CHAPTER 26
1996 - Fuck Friendship, Let’s Festival
Ticket price - $55.
National attendance- 135k
Producing the Big Day Out was becoming our full-time job. What started as a summer event in concept & workload was now continual. Acts & venues were confirmed mid-year. Tickets went on sale in October & the paperwork after the tour continued until June. Each year more people worked on, played on & attended these events.
Every year Vivian & I had to put everything we had, financially & emotionally back on the table. The events’ success had trapped both of us into a yearly routine of elation followed by exhaustion, then reflection, relaxation, consternation, anxiety, stress, confusion and eventually elation again (hopefully). Somewhere in there, apart from the eventual financial rewards was a reason for continuing. Each year as the team got better & the crowds grew, we felt the next one should be easier, but it never seemed to go that way. Our summer break was in the middle of the year & for me in particular I was questioning how long we could go without a major fall.
Technology was ramping up allowing us to start up our Website and make ticketing forge proof by having our tickets offset-printed by bonded printers in the UK. These people actually printed money so we knew we could trust them.
On the art front, Richard Allan really tested my art vs commerce brain when he proposed a target man shooting a gun as the image. While I loved the confrontational statement it made, I eventually insisted on a Hawaiian print for the background and changing the 10 on his head to a 0. I believe it is our most powerful poster, there’s nothing in the world like it. The only problem with the image came with Adelaide beer sponsor Coopers. They had to replace the gun with a flower for the souvenir Coopers cans they made especially for the show.
Coming off the back of our biggest & wildest shows we all thought that 96 was going to be easier. We had seen how hopeless the three Michael's were when it came to staging festivals, and a lot of great acts wanted to be on our show.
But I hadn’t anticipated that our real competition was not going to come from the big promoters but from the enemy within. It became apparent that we had become tall poppies with a lot of people within the music world feeling we had gotten too big, too fast, too easily. More of concern was that close allies were making moves to stage their own festivals. Soon after BDO 95 & Alternative Nation were over it became apparent that Stephen Pav (Pav for short) had decided he was sick of being a talent supplier (he represented Nirvana, Hole, Offspring & many more) for the show & wanted to go for the money & status of being an event producer. But as usual he never actually told us that, Pav always avoided confrontation. He was renowned at that time for answering every confrontational question with “man, I’m just doin my thing”.
Up until that time, Pav & I were close. We talked openly to each other about music, life & the non-existent glamour of being a promoter. But Stephen rightly or wrongly felt I had been using him & his band connections just to get what I wanted. The truth is I might have been, but never intentionally. When I read that he felt I had a Godfather complex I thought, "oh well if you are going to have a complex, it might as well be a Godfather one".
When I first started promoting, I didn't know how the system worked. If I wanted to ask an act to tour, I usually went straight to the artist or the manager. If they wanted their agent involved, they would tell me. From my experience in Australia, I didn't trust agents as they traditionally already had working relationships with the older promoters. Eventually, you can't say anymore, “I didn’t realise you were the agent?”. I needed to play the game. But Pav even ignored the management most of the time & worked directly on befriending the artists to get the tour. He was cool, he was a vegan that dressed like the acts & liked the same music. He wasn’t the band's promoter in the traditional sense but more like a mate, ‘sorting things out for the guys’. Secondly, John Silva who managed Nirvana, Beastie Boys, Beck & even Courtney for a while thought of him as, ‘His man down under’. This gave him a huge advantage over us when he wanted a band. We had solid relationships in the UK but were shaky in the US. When he decided that he was going to produce his own festival I knew straight away this was going to be our hardest year.
The other problem was that it was shaping up to be a music industry divorce & we not only had to fight over the bands but the staff, friends & audience. The three Michaels must have been very excited that finally we were going to destroy ourselves & they could watch the show.
What upset me the most about that time was that Stephen simply fucked it up. When I confronted him about his intentions, six months out from the show I was trying to be helpful for him & us. We both realised that there was a window for another event & I tried to convince him that either November or joining forces with Livid in October would work. It made sense that if he had a festival at the beginning of Summer & Big Day Out & Homebake mid-summer, then the Michaels didn’t have a window, just in case they wanted to have another go. But Pav must have made up his mind that I was the bad guy around the same time that he felt he was not only a better promoter but that he needed to prove it, by going head to head. I just couldn’t convince him that we would both lose. Pav, with all his bravado, suffered from a lack of attention to detail. However, he did have a great talent for picking acts on the way up.
When I finally found out that Pav's Festival was going to be from Dec 28 - Jan10. I was furious. When I confronted him, I got the "I'm just doing my thing" bullshit. For me, this was just insane. But somewhere in Pav's head, it was perfectly logical.
