Concert in the Park – A Peaceful Riot
This double album is still sealed.
The story goes…
Johannesburg, 1985. In a helicopter flying back from Bophuthatswana, music producer Hilton Rosenthal saw Ellis Park below. He leaned over and told his companion, 702 boss Issy Kirsch, that he had been listening the previous Saturday to a 702 telethon raising money for a local charity and wanted to do something similar – only much bigger. The stadium below, he believed, would be an ideal venue.
As luck would have it, Kirsch was a friend of Ellis Park supremo Louis Luyt, and said he would give him a call. In a matter of hours, Kirsch called Rosenthal to say that Luyt had agreed to donate the stadium free of charge, and that it was time to get to work.
Rosenthal did just that, in the space of a few days getting 22 of the country’s biggest bands, across all races and genres– a singular feat during the height of apartheid. All artists, as well as the sound engineers, lighting technicians and everybody else necessary for such a concert, agreed to offer their services mahala – all in the name of raising funds for the local NGO Operation Hunger.
“We had relatively modest expectations,” remembers Rosenthal. “In my mind, a number around 30 000 would’ve been a fantastic success.”
Incredibly, on that Saturday, 12 January, 1985, it turned out to be almost four times as many. An unprecedented number of people flocked to the stadium in downtown Jozi. There were moments that threatened to turn ugly. “I got a call for help from one of the security people on the side of the stadium,” says Rosenthal. “I came running out and saw this huge crowd outside the gate. People were streaming through the turnstiles with their tickets. The crowd was so large that at one point the gate was lifted off its hinges, and people just poured in. I was praying that no one was going to get hurt.
“Thankfully it turned out pretty well. We sold somewhere around 100,000 tickets, but I think the final number was 125,000 people at the concert!”
For 12 magical hours, there was no apartheid. “I think the whole of South Africa at that time feared the potential of violence. The whole of Ellis Park was absolutely jam-packed, with white and black. And everybody grooved. There wasn’t one incident. It was brilliant,” remembers producer Malcolm Watson.
22 bands took to the stage that day, beginning with Pretoria rockers Petit Cheval, pop crooner Neville Nash, and Mara Louw, who covered “Motla Le Pula” in lieu of the exiled Hugh Masekela. More slick pop acts followed in quick succession: Supafrika, the Stimela-backed Street Kids, coloured funk sensations The Rockets, Blondie Makhene, doing his gospel-soul routine, and a riveting performance by a wheel-chair bound Margeret Singana.
The concert reached a climax with Juluka, the only mixed race band on the day. “Johnny Clegg showed us that day why he was world class,” remembers Alex Jay, the MC on the day. “He was just a man on his volcano. He was spectacular,” It was to be one of Juluka’s final performances. The band split up later that year when Mchunu returned to rural Kwazulu Natal, and Clegg went on to form Savuka.
Note:
This double gatefold LP release of the concert (still sealed) was produced soon after the concert, featuring images of all artists that participated in the charity concert on the inside, together with their songs. Since the concert in 1985, this double LP has been the only available chronicle of that day. A VHS of the concert was only made available to a handful of industry insiders.
The cover photo was taken by Herman Potgieter, one of the world's top three aviation photographers in the 1990s. His aerial photographs of South Africa’s Air Force planes are legendary. Herman was tragically killed in an air crash on the 13th of February 1998, in Kenya, while on a photography shoot. He was 53. In appreciation of Herman’s efforts to record the history of South Africa’s Air Force, the IPMS South Africa Website has been dedicated to his memory since 1998.
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