Not many people can say Queen and Oasis have played in their back garden. Henry Lytton Cobbold can. Forty years ago, on 9 August 1986, Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon brought Queen's sold-out European tour to a close at Knebworth House in Hertfordshire.
Lytton Cobbold, now the owner of the estate, was 24 at the time and remembers the suitably rock-and-roll celebrations backstage afterwards, complete with fairground rides and naked women mud wrestling. "They had a lot to celebrate," he recalls. "They'd really smashed it live the year before...
And then of course it became legendary for various rather sadder reasons." Five years later, Mercury died from bronchial pneumonia resulting from AIDS. His performance in front of 125,000 people at Knebworth was his final time on stage with Queen. Lytton Cobbold says: "He was at the top of his game and nobody knew about his illness at that point.
"The other thing, of course, that makes it legendary is this bizarre fact that although the field was full of screens nobody pressed record. "The only record we've got of the show is a little bit of news footage from the beginning and then a really bizarre bootleg that a Dutch guy took on his little home video camera of a screen at the back of the audience. "I mean, imagine going to a Freddie Mercury gig and spending the whole time at the back of the audience filming the screen with your wobbly video camera." Lytton Cobbold never met the band, unlike some of the other stars who had played Knebworth in earlier years.
"Back in the old days, they didn't used to helicopter off the minute they'd done the encore, they would come up and chill at the house until the roads cleared." Knebworth Park has hosted live music since 1974. Pink Floyd were the first major act to play the venue in 1975, with the Rolling Stones following a year later. He said: "My mum and dad generally loved a party.
"I mean my dad's birthday was on 14 July, and every summer holiday began with a big party and the concerts just gave us that encore party. " Genesis, Led Zeppelin, The Beach Boys and Cliff Richard were among the names to play Knebworth in the 1970s and 80s, but it was the 90s when guitars in Hertfordshire were heard around the world. There was a lot happening in the UK in the summer of 1996: England hosted Euro 96, the Spice Girls made their debut, Dolly the sheep was cloned, and Oasis played two nights at Knebworth to 250,000 people.
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