[2] Pacific Presentations, a Los Angeles–based concert company headed by Sepp Donahower and Gary Perkins, coordinated the event, booked all the musical talent and ran the advertising campaign.

Purple left the concert area by helicopter to avoid a possible confrontation with Ontario fire marshals and ABC-TV executives.

During the prolonged delay waiting for Deep Purple to hit the stage, restless concert goers began tossing their water jugs in the air.

For the Eagles' set, Jackson Browne was deputized for absent guitarist Don Felder, whose wife was giving birth to their first child.

[6] Circus reported that Emerson, Lake & Palmer were "angry with the Deep Purple boys, who refused to come onstage until darkness fell.

Tycobrahe Sound Company combined the touring systems of Purple, Black Oak Arkansas, Black Sabbath, Earth Wind and Fire, and Rare Earth (each manufactured by Tycobrahe),[citation needed] plus 16 feet (4.9 m) bass horns from Phoenix Sound and a complete array of folded bass horns from Flag Systems.

Circus commented on "two 50 feet high speaker towers" that transmitted Black Oak Arkansas singer Jim Dandy's "hot and nasty growl to swarms of people spread clear across the speedway".

[citation needed] Unlike other rock festivals such as Woodstock, the concert was not planned for release as a film or sound recording.

Deep Purple's California Jam performance was the first full-length music concert recording to be released and sold on video tape in the early 1980s.

[citation needed] His web site was shut down after he tried selling his unauthorized products without creative approval from the artists involved and the producers of the festival.