IQ Magazine issue 37

Dark Knight of the Road

Batman Live hits the highway

Building the business

New paths as the EAA turns 20

Laying The Groundwork

eps and its quiet revolution

Ride to Live

Two wheels, 26 festivals, 30 days

Live Music Intelligence An ILMC Publication. Sept 2011, Issue 37

Russian Ahead Market in Overdrive

Bob Taylor: Onwards and Upwards Dear Boy! Laszlo Hegedus: The Trap Caspar Gerwe: The Show on the Road Richard Hoermann: Continental Divide

Issue 37, Sept 2011

Contents 18

News 6 In Brief The main headlines over the last two months 7 In Depth Key stories from around the live music world

Features 18 Dark Knight of the Road Chris Barrett profiles the new Batman Live show 26 Building the Business The European Arenas Association at twenty 34 Russian Ahead The next major touring market continues to develop

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44 Laying the Groundwork Event logistics firm eps stage a quiet revolution 50 Ride to Live One man, two wheels, 26 festivals and 30 days

Comments and Columns

34

44

12 Onwards and Upwards Dear Boy! Bob Taylor on the life and times of Willie Robertson 13 Continental Divide Richard Hoermann wants support for mainland Europe 14 T he Show on the Road Caspar Gerwe on upscaling touring shows 15 The Trap Laszlo Hegedus on the perils of the money merry-go-round 16 Insight

Academy Music Group CEO John Northcote reflects on the UK venue scene

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56 In Focus

Out and about for the summer season 58 Your Shout The rumour mill in action...

THE ILMC JOURNAL Live music intelligence Issue 37, Sept 2011 IQ Magazine 2-4 Prowse Place, London, NW1 9PH, UK info@iq-mag.net www.iq-mag.net Tel: +44 (0)20 7284 5867 Fax: +44 (0)20 7284 1870

Brighter Times

A spate of festival deaths and news of industry luminaries passing has meant an aestas horribilis for many, writes Greg Parmley...

T

Publisher ILMC and M4 Media Editor Greg Parmley Associate Editor Allan McGowan Marketing & Advertising Manager Terry McNally Sub Editor Michael Muldoon Production Assistant Adam Milton Editorial Assistant Elma Fudd Contributors Christopher Barrett, Lars Brandle, Caspar Gerwe, Laszlo Hegedus, Richard Hoermann, John Northcote, Manfred Tari, Bob Taylor & Adam Woods Editorial Contact Greg Parmley, greg@iq-mag.net Tel: +44 (0)20 7284 5867 Advertising Contact Terry McNally, terry@iq-mag.net Tel: +44 (0)20 7284 5867

o paraphrase the Queen, in the wake of the disaster at Pukkelpop, it’s shaping up to be an aestas horribilis for many. The tragic news that five people have lost their lives during the storms that swept the Belgian site comes just days after a stage collapse in Indiana also claimed five people.

Neither are these incidents isolated.

Many festivals have suffered from inclement weather this season, leading some to state that the festival season climate is now a far more unpredictable beast than it once was.

Yourope members adjusted provisions in their contracts dealing with force majeure last spring, and in our 2010 European Festival Report, Sonisphere promoter Stuart Galbraith told IQ, “We now budget for bad weather, which I’ve never had to do before”. So is the climate changing so radically, or with more outdoor structures erected than ever now, is it simply a numbers game that more will be hit? Many festival organisers tout the former. Either way, both recent tragedies will surely trigger reviews of safety procedures and emergency plans, and questions will continue to be asked for some time.

The tragedy at Pukkelpop comes shortly after the passing of two longterm ILMC supporters and industry notables – insurance pioneer Willie Robertson, and venue legend John

Northcote. Everyone at ILMC and IQ towers was immensely saddened to hear the news, and what with Amy Winehouse also passing, I’ve certainly experienced more positive periods of news-writing.

This issue, we’re profiling two distinct operations – the first, Batman Live, which while facing a few issues in communicating itself to audiences is proving one of the more remarkable stage productions of the year (page 18). Second, we take a look at logistics supplier eps who’ve been staging a quiet revolution for the last 15 years (p44). For our regular market report, we dive over to Russia, a market swollen with potential (p34), and we catch up with the European Arenas Association as significant questions are posed about its future (p26).

Also check out the account of my recent trip to visit 26 festivals in 30 days by motorbike (p50). Some of the conversations and experiences changed my outlook about what really drives the summer season.

And aside from reporting back on some undiscovered gems in Central and Eastern Europe, I hope there are a few observations in there that people will find useful.

Anyway, that’s it for now, roll on the autumn, and my deepest sympathies go out to all of those affected by the recent tragedies.

To subscribe to IQ Magazine: +44 (0)20 7284 5867 info@iq-mag.net Annual subscription to IQ is £50 (€60) for 6 issues.

News

In Brief...

Below: Amy Winehouse Far Right: Artist’s impression of mobile museum

A spate of festivals are hit by bad weather or suffer slow ticket sales, while several industry luminaries pass away. Figures may be up in some quarters, but there have been brighter summers...

June

• The Bulgarian leg of Sonisphere is cancelled due to slow ticket sales.

The other 11 European dates go ahead unaffected.

• German festival promoter Folkert Koopmans announces his second Swedish festival in Norrköping. The 50,000-capacity site is due to launch in either 2012 or 2013.

• UK-based luxury tent company MyHab stop trading a week before Glastonbury after taking up to £500,000 (€576,000) in advance bookings, leaving festivals to arrange alternative accommodation.

• Three weeks from launch, Arvika Festival in Sweden cancels due to ongoing financial difficulties, having gone into administration in 2010.

• Live Nation gives Cablevision president and CEO James Dolan a seat on its board.

• Bloomberg reports that AEG plans to refinance The O2 arena in London with a £150million (€173m) loan and equity injection.

• Hong Kong promoter Abba ChanTat is sentenced to three-years imprisonment for embezzling more than HK$63million (€5.6m) from two companies he chaired.

• It’s announced that the three stages from U2’s 360 tour will be sold, with the undisclosed purchase price including delivery, and assembly by designers Stageco.

• Having secured €2.1m in EU funding, organisers of the European Talent Exchange Programme announces a similar scheme for Central and Eastern Europe (CEETEP).

July

• A 35-year-old German woman dies at Roskilde Festival after jumping from a 30-metre platform, part of a sponsoroperated aerial ride.

• Promoter Vince Power raises £6.5m (€7.48m) by floating his company, Music Festivals, on the Alternative Investment Market exchange.

• One of Live Nation’s largest shareholders, John Malone, states that taking the company private would make economic sense.

• Pollstar’s mid-year figures report an 11% jump in gross of the top 50 tours worldwide to $1.65billion (€1.15bn), with ticket prices also rising 13.6% to an average of $84.92 (€59.23).

• Willie Robertson, co founder of insurance specialist Robertson Taylor loses his fight with cancer and dies on 9 July (see page 12).

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• Five people are injured when the main stage at the Ottawa Bluesfest collapses in high winds.

• Hultsfred Festival attracts just 11,000 per day in the first year under new owner, German promoter FKP Scorpio, 4,000 less than hoped.

• Award-winning singer/songwriter Amy Winehouse is found dead at her Camden home, aged 27. The cause of death is not initially known.

• SMG secures a management contract for Movistar Arena in Santiago, Chile – its first in South America.

• Perth’s One Movement festival and conference, established by Sunset Events and Chugg Entertainment, is axed after two years having accumulated seven-figure losses.

• A tribute concert for Michael Jackson in the autumn at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium is announced by some of the singer’s family, while other family members quickly oppose it.

• Live Performance Australia’s 2010 Ticket Attendance & Revenue Survey shows a 22% increase in revenues in Australia’s live sector to A$1.3bn (€0.94bn).

August

• Live Nation sues Lloyds of London for $10m (€6.97m), alleging that it was wrongly insured for lawsuits against Ticketmaster.

• Several newspapers report the UK festival business in trouble this year, with 34 having been cancelled by early August including Truck Festival and Newcastle’s Ignition Festival.

• Live Nation posts profits of $13.3m (€9.27m) in Q2 with revenue up 23% to $1.56bn (€1.1bn).

• Sony’s main UK distribution warehouse is gutted by fire as riots spread across London and other major UK cities.

• Australian travelling festival, Soundwave Revolution, is cancelled after organisers fail to secure a sufficiently strong line-up.

• AEG appoints Bryan Perez, formerly VP & GM at NBA Digital, to its new role of president of digital, ticketing and media.

• Academy Music Group founder John Northcote dies, aged 62, after a long illness.

• Five people die at the Indiana State Fair in the US, when a stage is struck by high winds and collapses.

• After a spate of lawsuits in 2009, Ticketmaster trials new links between its primary ticketing site and secondary operation TicketsNow. • Five people die and many more are injured as a storm hits the 60,000cap Pukkelpop Festival in Belgium, collapsing tents and stages.

News

ETEP 2.0 Launches The European Talent Exchange Programme (ETEP) has spread into Central and Eastern Europe with the addition of 13 festivals and 26 media partners, which organisers hope will encourage the development of artists from that area.

Next summer, the most booked bands among members of the Central and Eastern European Talent Exchange Programme (CEETEP) will be awarded a place at Eurosonic Noorderslag as part of the ETEP scheme, the following January. CEETEP has been

in discussion for four years, particularly among founder members Sziget Festival (Hungary) and EXIT Festival (Serbia) and will be funded by part of a €2.1million five-year EU grant ETEP recently secured.

