California Jam Festival

Lore & Background

The Eagles took the stage at the California Jam as part of a lineup that included Rare Earth, Earth, Wind & Fire, Seals and Crofts, Black Oak Arkansas, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. The event was MC'd by New York DJ Don Imus. The festival was produced by ABC Entertainment, Sandy Feldman and Leonard Stogel, and coordinated by Pacific Presentations. The weather on the day of the concert was unusually warm for April, and at one point thousands of plastic gallon jugs were handed out to the audience, who filled them at drinking fountains set up on the grounds.

Reader's Guide

The California Jam is widely analyzed as one of the most well-executed and financially successful rock festivals of its era, presaging the era of media consolidation and the corporatization of the rock music industry. The festival set records for the largest paid attendance at such an event—Circus reported 'more than 175,000 paid admissions' at $10 in advance or $15 at the gate—and for the largest concert sound system ever assembled, totaling 54,000 watts RMS. The Eagles' performance was part of a lineup that also included Deep Purple, whose performance was one of the first with their third line-up featuring vocalist David Coverdale and vocalist/bassist Glenn Hughes. The festival was broadcast on TV and radio nationwide in the US, and Deep Purple's California Jam performance was the first full-length music concert recording to be released and sold on video tape in the early 1980s.

Did You Know?

• The sound system was the largest ever assembled at the time, totaling 54,000 watts RMS, with two 50-foot-high speaker towers.
• The Goodyear blimp hovering overhead was a first for a music festival.