PARKS AND
RECREATION
ACCESS TALKS TO THE ROYAL PARKS ABOUT THE MILITARY
PRECISION AND NEGOTIATIONS BEHIND ITS EVENT STRATEGY
O
Words: Tom Hall
n 5 July 1969, the Rolling Stones played a now legendary free set in
Hyde Park, just two days after the death of founding member Brian
Jones. An estimated half a million people, including rock royalty Paul
McCartney and Keith Moon, gathered in London’s Grade I-listed green
space, where frontman Mick Jagger donned romance era attire to recite
two stanzas from Shelley’s poem Adonaïs, written as a meditation on
John Keats’s premature demise.
Once through with the reading, dedicated to Jones, the band released
several hundred cabbage white butterfl ies into the crowd, whose close
proximity to the – tiny by modern standards – stage would be much
maligned by today’s safety practioners.
Auspicious occasions such as this require a setting
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