In June 1971, a legend was born. Following a low key trial run the previous year, Worthy Farm in Glastonbury, England, opened its gates to one of the largest gatherings of the rock underground that the UK had ever seen.
Traffic, Quintessence, the Pink Fairies, Hawkwind and the Edgar Broughton Band were among the attractions; so was the then all-but-unknown David Bowie. And there was room, too, for MELANIE, best known at the time as a star of Woodstock in 1969 and the following year’s Isle of Wight festival, but still awaiting the UK hits that would establish her as a superstar. In terms of perception, she was then as much a part of the underground as any of the performers.
“There was a real buzz about Melanie being there,” Hawkwind’s Nik Turner recalled in 2015. “Surprise, too, because there really weren’t many Americans on the bill; it was a very English event. But everyone adored her, and the whole site fell silent while she was on. Even the drummers stopped playing to listen.”
Melanie, too, remembered Glastonbury as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. “I flew in… I was so jet lagged and so out of my mind that [festival organiser] Michael Eavis took me to his farmhouse and let me take a nap there, because I was so tired. But it was absolutely magical.”
Neither was Turner her sole admirer at Glastonbury. Paul Rudolph of the Pink Fairies has already paid fond remembrance to her by layering some exquisite guitar over her “Some Say (I Got Devil)” (a song that has also been covered by Morrissey); now another star of the festival, singer Terry Reid, steps forward to duet with her on Bob Dylan’s “Mr Tambourine Man.”
Melanie first recorded the song on her debut album, and performed it at Woodstock, too. This version dates from later in her career, but the years roll back as she and Reid – oft-described as “the man who turned down Zeppelin” – throw heart and soul into the performance, retaining all the mysticism of Dylan’s original, but refusing to be hog-tied to his prototype.
“I recorded so many Dylan songs over the years,” Melanie recollected in 2023, “and ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ was one I always wanted to return to. There are so many layers to the lyric, I could never grow tired of exploring them.”
Reid felt the same way, contributing an arrangement that allows both singers the opportunity to sing the song their way, as well as bringing them together for a powerful duet. A dramatic psychedelia-tinged video adds to the performance’s impact.
DIGITAL: https://orcd.co/melanieterryreid
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