Elizabeth Taylor (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a British-American actress, businesswoman and humanitarian. She began as a child actress in the early 1940s, and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. She continued her career successfully into the 1960s, and remained a well-known public figure for the rest of her life. The American Film Institute named her the seventh greatest female screen legend in 1999. Taylor had her breakthrough role in National Velvet (1944), becoming one of the studio’s most popular teenage stars. She made the transition to adult roles in the early 1950s and began receiving better roles in the mid-1950s, beginning with the epic drama Giant (1956). She won two Academy Awards for Best Actress. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, dubbed “Liz and Dick” by the media, starred in eleven films together. In the 1980s, she acted in her first substantial stage roles and in several television films and series, and became the first celebrity to launch a perfume brand. Taylor was also one of the first celebrities to take part in HIV/AIDS activism. From the early 1990s until her death, she dedicated her time to philanthropy. She received several accolades for it, including the Presidential Citizens Medal. (More from Wikipedia)
In 1969, Mick Farren “liberated” the earliest large-scale rock concert in the U.K., the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival by encouraging the fences to be torn down. This concert – which took place the month after Woodstock (and with many of the same acts) – featured the Who, the Band, Free, Joe Cocker, and the Moody Blues. But the real excitement was caused by the inclusion on the bill of Bob Dylan, who had been little seen since his near-fatal motorcycle accident in July 1966. When Dylan took the stage, audience members included three of the Beatles, three of the Beatle wives, three of the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Liz Taylor, Richard Burton, Jane Fonda, Roger Vadim, Syd Barrett, and Elton John.
One of the main reasons for the location of the original Woodstock was to lure Bob Dylan out of hiding – the idea was to throw a huge party practically on his doorstep that surely he couldn’t resist attending. Woodstock is the name of the town where Dylan lived (and also members of the Band); the festival itself was in Bethel. But resist he did; Bob Dylan instead signed up to appear at the Isle of Wight Festival and set sail for England on August 15, 1969, the day that Woodstock opened.
Bandmembers in the Primitives at this point were Jay Roberts (lead vocals), Geoff Eaton (lead guitar), John E. Soul (rhythm guitar and harmonica), Roger James (bass guitar), and Mike Wilding (drums) – the latter gentleman is the son of Elizabeth Taylor and British actor Michael Wilding.
(May 2015)
