Access All Areas June 2018 | Page 29

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 29