CHAPTER 27
1997 - Six and Out
Ticket price - $60+.
National attendance – 215k +
After the 1996 shows everyone felt like a huge weight had been lifted. We had managed to survive against the big boys & soon after sent a once close friend broke. We were in the wars & were still in business. But for me, I was still in competition, but only with myself. The risks of producing the Big Day Out were huge. Losing one show from rain, a headliner cancelling or not selling enough tickets would mean the loss of my home & my credibility.
Both Vivian & I had spent fifteen years putting our entire net worth on the line. Part of me felt that we had risked too much & part of me felt that we had stayed at the gambling table too long. There was also the traditional tall poppy syndrome to deal with in Australia. Once we had put our heads up, there was no turning back, ultimately, I felt we would be punished for being successful.
At the same time our Sydney venue, the Showground, was to be redeveloped into Fox studios. This meant 97 would be our last show. The Olympics were coming and apart from no suitable venue options, there was not much interest in helping us secure one. The event had become too big, no council would want to take on the resident action groups.
And just to drive the point home, when Perry Farrell told me he had booked Metallica to headline Lollapalooza for August 96, I was fearful of the consequences. My fears were justified with more men, more drunken fights and a lack of vibe. Lollapalooza became the support act to Metallica. The damage from that show led to 97 also being the end of Lollapalooza as we knew it.
Then just to cap off an emotional time the news rang out…
Port Arthur Massacre, mass shooting in and around Port Arthur in Tasmania on April 29, 1996, that left 35 people dead and 18 wounded; the gunman, Martin Bryant, was later sentenced to 35 life terms. It was the country’s worst mass murder, and it led to stricter gun controls, notably a near ban on all fully automatic or semiautomatic firearms.
In short, a Kurt Cobain look-alike lost it a few weeks after the second anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death. The government was now dealing with a fear of the young losing their shit.
These unconnected events, when combined gave me cold feet.
I wanted to be remembered for a success & not for a failure. So in the middle of 1996, I decided to end the Big Day Out. Partly because we were on top & second because I had no fight left in me. Vivian accepted the call, after all, I had dragged him into this emotional minefield. With an end in sight, we put together a best of show. The rules had changed.
With Soundgarden, Offspring, Prodigy, Patti Smith and a great Australian line up the 97 BDO was ready to roll. I hadn’t realised however that Australians’ also rewarded people who rejected the system. That year I learnt how much the show had become important to so many people. In short, we went from 135,000 people to 215,000 people for the six shows. I remember an article in the Sydney Telegraph that quoted me as saying, “I can’t keep up the standard & I’m not prepared to lower it”.
I can’t remember saying it, but it was what I felt.
I was also feeling that the event was no longer artistically or emotionally important. It started as a life-altering experience & in a few short years became a sideshow at a circus. Not quite real & just a bit more than passive entertainment. I needed time to think about what the fuck I was doing.
Post the 96 BDO events I received a call from an irate man claiming his underage son had returned home drug-addled and told him he purchased the drugs at the show. His accusation was that the Big Day Out was just a front for selling drugs to kids. When I suggested that maybe his son was not telling the truth to his police officer dad it got more heated. While nothing eventuated from that conversation, I believe that was the start of the undesirable tag, worming itself into the minds of the powers that be.
The evil villain role sounded appealing, so I often talked jokingly to my friends about crazy ideas like setting up steel plates in the audience with explosives underneath & blowing hundreds of people up. I always loved the Bond movies where a supervillain would go to so much trouble to cause basic mayhem. I loved the idea that I could have created this event to draw people in to cause mass destruction. The sixties were such a great time for the appreciation of the super-brain, good or evil.
Leading up to the 97 shows we were in competition to tour Oasis. Originally confirmed for BDO 95 and represented by my friend Ben Winchester, a London agent with a good ear & friendly smile had lucked out. In Australia, at that time they were huge, so huge that we proposed an outdoor show in Sydney & an arena tour around Australia & NZ. Everybody wanted the act but eventually, we secured them. It was a mixed blessing. The competition was so intense that one week before we were confirmed as promoters for the tour my garbage was stolen from our trash bin. I knew this because it was gone less than an hour after I put it out on the street. It was really freaky.
