There’s been talk for the past few years now about the long-term future of the music festival; certainly within the UK. Such talk has been prompted by prevailing recessionary gloom and the collapse of several key events on the annual festival calendar.
The last feverish burst of debate was in September off the back of a rocky summer which saw over 30 festivals cancelled owing, largely, to financial difficulties. But that debate is already back in full swing with the news, last week, that Big Chill will not be taking place this year.
“I looked long and hard late last year at moving the date so it didn’t clash with the Olympics but the mix of the festival fans’ desire to keep the date and an inability to find an alternative date that works I plumped for maintaining the existing weekend” read an official statement from Melvin Benn, Managing Director of Big Chill promoter Festival Republic. “Sadly, the artist availability and confirmations we were achieving led me to conclude that I couldn’t risk going ahead with the event as an outdoor event this year.”
Benn might well have laid his problems – very firmly - at the door of London 2012, calendar clashes and busy artist schedules but there remains some suspicion within the music community of there being other factors play. Certainly Benn’s reference to ‘risk’ suggests that if scheduling is the main issue then the strength of the operation is not so much in the current financial climate that it can afford to promote as freely as it has done before.
It’s also worth pointing out that in 2009, Chillfest Limited, the company responsible for running the event since 2003, was placed into voluntary liquidation by its owners, at which point the rights to the brand were purchased by Festival Republic. Big Chill is not, on recent form, the easiest gig.
Of course Benn has stressed that Big Chill will still appear this year, in the form of a smaller-scale indoor party. And the plan is very much to have Big Chill back outdoors in the Malvern Hills of Herefordshire for 2013. Is Daily Mail talk of festivals being “dead” therefore overblown?
“Absolutely, it’s nonsense” comments Alex Lowes, whose Newcastle-based Up North Promotions enterprise looks after everything from the iconic Southport Weekender – celebrating its 25th anniversary this May – to Croatia’s upwardly mobile SUNceBEAT festival, with a slew of European club events in between.
Lowes continues: “Look, the British press can be notoriously negative can’t it? They’ll look for problems rather than at the positive resolution of those problems. I mean, I’m in Australia at the moment and they’ve got awful flooding here but rather than the media criticise local authorities or whatever, they’re praising the rescue efforts and the rebuilding efforts. It’s a mentality thing.”
The festival scene is, Lowes urges, a matter of perspective. “I can talk largely about my own experiences” he offers. “Southport sold out months ago and that was before we even announced a line-up. In Croatia our numbers are up on last year; music lovers are still talking with their feet, thank god.”
But it isn’t all plain sailing. Up North is having to work harder and longer for its results, and Lowes admits to taking more care with the presentation of something like Southport.
“A festival or live event organiser can’t be complacent these days” he says. “Loyalty isn’t what it used to be. These days, you really are only as good as your last event. The economy is a factor, because people are now weighing up the combination of holidays and festivals they spend on each year; invariably it’s less festivals. They have to pick and choose; and where they are more selective and pick only one festival to attend their expectations are completely unreal.”
It’s a point legendary Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis has picked up on before now. Following last year’s festival he famously told media: “People have seen it all before with festivals. They want something else.” He went on to recommend his event’s expiry in “three or four years.”
Like Big Chill, Glastonbury is not on this summer. And again the issue seems to be the Olympics; in this case, its drain on police and Portaloo resources in the UK. Crucially, there are none left for Eavis, who has looked elsewhere but encountered vastly prohibitive costs; which brings us back to the general feeling that running festivals is a tough old game in the 21st century.
Eavis rightly claims that the pull of an event like Glastonbury is a saving grace where artists’ fees are concerned; most like to play a big event like Glasto and are happy to soften booking costs. Fees do remain a concern for many others.
“Everything goes up” Lowes reflects. “But that’s life. You have to get on with it. Things like regulation and security have also rocketed in cost. I mean these days the cost to follow a local council’s health and safety plan is bloody astronomical but there’s nowt you can do. You can’t moan, you just have to plan harder and think outside the box.”
One of Lowes’ first jobs was, in actual fact, emergency local council planning. His knowledge of regulatory processes has, undoubtedly, eased his passage as festival promoter but there’s still so much else to consider.
“A lot of my peers are thinking outside of the box now” he points out. “They’re bringing in other acts, and entertainment, other catering and entertainment facilities, to make their event different and more standout. It’s entirely do-able. Kasabian were on my plane to Oz last week and we got on like a house on fire; here’s an indie band and one of their members used to DJ in Philadelphia with Jazzy Jeff and they’re all there feeling soul music and people like Jill Scott. We were talking for hours – it really struck me; musical styles are merging and, in turn, broadening. Promoters need to consider that trend as they move forwards, if they’re to stay afloat and justify rising ticket prices.”
Indeed, ticket prices have soared in recent years but, according to Benn last September, there’s little that can be done: “It can’t be helped. There's no point wishing or pretending that there’s any other way around it. There isn’t a lot of fat for the promoter. We're in a cycle where, of course, we’d all love to cut the prices, but the reality is that there’s no fat to cut. If there was, we’d be doing it.”
And so the onus is on trying to provide maximum value for the admission price. The aforementioned fusion of musical interests, catalysed by everything from an increasingly open-minded Ibiza season to the relentless spread of download culture, has helped, giving clubland – nay, the wider music scene – a welcome kick up the backside in terms of bringing in new, paying fans.
Increasingly so, young, experimenting, genre-straddling acts such as Katy B, Tinie Tempah, Jamie Woon and Metronomy are appealing as much to rock audiences as they do dance ones – acts like these would fit in just as comfortably at Reading or Leeds, as they would at ‘boutique’ affairs Bestival or Field Day. They’re shaking things up in a truly positive way.
Much has been made of the UK festival landscape becoming too crowded in recent years; promoters capitalising on a surge of interest in festivals four or five years ago by creating a myriad of new events, big and small. Harsh economic realities are now halting that growth, and necessitating that only the most creative and disciplined of organisers will survive.
“Some of the big guys are still doing a tidy job” Lowes asserts. “Coachella and Glastonbury have diversified and widened their appeal over the years, and they’re engaging with social networking and similar channels to solidify their position – as am I! But then smaller events like Camp Bestival are also thinking outside the box to boost their appeal. It is survival of the fittest but then there remains a lot of fit promoters!”
And when all is said and done revellers still want to party, whatever happens. “There are challenges but the festival scene is alive and things are moving on” Lowes concludes. “A lot of people are telling me that they’re going to drive to SUNceBEAT this July to save on flight prices; it’s a 25-hour drive from England but that’s dedication for you. Times are difficult but people still want to escape and enjoy themselves; with a reality like that the festival scene is far from finished mate.”
Words: Ben Lovett
Visit www.southportweekender.co.uk for more on Southport’s 25th (May 11-13) and www.suncebeat.com for info on SUNceBEAT (July 27-29).