“It’s a five-year plan; we want to build slowly,” says Peter Smidt from Eurosonic Noorderslag. “The goal is

to help the circulation of acts within the Central and Eastern region but if it works, we hope they’ll opt to do more festivals in western and southern parts of Europe.”

Since the start of the ETEP programme in 2003, a total of 1330 shows by 489 European artists have been presented at the 60 ETEP festivals.

Tomb Tour Expands Worldwide

ILMC Sponsors Announced The principal sponsors for next year’s International Live Music Conference (ILMC) have been announced, a full seven months in advance of the 9-11 March 2012 event.

Platinum sponsors are Live Nation, with AEG taking gold, and RFID ticketing specialists Intellitix silver.

Associate sponsors are Showsec, full-service events agency AKA and the NEC Group.

“Companies have been quick to take up the opportunity to partner with the ILMC and we are very

proud to have them with us on the journey,” says ILMC director of marketing and communications Chris Prosser.

“We have a good spread of companies this year, which reflects the demographic of the conference. I would like to thank all of them for their commitment and look forward to a productive ILMC.” ILMC 24 takes place at the Royal Garden Hotel in London. Full conference details will be announced in the December issue of IQ and online on 5 December.

BTS Gets the Benz Having purchased a fleet of Mercedes Benz cars, Austrian bussing company Beat The Street (BTS) has launched a new ground transport division.

The new operation is based in Mansfield Woodhouse, in Nottinghamshire UK, and according to BTS’s Ian Massey

a European one-stop-shop expansion is already planned.

Offering airport transfers, hotel pick-ups or a full tour if required, Massey says the cars will complement the existing bussing business, which now operates 50 purpose-built vehicles

Proving that the right family product can be impervious to recession, Semmel Concerts’ Tutankhamun – His Tomb and His Treasures is touring in Asia for the first time this year, and the promoter is launching a new temporary exhibition space in Frankfurt.

The September Asian debut in Seoul, Korea, is the third Tutankhamun exhibition Semmel is currently touring, having shifted 2.5million tickets overall since it launched in Zürich in 2008.

Recreations of 1,000 Egyptian

artefacts including the tomb of Tutankhamun will also be on show at a purpose-built 4,000m2 temporary structure in Frankfurt’s Mainzer Landstrasse in November.

“Although our exhibition has been seen in 12 European cities, we are always facing difficulties to find exhibition venues of that size,” says Semmel’s Christoph Scholz.

“If the concept works, we will bring the mobile museum to further cities such as Berlin, Amsterdam, Prague and Milan.”

around the continent. BTS currently has five Mercedes Benz vehicles based in the UK with more on order and has selected partners to service clients elsewhere in Europe.

“The next move is offering a complete service to our customers... day busses, hospitality busses, a full

package,” he says. “Our clients should be able to make one phone call and we can take care of all their transportation needs across Europe.”

Current BTS clients already using the service include Dolly Parton, Iron Maiden, The Strokes, Foo Fighters, Cheap Trick, U2 and Bon Jovi.

News

MCT Triumphs Over Resellers door and instructed what action they could then take.

MCT head Scumeck Sabottka says: “94% of the fans had no problem accessing the shows – all tickets were checked for identity and this went very smoothly.

The fans who had bought tickets through unauthorised ticket exchanges and internet platforms were helped at numerous troubleshooting counters.” Media coverage of the ticket cancellations was widespread in Germany and Viagogo has since agreed to refund ticket buyers for the

Take That shows.

Sabottka believes such action is “the only solution” to fight back against touts and protect fans from being “ripped off.” He says: “For the upcoming concerts of Red Hot Chili Peppers and Kraftwerk this fall, only personalised tickets will be sold exclusively through [Smart Tickets’ online platform] tickets.de. Also, the tickets for Rammstein’s German dates will be personalised and only be available directly from their website.”

Prodigy Festival Rejects Barriers

without safety barriers would not be a wise decision,” the International Centre for Crowd Management states.

“There are many cases in law which identify that to run a concert without adequate safety precautions is dangerous.”

“Depending on the size of the crowd, you could also need second and third lines of barriers to prevent crushing,” cautions Cees Muurling, MD of Mojo Barriers. “If 700,000 people push forward, for whatever reason, there’s simply no means of stopping the crowd or reaching those in distress.”

German promoter MCT Agentur has taken the fight against secondary ticketing to the streets, having

In the aftermath of The Prodigy’s performance at Przystanek Woodstock Festival in Poland that saw 34 people hospitalised, the event’s promoters have stated that they still do not consider crowd barriers to be necessary.

The free event took place from 4-6 August, and attracted close to 700,000 people.

The Prodigy’s manager John Fairs, who has since described the festival as “the most unsafe festival I have worked at in 25 years”

cancelled 9,000 tickets at recent Take That shows, and provided ticketless fans with information to sue Viagogo and Seatwave.

MCT publically warned ticket-buyers not to purchase tickets from resellers, while law firm CMS Hasche Sigle composed strict terms and conditions for the personalised tickets sold exclusively via Smart Tickets.

Fans arriving with resold tickets at the three Take That stadium dates in July were refused entry, offered a chance to buy tickets on the

insisted that crowd barriers were brought in. Woodstock organisers are blaming the barriers for the injuries, while Fairs claims that the situation would have been far worse without them.

Organisers at Woodstock, a member of festival organisation Yourope, point to a strong 17-year safety record, steward training programmes and close associations with emergency services and medical staff.

Because the stage is four metres high, they contend,

it creates a natural safe space.

“Our safety system, which we believe best suits the Woodstock conditions, is a barrier-less one,” says spokesperson Piotr Miazek.

“Both our experience throughout the years and the experience from Woodstock 2011 leads us to believe that no fundamental changes shall be introduced to this plan.”

But the festival is facing criticism from some quarters.

“It is our opinion that to hold a concert of such magnitude with this artist

New Harvest while Soundwave Falters Soundwave promoter AJ Maddah has enjoyed a hot streak Down Under but the festival maestro has hit a ‘win some, lose some’ stretch. In late July, Maddah launched with some fanfare its new threecity festival brand Harvest, with Portishead and Flaming Lips among its headliners.

But in the following days, the impresario cancelled the anticipated Soundwave

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Revolution shows, which were to tour the likes of Van Halen, Alice Cooper and Bad Religion this September.

Maddah blamed the late withdrawal of an unidentified headliner for the cancellation. “Unfortunately, we don’t have enough time to replace them and we didn’t really want to go ahead with an incomplete line up,” he says. Some of those booked acts will still make their way

to Australia for shows.

Australia’s live business is on the rise, but there’s little argument that the festivals market is crowded. Still, that hasn’t stopped Maddah from trying another festival brand, Harvest, which begins its trek on 12 November in Melbourne. Harvest has a strong European flavour.

Its music director is Declan Forde, the creative mind behind Ireland’s award-

winning Electric Picnic and its arts programme is developed by Jenny Jennings, also from Electric Picnic.

The shows “all take place in beautiful sites,” explains Forde, “and there will be a general overall emphasis on aesthetics – a feast for all the senses.” The flagship rock and metal Soundwave festival tour shifted roughly 200,000 tickets across five dates earlier this year.

Top: Scumeck Sabottka

German Conferences Hot-up Germany is set for conference fever in September as Hamburg and Berlin go head-to -head for the attention of music professionals. And both Reeperbahn Festival and Popkomm (twinned with Berlin Music Week), have made significant changes this year.

Popkomm is first, taking place at Tempelhoff Airport

from 7-9 September.

Organisers say that there is now a clearly defined split between Berlin Music Week (which is booked by Melt!’s Stefan Lehmkuhl) and the B2B event.

In addition to a daytime programme of B2B showcases, Popkomm is running 14 panels and 14 keynote speeches, including a Q&A interview

London Conference Season Begins Several conferences for entertainment professionals take place this autumn in London, starting with the second annual Comedy International Conference on 8 September. Located in Greenwich, organisers

expect 70 delegates to attend, and the schedule includes a special session on the crossover between promoting comedy and live music.

From 5-6 October, Live UK’s The Summit returns for its fifth edition at the

with Festival Republic’s Melvin Benn, Berlin Music Week’s major shareholder.

From 22-24 September, the focus shifts to Hamburg for Reeperbahn Festival and Campus, where 1,500 professionals are expected to attend panels focussed on the live and recorded sectors.

With 80 conference sessions, showcases from featured countries, B2B-events,

meetings and networking events, organiser Detlef Schwarte says there’s a strong focus on communication.

“We’re offering several networking sessions this year, called Meet the Promoters, Agents, Festivals, and Managers, and working together with organisations such as IMMF, Yourope and BDV,” he tells IQ. Throughout the festival, 200 bands will perform across 40 venues around the city.

Radisson Blu Portman hotel in London. The event, which attracts around 200 UK professionals from the live music industry promises more networking events this year, while “topics for discussion will range from the staple issues of ticketing, concert and festival promoting, venue sustainability and...booking agents, to

in-depth DIY covering artiste management, ticketing and touring.”

The month after, the UK Festival Conference precedes the UK Festival Awards on 15 November. The Londonbased event has moved from Indigo2 to the Roundhouse this year, and a new voting system for the awards.

More details will be announced shortly.

News

Industry Mourns Double Loss The deaths of two industry pioneers have saddened many in the live music industry this summer, with tributes paid to both insurance legend Willie Robertson and venue boss John Northcote.

