They met three months before the Holland Pop Festival: Georges Knap and Berry Visser. In three months they went from scratch to a legendary festival. Fifty years ago, history was written in the Kralingse Bos in Rotterdam on June 26, 27 and 28.
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The Holland Pop Festival was the first multi-day open-air music festival on mainland Europe. About 100,000 visitors came to Kralingen. Big names like Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, Santana and Dr. John the Nightripper were on stage in the Kralingse Bos.
Georges Knap had the idea in 1970 to organize a pop festival in Rotterdam as part of the manifestation C70. With that event – 25 years of liberation – the reconstruction of Rotterdam was celebrated. Knap was at that time a representative of the Rotterdam firm Stokvis.
Berry Visser should program the bands. Visser remembers his first meeting with representative Knap well: “His appearance upset me.” Visser originally came from the cabaret world and had discovered pop music through a disco in Delft. Fifty years later, the two men sit together at the table to look back.
Kralingen Pop, as the festival is also known, was perhaps the beginning of Dutch tolerance policy. There was plenty of blowing and the police turned a blind eye. “There was no discreet word in Kralingen,” said Visser.
For organizers George Knap and Berry Visser, the festival was a great musical success, but a financial one. The foundation that organized the Holland Pop Festival went bankrupt.
This was partly because a large part of the visitors did not pay. For many it was not difficult to enter the festival site without a ticket. But the atmosphere was good and most people who were there are still talking about it.
It was a festival like the Netherlands had never experienced before: the music, the atmosphere and the location contributed to this. Visser remembers that Knap showed him the possible locations for the festival.
The first was the Island of Brienenoord. Both men immediately rejected that. Visser: “Then he drove me to the Kralingse Bos. I was flabbergasted. Unimaginable. That place is one of the reasons it has become so legendary. ”
Holland Pop on TV Rijnmond
The talk show in which Visser and Knap look back is a collaboration between Rijnmond and Galerie and Erfgoedlab Dig It Up. Parts of the program can be seen on Saturday in a special broadcast on TV Rijnmond on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Holland Pop Festival.
The program ‘Freedom, happiness: 50 years of Holland Pop’ can be seen on TV Rijnmond on Saturday at 5 p.m. Then there is a repetition every hour.
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