Staging a music festival is an incredibly risky thing because so many things that are beyond your control can go wrong. That ranges from the weather to crazy crowds to logistical mistakes to the bands not cooperating.
One of the worst of all time happened on July 4, 1974, at Chuck Berry Park in Wentzville, Missouri. Yes, this was on Chuck Berry’s private estate. The promoter was Paul Hindeland, a student at the University of Illinois and was only 27 years old. Acts were wary because they weren’t confident they were going to get paid. Even though people flooded the site, the box office didn’t sell any tickets. When many of the big acts refused to play, some of the 20,000-strong crowd took it out on Chuck Berry, pelting his house with rocks and setting fires.
Hindelang—who ironically was a graduate student in accounting—was later convicted in one of the biggest pot smuggling operations in US history.
More next time
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