Sales for the tour were huge, 17,000 on the first day in Sydney so I headed off to the US to enjoy a well-earnt break. But all was not well with OASIS. The first signs of implosion came when Liam (from Oasis) didn't turn up for the US tour. It was panic stations back home but eventually, he joined the tour. I drove down to Long Beach California, a place that my then partner, Nadine referred to as, “a sump”, to see the band. Apart from feeling like we were on another planet I also felt that ‘if this was how you break it in America, I couldn’t relate to it’?. The venue was horrible, a concrete amphitheatre & the vibe backstage was at best workman-like. The show was good if not great & I had no interest in meeting the band before or after the show. I knew a few of the crew, including the head of security & that was enough. We drove home, spoke little & moved on. It was always hard for me to accept an act I believed in becoming commercial darlings. And it was hard to let them go when the competitors offers became too risky for us to match.
Soon after fulfilling my responsibilities as a touring company, I was dragged back to home soil by Sahara (my right hand) & John Foy (my artist conscience} when I got the panic calls over Vivian's proposed BDO 97 artwork. My efforts to include Vivian in the artwork process wasn't going well. I always tried to be cutting edge. Richard Allan from Mambo to Maria Kozik and Ben Brown, it was important to take risks. But Juan Davila was an issue. His art was really out there & the problem with REAL artists is that they were crap at deadlines. One thing from my years in art school & dealing with artists is that 'the brief is everything'. Most artists when taken out of their own world & asked to produce something specifically for a fee will lose their own identity. They immediately try to produce not what they are known for but what they think the client wants. Juan delivered the worst art anyone could imagine. A floating Mexican Elvis head. Vivian, trying not to lose face convinced himself it could work, John & Sahara were appalled. When I saw a faxed copy I tried to convince myself that it was so bad it might be good. Promotion as I knew it was all about gaining people's attention. Bad art can often work better than good. But later that night I realised I had to solve the problem & in turn insult or save Vivian from the outcome.
Around midnight after a day of denial, I left my New York Hotel room & walked to Times square. The Virgin Megastore ran late, and the bookstore held some hope. I was about to give up when I found a book on vintage sideshows & the banners that were part of the circus culture. The next day I used the hotel photocopier to create a rough image to represent what I felt this Big Day Out was all about. The Big Day Out is a circus, some years it's a freakshow, but most of all it's the new carnival. I faxed what I wanted to do & express couriered the book. It was great to be part of the process again.
Between NY & home, we had a week's break in Fiji, we were on a small Island with one phone line but four days in Vivian called to say that the Oasis tour was cancelled. He was about to refund the 92,000 tickets we had already sold. We had no insurance & only the bands word that they would compensate us for the expenses. I was suitably pissed off, especially as they refused to reschedule which would have kept the money in the bank. I felt slightly better when the manager of the small resort told me that another fellow got a call the year before that his factory had burnt down. His advice was to relax & accept there is nothing you can do. Good advice but it really fucked up the vibe.
Back home it was damage control. There was even talk of class actions from ticket holders. When we made our official statement ‘on behalf of Lees, West & Oasis we apologize for any inconvenience & refunds were available from the point of purchase”. We were notified from Oasis central that ‘Oasis never apologize’ & were meant to clarify that. We never did, but we waited for 12 months to get the 320,000 dollars they owed us for direct costs. What a waste, the return tour by Coppell was a disaster. I had already sold 28,000 tickets in Sydney two months out, but Coppell only managed to draw 9,000 in Sydney. They never understood that Australians, especially Sydney people hate being fucked around & will punish you if you are fucking with them.
Luckily by the time I was on home soil, Sahara & Viv Lees had calmed the lynch parties & we just had to lick our wounds & get on with the 1997 BDO. It was only September but already the pressure was on. As far as ego went 1997 was a great year, everyone was confused. Pulling the show made no commercial sense so I had everyone on the back foot. Ticket sales were huge, it felt like a triumph & especially to me a huge relief that I could move on. I never wanted to be responsible for the livelihood of so many people. I desperately wanted to leave the gambling table, in short through the success of the show I actually had a lot of things I didn't want to lose, a home, cars, financial security. My nerves couldn't handle it anymore. Viv more or less felt the same. The last few years had been hard, but either way, he knew I was out.
This meant that selling the show, with a great line-up was very emotional. Not only for the media & the fans but especially for the core people working on the event. They had to think about their future & I had to push them out the door. What started as a few weeks' work in 1992 & 1993 became the core of their working & private life. I had to be strong, I really felt in conflict with myself over my motive, but never my need to end this stupid all-consuming event. I was starting to realise that what I did was a form of art & consequently I needed to move on regardless of the emotional or financial consequences.