John Silva gave Stephen a dream package of Foo Fighters, Beastie Boys & Beck plus he secured Sonic Youth & a few good locals. He was convinced he could take us on & win. We realised he underestimated the local bands so we secured every big act we could get including Nick Cave, TISM, Spiderbait, Regurgitator & even a reformation of Radio Birdman. To help compensate for the weakness on the international front we doubled down and ramped up the Skating with Tony Hawk.
Internationally we had Perry Farrell's new band Porno for Pyros plus Prodigy, The Jesus Lizard, Tricky, Elastica, Rancid & Billy Bragg. The one act that we were both after was Rage Against the Machine. Our only hope was to make what for us at the time was a huge financial offer. Thinking back now about that time, I can’t believe how close it was to the end for BDO.
I couldn’t get through to him that we were both heading for disaster. I had heard that he was calling the event either Flipside or Summersault so I registered both names, not so much to fuck him up but to show him how untogether he was. He had to register the Summersault trademark to get around me.
Whether it was luck or fate he did the one thing I demanded he not do, he confirmed our Melbourne Venue, the RAS Showgrounds for his event. As we had set up a one-month exclusion clause in our venue contracts for music festivals, it should not have happened. But for some reason, the venue not only didn't tell us but now had two signed contracts in breach of each other.
One night soon after this news I crossed paths with Pav at the Metro nightclub in Sydney & decided to confront him. The front bar was packed & I wasn’t getting anywhere with him. When I finally got one too many, “I’m just doing my thing” bullshit, I lost it, tipped a glass of water over his head & yelled at the top of my voice, “get out of my site”, before making a rapid exit down the stairs. Urban myth has put that confrontation into, “get out of my sight”, which is kind of fun.
We finally had a real ace.
We could force him to move his Melbourne venue. No amount of pleasing from the venue was going to work. As we were both after Rage Against the Machine, we gave Pav an offer/ultimatum. If we secured Rage, we would let him use our venue. That was the biggest mistake he made. We now had the better show.
For the next few months, I had to not only be the producer & director of the BDO, but I also had to lift the morale of the whole team, especially Vivian who was fearing the worst. (this is the two-edged sword of a business partner, sometimes you don’t want to know when you are at great risk).
So now we had all lines drawn in the sand. People might think that I was being overly emotional at that time, but not many people understood just how fine our profit margin was back then. We had no real sponsorship. In most venues including Sydney, we did not get part of the bar income. Most of the costs including talent, production & venue were fixed. A few thousand people made the difference between profit or loss. Ten thousand people down meant my home was on the line.
But for Pav, he again got some backers. Shock records put up risk money & in the back of his mind, he must have known that the main acts, being his friends, would stand by him. What he didn't know was how easy it was to lose a fortune on a festival. The safety net can go in the blink of an eye.
Eventually, all the talk ended & the teams, media & fans were divided. We were both totally underfunded, it was to be the last man standing. As sales were bad, we struggled to even find the money to pay the band deposits & as each day moved forward Vivian was becoming more negative. At one point I think I stopped him from talking to the media. For a private schoolboy, he was an atrocious liar.
While all this is going on, I had been recruited to solve the lack of Sydney independent radio created by Triple J becoming National. A friend, Lee Hubber approached me at the Sydney 95 BDO show to stop talking and start acting on solving the no local voice dilemma. Thus, the flame of what was to become FBI radio was lit. As we had no money to kick start the venture, I produced the FBI Benefit staged on November 4 1995. It sold out and raised over 100k with a $20 ticket and featured over a dozen acts including silverchair. It was clear I had issues with Triple J and the politics game.
Sydney for us was selling well, partly because it always sold out in advance but everywhere else it was a disaster. One of the things I told Pav (before I poured a glass of water over him) at the Metro, was that very few people will carry two festival tickets in their wallet, & virtually no one would have two for the same venue, meaning Melbourne.
So now, after the Alternative Nation train wreck of 95, we are witnessing the impending 96 train wreck of Summersault. The difference between the Big Day Out and any new event was that we actually had a history. While a lot of people talked about Summersault, it was more of a ‘should I go to that one too’, not instead of. The problem for us as well as Pav was that no one seemed to be in a hurry to buy any tickets. As Pav knew that most sales happened (at that time) in the last two weeks, he kept thinking it would come home. We also knew he had a shit venue in Adelaide & Gold Coast. Eventually, the ticket buyers rejected them. In the festival world, the venue is absolutely pivotal.
Mathematics is the ultimate decider and while he crashed & burned, we had to hope it wasn’t going to be the same for us. In short, we were shitting ourselves. Gold Coast had only sold 5,000 tickets a week out. We eventually sold 18,000. 13,000 in the last week. The other cities were the same, the shows were good if not exceptional. I was convinced that this was the end and I felt it necessary to document the shows. As Nick was the headliner and had invited Kylie to sing with him on the east coast, it seemed logical to make the Bad Seeds the focus of the documentary. However, as I had no budget, and knew that Nick would not want a film crew around, we simply gave them five video 8 cameras. The performances on stage would be covered by Channel V (then Red tv) plus we dragged my old friend & historically significant Nick Cave documenter, Paul Goldman into the chaos. Paul made the early Birthday Party clips & was the one filmmaker I knew Nick would trust.