In July, Robertson, renowned for his infectious sense of humour and huge personality, died of cancer, aged 67. Robertson cofounded insurance specialists Robertson Taylor in 1977, a company that would revolutionise the insurance business in the world of music.

Covering a niche market that had not been previously served, the company soon became a leader in the field.

Innovations in the business included introducing non-appearance policies to the US. “Willie was one of the great originators of the live music industry, a fantastic

supporter of the ILMC since day one, and a genuinely irreplaceable character,” commented ILMC head Martin Hopewell. “He was also a lovely chap, and the business will be a slightly greyer place without him.”

A month later, Academy Music Group’s (AMG) John Northcote lost a prolonged battle with illness and also passed away, aged 62.

Northcote was instrumental in evolving the UK’s venue market, building a network of 24 Academy venues that assure gig-goers of clean, comfortable surroundings and cold beer.

Live Nation UK president Paul Latham says, “Our industry is full of chancers and charlatans; egotists and eccentrics, but John was completely the opposite... classy and charismatic; earnest and erudite, he was like a

breath of fresh air and it was a delight to help him realise his dream of broadening the AMG network, upgrading the facilities and making music more accessible to the masses... He was a damn good man and I shall miss him terribly.”

Latham says that with the permission of Northcote’s family he intends to start a bursary scheme “to help those

less fortunate to get the training they need to start a career.” Irish promoter Dennis Desmond, also a shareholder in AMG, adds: “It’s very sad news and a huge loss. Our thoughts are with John’s wife, Sanae, and his children.”

Robertson, meanwhile, is survived by his wife Angie and three children Saran, Sam and Max.

Tour Grosses Rise Overall Three separate sets of industry figures suggest that while 2010 was a difficult year, there are signs of recovery ahead. In its report Adding up the Music Industry 2010, authors’ society PRS for Music revealed that the value of live music dropped 6.8% in the UK to £1.48billion (€1.69bn) with primary ticket sales falling nearly 12% to £843.5million (€965.3m).

The fall was largely attributed to fewer stadium shows that year and a lower number of arena-level touring acts on the road.

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IQ Magazine Sept 2011

“This year it feels as though the economic downturn has caught up with the live music industry and promoters and bands alike have responded accordingly,” it comments.

“The live music business is ... showing signs of maturity and cooling to a more sustainable growth path after a period of unprecedented growth.”

While PRS’s report points south, more recent figures, this time in Pollstar’s mid-year report, are more positive. Grosses from the top 50 worldwide tours

rose 11.2% to $1.65bn (€1.14bn) over the first half of 2011 while the average ticket price rose 13.6% to $84.92 (€58.91).

The report states: “There were 12 tours on this year’s chart that charged an average of more than $100 per ticket as compared to only eight last year. Even more interesting is the huge increase in tours hovering just below that magic threedigit price point. There were 22 tours charging more than $90 this year as compared to 12 tours last year.”

Finally, proving that – despite an oversaturated festival scene – its market is in rude health, Live Performance Australia released 2010 figures showing a 22.6% boost in revenue to AUD$1.3bn (€0.95bn), with a 13.5% jump in attendance to 17.2million tickets (paid or unpaid). A 43% increase in revenues from contemporary music was in part attributed to the inclusion of more smaller venues, Moshtix data and the Darwin Entertainment Centre for the first time.

Top: Willie Robertson Top Right: John Northcote

News

Questions Asked Following Festival Tragedies The fallout from the recent festival tragedies in Belgium and Indiana, US, has thrown up a series of questions from production professionals about safety planning for inclement weather. Seven people died and dozens were injured on 13 August at the State Fair in Indiana when winds of up to 70mph hit the site and the stage collapsed.

On 18 August, at Pukkelpop festival in Hasselt, Belgium, five people died and eight were seriously injured when a severe storm blew down tents, trees and scaffolding.

Both accidents come one month after heavy winds and rain caused the main stage at Ottawa Bluesfest to collapse during a Cheap Trick set on 17 July, hospitalising three people.

Pukkelpop promoter Chokri Mahassine told journalists that he had never experienced anything like the storm in the festival’s 25-year history. “I have seen many tropical storms, but

this was unprecedented,” he said. “This is the blackest day that any Belgian festival has experienced.”

While some speculate that the weather is becoming more extreme, others argue that there are simply more outdoor events and temporary structures being built than ever.

“It’s a bit of everything,” says Sabine Funk from Rheinkultur festival in Germany, who also out that there is no broad understanding of the risk of weather by the audience. In a 2009 research document on inclement weather, she further states: “the assessment of this hazard is strongly dependent upon personal experiences and not upon educated knowledge and data.”

At both the State Fair and Pukkelpop, with the storms descending so fast, no evacuation order was given. Veteran production manager Chrissy Uerlings

argues that financial implications of postponing a festival can deter promoters from making the call. “The promoter should be able to cancel the show without losing his shirt,” he says. “We have to get to that point with insurance. I understand the political and financial pressure, but bad weather planning has been a top topic for more than three years at IPM [ILMC’s International Production Meeting]– perhaps people will start to think about it now. Maybe they’ll figure out that a wind warning might be enough to stop a show before it happens.”

“How do you evacuate the site?” asks Stageco’s general manager Tom Bilsen. “Where do people go for two or three hours before the storm blows over?

It’s not easy – it needs more thought about how to do it.”

Bilsen says that a confusing array of accepted standards also needs further discussion, as well as wider education about temporary structures and tents in some quarters.

“There are no official national standards for events and/or temporary structures in most countries,” he says. “More experienced companies rely on EU (and DIN) standards

that are in place, but the onus is on them to find out – no one learns them at school.

Consequently, there are more suppliers than ever now, and young companies can find themselves successful without knowing or implementing these standards.”

Bilsen says that industry standards vary between European nations, but are even more diverse in the US, where in states such as Indiana, registered engineers can sign off their own building calculations.

“There’s no one watching over their shoulder, which means they can refer to different standards or other assumptions as long as they’re an engineer,” he says. “Different states have different acceptable wind speeds as well.”

Some professionals argue that production elements have become too overblown to hang on festival stages, others that a chain of command needs better definition. With such a high casualty rate this summer season, many festivals have found their local media enquiring about bad weather planning. In the wake of both disasters, they won’t be the only ones asking such questions.

Comment

Onwards and Upwards Dear Boy! Bob Taylor reminisces on the extraordinary life of his long-time friend and business partner, the irreplaceable Willie Robertson who passed away on 9 July...

JUst how many times I heard that eXPression over the as near as we could get. Not just for the client’s purpose, last 40 years I cannot begin to tell you. That, together but for our own self-knowledge as to what could and with, “We are so hot the London Fire Brigade couldn’t could not be done.

Just before we broke away from our previous employers put us out”, “Nobody moves until I pull the trigger”, “Are we having fun yet?” and on and on. Those who knew the and started Robertson Taylor Insurance Brokers Limited, he called me to say that he had chartered a boat by the Croisette man will, I am sure, have many more of their own.

He enthused and encouraged everyone who came in Cannes for the duration of the MIDEM conference. As close to him – that was the unstoppable character of you can imagine, I was horrified as this was an expensive Willie Roberston. Whoever he spoke to would remember plan. In truly classic style he said to me “Don’t worry, I will him and would want more of that infectious sense of cover the cost in the very first day”, and so he did.

One evening, an American business manager came on humour and huge personality. His telephone simply board and Willie spent hours entertaining him in typical never stopped ringing.

I was lucky enough to meet Willie in the early 70s, just ‘Robertson’ style. The end result was a lightning trip to New York to explain just what ‘non-appearance’ insurance as the music business was moving out of the dark ages. was all about. We both went as we were still We were both in our early 30s, but I am pleased learning ourselves. We found out that the to say, we had the vision to see that the crazy coverage was almost unheard of in the States world of rock ‘n’ roll was running merrily at that time. along without any form of insurance Initially, we were more successful here coverage. Can you imagine The Who in the UK, but slowly we convinced the or Zeppelin or even Pink Floyd playing Americans that the coverage worked, and shows without liability insurance today? paid claims, and from then there was no Impossible in this modern world. Keep in stopping us. The ‘Robertson Taylor’ party mind that this was the 70s, so insurance boat has now become an institution at was just another bad word and something MIDEM every year. to avoid. It was a subject that no one really Willie became a regular visitor to understood or wanted to know about, so both New York and Los Angeles and trying to sell it to the music business was made many friends as he went along. no easy challenge.

Willie Robertson He would always stay at the Four But that was his secret: Willie could 8 June 1944 - 9 July 2011 Seasons Hotel or the Peninsular where talk to anyone, including the movers and shakers of the time, as he was able to mix with and get he could sit in the bar in the early evening and catch along with everyone he met. It was a long, slow process, whoever might pass by. British bands were regulars there, but slowly, oh so slowly, everything started to click. He so he became truly unstoppable.

Obviously, over the years we had our ups and downs would do the partying while I and our co-founder, Ian within the company but one thing never changed with France, did the backroom work with the insurers.

One of our biggest problems was always the fact that Willie it was always “Onwards and upwards!”.

When Willie and his group of friends told me about he just could not say ‘no’ to anyone, and we moved forward in a whirlwind of crazy sounding enquiries, including Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy so many years ago we insuring the Pope shortly after he had been shot; a policy were fully behind him in his charitable work, and will to pay Captain Sensible if his first song Happy Talk went to continue to be in his passing. Willie was able to bring his number one in the UK charts – which of course it did; and energy and enthusiasm to that project as well, and he took requests to insure various parts of the body, from faces to his involvement very seriously.