The great thing about those shows, since everyone knew it was the end was that it felt special again. Ticket sales were huge, the media attention was extraordinary & the bands were our friends. It felt like a circus on the road, it was a cyclone & we were the eye. It was calm for us backstage, everyone had become professional & the shows were amazing. By the end of the run, we had sold over 215,000 tickets. This was an unbelievable achievement.
But just as we were ending an era for the BDO some of the acts were headed the same way. Soundgarden in particular were very fragile. I’m sure the death of Kurt Cobain was a factor, but it was like they had lost their way. The self-confidence & dynamic energy that made them special was gone. Whether they were just sick of each other or unhappy to be part of the system they fought against, it was apparent that all was not well. Chris's voice was less than brilliant & the band avoided Ben the bass player. He was drinking heavily & on the Gold Coast, mid-afternoon he asked Sahara to sit with him alone in the site shed we use as dressing rooms. He wasn't making a pass, he just didn't want to drink alone. Offspring were also pretty lost. They had just signed a mega-deal with Sony, leaving their independent label & now were 100% part of the mainstream recording industry. The whole scene had lost its innocence in such a short time. I guess rapid rise will always produce rapid fall. If not commercially then emotionally.
Prodigy on the other hand had become dragon slayers. The day they woke up & decided that they were no longer a dance band changed the music scene drastically. They were prepared to perform in daylight & wanted to play before the biggest rock acts that would accept them. In London, they played before Oasis at Knebworth in front of 80,000 people. They had done what so many acts do not do & that is 'as soon as you get comfortable with your success & bank account throw it all on the table & see how the dice fall'. They stole the shows, they were the future, Techno music had come of age. Liam saw Prodigy as a punk band & knew how to blow other punk acts (especially Americans) not only off the stage but out of the venue. They also had one huge advantage, as 70% of the music was on dat, it was clean sound & they could be much louder than a band with microphones. It sounded & looked incredible & everything else, including Soundgarden, sounded old.
At the other end of the electronic music world was The Aphex Twin (Richard James) His music was from another planet. He delivered sound sculptures way ahead of his time. I remember a review from the Sydney Boiler Room where the penny dropped. He was running different beats on the right and left speakers from his laptop. The sounds worked together then as he moved them over you had to stop dancing to one beat and reconnect with the new beat. He even performed lying on the stage inside a children’s dollhouse, so you never even knew he was on stage. Added to that his clips were frightening. “Window Licker” and “Come To Daddy” were heavier than the heaviest metal. The Boiler room was on its way.
We had five great shows under our belt & then we arrived in Perth and things went very wrong. Part of the problem of the BDO was that it had become very big, we were no longer under the radar, we were not only a tall poppy but had friends & enemies in high places. In Perth, it seemed we only had enemies. Perth is a cowboy town. It is all about who knows who & brown envelopes. Our problems started when the Soccer Federation wanted our venue in 1996. We had a three-year deal so instead of being upfront, the council, in combination with the venue, decided to push us out on ‘undesirability factors’. We blindly trusted them until a council insider let us know of the plan. We were already on sale, it was two months out from the show, & the reality was we had no venue.
As we didn’t have all the pieces to the puzzle, we hoped it would work out, very soon however it became apparent we were fucked. In short, the council needed to prove we were undesirable to avoid a claim by us for compensation. This also meant that they wanted the show, a national event, to simply go away. If we did find another venue it weakened their case. To make matters worse the mayor was also a close friend of the state Premier who was also the minister of the arts, which was our only real point to plead our case. What was so appalling for us, being from THE BIG SMOKE, was that if they had talked to us straight, we would have understood, moved on & maybe claimed a small relocation fee. But this was Perth, the land of the cowboy, where small-town issues become shootouts. Eventually, Squasha made a deal with Bassendean Council & we had a venue. Until then Rolf Harris had the record for the biggest crowd, 17,000. In 1997 we sold out at 30,000 and all seemed good. But we weren't aware of what was happening behind the scenes.
As we had a new venue by November, we were moving forward to make a substantial financial claim against our old venue for breach of contract. For us, it seemed the worst was over & if we got some compensation for the financial & emotional stress then for us justice would be done. What we had forgotten was how the system worked in Perth.
To win their case they still needed to prove we were undesirable. Apparently, one of the local site team was pretty close with the East Perth football club and let them know that a lot of drugs were backstage at the 96 show. This was what they needed. Having connections in high places helped, especially when the police were led to believe that kilograms of coke were backstage. So, in we went, lambs to the slaughter.
It was 40 c on the day before the show & everyone was after drugs, especially coke. Squasha didn’t come through & we hadn’t planned ahead. The only solution was to fly some in from Melbourne. This idea I didn’t like, partly because of the cost & secondly for the risk. But as this was the last show of the last BDO we agreed & hoped it would work out.