Peter Critchley, my good friend & once BDO site manager was responsible for producing & editing the documentary. His then wife, Cathy had the skills as a film producer to help him, so I gave him a shot. He actually did a great job considering the difficult brief. By the end of the tour, we had over 100 hours of footage. Nick & his team/band supplied around ten hours, much of it so personal that Peter called me recommending it be sent back to Nick. That was one of the reasons why both Paul & Peter were so important to the documentary process. Some of that footage could have really fucked up Kylie’s career. We were a close family & the thought of betraying a friend for short term goals was inconceivable. I’m still very proud of what we achieved.
However, in the world of the paparazzi or should I say para-sitie, it was another story. Having Kylie on the road sounded like a fun idea. To us, she was a nice girl with an OK voice that lucked out in the commercial world. But to the media, especially when she was now linked to Nick, it was a chance for some parasite to make a quick buck.
Tony Mott, our official on-road photographer received a call in Auckland from a major women’s magazine, demanding he supply them with photos of Kylie & Nick. When he refused, the calls got more aggressive. Eventually, he was called by the publisher, telling him that if he didn't do it, he would be fired. When Tony told him that he didn’t work for them, the phone went silent. That was when we realised that the paparazzi might be a problem.
The funny thing with Kylie on the road was that for us it was no big deal. She was a pretty suburban girl from Melbourne, had gone out with friends Mark Gerber then Michael Hutchence, & seemed to like the dark side. Nick on the other hand actually was the dark side & confessed to us that he had a lust for check out chicks. I guess he had a point, Kylie was the ultimate sexy checkout chick.
She only performed on four shows (Auckland, Gold Coast, Sydney & Melbourne) & only sang one song but to the global media, it was a huge deal. Nick & Kylie had a top ten hit with 'Where The Wild Roses Grow'. As Nick put it, "It's a love song but I still kill her at the end". In some ways this saved us probably more than having Rage on the show, we got ALL the media, especially the mainstream media.
So here we were, in Auckland with an average international line-up but a strong show waiting for people to buy tickets. In the final week, the turnaround in all cities was amazing. In Auckland, we had incredible weather & sold 5,000 or a third of our tickets on the day. I had worked so hard in convincing people this was what would happen. I had forgotten to convince myself. I was ecstatic & brimming with confidence until half an hour before gates when our local promoter Bridget insisted that I be part of the Maori opening ceremony. Now I’m not particularly superstitious but I personally have a problem with any native culture blessing anything staged, produced or associated with people that historically invaded & murdered their ancestors. After all, the Maori term for white people is Pork Flesh. So here I am dragged into a native welcome ceremony, in front of the main stage at the same time as gates are opening. All goes well until at the end of a beautiful musical performance I am given a seashell. The significance of this is brought home six hours later.
The Auckland show itself is well run but uneventful. The local police as usual are brutal but efficient & it appeared to be a smooth day. In our production office, we had hourly satellite weather updates, it was clear skies all the way. That was until Elastica took the stage at 5pm. No one could explain it, & you had to be there to appreciate it, but we had the most specific & intense storm over our site imaginable. It rained over an inch (3 cm) in an hour just on our site. It was so specific that if you stood on the main stage all you could see was blue sky. Elastica were very confused. We were very alarmed. It didn’t even show up on the satellite report.
At this point Malcolm, the venue manager is looking at a field with two inches of water & wants to pull the show. This was all new to us, but we knew we needed to calm him down, hope the rain stopped & keep going. From memory, in the middle of Malcolm swinging his arms & demanding the end of the show the rain stopped, the sun came out & the world was a wonderful place..... again.
Tricky was positioned to perform soon after and before Rage for Auckland only. As this was the first show of the tour, we were all winging it to some extent. Halfway through his set the Rage crew started sound checking the bass and drums. This did not go down well with Tricky, before we could get them to stop, he simply walked from his stage, through the centre PA tower dividing the stages, then walked up to them with his radio mike in hand and yelled “shut the fuck Up!”. It was a beautiful moment. The audience cheered and so did we. Don’t fuck with Tricky !!
When Rage Against the Machine hit the stage a surreal thing happened. A cloud formed just above the audience. The heat of all the bodies combining with the sun coming out created a very strange phenomenon. I referred to it as a beer cloud & luckily, we were filming on the day. It totally encapsulated the energy of the time & Rage were the perfect band to deliver it.
