Following a smaller edition on June 28th, 1969 within the city of Bath, U.K., featuring groups Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac and Led Zeppelin, among others, the organizers held The Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music at the Royal Bath and West Showground in Shepton Mallet, Somerset, England on June 27th-29th, 1970, where Pink Floyd, Santana, and others appeared, along with the returning Led Zeppelin.
The 1970 counterculture era music festival started at midday on Saturday, June 27th and finished at about 6:30 a.m. on Monday morning. A DJ played records for early arrivers from the Friday evening and continued to do so between many of the sets until the end. The festival featured a line-up of the top British and west coast American bands of the day, that also included Hot Tuna, Country Joe McDonald, Colosseum, the Byrds (acoustic set), Dr. John (acoustic set), Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention, Canned Heat, It’s a Beautiful Day, Steppenwolf, Johnny Winter, John Mayall with Peter Green, Fairport Convention, Keef Hartley, and others.
Pink Floyd premiered their new suite, “Atom Heart Mother”, which at that time was announced as “The Amazing Pudding”. The performance featured a complete brass band and 12 strong choir, and took place at 3 am, due to major delays. As well as the “Atom Heart Mother” suite, the band also played tracks from More, A Saucerful of Secrets as well as “Careful with That Axe, Eugene”.
The festival was captured on both film and on video, in varying quality, but a lack of post-festival organisation led to the footage being lost for many years. Much of it has now been recovered, but the black-and-white footage is of poor quality and is in many different hands. It is considered unlikely that it will ever see the light of day as a legitimate release since no-one can agree on who owns the copyright.
Michael Eavis was attendant at the festival and was inspired to hold later that year the first event of what would become the Glastonbury festival of contemporary performing arts.
Though the line-up approached the level of the more famous Isle of Wight Festival held in August of the same year, it attracted less press coverage at the time and has generally received less attention in the years since.
A 3-CD boxed set to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the festival has been issued.
The Fat Angel Sings 