The end result of that legendary career is a truly feet and other appendages… and so many more weird and international broking house employing in excess of 100 wonderful requests.

We soon learnt that we needed to be innovative and, people, and an incredibly successful charity.

We will all miss him, terribly. far more importantly, to deliver whatever he promised – or

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Continental Divide Austrian promoter Richard Hoermann argues for more support from mainland Europe...

Earlier this year I crossed the Atlantic to attend SXSW, and found it pretty frustrating to see so few bands from continental Europe represented and supported. Initiative Musik from Germany had put some money in to try and provide some visibility for German acts, but with little success I think. MICA (musicaustria.at) the only provider of support for Austrian artists has no such budget and were sadly not present in Austin, Texas.

As usual, the bands everyone wanted to see were British or US acts, and I see no chance of this situation changing. Let’s face it, booking agents are the new A&R, and whatever they take on gets a chance in the live market. 90% of booking agents are Anglo-American, with perhaps 75% being British, so it’s quite obvious that UK and US bands receive more support, because the agents are closer to them, both geographically and mentally.

Europe unfortunately, cannot challenge this. Strong local markets in France, Italy and Germany are helped by the radio quota system, limiting play for foreign acts, as some people prefer hearing music in their own language, but this does not help in trying to take them abroad.

Touring in other European countries certainly helps the situation, and European initiatives such as The European Talent Exchange Programme (ETEP) support this. But as long as US/UK opinion leaders still dominate, the only strategy that will truly help develop our artists is to get into their markets.

Operators in the European markets, including us promoters, should try all we can to improve the situation, but unless the EU institute legislation modelled on the radio quotas – perhaps a ‘support’ quota forcing big international acts to use local artists as opening acts on their tours – things will not improve.

I think that the European touring industry should lobby all their respective governments, calling for a European-wide PRS agency supporting local EU artists.

Also, as in Canada, a levy on the touring industry could be introduced raising support funds from ticket sales, perhaps with exemptions for tours taking on local acts.

This seems to me the only and best way to support local talent and increase income from the creative industries to the EU and the respective countries of origin. The EU simply can’t afford to continue to let so much touring concert income to be taken across the Atlantic.

Comment

The Show on the Road Caspar Gerwe, director of Stage Entertainment’s newly formed division,Touring Productions, expounds on upscaling his shows…

More and more new arenas designed to accommodate larger audiences than traditional theatres are being built throughout Europe. All these venues need programming and the golden live entertainment rule applies: ‘Content is King’. The most important crowd pullers are still sport, pop and rock, but there is a growing demand for largescale live family entertainment.

We have recognised a major opportunity in this development and formed Stage Entertainment Touring Productions, a new division 100% devoted to touring in arenas, to provide for the needs of this growing audience.

Our long-lasting experience in touring the Holiday on Ice production through Europe’s largest arenas has provided us with a sound basis to roll-out the ambition to become Europe’s leading promoter and producer of arena-touring, family live entertainment.

“ Impressing audiences with your content becomes more and more difficult, but it’s clear that the desire to experience the thrill of live entertainment is still there.“ Stage Entertainment has worked with international partners to produce and tour the world’s biggest musical theatre titles, such as The Lion King, High School Musical, Cats, Dirty Dancing and Sister Act. Our first step will be to transform our current theatre musical productions into shows that can play arenas in France and Germany, followed by the rest of Europe. France is a good example of the trend we follow; there are enough big arenas in the whole country but these provide just a few family entertainment events such as Holiday on Ice. To see a musical, people need to travel to Paris, which they don’t do. Our answer is to stage the Mamma Mia! tour in 29 cities throughout the country. The first signs are very encouraging with already more than 6,000 tickets sold for a show that will not play for another 18 months!

However, although content is important, these shows need to reflect the same presentation values and current trends we see in the rock and pop culture with artists such as Lady Gaga. With the latest developments in light, sound and video, shows can be made into a real 4D experience.

Developments in social media are also an essential aspect;

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audience interaction is more important than ever when everything can be shared online. The big world is no longer removed, people have seen it all, on- or offline, so impressing audiences with your content becomes more and more difficult, but it’s clear that the desire to experience the thrill of live entertainment is still there.

Our biggest challenge is to deliver the total experience of a musical in an arena. Normally, the sensation of a musical begins when entering the venue. The atmosphere, comfortable seats and environment all support the feeling of a special night out. The setting is of course different in the giant arenas we will be focussing on now. Creating a live entertainment experience whilst retaining the intimacy is our aim and can only be achieved by using the latest technology. Moreover, by offering these shows to the venues we will make them accessible to customers who may not normally see a musical.

Another interesting development is that television is increasingly keen on broadcasting live stage entertainment.

TV shows such as the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing had a successful remake for the arena circuit. Other content providers work closely with TV broadcasters to co-create TV formats, which can later be combined with live events.

The function and the added value of the venues are increasing. Recently we conducted some website research which showed that visitors to our websites often linked via a venue site. This indicates that audiences are searching online for an event in their city or in venues they know. Therefore the venues’ communication with their visitors regarding our shows becomes more essential for both parties. Databases, social networking sites and bannering are low-cost marketing tools that create awareness of the upcoming event whilst also getting the customer more involved. It is a strong advantage for the venue, the show and its promoter!

I think this strong focus on live family entertainment within big capacity arenas will endure. Nevertheless, I don’t feel that we are in competition with other companies within the touring live music industry. We react to the demand of the venues and their audiences wanting our family entertainment in addition to their regular programme. It’s a win-win situation: venues get a more diverse programme and access new audience target groups.

The touring shows, which already perform in these arenas, will retain their own audiences; I really don’t think that will ever change.

Comment

The Trap Veteran Hungarian promoter Laszlo Hegedus posts a warning for both established and start-up business players in the live industry...

When all is said and done, the main story of our business is just the common reality show we call life and we assume that everyone knows about this anyway. But it’s a wrong assumption if we think about the new generation; the fresh arrivals to the business. I saw the crowd of new faces at ILMC earlier this year and I wondered how much they know and understand about the mechanism ruling our business and whether we should let them learn it the hard way or pass on some of the sweet or bitter experiences we learned in the past. Let’s try…

It is always exciting to read about the ongoing twists and turns of the big businesses of the live entertainment world. We gasp for air when we read about the billion dollar debts of the multinational companies and the huge but cleverly financed losses, the positive and negative developments of share prices and profit and loss account reports. Less exciting but true, all this is very far away from most promoters’ everyday life – we talk and work in different terms.

Still, if we stop for a moment to think over our life, sooner or later we come back to the basics, following the trends and enjoying or suffering the consequences of the reality of big business.

It’s a cliché but true that money was, and is always, the issue between promoters and agents – an ongoing dispute over higher ticket prices and higher or lower artist fees. In the early days, it was a small everyday victory to gain 10% up or down on the fees and of course agents have to fight, to use every bit of their authority to squeeze out a decent increase of the fee, if, for instance, the artist got a good position on the chart. Even if it was rarely said, everybody respected that.

In the new age of concert touring after the millennium, the landscape changed entirely.

Before we realised what was happening, the major promoters and agents, or at least the market leaders, were taken over by the same owners and ticket prices and artist fees changed entirely. The debts of the buyout deals and the squeeze for turnover and EBIDTA increases pushed up fees and ticket prices, three, four, sometimes ten times above the usual

rates of the 90s. Secondary ticketing started another rally of price hyping, giving the impression that the market is unlimited. People had the money to buy even the most expensive tickets and even if a minority protested, the growth of the market continued and it seemed that the hyping rally would never stop.

I thought (like many others) when the financial crisis came, that it would stop the pricing roller coaster. I was wrong. The number of gigs decreased. The commercially less successful artists and promoters suffered, but the megabusinesses have enough reserves to hold on and see if they can continue the spiral of growth once the crisis is over.

“ I thought (like many others) when the financial crisis came, that it would stop the pricing roller coaster. I was wrong.”

But the trend is not so easily predictable. I have the feeling – and experience – that most ticket buyers are no longer accepting the mega-fees and mega-ticket prices, voting against them with their feet. And this summer and autumn there will be some unpleasant surprises, first in the big countries and then in the smaller markets.

The trap is set. We decide if we walk into it or we find a way around.

We are close to a turning point again. If we want the promotion and concert touring business to survive, the market leaders of the business have to face some major decisions. We have to decrease ticket prices and sales commissions and all the related inflated service prices around concerts, if we don’t want to lose the remaining – still enthusiastic – crowds who love live music.

This is only possible if all players exercise self-control with the artist fees, touring costs, production expenses, agent commissions and promoters’ margins. We either start doing this now, or in five years we will be jobless like most of the stone-headed record company executives are now.

They failed to come up with the right answer in time for a similar demand on CD prices 5-10 years ago.

Insight

The Market Properties Long before The O2 upped the stakes for arenas, John Northcote was driving innovation through UK venues, promising cold beer, first-class production, clean venues and a modern, enjoyable customer experience. IQ spoke to John as part of our UK Market Focus in the last issue. Sadly, it was to be his last interview. In case anyone missed it, we’re repeating it again here. AMG now boasts 14 venues in its estate, including a majority shareholding in O2 ABC Glasgow, a partnership with Leicester University Students’ Union for O2 Academy Leicester, and management agreements with three additional University venues in Hertfordshire, Liverpool and Bournemouth.

