CHAPTER 21

1992 - Build a Better Mousetrap 

 

Ticket price $42+fees in advance.
Attendance: 9,700.

1991 was the year of ‘the recession we had to have’. Youth unemployment was over 25%. A home loan, if you could get one, was around 18% per-annum. The Alan Bond and Christopher Skase media empires collapsed. Australia, more or less, ground to a halt financially. In general, it was tough times. Optimism was in short supply.

At that time Vivian & I still worked out of our respective homes. We had an office area in each city & an assistant. Kate Stewart worked with me, I never used the term for, and financially at least all was going well. Working out of home was a combination of cost & efficiency. We needed to be available from 7 am up until 3 am to allow for all the international time differences. If you never wanted to miss that call you either had to work stupid hours or simply work out of home. It didn’t matter if I got a call at 4 am, my adrenalin kicked in and answered like I was at the office. I wanted agents and managers to know they could call at any time, and I might also call them at any time. 

People who worked from an office usually ended up with alcohol and drug problems due to their lifestyle. However, working from home can do that as well but at least the bed isn’t far away.

As for me, the office was home, home was bed.

The Big Day Out was born from having the right things happen at the right time and in the right order. I had wanted to attempt a festival again since producing the Victorian Government funded 88 Melbourne Music Show, partly to demonstrate to the ‘real promoters’ in Melbourne what I had wanted to do in the first place and secondly that its time had come. Then when Lollapalooza was about to happen in the US I realised time was against me.

Rock festivals, at least in Australia, before the Big Day Out were all about being in the country, drinking beer & getting stoned. Normally it was a campout and facilities were shit, the production was shit & if it rained it was a mudfest. I hated that whole hippy bullshit concept. I wanted urban mayhem but with good drainage, toilets & production. I wanted people to learn about music, go as hard as they wanted & be able to get home safely at the end of the night. 

I needed to create a blueprint for the task. If you’ve read the previous chapters there were a lot of learning curves. Some good, some bad. 

I had a priority list. I will try to keep it brief.

What I felt the show needed

A venue that was inner city, had the chance to grow, Licensed, but also allowed all ages, plus good toilets, minimum corporate signage, close to public transport, reasonable sound restrictions, lots of parking, couldn't be cancelled due to weather and wanted to do a deal.

Thus, the Sydney showgrounds. It already had the Hordern Pavilion and much more to offer.

Then to what the event needed

The right combination of acts with at least two international bands, all alternative, from different genres and ages that bring their own fans. 

Pay invited artists well. The minimum fee is $500 then set increments to simplify deals.

Artists and crews to get 1 guest each. 

At least two stages so there was always something to see.

Skating via John Fox to keep the audience's senses charged.

Great production, where acts weren’t restricted on lighting, sound or stage space. 

On the food front - alternatives to the normal fried everything food that was traditionally available by involving restaurants, especially vegetarian.

Security to be audience-friendly with dedicated pit security.

Carnival rides to add energy.

Event merch to help with income and branding plus allow all bands to sell merchandise as well.

Would run from early afternoon until 11 pm.

Then when it came to marketing….

Come up with a name other than my working title “Kenfest”.

Artwork by Richard Allan from Mambo that spoke to the scene.

Go on sale 10 weeks out with only the two main acts plus announce skating. Then keep adding acts and other attractions to create the media momentum.

Make sure the scene, not the industry was behind it. Especially Double J, The Drum (street press) and Mambo, just for the association.

Set the ticket price as low as possible based on the estimated budget and attendance. To motivate presales there would be two ticket prices ($42  plus fees in advance, $50 on the door if available). I needed to sell out to cover.

Independent record stores for the bulk of the ticket sales, especially as we needed the cash flow.

That was pretty much it.

January was historically our most successful month as it’s the school holidays and midsummer. 

Luckily the Violent Femmes were available and trusted me, so we secured them for an extensive tour starting mid-January 1992, I now had my first major drawcard for my show. The Femmes could easily fill the Hordern at that time but as a fragile three-piece, it seemed more logical to make the show into a multi-band bill, more or less a mini-festival.

