The first WOMAD Festival took place at The Royal Bath and West Showground, near Shepton Mallet, Somerset on 16-18 July 1982.
Peter performed twice across the weekend in the Showering Pavilion, firstly on the Friday night with a set billed as a “special festival set of non-album material” – ostensibly a preview of songs from the as yet unreleased album PG4 – and again on the Sunday with Peter Hammill, Shankar and Stewart Copeland for a short four-song set, that featured the debut performance of ‘Across The River’.
Other artists across the weekend included The Drummers of Burundi, The Beat, Prince Nico Mbarga, Tian Jin, Ekomé, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, Simple Minds and Echo and the Bunnymen.
The video above is the last song from Peter’s Friday night performance. Only recently rediscovered in the Real World archive and previously unseen in full, until now.
With Peter on stage are David Rhodes (guitar), Jerry Marotta (drums), Larry Fast (keyboards), Peter Hammill (guitar) and John Giblin (bass).
Fittingly, the performance featured as part of the WOMAD at Home programming across the weekend of 25-26 July 2020 where, in lieu of the real thing due to the global pandemic, the essence of the festival could be experienced online. The content remains available on the WOMAD website throughout summer 2020.