Q. Who owns AMG, and how active is the company?

Live Nation Entertainment and Denis Desmond own 56% and Bob Angus (Metropolis Music) and Simon Moran (SJM Concerts) own the remaining 44%. We’re predicting that AMG venues will host over 4,000 events in 2011, hopefully attracting up to 3.5 million customers.

Q. So how would you describe the UK venue market right now? Is it feeling the pinch as some tours are?

As far as the mid range and grassroots market goes, I’d say it was oversubscribed in some locations. The mid/lower end is difficult, due to a lack of product and the increased pressure on people’s pockets across the board. There are many hands trying to get into consumers’ wallets at present with gaming, cinema, sport, retail, all looking for their slice; so we have to offer value for money in terms of ticket prices. The difficulty is how we do this, while maintaining our margins as well.

Q. Over the last 12 months a number of London clubs have shut down – is this a sign of a market in decline?

My experience is that we are not struggling, but it’s harder to maintain margins and many artists are not touring, especially American artists, and tour support is difficult to obtain from the traditional record company source so alternatives have to be explored; ie sponsorship and flexibility in managing diary activity. Clubs are becoming increasingly important so space has to be flexible as competition becomes more ferocious.

What pressures does the venue market face in the UK? What are the key considerations?

Well, there’s certainly an issue with declining levels of disposable income which can effect spend per heads while landlords and suppliers are looking for increases in their margins. Landlords still want rent increases and local authorities and energy suppliers want to increase revenues, so the market is certainly tight!

You also have to consider your audience, and artists appealing to a middle-age range, often those with families, are increasingly difficult to sell tickets for. However, at our level it is more about a lack of quality touring acts which connect with 18-35-year-olds. And then there’s also the effect that festivals are having on the touring market each summer; with the increasing amount of activity, it’s becoming more difficult each year.

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How long do you see this situation remaining?

Until the economy picks up, the market will remain tough but a hot ticket is still a hot ticket and will sell. What effect the London 2012 Games will have on disposable incomes is unclear so I don’t envisage a sustainable bounce back until potentially 2013. Artist packaging and lower ticket pricing will in some cases help, with sponsorship becoming a key element to replace record company support. But while we might be facing a slight dip at the moment, I’m not overly worried. Fans will always want to see their favourite artists in the flesh, so there’s a positive future ahead.

“ I thought (like many others) when the financial crisis came, that it would stop the pricing roller coaster. I was wrong.”

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Batman Live

The caped crusader’s new stage show has plans to fight crime and floor audiences far beyond just UK arenas, writes Christopher Barrett…

Since he first swooped into existence on the pages of Detective Comics back in May 1939, Batman has proved a perennial hit, looming large in numerous forms across comics, TV shows and feature films, but never, until now, has he been presented live and with such multimedia fanfare.

Two and a half years in the making and with a reported budget of some £7.5million (€8.6m), the Batman Live show is currently on a 55-night UK tour that takes in many of the country’s premier arenas including an 11-night stint at the London O2 Arena. The next step will be a full European tour before the show takes to North America in August 2012.

A heady cocktail of theatre, circus acrobatics, impressive stunts, pyrotechnics, beautifully illustrated video sequences and music, Batman Live is a compelling mix that successfully combines the drama of theatre with the visual spectacle of a complex concert performance.

Throughout the two-hour show some 43 actors and acrobats dart across the multifunctional, custom-made stage, descend on wires from the equally bespoke lighting grid or launch themselves into the audience. Meanwhile a 3D Gotham City set provides depth and supports the narrative along with a 100ft video wall projecting illustrations drawn by the DC Comics team.

Behind this latest realisation of the comic book legend is a hugely impressive team whose collective experience ranges from working on the world’s biggest concert tours for the likes of U2 and The Stones to designing Formula 1 cars. But while many are credited with getting the show on the road it was Batman Live’s executive producer and UK booking agent Nick Grace, and creative director Anthony Van Laast, who came up with the initial concept.

Speaking moments before the doors open for a show at the Newcastle Metro Radio Arena, Grace says that two years ago both he and Van Laast individually wrote topfive personal wish lists of future arena projects. Batman

topped both lists. Van Laast has choreographed numerous theatre shows, films and arena gigs while Grace has more than 15 years experience of producing arena shows including Mamma Mia! and Walking With Dinosaurs, yet Grace admits to being taken aback when he got the green light from rights owners DC Comics and Warner Bros.

“I went off to Burbank two and a half years ago and did a pitch to Warner Bros for a live Batman show and to my amazement they agreed,” he says. “I think it was because I had put together a world-class creative team who were not only people that could work in a theatrical way but were also used to working in big spaces like arenas.”

Key members of that team include production director Jake Berry, who has worked with some of the world’s most successful concert tours including the record breaking U2 360 tour, and set and props designer Es Devlin, renowned for her creations for everyone from Lady Gaga to the Theatre Royal. Then there is lighting designer Patrick Woodroffe, whose A-list clients have included ABBA, Michael Jackson and the Rolling Stones, plus video producer Sam Patterson who has created content for concert and stage shows featuring the likes of the Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Take That and U2.

“We wanted to create something theatrically dramatic with an original story and a cinematic score, but also make it a show with lots of illusions, special effects and technical aspects and that is where the rock ‘n’ roll guys come in,” says Grace. So far tickets sales for the UK tour have proved less spectacular than the show itself and Grace admits that Batman Live is not the easiest show to describe.

“The biggest challenge has been trying to explain to people what the show is because we have been trying to do something so different. The vision was to use the whole arena floor and from the very start we wanted a 100ft video wall – we were looking to create a show that would make you feel like you were reading a comic and then the characters burst out of the comic and it becomes a real 3D adventure,” he explains.

Left: The caped crusader swoops onto the stage

The UK and Ireland tour is due to culminate in Belfast on October 8 before Batman Live takes to mainland Europe for an extensive tour that’s due to run until May 2012. Following a break, an 18- to 24-month run in the US commences in August. The intention is then to take the show to the rest of the world.

While Nick Grace Management’s sister company BMLive Productions is promoting in the UK, numerous European promoters are facing the same challenge as Grace when it comes to explaining to the public exactly what Batman Live is.

“Because this is a brand new show with no history, many people are still unsure as to what it is exactly,” says the show’s Swedish promoter Live Nation’s Jay Sietsema.

“Our promotion will rely heavily on visual medias like TV, the internet and social media where we can spread video content. We need to show the public what a fantastic show it is through actual live action film clips.” To tailor the show to each local market, Live Nation is looking to install side screens with subtitles. e biggest challenge has been trying to explain “ Th to people what the show is because we have been trying to do something so different. ” – Nick Grace, NGManagement

Regardless of the challenges faced by promoters in selling the show, audience reaction has been unanimously positive. And John Huddleston, GM of lighting company Upstaging Inc, who worked alongside Dave Ridgway at Neg Earth and Patrick Woodroffe on lighting Batman Live, is among them. “Batman takes touring arena theatre to a whole new level. The designers and production staff had to really consider all viewing angles. It’s pure genius that it looks so great.”

Jake Berry is no less enthusiastic when discussing the complexity of the production and compares Batman Live to the record-breaking U2 360 tour he has been

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overseeing. “Batman is a very technological show, I think it is probably one of the most technological shows out there running on a weekly basis. U2 was the biggest rock ‘n’ roll tour, we crossed a lot of boundaries, and that’s what Batman Live is doing now in its own field; we are doing things that no tour has ever done before.”

Core to Grace’s vision was the creation of a stage that was not simply big but sufficiently advanced to provide a platform for an array of special effects and illusions while enabling the smooth manoeuvre of numerous props and performers. Created by Tait Towers in Pennsylvania, the entire stage was custom-built with features including collapsible panels, trap doors, a multi-functional revolve and what the crew refer to as ‘magic stairs’.

Production manager George Reeves is another member of the team that has a background primarily in music having worked on tours as diverse as “Barry Manilow, Metallica and everyone in between”. Reeves left U2 360 to join Batman in May and spent the first two weeks in the US at Tait Towers. He still remains impressed by the complexity of the Batman Live stage (see page 23), specifically the central riser.

“In the middle of the stage we have a revolve – which in itself is not that unusual,” says Reeves. “But the revolve is also a hydraulic lift, so that adds one more level of complexity in having something really big turn and lift, then you add the fact that it’s a video floor and there’s a lot to be worked out.”

With various props tracking up and down, performer flying and the 400kg Batmobile which power slides onto the stage, it’s no surprise that 45 technicians are required. Stuart Tucker is production stage manager, and with a background primarily in theatre he admits that Batman Live has thrown up numerous new challenges.

“The rules and the basics are still there, the safety and what you are looking out for, but the sheer scale of the show means that there are so many things going on

Top: Batman’s fearsome foes emerge...

Batman Live the grid which works as a catwalk system integrated with the lighting package.

“When we are travelling from city to city, all of the lights can be flipped inside the catwalk for easy storage and transportation. It means we need less people to set it up and less boxes to put it in,” explains Reeves whose aim it is to reduce the Batman Live convoy from 23 to 22 trucks, and reduce the time it takes to break down the set to four hours.

takes touring arena theatre to a whole “ Bnewatman level... it’s pure genius that it looks so great. ” – John Huddleston, Upstaging Inc

at once and so many people to look after – there are people up in the rig and underneath the stage – it all takes a lot of management.”

