Amaya Toman In early September 1982, Us Festival took place in sunny California – a unique and unusual celebration of music and technology. Among other things, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak also performed at the festival, who at the time was taking a medical break after a plane crash in 1981. The cost of the entire spectacular event was eight million dollars, and there was no shortage of truly spectacular musical performances.
The aforementioned plane crash was apparently a major milestone for Wozniak. Instead of trying to get back to his work for Apple as soon as possible, Woz decided to pursue a series of diametrically opposed activities. Under the pseudonym "Rocky Racoon Clarke", he even attended engineering courses at the University of California, Berkeley.
If your personal fortune is - like Steve Wozniak's back then - a respectable $116 million, you can easily afford to organize your own generous version of Woodstock. The letters "Us" in the name of the festival had nothing to do with the United States. It was supposed to describe togetherness and reciprocity, which was supposed to be one of the main ideas of the entire event. The motto of the festival, to which the name also referred, was "Unite Us in Song". "Us" was also meant to mark the beginning of a new era and the end of the "Me" decade of the seventies. The transition from "I" to "We" had another important meaning for Wozniak - the night before the festival opened, a child was born with the co-founder of Apple.
Wozniak invited the legendary rock star promoter Bill Graham to help organize the festival, after whom, by the way, the audiotrium in San Francisco, where more than one Apple conference took place, is named. Graham did not hesitate to secure famous names for Wozniak's festival, such as the Grateful Dead, The Ramones, The Kinks or Fleetwood Mac.
It could be interest you
But the artists did not hesitate to talk about the truly generous fees. Carlos Harvey, who was in charge of inspecting the festival, later recalled the huge sums that literally flew through the air: "It was much more money than anyone had ever paid these bands," he said. When it came to artist selection, Graham tried to keep Wozniak in check. But it still managed to push progressive country singer Jerry Jeff Walker.
In order to get the Us Festival as close as possible to the legendary Woodstock, Wozniak decided that instead of the stadium, it would be held in the five hundred acre Glen Helen Regional Park in Devore, California.
The three-day Us Festival was supposed to be "a celebration of contemporary music and technology". Robert Moog presented the capabilities of his famous synthesizer on it, and the audience was treated to a spectacular multimedia light show. A giant hot air balloon with the Apple logo floated above the main stage, but Steve Jobs did not attend the event.
Steve Wozniak described his festival as a massive success, despite the fact that he sunk a huge amount of money into it irretrievably. A large number of non-paying spectators attended the festival - some used forged tickets, others simply climbed over the barrier. But that didn't deter Woz from organizing the second year the next year - it recorded a loss of $13 million and Wozniak finally decided to stop organizing festivals.
