It’s early March, and that means one thing for me and thousands of other live music fans – it’s time to kick off festie season with the award-winning Legends Of Rock. It’s my eleventh year experiencing 50 bands over four days in the Vauxhall Holiday Park, and what happens in Great Yarmouth stays in Great Yarmouth.
Legends Of Rock 2023, Great Yarmouth
Words: Sara Harding
Photography: Sally Newhouse
Lovingly crafted by rock fans for rock fans, Legends is the brainchild of the Yates family – affectionally known as The Bastards. Legends of Rock is an indoor festival spread over a stunning holiday park resort where you can grab a designer coffee, have a game of mini golf, go for a swim, enjoy nature, or have a cracking roast in their onsite restaurants.
It really is the only festival where the bands and fans all hang out and party together, whether it’s at the two awesome gig venues onsite or in our caravans which are now very posh lodges. We’ve welcome several rock stars to our super lodge for bacon sandwiches, cheese parties, curry nights and a cocktail or ten.
The line-up always consists of the best of emerging British rock, where we’ve witnessed bands like Collateral, These Wicked Rivers, and Blind River make their Legends debuts.
Then there are the world’s greatest tribute bands. If you haven’t seen Canadian Danny Deane’s Aerosmith, you need to, plus the mega jams run by some seriously talented musicians that take us way into the wee hours.
Bearing that in mind, I like to be up and in the onsite swimming pool at 10 am for a cheeky water slide and to see my old rocker mates in their budgie smugglers. It isn’t exactly Baywatch, but it’s certainly a laugh …… errr. Where’s the eye bleach?
Thursday afternoon, and there is already a huge queue of fans waiting for the shenanigans to begin. As we wait to enter this sold-out event, headliner Davy K looks at the huge crowd and me and says, “holy shit, we are going to have to step up our game.”
The first band to kick off Thursday’s entertainment are Twisted System, made up of lifelong Twisted Sister fans, who deliver us bad make-up with stand-out anthems of our teenage years. Up next, and very classy, are the suited and booted Kinks Experience, who takes us through the band’s incredible back catalogue.
I’ve worked with the real KISS many times and have the X-rated tales to boot. So I was very keen to see the Detroit rockers’ tribute act, and boy did they deliver. Formed in 2003, Hotter Than Hell, in their 7-inch platforms, iconic make-up and costumes, lead us on the ultimate KISS journey – with big tongues, big hair, all the cliches and cracking musicianship.
To end tonight’s superb line-up are the stand-out band of last year’s Legends – Irish power trio, The Davy K Project. The bearded top-bunned Davy and his dudes entertain us with their heavy blues originals with a couple of covers celebrating Rory Gallagher.
This band were absolutely worthy of their headline slot and are one of the greatest live bands we’ve seen in recent years.
Keep up to date with our Legends Of Rock 2023 coverage by using this link: https://www.metaltalk.net/tag/legends-of-rock-2023
You can find a nice selection of film from the event by PunkRockSal on YouTube.
Love this first day’s coverage, Sara!!