Similar concerns come into play when moving the show, which falls under George Reeves’ remit. Reeves says that the swift assembly of the show was a key consideration from the off, and points to a superstructure hanging from

“It will take us two months to load out seven or eight times. So it will take longer for everyone to hit their groove than on a normal tour,” says Reeves. But progress is certainly being made both by the production team and by the staff working to fill the existing and future arena dates. Nick Grace looks relaxed and contented as the Newcastle arena begins to fill up with parents and eager looking children clad in an array of Bat gear sold at the merchandise stands.

“Normally when you open a brand new show you go into previews, and you can fix things that aren’t working in a preview, but you don’t get the luxury of previews in arenas,” says Grace. “But I look at the show, I look at every single scene and think ‘that works’. The creative team have left now and I’ve not once needed to call them with a concern. I’m really happy with it, exactly the way it is.”

Two hours later and Grace isn’t the only one smiling.

The key challenges of staging Batman Live For the team at Tait Towers the construction of the Batman Live grid and stage presented a whole range of challenges. Here, Tait Towers director of product management Matthew Hales outlines some of the innovations needed for the show...

• The Batmobile power transmission unit runs through a lift/revolve that has a video floor integrated to it. This deck track and PT unit all had to function with the potential of running at 15-feet per second which is extremely fast for a stage move. But it needed to be fast and dramatic.

• The video floor is an innovative product because it interacts with our standard staging products and also provides a 30mm high-capacity video floor.

• The Joker Mask is a 25ft freestanding scenic element that was made by CNC carving foam that is then hard-

coated and scenically painted. Building a freestanding structure that was stable enough to support up to 16 circus performers climbing outside and inside of the unit brought its own set of challenges. It takes up two trucks worth of space by itself.

• All of the flying winch system was integrated to the mother grid, and the majority of the lighting package was integrated to the catwalk system that is suspended from it. All lighting fixtures are on spring-loaded pivoting arms, so they fold into the catwalk truss for storage and transportation, and then fold out and are cabled during installation.

• As with most shows, the packaging of the gear had to be as efficient as possible. We often spend as much time figuring out how it is going to break apart and pack for transportation as we do developing the actual mechanism and technology involved in the elements.

Top Left: Scarecrow

reiMaGininG the BatMoBile one of the MoSt warMly welcomed and highly anticipated arrivals on the Batman Live stage is the Batmobile. Undoubtedly the most legendary automobile ever envisaged by a comic book creator, it’s an essential centrepiece of any Batman story and in line with every other element of the arena show, Nick Grace went straight for the top draw when looking for someone to design the vehicle.

Professor Gordon Murray, best known for designing Formula One racing cars, opened an email from Grace at the end of 2010 and his first reaction was to laugh.

“It came so much out the blue that I thought it might be one of my mates winding me up to start with, then we looked up Nick and realised it was a very serious proposition because he has a such a great reputation,” he says.

With the team at Gordon Murray Design (GMD) engaged with other projects, Murray took it upon himself to personally oversee the Batmobile’s design.

“I don’t work on a computer or CAD, I always start any new concept with sketches on a drawing board. I normally do half a dozen and start gravitating toward one or two that look good, but this time I got it instantly – I did the first sketch and with one small alteration I got something that I really liked the look of. I showed Nick the sketch and he loved it.”

Murray grew up with the Batman comics and it was memories from his childhood reading that informed his design approach. “I felt the Batmobile should be brought right up to date with a large injection of Formula 1 thinking and aerodynamics,” he says.

The next step was the involvement of GMD’s head of

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visualisation Kevin Richards who created a 3D computer model of the car. Richards and Murray then began liaising with the construction company Asylum Models and Effects whose previous work includes creating a huge mechanical elephant for the Take That Circus UK stadium tour (designed by Batman Live set and props director Es Devlin). Asylum had also built a completely transparent car made from over 2,000 individual parts for a Shell Oil advert.

“I worked closely with Nick and Asylum on the mechanisms such as the fire on the afterburner, the opening cockpit and the controls inside,” says Murray.

“It was explained to me back in January that the car would come on to the stage and sit there, so I said to Nick ‘it needs to be something that looks fast standing still’. As a result I went very aero on it and dreamed up the virtual wheels with the LEDs and the afterburner to give it some life on the stage.”

From the initial meeting with Murray and his team, through to the car’s completion 14 weeks later, Asylum MD Mark Ward says that they were in touch on a regular basis. And while Murray was obviously very sympathetic to the engineering and construction process, he admits to listening to the child within when coming up with the gadgets on board the Batmobile.

“I wanted the Batmobile to feature future technologies that are believable, well some of them are… some of them are a bit of stretch, but that was the fun bit,” he says. “I was focusing on what an eight-year old would want to see. I have never really grown up I suppose.”

Building

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EAA

the Business The European Arenas Association is 20 this year, and many believe it’s just coming of age. Greg Parmley reports…

For two decades, the European Arenas Association (EAA) has been a guiding light in the world of big business venues. Like so much of the contemporary live music industry, what started as an informal affair has gradually grown more structured, while its ranks have swelled as the venue map has expanded. Twenty years in, the association faces some tough questions about its future, and two distinct paths it could take. And it’s a position a long way from some remarkably humble beginnings.

The EAA wasn’t always a beast of an association that straddles 30 arenas in 18 countries across the continent.

“It came about from two brand new arenas, Stockholm

[Globe] and [Palau St Jordi in] Barcelona,” says association founder and long-term president Stefan Holmgren who was CEO of the former. “I had a visit from Jordi Vallverdú from Barcelona and we had a discussion – we were sorry that we didn’t have an association for arenas in Europe, so we made some calls to see if there was any interest.”

Vallverdú was involved in the International Association of Venue Managers (IAVM) and wanted to establish a focussed group for Europe. He already had a strong relationship with the Olympiapark in Munich after approaching them for advice on Barcelona’s successful 1992 Olympic bid. Oslo Spectrum in Norway was another new face on the scene, having opened in 1990, and the fourth initial member was prestigious Wembley Stadium, which at that time also operated the arena next door. Soon after the first meeting in Stockholm in June 1991, the founding four added The Ahoy in Rotterdam.

“I always called it a private club,” says Wilfred Spronk who was VP at Munich and later became EAA president after Holmgren resigned in 2004. “If we had a problem, we phoned a colleague.”

“It was not very formal to begin with, but we discussed the principals for the association and who we should invite,” says Holmgren. “Rather soon we invited a lot of arenas, and it began to expand as it has done for 20 years.”

The primary purpose of the EAA was and has always been the exchange of information between members. And this central tenet to its formation was clearly defined from the start. “The first thought was simply to have a group for the exchange of information, that was the main idea,” Spronk says. “It was easy to handle it with four and later five arenas. We had very strong information between us, and one CEO could learn from the experience of the other.”

This loose band of brothers benefited all the CEOs by keeping them in touch with events outside their markets, and allowing them to identify any pitfalls with

Top: The 2011 EAA board. (L to r) Thomas Torkelsson (board member), Linda Bull (MD), Jos van der Vegt (treasurer), Juan Carbonel (president), Edgars Buncis, (1st vice-president). (Board member Uwe Frommhold not pictured.) Above: EAA members in 2011

EAA show went on. When the scale of Lady Gaga’s recent production raised eyebrows, technical staff called each other and posted questions on the EAA intranet to prepare well in advance.

“ I always called it a private club…

If we had a problem, we phoned a colleague.”

– Wilfred Spronk incoming shows. “You could talk to these cities about what their income and costs were, what sort of publicity they received,” Holmgren says. “You had a good understanding as to whether it was possible in Stockholm or Amsterdam or wherever.” And that pan-European knowledge was also of huge local benefit. “The Globe was owned by the city, so I had a politically appointed board. Being able to describe what was happening in Europe, what the threats and possibilities were, and, for example, explain why Wembley had more shows than us, was of huge benefit to me.”

That same focus of communication remains.

Recently, the EAA network was activated after problems with water spillage on Kylie Minogue’s Aphrodite – Les Folies Tour in Mannheim. They contacted Helsinki (which had dealt with a similar issue) for advice and the

EAA first occupied an office in Wembley, then Barcelona. Later it moved to Amsterdam, run by The Ahoy’s Wim Schipper, who as director secretary of the EAA for many years, Spronk describes as “the motor” of the association. And much as it does today, the two or three annual meetings saw information exchanged below CEO level. “From the beginning we organised meetings of the technical directors of the different arenas; they had their own workshops as did marketing directors and press officers,” Spronk says. “All the specialists had their own workshops.”

Holmgren says that the association began to be more formalised in 1998, when elections were held for the board every two years (he was still voted in as president for a further three terms). “The last four or five years, we had a lot of workshops and plenty of communication between meetings. There were lots of investigations, data sharing and presentations, and many discussions. And we always tried to have one interesting speaker at our workshops.”

With more members aboard, the phone-friendly network that allowed regular communication was replaced by more formal reporting, but some initiatives simply fizzled out. Catering management firm Compass Group sponsored the EAA for a number of years until finance was found through a membership fee. (Today this stands at €6,000 for the first year, then €4,000 with a rebate of up to €1,500 if members attend all seminars.)

And Spronk says that the concept to develop shows that members could promote between themselves never gained much ground.

If Holmgren has regrets about the association’s adolescence it’s the difficulties it faced developing links with other associations. “We had a stadia organisation in Europe that disappeared after a few years and we tried to find co-operations in America because they’re so far ahead of us in Europe,” he says. “That was something where we didn’t succeed. Each organisation simply doesn’t have the resources or time to meet other associations and travel a lot. You’re stuck with your own business.”