After Auckland & Gold Coast it felt fun again. We realised that the crap we had been telling people was actually true, the Big Day Out was becoming an institution & regardless of the distractions around us, people trusted us to deliver a fantastic show. So at the end of the day, we got the numbers we needed & stayed in business. In Sydney, I made an effort to talk with Perry Farrell. To me, he was very special. An artist who created the most important musical event of the 90s. He worked with his instincts & luckily, like Nick he had enough magnetism to have people follow his beliefs & make them a reality. Having Nick & Perry on the same bill was incredibly significant. It was also weird that Perry was in awe of Nick Cave. I also loved that Nick & Perry were not intimidated by their fans & would not hesitate in walking through the audience to see another act. At one point I ran into Perry in the audience in Sydney. He had gone down to check out the other stages & found himself lost in the stables area of the showgrounds. We walked back through the audience while Rage was on stage, he was friendly to the fans, then said “what kind of music do you think horses like? I don’t think they’d like this band”. How could you not love a mind like that?
Before Nick went on, I got a call looking for a doctor. His ear was blocked & needed to be unwaxed. In those days the medical situation was pretty basic. The only doctor we knew was on site was Denis Tek from Radio Birdman. He wanted to help but as he had been drinking had to say no, lightweight. In the end Howard Freeman, the tour manager poured vodka in Nick's ear, shook his head and got on with the job. Nick sang flat & of course, we filmed it.
By the time we got to Melbourne, everyone had bonded pretty well, sometimes too well. I love Nick but he has a great capacity to lead people astray, especially people with a dark past. In short, Perry lost his way after several years of being clean. It became quite tense after that, but for me, I had seen it all before & as usual, I was only a spectator.
After an uneventful Adelaide show, one of the most special nights of my life took place. Perry, the ultimate host, had been given one of the super suites. They were huge but not that opulent. He decided to hold a small party, he even made invitations. Perry, with his wealth of experience, knew that connecting with people was one of the most important things in life. In Sydney, he helped me realise that there is little difference between artists and their choice of medium. a painter, a poet, a writer, a filmmaker, a musician, in many ways it's all the same. I knew this but felt charged by his beliefs. In short, he said the ultimate party is to have all these & more outcasts together, Warhol knew this, Perry knew this & I knew this, but to make it happen was another thing altogether. In short, you need to create a world of innocence when it is all about the future & you are 18 again, not set in your ways. A time when you loved to argue all night about your half-developed beliefs.
The party in Perry’s room was great. He set up instruments & people, including Mick Harvey & Perry played very strange songs. It went the usual messy way till dawn & when we met up again at 8am in the lobby, Mick Harvey came out of the lift with a texter swastika on his forehead. That morning for the 9am flight to Perth the airline put a black belt steward on the flight. This was our ROCK flight, but the reality was we only ever wanted to sleep. Waking up for landing was & still is hell.
As usual, by the time we made it to Perth we were all pretty close. Squasha, the local promoter set up a pool backstage & on a 40c day, it was much appreciated. Perth was as always weird. By the time we arrive the entire touring party of over 300 is after drugs, usually cocaine. Often it is fruitless, but even if it is successful it is normally discrete, but not this year. There was a shed with a cue backstage. Within an hour several ounces had been sold, it was very rock. At the same time, the local uptight police were causing trouble. At the worst possible time, the police, in full uniform, guns & attitude walked into the fenced bar area. RATM were performing ‘KILLING IN THE NAME OF’, with the main punchline, “fuck you I won't do what you tell me”, repeated over & over again. It was very close to all going to shit. As the cops were behind a double mesh fence dividing the wet and dry areas, the drunken crowd started shaking the fence violently, then the crowd on the no alcohol side joined in as well. To the point that the fences were starting to bend over, almost hitting the police. It was too fast and too late to help as the fences started to close in almost causing them to draw their guns. Luckily, it's not that long of a song and It cooled down as soon as they finished. Phew, but at the end of the night PRODIGY, on the outdoor boiler room stage, cranked the show up to maximum volume and equal chaos, luckily, the police stayed away. It was all very close to melting down.
Back at the hotel, we drank & relaxed. Perry held court with a story of how he wanted to produce a festival to welcome the aliens. It was called ENET & the story was long & complex, about music to the stars, in a forest & lights & love. It must have gone on for twenty minutes but just at the end of the story he said ". Oh well, at least it would be a great publicity angle". We sat there stunned, was it all crap or did he believe in what he said. A year later he did the show...... It was a disaster.
Some of the songs that mattered 96 tour:
Porno for Pyros – “Pets + Mountain Song”
Nick Cave and Kylie – “Wild Roses”
Rage Against the Machine – “Killing In The Name Of”
The Prodigy – “Poison”
TISM – “All home Boys Are Dickheads”
Shihad- “You Again”
Rancid – “Time Bomb”
Elastica – “Connection”
Spiderbait – “Monty”
Regurgitator – “Blubber Boy”
© Ken West January 2022