Rock festival days in Mayo's county town
By Tom Gillespie
THE Mall in the centre of Castlebar became a multi-coloured camp site (pictured) for many of the 13,000 fans who flocked to the county town on the August bank holiday weekend of 1981, for the staging of the first Occasion at the Castle.
On stage at the 65-acre site at Raheens, outside Castlebar, were The Pretenders, Ian Dury and The Blockheads, The Undertones, and a variety of local groups.
Three local businessmen were behind the two-day rock festival, which was estimated to cost over £100,000.
Months of intensive planning involving the organisers, the gardaí and the Western Health Board took place.
On the Saturday of the weekend the crowds began to arrive and the streets of the town were packed.
I had to write a piece on the festival for the Sunday Press and I accompanied Supt. Brendan Colton on a walkabout as we weaved through the happy-go-lucky throngs.
As we returned to the garda station, opposite the Mall, I got my first view of the canvas city that had sprung up on the Green.
Despite the huge numbers very few incidents were reported but I did recall many residents on the Newport Road - on the way to the festival site - complained that some visitors had used their lawns as a loo.
The overall success of the first Occasion gave the organisers the courage to plan Occasion Two at the same site for August 1982.
A review of the first festival was carried in one of the Sunday newspapers and read: “At last somebody has shown just a glimmer of how to run a music festival.
“The Occasion at The Castle had decent facilities, security staff that were efficient, a stage that didn’t look like it was about to collapse at any minute and a sound system which permitted the performers actually to be heard.
“In other words not your average festival. I definitely spotted people who were not having to pretend to be having fun.”
The star-studded line-up for ’82 included Bob Geldof and The Boomtown Rats, Thin Lizzy and Madness.
Also on stage were the Fury Brothers and Davey Arthur, Tokyo Olympics, Bogey Boys, Rhythm Kings, Zen Alligators, Brush Shiels, The Memories, April and The Pennies, Big Self, Rosetta Stone, Some Kind of Wonderful, Barleycorn, Eugene and The Atrix.
The comperes included Dave Fanning, B.P. Fallon and Jim O’Neill and the complete show was produced by Ian McGarry of RTÉ.
The organisers boasted of having every facility on site - bar facilities, restaurant and full catering facilities, free camping, aerobatic exhibition, parking, Mass on site, and free busses from the town centre. And, importantly, they guaranteed controlled prices on site.
The ticket prices for this three-day event were £5 for Friday, £12 for Saturday and £8 for the Sunday, or £18 for the weekend.
A first class medical centre, lost property and cloakroom facilities were available over the weekend.
For the first time at an Irish festival a complaints and information centre was provided to look after any problems that might arise.
A flier for fans read: “Festival facilities will be second to none this year with a special effort being made to control prices. A camp site grocery shop will operate at controlled prices. There will also be a fully equipped medical centre.
“Camping will be free but due to circumstances beyond our control, there may be a charge for car parking. Communal sleeping tents will be available for the weekend.
“We intend to have a bigger and better festival this year and with this in mind, we have lined up a host of national and international talent.”
Local historian Noel Campbell wrote of the ’82 festival in 2016: “Hoping for a financial return, several businessmen sponsored the second event, investing a total of £250,000 into the now three-day festival.
“They had good reason to be optimistic. The 1982 line up was second to none. Thin Lizzy, Madness, and The Boomtown Rats were the headline acts of the new and improved show.
“Despite the obvious efforts of the organisers, the concert failed to grab the interest of the intended audience. Local businessman and former director of the Castlebar International Song Contest, Paddy McGuinness, put the poor numbers, which were unchanged from the previous year, down to the general recession and the fact that The Rolling Stones had played at Slane the previous weekend.
“The weekend's music was reported to have been of good quality and the festival relaxed. Gardaí had only made 15 arrests all weekend. But the news that one incident occurred outside the hospital, where a group refused to disperse and had to be baton charged, moved Castlebar Urban District Council to unanimously adopt their chairman Frank Durcan's call for festivals to be licensed in order that objectors would have an official platform from which they could be heard.
“The motion would not affect The Occasion at the Castle. The organisers had already announced that the financial hit was too much to bear and that no festival would go ahead in 1983.”