The most recent incarnation of the EAA began in 2006, with a marked changing of the guard. Ahoy CEO Jos van der Vegt was appointed president (succeeding The Globe’s Ulf Larsson) while (former NEC Group head) Linda Bull was employed as managing director.

“We knew that if we wanted to be a serious player, we needed more power – more countries and venues had to be involved,” says van der Vegt. “At that time we

Top: EAA founders in 1996: (L to r) Wilfrid Spronk, Stefan Holmgren and Werner Göhner Above: The 2006 EAA board. (L to r) Peter Tudor (Wembley), Linda Bull (NEC Birmingham), Ulf Larsson (Stockholm), Jos van der Vegt (Rotterdam) and Gil Calmeida (Lisbon)

“ We knew that if we wanted to be a serious player, we needed more power – more countries and venues had to be involved.”

– Jos van der Vegt had between 12-14 members, but now we have 30, so we more than doubled in a few years. We were proactive – we looked at the map of Europe, figured out which countries we didn’t have, then we phoned them.”

It was a boom period for arenas, with cement mixers kept spinning across Europe. Van der Vegt and Bull quickly added new members, and new entrants such as the Baltic States gained a wealth of knowledge from their Western counterparts. “The second development was that we tried to be more focussed with our meetings and discussions,” says van der Vegt. “We started organising seminars or workshops about ticketing, safety, chasing new markets. We invited people like Ticketmaster, AEG,

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Live Nation and Stage Entertainment, and there was a keynote speaker in the workshops. We basically tried to organise things in a more professional way.”

Previously, to avoid competition hampering communication, membership rules had allowed just one arena per country. But pressure from potential members saw the rules relaxed that same year. “One circumstance was The O2 in London and O2 World in Berlin – two of the most significant venues in Europe that couldn’t join,” says AEG’s VP of business development Brian Kabatznick.

“But through an education process and acceptance by the membership we were able to successfully join.” Seven of the EAA’s members are now owned, operated or serviced by the American multinational. “We’ll be adding the new arena in Istanbul and Moscow in the near future, so we make up a large part of the organisation – we’re committed to its success,” he says.

The safety in numbers provided by the EAA and large venue chains is acknowledged by its members. O2 World Hamburg joined the AEG fold in 2007, and arena head Uwe Frommhold summarises the benefits. “We were 100% private and were alone until we were purchased by AEG. It’s cool to be a successful lonely rider, but you’re limited when it comes to the bigger world view.”

Membership of the EAA is now conducted on a case-by-case basis, with all members allowed input on any potentially controversial invitation. Recent members include Főnix Hall in Debrecan, Hungary, which joined in May 2009, while London’s The O2 and Hallenstadion Zürich received invitations in October that year. More recently, Budapest Sports Arena and Malmö Arena in Sweden signed up in October 2010.

There are still gaps to be filled in Poland, Russia, Romania, Bulgaria and more, but as the membership grows, so to does the number of competing voices.

“A big challenge is that we have different situations in different venues,” says van der Vegt who still sits on the EAA board today. “City-owned venues have different agendas to privately owned arenas, as do arenas owned by companies like Live Nation or AEG. We have to put the same people together who have the same aims and ideas for the future, but it must not lead to a splitting of arenas.

The fear I have is that it could divide the association. That’s one of the most important challenges for the future.”

Arēna Rīga’s Edgar Buncis is first vice-president, and he shares some concerns about membership. “At the moment, we’re in some kind of development process,” he says. “We’re changing and willing to change but if every arena in Europe joins, we’ll lose the value of exchanging information. If there are two arenas from Berlin, we’ll lose them both because they won’t want to share their information because they’re competing for the same event in the future. So we’ll lose a city.”

Top: The 2008 EAA board. (L to r) Aivar Sirelpuu (Tallinn), Linda Bull (MD EAA,) Philippe Ventadour (Paris), Jos van der Vegt (Rotterdam), Gil Calmeida (Lisbon) Above Left: Live Nation’s David Vickers receives a special EAA award during ILMC 21 in 2009. (L to r) Phil Mead (NEC), Linda Bull (EAA ) and David Vickers.

EAA

“ The members are the only reason the EAA was formed and will continue to be the most important focus.”

– Juan Carbonel Current president Juan Carbonel (from Palacio Vistalegre in Madrid) says that questions of membership have been the hardest issues to resolve of recent years: both whether to increase numbers and dealing with the subsequent varying agendas. But he adds: “The members are the only reason the EAA was formed and will continue to be the most important focus. What the members wish to talk about or action is what the board and I will try to accommodate.” However, the very purpose of the association is currently under discussion, and the results will likely greatly impact member numbers.

“The association is in transition,” says Kabatznick.

“Currently we meet twice a year which satisfies a very important networking and information sharing role, but I think the board will consider how we successfully

transform into a more proactive organisation which is very exciting.”

“We’re asking how we can be a more recognised body in Europe,” adds Frommhold. “How can we be more recognised as the representative organisation of arenas in Europe?” Board member Thomas Torkelsson represents Gothenburg. “Perhaps we should take a bigger part in the industry and be more of a part of it – an association that the industry will contact about arenas,” he says. “It could be promoters, or a connection with the EU.” Given the number of markets EAA now represents it may well have an untapped role on an EU level, but there are other venue associations. It has a long relationship with the UK’s National Arenas Association (NAA) and will shortly begin publishing annual data, mirroring the NAA’s own efforts. “I believe that the EAA has the potential to grow even more over the coming years, and boost membership levels to be the main voice of the arenas industry across Europe,” says NAA chair Phil Mead. But links with associations such as the Germanbased European Association of Event Centres (EVVC) are not as close, and so building a political soapbox may have its detractors.

Were EAA to push for a voice at a European level it would likely need to actively grow – or certainly accept by majority – new members, which in doing so could threaten the spirit of openness and cooperation that has driven it for two decades. Carbonel says the EAA has yet to “develop relations with European political institutions, and other international sport and cultural institutions,” as well as “full recognition of the achievements and best practices of its members on a broader stage.” And that level of skill and achievement is certainly being tested at the moment.

“We’re going through a significant recession, so we all have to be better operators, give the customers more value, make sure the artists get what they need on a marketing level, evaluate ticket prices and give the fans and artists a better experience,” says Kabatznick, summarising some of the challenges European arenas are facing. “The business is getting more competitive, there are more buildings getting built, more pressure on managers to bring shows to those markets and pressure from corporate partners to attract as many shows to that city.”

So whichever direction the EAA board decides to take (they meet in Paris later this month), there is no shortage of agenda topics. In the midst of a marketing campaign to highlight the association brand, steps are clearly being taken to build awareness of its role, but the next few months may well see it step into uncharted waters… provided it can keep the members as satisfied as it has done for so many years.

Top: EAA members in 1993 Above left: Association co- founder Werner Göhner receives EAA’s honorary medal

Russian Ahead

What was once an exclusive playground for aging rock acts is fast developing into the next major international touring market, writes Adam Woods‌

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Russia

Introduction TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE COLLAPSE of the Soviet Union, Russia has yet to realise much more than a fraction of its potential in live terms. But a crowded summer of major international shows – more than 25 in two months in Moscow and St Petersburg – offers an indication that the business is strengthening, even after you’ve allowed for a few misfires.

Whereas international shows in Russia tended to be symbolic events in the late-80s and early-90s, superstar names cross Russia’s borders in earnest these days.

Beyoncé, Shakira, U2 and Linkin Park have all visited in the past two years; Paul McCartney has made a habit of it since he first played there in 2003. Meanwhile, surviving 70s outfits such as Scorpions, Uriah Heep and Nazareth continue to dive further into the wilds of Russia than bands half their age.

It’s not hard to see why. In a touring market hungry for unsatisfied demand, here we have an increasingly wealthy country of nearly 140million people that straddles Europe and Asia. More than 13 of its cities – places with names such as Perm, Ufa, Omsk and Chelyabinsk, alongside the better-known Yekaterinburg and Nizhny Novgorod – are inhabited by over a million people.

But the fact that Moscow and St Petersburg between them number nearly 16m inhabitants – more than the next-largest 15 cities combined – means that even now, with notable exceptions, most western traffic stops only in the current and former capitals.

THE SHEER SCALE OF THE SO-CALLED Russian Federation, even at its relatively populous western end, makes touring automatically expensive, and the need for air freight is a logistical barrier to touring.

Much infrastructure dates from Soviet times, even in Moscow and St Petersburg, and the most fervent modernisers admit that transparency (not enough) and corruption (rather too much) remain serious issues.

The average income is liberally estimated at €1,000 a month, but over-paying promoters and over-generous oligarchs have set the bar high for fees. Consequently,

lofty ticket prices result in some embarrassingly empty halls for major western stars. Many local promoters believe international agents ask too much, and plenty of inexperienced opportunists have paid the price. In any case, dramatically polarised ticket prices are a facet of Russia’s enormous wealth gap. Front-row VIP tickets can change hands in Moscow at €1,500 to €2,000 a time, though these do not always sell as fast as some might imagine. More typical are tickets priced at between 600 and 1,000 roubles (€15-€25).

Russia facts Population GDP per capita (US$) Internet users Mobile subscriptions

139.4m 15,900 59.7m 187.5m

“Russia will be booming in a few years … It’s a natural link between Asia and Europe.”

– Dmitry Zaretsky, SAV Entertainment However, like the canny investors they are, the western live giants appear willing to see past a few cosmetic issues. AEG last month announced deals that will see it consult on and subsequently manage two major new arenas and a stadium, all in Moscow, while local promoters all have their theories about how Live Nation may soon play its hand.

