California Jam

California Jam
California Jam 1974
Genre	Hard rock, progressive rock, heavy metal
Dates	April 6, 1974
Location(s)	Ontario, California, USA
Founded by	ABC Entertainment, Sandy Feldman and Leonard Stogel
Attendance	250,000 (tickets sold)

California Jam (also known as Cal Jam) was a rock music festival co-headlined by Deep Purple and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, held at the Ontario Motor Speedway in Ontario, California, on April 6, 1974. It was produced by ABC Entertainment, Sandy Feldman and Leonard Stogel.Pacific Presentations, a Los Angeles-based concert company headed by Sepp Donahower and Gary Perkins, coordinated the event, booked all the talent and ran the advertising. Don Branker worked for Leonard Stogel and was responsible for concert site facilitation, toilets, fencing and medical. It attracted 300,000-400,000 paying fans. The festival set what were then records for the loudest amplification system ever installed, the highest paid attendance, and highest gross in history. It was the last of the original wave of rock festivals, as well as one of the most well-executed and financially successful, and presaged the era of media consolidation and the corporatization of the rock music industry.

Acts that performed at the festival in order of appearance:

Deep Purple's performance was one of the first with their third line-up, which included the vocalist David Coverdale and the vocalist/bassist Glenn Hughes. Deep Purple was given the choice of when to go on stage, and chose to go on during sunset, thus pushing Emerson, Lake & Palmer to the last performance. Assuming that, as with all festivals, the show would run late anyway, they stalled when the festival was actually ahead of schedule. Angry organizers tried to force the band to go on and then threatened to cancel their performance but a quick thinking announcer told the crowds that Deep Purple would be coming on. The band made everyone wait nearly an hour until near dusk before they went on stage. In spite of this, the show did not end up running late. At the end of the show, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore threw a number of guitars, amplifier and speaker cabinets out into the audience and attacked one of the network's video cameras (which had been getting between him and the audience) with a guitar. Later on, a mishap with a pyrotechnic effect caused one of Blackmore's amplifiers to explode, which briefly set the stage on fire. The group had to leave the concert by helicopter to avoid a possibly ugly confrontation with furious fire marshals and ABC-TV executives (and potential arrest for the pyrotechnics). The damage to the camera was estimated to be $10,000, later settled by the managers.