Flashback: 43,000 pack in for Showground rock
40 years on, we revisit Paul Dainty's one day Rockarena festival, the biggest outdoor concert of the time, featuring headline acts including Fleetwood Mac, Santana, Little River Band, Kevin Borich Express and Creation.
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald on November 12, 1977
Lindsay Scott
More than 43,000 people – a record Sydney rock concert crowd – packed into the Showground yesterday for Paul Dainty's one-day Rockarena festival.
For more than seven hours they sat on the grass and perched in the stands, many bare-chested and basking in the ideal summer conditions. By 9 pm tickets were still selling. Crowd estimates varied. Mr Dainty put the figure as high as 48,000. Three of the world's top rock groups.
Fleetwood Mac, Santana and the Little River Band, headed the five-act show. With all but 30¢ of the $12.50 going to Mr Dainty, he would have grossed more than $525 000. He has personally invested more than one million dollars in the two Rockarena festivals. The second will be at Calder Raceway, near Melbourne, tomorrow. About 6000 people made a dash for the best vantage spots when the Showground gates opened at midday. Some had slept there overnight.
Sixty uniformed police, about 12 detectives and 80 security men kept watch on the biggest Sydney gathering since the Rugby League grand final two months ago. By 8.30, police had arrested about 20 men, mostly for drunkenness. The 40 ambulance workers treated about 30 serious cases, mostly for cuts and drunkenness. At 9.30 the headliners,
Fleetwood Mac, received a tumultuous ovation when they started their first-ever Australian concert.
Backstage, a party atmosphere prevailed among the 200 performers, crew and guests. They ate, drank and played pool and pinball machines in two specially constructed tents.
Out front, people were sitting on friends' shoulders, dancing and clapping to the music being pumped through the biggest sound system constructed for an Australian show – twice as big as that used by Abba and Rod Stewart.
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/...12-gzjnky.html