Richard Burton (10 November 1925 – 5 August 1984) was a Welsh stage and cinema actor noted for his mellifluous baritone voice and his great acting talent. Burton was nominated seven times for an Academy Award without ever winning. He was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. In the mid-1960’s Burton ascended into the ranks of the top box office stars, and by the late 1960’s was one of the highest-paid actors in the world, receiving fees of $1 million or more plus a share of the gross receipts. Burton remains closely associated in the public consciousness with his second wife, actress Elizabeth Taylor. The couple’s turbulent relationship was rarely out of the news. (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.
