A festival in Hyde Park, London (25-27 June 2010)

Hard Rock Cafe restaurants and live events company Live Nation organise Hard Rock Calling, a festival that takes place in Hyde Park every summer. The first Hard Rock Cafe opened near that park in the early 1970s (143 have opened worldwide since), and it is easy to guess that a restaurant that hangs electric guitars on its walls wanted to be part of the legend in the park that has seen many a rock-history highlight since one Jethro Tull’s concert in 1968. The first Hard Rock Calling festival kicked off on 1 July 2006 with a concert by Roger Waters and drummer Nick Mason playing every track on Pink Floyd’s cult album The Dark Side of the Moon. The Who, a band that was just as big in England in the 1960s, was on the programme for the next day. Rock’s guardian angels still get the limelight at this festival, which has slowly but surely also been branching out with a more trendsetting slant as its audience has grown. In 2009, the festival ran for three days (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) and The Killers were the name in big letters, alongside Neil Young, who asked Paul McCartney to join him onstage for a Beatles song cover (John Lennon’s A Day in the Life). Paul McCartney was back in 2010 along with Stevie Wonder and Crosby, Stills & Nash. The Born HIV Free YouTube channel broadcast his concert live on Sunday 27 June as part of this singer’s efforts to fight AIDS.