It was July 1985 when the first pages were written in the domestic music festival history book. For two nights, on the 26th and 27th, more than 80,000 music lovers flooded the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, attending the historic Rock in Athens 85, the first major rock festival organised on Greek soil.
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Top moments from this maiden music event are revived through the "Rock in Athens Festival" exhibition organised at Terra Vibe in Malakasa, as part of the Rockwave Festival 2023.
The exhibition includes archival photographic and video material from those two hot nights that changed the domestic concert scene forever and laid the foundations for organising the major music festivals in our country in the following decades.
At a time when rock music almost monopolised the interest of the youth everywhere, the experience of enjoying up close, live and even on the same day, great artists of the rock scene, such as The Clash, Depeche Mode, The Cure, and Culture Club, seemed unique and unrepeatable.
And the Greek public experienced it, as it deserved, solemnly, with unprecedented passion and enthusiasm. There were, of course, some episodes created by a group of young people who wanted to invade the venue without a ticket, but the music, however, was the one that won.
And for the artists themselves, however, their appearance in the packed Kallimarmaro, in front of a passionate crowd, which had literally caught fire, was an unforgettable concert moment:
Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode recalls how the festival was an incredible experience with the biggest crowd they had ever played to at that point.
"Rock in Athens", organised in the framework of the events for the declaration of Athens as the first European Capital of Culture, had attracted the interest of the international press at the time, where great tributes were published to the first mass rock party of Athens.
Of course, it took more than ten years for the Greek public to experience a similar music festival experience, at Rock of Gods, which was organised on July 12, 13 and 14, in the Port of Piraeus. It was "reborn", one year later, in 1996 the Rockwave Festival, the longest running music festival in Greece.
"We are proud to be successors and continuers of the tradition started by Rock in Athens 1985 and we will remain faithful to this tradition and our shared values," says the organiser of the Rockwave Festival Nikos Loris.
"With pride and emotion, we are hosting at the Rockwave Festival the exhibition for the first Rock festival ever organised in Greece. So that the older ones can remember again and the younger ones can get to know," he added.
Nikos Loris.As part of the exhibition, the documentary by Iosif Vardakis "AKOE/AMFI: The History of a Revolution (*To sleep on his chest...)", the first Greek film that presented the history of the Gay Liberation Movement of Greece, will also be screened.
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