As Vivian was in Melbourne, he was confused but trusted me & off I went. At that time the independent scene was growing but fracturing simultaneously. Substructures & titles were happening such as Goth, Techno, Hip Hop, Grunge, Indie Pop, Hardcore and many more, creating scenes that weren’t crossing over. I wanted to bring as many of them as possible onto one show to let the mainstream know that the indie scene had come of age.

At this stage, I didn’t have a name for the damn thing. A few weeks out from the artwork deadline it was still known as “Kenfest”, and I was not getting any closer to a solution. It wasn’t going to be a festival, it had to be seen as an event. 

I asked Richard to make the poster design and added Mambo, Double J and Drum Media as presenters. Ironically, I also rang the Festival of Sydney to be part of it since it was at the same time, with the result that I had to pay $120 to be included, but not part of the FOS but as an Umbrella event. We were listed in their program with local markets and flower gardens.

Eventually of course I decided on the Big Day Out. However, I’m still not sure whether I just went with a common term or did I take it from the Wonderstuffs’ UK Big Day Out festival held in June 91? I even produced their Australian tour in November 91, when the Big Day Out was already on sale, but it is still a mystery to me. In the end, it doesn’t really matter.

The name came about partly from all the pitching I had made to bands and trying to explain to them what I was trying to do. The common concern was that Australian audiences tended to ignore the opening local acts & not turn up until the headline international. Sadly, they were right, and I needed to convince the audience that they had paid for the whole day, so they should come early..... thus, The Big Day Out was born. The first posters still have ‘aka Kenfest’ on the poster.  Richard Allan tended to present finished artwork. It was pre-computer graphics, handmade and nothing could be changed. There were two spelling mistakes and he provided the event with a six-legged mascot. I was blown away. He had previously created the Mambo farting dog.

On the first day of sales with the Violent Femmes & Nirvana on the artwork, we sold a total of 52 tickets. I put that down to people being confused by the concept, don't panic. As each day unfolded and new acts were announced the momentum built.  Kate & I were also realising how much work this was becoming & started to drag friends in to help anywhere they could.

Luckily the Hordern Pavilion had other areas outside the main hall because it seemed everyone wanted to be on the show. Before I knew it I had 21 acts over three stages including Nirvana, most were added after it went on sale. Stephen Pav was touring Nirvana at that time & as luck would have it, they were Violent Femmes fans. Nevermind had been out since late September but was still only on the alternative charts. Soon after we went on sale on November 18 Nirvana exploded worldwide & eventually made the first BDO the hottest ticket in the country.

During the programming stage, it went from 2 to 3 stages. At some point, I made contact with the organisers of the inaugural indigenous Festival Survival, aka Invasion Day. It was to be held on Australia Day January 26th so I wanted to find out if there was a suitable act for BDO. As we were on the 25th it made sense to see if we could help each other. As fate would have it, they were trying to secure Yothu Yindi, but couldn’t cover the huge costs of flights. The end result was I paid a high fee, more than Nirvana to support their event. I now had the perfect act to perform between Nirvana and The Violent Femmes. Tim Pittman proposed bringing out Henry Rollins to sing with the Hard-Ons, a great idea.  The musical misfits went to the Skate stage that joined the Skate ramp, and Stage 2 had a schedule that mirrored the changeovers for the Hordern. From midday, there was never a moment of silence.

Each day ticket sales grew until ten days out it sold over 500 tickets in one day & sold out... at 9,700 tickets.  I had planned to sell 10,000 but became concerned now that Nirvana was a must-see act, caution was required. The reality was that without Nirvana it still would have sold out, however, Nirvana made the show legendary. Two weeks out from the show I rang Pav to get the Nirvana return Selinas shows on sale. I did the same with the Femmes, but nothing slowed up the Big Day Out momentum. 

The promotion was so street level that most of the old guard thought it wasn’t selling. Photographer Tony Mott told me that Michael Chugg still thought it would ‘stiff’ even after it had sold out. When told of his error he apparently went very quiet.

Soon after selling out I also got a call from the office of then Prime Minister Paul Keating to purchase 3 tickets for his kids. When I offered to just send some, my offer was politely rejected as free tickets can be considered corruption. We then arranged tickets to be purchased from the Canberra outlet. Simpler times.