As usual, I made the 4am trip to the venue to make sure the six trucks from Adelaide had arrived & made coffee for the drivers & crew. The mood was great. I even had to break into catering to get the coffees which went down well with the team. This was important to me. I just wanted them to know that I appreciated them as people & part of a team. Soon after of course I drove back to the hotel & slept until 9am.
Returning to the venue I did my usual arm-waving & yelling in an attempt to open the gates. By then I travelled with a megaphone which was so much fun. Everything was good, it was the last show & it felt great.
At around six pm I was told that the coke had arrived & Neil was handling it. This for me was a big problem, I didn’t trust him, he was at best indiscrete & had a prior conviction for dealing. The day had run smoothly but we were having real problems with some of the backstage security. In short, they didn’t do what they were told to do. By around 7 pm I found out why they were so unhelpful...... they were cops. Things went rapidly pear-shaped, there must have been forty police involved in the raid. To make matters worse my timing totally sucked as I had just entered the production office & was offered a line, then in came the good guys.
They weren’t threatening, but they were totally objectionable. These people had no idea how an event of this size worked. They shut down the security communication, our phones & didn’t let us leave the sheds. In short, we no longer ran the show. When they asked who was in charge the shed went silent. I looked around & thought ‘Fuck It’, this is serious. When I identified myself, they became very friendly, almost jovial. But whenever we wanted to get on with the job of running the event, they got really shitty. Very soon it was getting heated. Offspring were on stage & the audience was going nuts, but backstage we were having to drop our pants to get thoroughly searched. The cop checking my arse commented that I had a haemorrhoid problem, “like thanks man”. Later I found out that the local crew boss got the full rubber gloves treatment when he tried to stop them from entering the backstage area.
By the time we get to Perth, we are tired but very professional. We knew how the show ran, especially when trouble was brewing. It was totally surreal that we had to let go of the show, especially at the most dangerous part of the day. The more agitated we got the more they fucked us around. I remember the tour manager for Offspring coming in & out of the production shed to send faxes, each time he was searched & each time he said, “search me again, I don’t care, I’ve got a job to do”. I think he really just wanted to fuck with them. The word got out pretty quick and most bands skipped as quickly as humanly possible. They found half a gram of truckie speed in my wallet but didn’t act like they were going to charge me. I did however have to stay & witness the search. Four guys went through everything in our 40ft x 8ft shed & eventually they found a bag of pot & a gram of coke. By now it was 9.30 & Soundgarden were on stage & I was getting pretty pissed off with these fuckwits & very concerned about how the show was running. They made me sign as the witness to the search, then, just as I thought I could leave, said they were charging me for the speed & the coke. I was now very angry & having a hard time dealing with not only their bastardry but how weird it felt to be powerless, especially at my own event.
Outside the show was just holding together. They locked up the ground electrician for having a joint just when we lost lighting in the main bar area. They tried to strip search Soundgarden as they were about to go on stage, luckily the stage manager Michael O berg convinced them that if they did the band wouldn’t go on & this would mean a riot. Finally, they arrested Jeff Grey, our head of security after they put a bag of pot in his briefcase. This was their way of letting Jeff know that they could fuck with him really easily. A few minutes later I was put in a Paddy wagon with Rocket (one of our production team) & Neil Wedd (he was caught with cash, scales & 3 grams of coke), he was lucky it wasn’t sooner.
The strange thing was that they let us keep our mobiles, so I spent the next hour on the phone, talking to Viv Lees & lawyers trying to work out what the fuck we do now. I wasn’t really worried about being charged & I didn’t give a fuck about what anyone thought of me so it all just seemed so surreal. At first, we drove past a huge police roadblock that they had set up to breathalyse virtually everybody. I felt more connected to the young people of Perth than ever before. Cops here really were scum. It was obviously the career of choice for the meatheads from school. They became cops for the power, there was no thought of justice, it was all about continuing to live a life as a bully. I called back to the venue to at least warn our staff about it then sat there for a moment & had a laugh to myself.
It just occurred to me that on the same night I officially became a millionaire I was sitting in a paddy wagon being taken to be charged for drug offences. I couldn’t think of a more poetic ending to my festival career. It certainly did help me from getting egotistical or smug.
