Atlanta International Pop Festival

The first Atlanta International Pop Festival was a rock festival held at the Atlanta International Raceway in Hampton, Georgia, twenty miles south of Atlanta, on the July Fourth (Friday) weekend, 1969, more than a month before Woodstock.^[1][2][3][4] Crowd estimates ranged from the high tens of thousands to as high as 150,000,^[5] with few problems reported other than those related to the hot weather.

The second Atlanta International Pop Festival was held in a soybean field adjacent to the Middle Georgia Raceway in Byron, Georgia, south of Macon, from July 3–5, 1970, although it did not finish until after dawn on the 6th.^[6] As in 1969, high temperatures were an issue, and nudity and drug use were widespread. The festival became a free event after promoters opened the gates when crowds outside threatened to overwhelm security and eventual estimates of the crowd ranged between 150,000 and 600,000. The festival saw rock icon Jimi Hendrix perform before his largest American audience ever and featured the up-and-coming Macon-based Allman Brothers Band.^[7]

The 1970 festival would end up being the final Atlanta International Pop Festival, with Georgia authorities passing legislation to make it more difficult for anyone to organize another such rock festival in the state. It remains one of the largest public gatherings in Georgia history and one of the largest music festivals of its era. Recordings of some of the performances have been released by some of the performers involved (e.g. Hendrix and the Allmans) and seven songs were included on the 1971 album The First Great Rock Festivals of the Seventies: Isle Of Wight / Atlanta Pop Festival.^[6]