The day before the show it was all loose ends. I worked all day and pretty soon I realised I would have to work all night.  I had a short break to go to see Nirvana play at their first Australian show at the Phoenician Club in Broadway, a few kilometres away. It was a chaotic, loud, stage diving celebration. I then raced back to hopefully complete the set-up. Luckily, I managed to score some speed earlier in the day from a reliable source, the skaters. At around 2 am I realised that I still had to put up 100 metres of fencing & was basically on my own. Luckily soon after I noticed some kids up a tree. They were hiding out until the morning, so I gave them the choice to leave or help with the fencing. The irony of getting fence jumpers to help keep out fence jumpers was not lost on them. That was the first time I met Bob, for many years he came back as part of the 40 strong Sydney site crew & became the official fence tester.

My concerns that no one would come early were proved unfounded when I opened the roller doors & thousands streamed into the site. It was all indie, young and up for trouble. I had structured the deal with the venue that apart from a flat rental I would take the door, food fair & the merchandise & they would take the bar & fast-food money.  I was very possessive about the show, anal about details & had worked out they didn’t have enough beer. I was eventually told by the licensee to ‘fuck off’ as he did the Easter show & knew how to run a bar.

About two hours after the doors opened, they ran out of beer. And we were all freaking out. Luckily the Sydney Cricket ground was next door & they managed to borrow 12 pallets. After being dry for an hour the flatbed truck drove through the crowd and everyone cheered, they even helped unload the truck, then bought the beer. I couldn’t believe how well behaved everyone was, it was a really important event, and they knew it. My journalist friend Clinton Walker had the task of creating a chilli stall.  It was doing shit business & he was looking worried. He then came out with his food theory that holds to this day. You want fast food on arrival to prepare for the booze, then good food in the late afternoon, then more fast food at the end of the night to keep it all down. He was right, he went from ten sales before noon to selling out 700 serves by 8 pm.

One of the strangest things that day for me was that until Vivian arrived on site with the Femmes, I couldn’t believe he had no idea what I was up to. The Femmes tour started in Melbourne the night before so now he had to take it all in as fast as possible. It was a real eye-opener for him.

As backstage, let alone backstage catering didn’t really exist, the bands mixed with the fans to eat. At one stage Nirvana were in a line at the vego stall and the fans were acting so cool, pretending not to know them or not believing it was them.

At one point, Nirvana bass player, Chis Novoselic, gave a backstage interview with Red Tv. He looked really stressed when asked about being number one in 23 countries, that week. He tried to explain that it took off like a grass fire. How they were dealing with it and his final fatal quote was, ‘I just hope we don’t fuck it up’. It’s a hard watch.

Michael Hutchence from INXS even rocked up mid-afternoon with friend Greg Pirano and asked through the chicken wire fence if they could join the party. They were friends and of course welcome. Michael was a huge star at that time and was about to witness a pivotal moment of musical beginnings and endings. He must have known what was coming. 

Soon we were facing the reality that the Hordern, with a 6,000 capacity but with 10,000 people on site we were going to have problems with Nirvana. By that time, they were literally number one worldwide & even with two other stages operating it was obvious that virtually everyone wanted to see them.

We were sitting in the backstage kitchen then Tex Perkins from The Beasts of Bourbon looked at me, picked up a peanut butter jar & said “It’s like this, there’s only so much peanut butter you can put in the jar until it comes out the sides”. He was more or less correct, but inside, in the audience where I was, it was like being in an ocean of humanity & one wrong move & you would be in a rip. About ten minutes into Nirvana's set one of the crew passed a message on to me that the authorities were at the mixing desk & were going to close the showdown. It was hot and sweaty, all the doors were open to keep it safe so we couldn’t shut them or turn the volume down, so I had to make it to the mixing desk. The direct way wasn’t an option as I had to go with the flow of the audience.  When I finally made it to the desk it ended up being Chinese whispers, triggered by the head of security, the show kept going & we all survived. It was frightening & exhilarating at the same time. 

