Everybody will know legendary rock festivals such as Monterrey Pop, Isle of Wight, Woodstock and Live Aid. However, most of these festivals took place once only while others vanished after a few editions. The Dutch Pinkpop festival is the sole annual event that still exists. The first Pinkpop festival took place in 1970 and this year’s 42st edition was being held last June.

Pinkpop 1970 took place in Geleen, nearby Maastricht, and attracted 10,000 visitors. Today, this three-day event draws around 50,000 music fans every day. The past 42 years around 1,950,000 have visited Pinkpop and during these years the festival was sold out 22 times.

It was during the mid 70s that the annual music festival became famous. Due to their live performances at Pinkpop, many bands gained worldwide attention and several of them became world-famous rock acts. Some of these groups include: The Police, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Dire Straits, U2, REM, Sinead O’Connor, Lenny Kravitz, ZZ Top, Van Halen and UB40.

One of the most legendary and sold-out editions took place in 1979. Never having played live for such a large (50,000) audience, the three extremely nervous musicians of The Police with their catchy reggae pop sound gave a brilliant performance. After the gig the whole band, Sting and Andy Summers still wearing their guitar, jumped in the outdoor swimming pool backstage. Sting admitted later that their Pinkpop performance established the band’s international breakthrough. Another new group known as Dire Straits played a terrific set as well.

The headliner of the 1979 edition was the Jamaican reggae star, Peter Tosh. His single "Don’t Look Back", a duet with Mick Jagger reached the first place of many international charts. The singer of the Rolling Stones visited the festival and it was expected that he would join Tosh on stage during the performance of the hit. When Peter Tosh and his band started playing the song thousands of people began to cheer. It was all in vain as an agitated Jagger was too drunk and therefore refused to sing the duet.

In 1988 Pinkpop moved from Geleen to Landgraaf, a small town near the city of Heerlen. During this time the first official Pinkpop Festival Shirts, printed by Thanx.nl, were available at the event. These cool festival t-shirts became very popular with visitors. Today, Pinkpop is a three-day festival attracting around 60,000 young and old music fans coming from every corner of Europe.

Unthinkable regarding the first 15 editions of the festival, the past decade world-famous acts such as Metallica, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Coldplay, Foo Fighters, Elvis Costello, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Arctic Monkeys and Green Day all performed live at this legendary festival.