We were initially taken to some out of the way interrogation centre. For me, it was like everything was in slow motion. The beige rooms were lit by fluoro so we just sat & waited to be questioned. Eventually, I was ‘interrogated’ on video & finally taken to the main Perth police centre to be charged. Until then I had hoped that they would let me go, but no such luck. At around 1am we were transferred by paddy wagon & formerly charged. The cream grey foyer had at least a dozen cops in it, happy they had been paid double time to go to a rock festival (this was because it was on a Sunday). I was getting tired & my contempt was growing. I was asked to remove all valuables, including my phone but just as he sealed the bag my phone rang & he gave it back. The whole thing was such bullshit.
We were printed & photographed & put together in a cell to wait to be bailed out. That is once they worked out what the bail might be. We presumed we were put together so we would talk & they could listen somehow & catch us out. The reality was that the whole event was a fiasco, costing WA taxpayers at least $40,000 and producing no results. For God’s sake, only finding a few grams of coke & some pot backstage at a rock festival was more embarrassing for us than the cops.
So here we were, Rocket, Neil & I are sitting in a horrible beige room with only a stainless-steel loo to look at. Our mood was pretty up & the jokes were flying, soon after Rocket pointed out how lucky we were that we would be out of this dump soon & these cops had to be here every day.
Around 3am we were released on bail and with our newfound freedom headed back to our hotel & intended to get on with the party. In fact, our hotel was only a few minutes away from the police station & on the same street for that matter and upon entering our hotel bar I found that the mood was high.
I was confused & tired but went up to my room where I had a dozen bottles of champagne in an esky I had bought the day before. We had a beach party to go to & those arseholes weren’t going to fuck it up for me. Sadly, a lot of my close friends chose to hide in their rooms & consume their recently acquired drugs in private.
We had small shuttle buses & people just jumped on board. We noticed that one person didn’t fit. Our suspicions were confirmed when he spoke into his hand. It was an undercover cop. Before tempers got too heated, I confronted him, listened to his bullshit ‘I’m a friend of blah blah etc etc” and promptly told him to fuck off.
Once on the beach I sat with my friends, including Viv until dawn, had a swim in the ocean & went home to bed. I even managed to finally score a line which was just what I needed.
A few hours later I started to accept the closure of one thing & the start of another. It was Monday & it was big news, partly because that was the whole idea in the first place. I was also informed that over $8,000 had been stolen from the various floats held in the production office. It made a lot more sense why I was charged now. As I was the only person to witness the search, I was no longer credible in any claim against the police for theft.
Other stories came out. When they tried to charge Jeff Grey, they realised that they had put the pot in the wrong case & had to let him go. In the lift on the way out, he was roughed up & seriously threatened by the narcs.
The site office that Squasha was in was also targeted & he was not only pissed off but had nothing to be concerned about. The cops themselves were getting frustrated as well because by then, an hour into the raid they had found nothing. Soon Squasha fell for a similar trick they did but much worse. When they said, ‘is this your briefcase?’ When he said yes, they distracted him then miraculously pulled out a substantial bag of white powder. Squasha shit himself but luckily, a few seconds later Neil was caught & the powder disappeared. In short, they had to bust somebody & Squasha was high on their list.
Viv and Bruno (friend and lawyer) set up a meeting with a heavyweight barrister to take on the case. His first words were ‘ I don't usually take on cases of less than a kilo but for you, I will make an exception'.
The bottom line is that he knew the score and knew how it would play out. If we tried to expose the corruption before I was sentenced, they would portray me as the key player and go for as heavy a penalty as possible.
He believed that the state government would prefer if this all just went away, especially as it was the end of BDO. While I wanted to fight it, the plan to fight another day made the most sense.
Once back in Sydney a call came through from my barrister that if I pleaded guilty to the charges I would not have to return to Perth for trial and would be given a spent sentence. Which means it never happened. The other choice was to fly back to Perth and fight an expensive trial with the possible result of jail time.
Not that hard a choice to make. It was typical Perth, who knows who politics.
Once the conviction was made public, I got a call from JJJ, live on air of course, for comment. I said there was much more to the story, but I felt the real embarrassment was that the speed I was caught with was only 6% proof.
It wasn't until a few months later that the arresting officers were recorded doing pretty much the same thing. This time around for taking money from a drug dealer in exchange for lowering the charge. What goes around comes around.
Some of the songs that mattered 97 tour:
Soundgarden – "Black Hole Sun"
The Prodigy - "Firestarter"
The Offspring – "All I Want"
Patti Smith – "Because The Night"
Aphex Twin – "Icct Hedral"
Supergrass - "Alright"
You Am I - "Soldiers"
© Ken West January 2022
