I, and 200,000 other fans, attended the California Jam at Ontario Motor Speedway on April 6,1974. It was a great festival, very well planned and executed. The fans were fairly well behaved, with few incidents. It helped that the acid was good and clean because there was a lot of it being freely offered up. And of course the entire speedway was covered with a huge cloud of marijuana smoke…even non-smokers couldn’t help but get stoned.
The line-up was incredible. Acts that performed at the festival in order of appearance:
Rare Earth
Earth, Wind and Fire
Eagles
Seals & Crofts
Black Oak Arkansas
Black Sabbath
Deep Purple
Emerson, Lake and Palmer
I thought Black Sabbath put on the best show followed closely by ELP. Deep Purple was also great, but they were not my preferred line-up with David Coverdale (Whitesnake , Coverdale and Page) having replaced Ian Gillian on lead vocals.
Needless to say, traffic (not the band) was a nightmare.