me started,” Knapp said.
Looking for a venue, Knapp contacted the State Fair Park, which he said only had one weekend available: July 25-27. “It was June 28,” Knapp noted.
“The Three Stooges Rock Concert”
The next day, he set out to find some bands. He started by looking at his record collection.
Knapp's favorite performer was singer Joe Cocker, so he got the name of Cocker's label. The label led him to Cocker's manager. the manager connected Knapp with 10 acts, saying if he could get them advances and signed contracts within 10 days, the performers would be there.
The problem was that the organizers didn't have the money for the advances, about $30,000. So they got signed contracts and paid the performers with ticket sales as the money came in.
Despite the haphazard approach—“it was like the Three Stooges doing a rock concert,” Knapp recalls—the line-up quickly came together.
Biggest gainers were Friday night headliners Led Zeppelin, who were preparing to record their second album. Blind Faith, Saturday's headliner, playing one of the band's first shows. and Sunday's Guitar God lineup with headliners Jeff Beck and Johnny Winter, along with Cocker. (Cocker, Winter and the band Sweetwater would later appear at Woodstock as well.)
The rest of the scheduled performers were no slouch either: Sainte-Marie was one of the nation's leading lights. Detroit's MC5 were one of the hardest rock bands in the country. Rogers and First Edition had been a little over a year since their big hit, “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In).” Zephyr, whose lead guitarist, Tommy Bolin, went on to play in the James Gang and Deep Purple. pop-folk stars Delaney & Bonnie; blues giant John Mayall; and more, including some local performers.
Fake tickets and lots of rain
Not that Knapp saw much of it.
“The whole thing was a blur to me,” he said. “Of all the bands playing, I probably only saw … parts of three sets.”
There were plenty of other things to keep him busy – like counterfeit tickets.
Knapp said they sold 12,000 three-day tickets to the festival, at $15 a head. (Advance one-day tickets cost $6.) But some of the reported attendees, some 41,000 people, got in with fake tickets. The originals, it appears, were printed without security markings.
“I guess they realized the hippies didn't know about Xerox machines,” Knapp said. “They were wrong.”
And, as at Woodstock three weeks later, there was the weather.
On Saturday afternoon, downpours caused the artists to scramble, but headliner Blind Faith managed to get in their highly-anticipated set.
When the skies opened again on Sunday, festival organizers consolidated the stadium's two stages into one. Two of the biggest acts of the day, Jeff Beck and Jethro Tull, never played, Knapp said; the Milwaukee Sentinel reported that the MC5, Jim Schwall Blues Period and SRC also did not play Sunday.
Despite the rain and ticket issues, everyone seemed to be having a good time. Bootleg recordings of Led Zeppelin and Blind Faith performances posted on YouTube have a high following among fans of the bands.
“As an attendee, I almost felt like I was baptized into the counterculture,” said Dean Chapman, who was 14 when he went to the festival at State Fair Park with his friend, Howie Epstein. (Epstein, who died in 2003 at age 47, became a musician, best remembered as the bassist with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.)
“It made a giant impression on me,” said Chapman, now 64 and an equipment dealer in South Milwaukee.
Richard Ziervogel, State Fair Park historian, was a member of the State Fair Park police in 1969. He said there were no “major incidents,” just a few drug-related arrests and a few drug overdoses, none of them fatal.
“It went very smoothly,” Ziervogel recalls.
“I think everyone was surprised it was happening at all …,” Knapp said. “I was as shocked as anybody.”
“Turning point in my life”
Unfortunately, the festival lost money, as did a second concert, the Midwest Rock Festival — Phase II, a blues-focused concert at County Stadium featuring Chuck Berry, Taj Mahal and Howlin' Wolf, among others. Although Knapp told reporters he believed it would repeat itself in 1970, it did not.
But the experience changed Knapp's life.
Shortly thereafter, he left Milwaukee and went on to tour for 12 years, for artists such as Cocker (a lifelong friend until the singer's death in 2014), the Who, The Band and more.
Knapp left the music business in the early 1980s and opened a “rock 'n' roll sushi restaurant” in Venice Beach, California. He and his wife, novelist Lesley Kagen, returned to Milwaukee to raise their children and opened Restaurant Hama in Bayside.
Seven years ago, Knapp moved to Colorado, where he is now the chef and owner PJ's Neighborhood Pub in Hotchkiss, a town of about 900 in western Colorado.
The Midwest Rock Festival “was a turning point in my life,” Knapp said. “It gave me the confidence to do whatever I wanted to do.”
Contact Chris Foran at chris.foran@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @cforan12.