The fire hoses were on the audience, Nirvana was amazing & the best live radio cross ever happened mid-set. Hellen Razor from triple J was in the mosh pit, simply phoned up the station & held the clunky phone in the air. It sounded rough but incredible, this was also just as the station had gone national.  Additionally, thanks to some cross communications we managed to accidentally video the set. Dave Hawthorn, our video person handed me the VHS at the end of the night and said, ‘You didn’t really mean that when you told me not to record it? I hung onto it for 10 years,’ I finally gave a copy to Dave Grohl at the 2003 Big Day Out, when the Foo Fighters headlined; he cried. It's now posted online, presumably by him.

Soon after Nirvana's set, thanks to sleep deprivation and a pot cookie Duckpond gave me I lost it and was sent home babbling. I didn’t even get to see the Femmes finish.

The next morning it was all on again.  A 9 am flight to the Gold Coast and a sell-out show, at Fisherman's Wharf. Most people don’t know that the Fisherman's Wharf show on the next day was bigger in attendance than the BDO. We had sold out at over 10,000 just to see Violent Femmes & Nirvana play together. The PA was shit, the stage was a tiny mobile & initially, the crash barrier was made of metal star pickets & wire. The BDO had taken up so much time that I had forgotten about the details in Gold Coast & it looked like it might bite us on the bum.

Luckily, we could fix the barrier problem which saved our bacon. We were just starting the Femmes set & were thinking it was going to be smooth sailing then all of a sudden, the automatic sprinklers started up, one is right under the $200,000 mixing desk. So, while someone ran to sort out how to turn it off, we grabbed a sheet of ply & stood on it. The security of course were brutal, and seeing as we didn’t really have a security pit, they just stood on the stage. They formed a line in front of the Femmes, you couldn’t even see Gordon for half the set. The end result, while underproduced, was a big success.

Just when we thought we could relax I got a call from Stephen Pav & he had a big problem. Apparently, Kurt had decided that Australia was the place to give up heroin but hadn’t planned on how sick he might get. He also had a bad stomach ulcer thanks to taking Ritalin without water as a kid.  He was going nuts from his stomach pains and drug withdrawals. In short, he wanted to go home. 

After the local doctor proved useless, Viv Lees, realising some of it was psychosomatic, told Kurt that he could give him some super painkillers he had back in his room. I seem to remember they were just extra-large aspirins but Kurt responded & we got through the next show. As Viv said to me, “this guy is really fragile, he just needs to know that we all care about him”. In those days we didn’t know any ‘rock doctors’ but nowadays it’s pretty important to at least know some that give a fuck about the consequences of an artist in pain, the ‘stay in bed for week’ approach just doesn’t cut it. I recommended to Pav that they should cancel Perth, have a few days rest and finish the rest of the run. From memory, he took them camping. Backstage at Brisbane Festival Hall was the last time I saw Kurt, I didn’t know him well but could always see a lot more pain than a stomach ulcer in his eyes. I wish I had a few more Nirvana albums, I guess everyone does.

Pretty much as soon as the first Big Day Out was over, I realised two things. It was a huge success & that the big promoters would be very pissed off.

What we had achieved was something that made us different from the others. We could offer something special that the others did not have. I immediately had a feeling of urgency & dread of what was ahead. Deep down I knew the only way to protect the event from duplication or bidding wars was to make it as strong as possible, as quick as possible. Another problem was that Triple J was now national & virtually abandoned Sydney in an effort to win a wider audience.

The only solution was to go national. It made sense on a financial level but logistically was quite daunting. The blueprint for the BDO was set in stone as far as I was concerned & it was up to me to convince Vivian, our local reps, the bands, agents, managers, media, venues & councils that it made sense. Then we had to convince the audience that this was going to be a great experience & worth the time & money to take the risk. 

Some of the songs that mattered on that tour:

  • Nirvana – “Teen Spirit “/ “Lithium”

  • Violent Femmes – “Blister in the Sun”/”Gone Daddy Gone”

  • Beasts  of Bourbon – “Chase The Dragon”/Can’t Say No”

  • Ratcat – “That Aint Bad”

  • Yothu Yindi – “Treaty”

  • Hard-Ons with Henry Rollins – “Let There Be Rock”

© Ken West January 2022

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Ch 20: 1991 - Rapid Evolution

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Ch 22: 1993 - On The Road