TODAY sees the start of the sixth Isle of Wight Festival, even though the first was all the way back in 1968.

Although compared to other festivals this is just a handful, the Isle of Wight Festival can still boast of having had performances from some of the greatest musicians of the 20th century.

The 1968 Festival was a very small event which attracted 10,000 people. The only major act to perform was Jefferson Airplane. Arthur Brown, The Move, Plastic Penny, T-Rex, and The Mirage also performed although they were less well known at the time.

The 1969 festival, however, was a completely different affair. The headline act was Bob Dylan. The festival's promoter Ray Foulk managed to persuade Dylan to perform by showing him the natural beauty and literary history of the Island.

With Bob Dylan on board the event was clearly going to be huge, and it ended up spanning two days and attracting 150,000 people, including Keith Richards, Bill Wyman, Elton John and Pink Floyd.

The Festival's success, became its downfall.

The 1970 festival was a five-day event and included the last performance of Jimi Hendrix, who died a month afterwards. It attracted a ticket-buying crowd of 600,000, however a lot more people had gone to the festival without tickets. They managed to break down the perimeter fence leading to one million people causing havoc for police and festival staff.

This was the end of the Isle of Wight Festival as later that year an Isle of Wight Act was passed banning all future festivals.

This Act stayed until 2002, which saw the first Isle of Wight Festival for over 30 years. Over the last few years organisers of the event have been rebuilding the festival's reputation, ad can be seen from the calibre of this year's headline acts - Stereophonics, The Who and David Bowie.

LINE-UP:

FRIDAY, JUNE 11

Headlining the first day of the festival are be Stereophonics. The Welsh trio have released four albums, Word Gets Around, Performance And Cocktails, Just Enough Education To Perform, and their latest You Gotta Go There To Come Back. Each album has helped the band to gain increasing recognition from the public and critics alike.

Even though this will be the first time Stereophonics will be performing at the Isle of Wight Festival, they are no strangers to being on stage at music festivals having previously headlined at Glastonbury, V2002 and Slane Castle.

Supporting Stereophonics on Friday will be Groove Armada, Super Furry Animals, 22-20s and The Duke Spirit.

SATURDAY, JUNE 12

Legendary band The Who will be headlining the festival on Saturday. This will be the second time they have performed at the event, the first time being in 1970, where they shared the stage with among others Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Free and The Moody Blues. Their set lasted for three hours, at the end of which Pete Townshend and Keith Moon famously destroyed their instruments.

At this year's event The Who will be on stage for two hours. Supporting them will be Manic Street Preachers, Jet, The Stands, Electric Soft Parade, British Sea Power, Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, Proud Mary and The Leah Wood Group.

SUNDAY, JUNE 13

David Bowie will be headlining the last day of the festival. An outstanding performer, David Bowie is noted for his changing characters and fashions, having been Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and The Thin White Duke. Bowie's appearance is even more striking due to having one blue and one green eye, caused after being stabbed in the eye by a compass during a playground incident. Bowie had his first hit back in 1969 and has continued to enjoy chart success into the 21st century.

Among his long string of hits are Space Oddity, Ashes to Ashes, Under Pressure, Let's Dance, Dancing in the Street and Thursday's Child.

Supporting Bowie on Sunday will be The Charlatans, The Libertines, Snow Patrol, Southampton band Delays, Suzanne Vega and Countermine.

Today until Sunday, Seaclose Park, Newport, Isle of Wight. For more information, visit: www.isleofwightfestival.org