Whatever problems Russia may have, it also has a whole world of potential, particularly with a raft of major sporting events prompting massive government investment in venues.

“Russia will be booming in a few years,” says Dmitry Zaretsky, promoter at SAV Entertainment, one of Moscow’s biggest. “It’s a natural link between Asia and Europe.”

Below: TCI’s Scorpions’ farewell Russian tour hits Novosibirsk, Dvorets Sporta Sibir, in May

Below: Serj Tankian at Crocus City Hall, Moscow

Promoters Russia’s geography forms a natural promoter division...

INEVITABLY, THE OVERWHELMING majority of Russian promoters congregate in the western cities of Moscow and St Petersburg. Players such as SAV, Melnitsa International, Attack Concerts and TCI in Moscow and St Petersburg’s NCA and Planet Plus are among the most active.

While careless stereotypes about Russian promoters don’t necessarily hold true any longer, even those in the thick of the country’s budding live business will acknowledge there are plenty of sharp operators and opportunists.

“Every year brings new dilettante promoters who spoil the market with over-estimated offers, and the international agents often agree to deal with them,” says Maria Axenova, talent buyer at Moscow’s Melnitsa International, which has recently brought Muse, System Of A Down, Slayer and Megadeth to the capital.

Of the two cities, Moscow easily maintains the higher ticket prices, though St Petersburg is geographically better located, and while Moscow has (by far) the larger population, St Petersburg promoters believe theirs is the city with the greater potential.

“Increasingly, artists come only to St Petersburg,” says Evgueni Finkelstein, managing director of Planet Plus. “I guess this trend will progress in the future.”

While many larger promoters operate in both Moscow and St Petersburg to a degree, they all draw their strength outside their home town from strategic partnerships.

“We are different from most developed markets because there aren’t any promoters who are strong in both territories,” says Michael Shurygin, managing director of St Petersburg-based NCA, pointedly acknowledging the very different cultures and rules of the two cities. “There are differences – Moscow is a lot bigger and there is a lot more money there, naturally – but the reason promoters aren’t often strong in both is more about politics.”

A St Petersburg promoter seeking to stage a show in Moscow will need a trusted Muscovite confederate to handle the necessary permissions and arrangements, and vice versa. “The partnerships I have don’t prevent me from doing shows in Moscow, but there are things you won’t do, because you have an understanding,” says Shurygin, who has lately promoted or co-promoted St Petersburg shows by Muse and 30 Seconds To Mars as well as the Tuborg GreenFest and Rock On Volga festivals.

FURTHER EAST, KAZAN, THE capital of the Republic of Tatarstan in central Russia, doesn’t make the international news all that much, and almost never

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for musical reasons. So when Sting added a stop at the city’s 10,000-seat TatNeft Arena on his Symphonicities tour, promoted by Planet Plus, it was clearly worth a mention. Whatever the merits of Kazan, it is not a muchfrequented stop on the touring itineraries of major western artists, but the concert’s organisers welcomed Sting on 1 July and waved him off the following day.

Not for nothing, evidently, is the unofficial motto of Tatarstan “Bez Buldırabız!”, meaning “We can!”.

While disposable incomes in Russia’s smaller cities don’t compare to those of western economies, the audiences are substantially less jaded. Accordingly, tours are gradually extending out into the less familiar but still demographically significant parts of the country.

Roxette played four regional shows in Russia in March with SAV Entertainment, opening their European tour in Kazan, Samara, Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk.

“Increasingly, artists come only to St Petersburg …

I guess this trend will progress in the future.”

– Evgueni Finkelstein, Planet Plus Further east, bands leave the orbit of the huge western cities entirely, and dates begin to make more sense scheduled with Asian tours. “A lot of artists are now expressing interest in adding Vladivostok and Khabarovsk in the Russian far-east to their South East Asian tours,” says Zaretsky. “Those two cities are too far away from the rest of Russia and even Siberia, but routing works great with Japan or Korea.”

If infrastructure is an issue in the capital, then it is certainly a far bigger one in less cosmopolitan destinations, where transport is the abiding dealbreaker. “Most cities in Russia are well connected to Moscow,” says Andrei Nedvetsky, general director of Moscow- and Kiev-based logistics specialist Showtime.

“The problem is they’re not connected to each other.

You can have two cities, 300km apart, but the only way you can get from one to the other is to go via Moscow, 1,500 km away.”

International Investment

Venues

Recent announcements spell change for the market...

Sport should drive renovations in venues...

CAREFUL LANGUAGE ATTENDED AEG’s announcement of its involvement in three new venues in Moscow on 19 July.

The US venues, sport and entertainment giant will provide “comprehensive venue services” for VTB Arena Park, the new sports and entertainment development planned in Petrovsky Park near the historic centre of Moscow.

The park encompasses two large venues: a 45,000seat soccer stadium for Dynamo Moscow Football Club and the 2018 FIFA World Cup, and a 12,000-seat hockey and basketball arena. Needless to say, there will one day be music in both, as there will in another AEGrelated development, a 15,000-seater arena to be built on Moscow’s ring road.

TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE DISMANTLING of the Soviet system began, there are still plenty of architectural reminders of those da ys. As a result, and notwithstanding the AEG-related projects, promoters will have a wish list of new venues in most cities for some years to come.

“The first thing Moscow needs is venues, and the rest of the country too,” says Tatiana Dalskaya, whose Dalskaya TOP Holdings has promoted shows for The Prodigy and Placebo, among others. “We still have a lot of old Soviet buildings. Olimpiyskiy Stadium was built for the 1980 Olympics and was beautiful, but it’s old now too.”

The saviour of music in Russia may yet prove to be sport. The World Cup will come in 2018, to follow the 2013 Universiade, the Winter Olympics in 2014 and the 2016 World Hockey Championships, while St Petersburg is said to be weighing up a bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics. “I think music will come after sport,” says Dalskaya. “When they build all these new venues, people will want to see live shows.”

There are already significant moves afoot. The 35,000-capacity Olimpiyskiy has signed a deal, not due to come into effect until Christmas, to give TCI the status of in-house promoter for international acts.

The aim of TCI’s Ed Ratnikoff, as he puts it, is to demonstrate that shows in Russia can run as smoothly as those in any other great nation.

“Our strategy will be to bring the venue to the notice of agents in London and Los Angeles as an absolutely transparent business with controllable, electronic ticket sales and costs that can be broken down, just like on any other show,” says Ratnikoff, whose dates this year include Maroon 5 and Rammstein.

Moscow also has the 6,200-capacity Crocus City Hall and the 6,000-capacity State Kremlin Palace, plus clubs such as Dom, Solyanka and the B2 Club, whose 1,000-seater fourth-floor room has hosted shows from Saint Etienne to the Dead Kennedys.

In St Petersburg, clubs include the Glav Club, Kosmonaut, Rocks Club and PORT, while at the upper end are the SCC and the much newer Ice Palace, with capacities of 25,000 and 12,300 respectively. A new 69,000-capacity stadium on Krestovsky Island, a ten-minute underground ride from town, is currently well underway.

Meanwhile, every large city has a sporting and concert complex, from Rostov-on-Don’s 5,000-capacity DS Sport-Don to the 9,100-capacity TatNeft Arena in Kazan and Novosibirsk’s 7,500-capacity LDS Sibir.

“We are not joint venture partners and we are not owners, but obviously the largest developing market in Europe is very, very attractive to us.”

– Brian Kabatznick, AEG Europe “To all three of these, AEG is providing strategic venue services,” says Brian Kabatznick, VP business development, AEG Facilities Europe. “We are consulting during the design and development phase, and will continue to work on the operating phase. We are not joint venture partners and we are not owners, but obviously the largest developing market in Europe is very, very attractive to us.”

The AEG deal is far from a piece of empire-building, but it is nonetheless significant as the entry point for one of the two most substantial international live organisations. Live Nation, no doubt, won’t be all that far behind, and rumours persist that it may spearhead a Russian expansion from its Finland office.

Above: Artist’s impression of VTB Arena

Festivals The festival-going culture is proving a slow burner...

RUSSIA DOESN’T EXACTLY THRONG with festivals each summer, but when it does them, it’s usually on a large scale. Rock on Volga proudly declares itself the biggest one-day festival, not just in Russia, but in the whole of Europe, with 253,000 attending June’s one-day event in Samara.

Unlike Tuborg GreenFest, the St Petersburg-based one-day festival also organised by NCA, Rock on Volga is a free show, with only a limited number of VIP tickets sold. “It is mostly Russian rock, but in the three years it has run, we have had Deep Purple, Skunk Anansie and Apocalyptica,” says Michael Shurygin.

Attack Concerts, one of the older concert agencies in Russia organises tours as well as private shows for corporate and monied clients with artists such as Beyoncé, Pink, Katy Perry, Kesha, Flo Rida, Dita Von Teese and FlyProject. It also has a significant roster of festivals that includes Energy Mega Dance (Moscow), Melodies and Rhythms of the Foreign Scene Russian style (Moscow), San-Remo (Moscow and St Petersburg) and The Voice of Asia (Almaty, Kazakhstan).

Other prominent festivals include Nashestviye, another Russia-centric event which takes place in

Zavidovo in the Tver Region with a crowd of 180,000 across three days in July. This year’s event narrowly escaped cancellation after an outbreak of African pig plague in the area, going ahead on condition that the entire area was fenced off and disinfected before and after.

Organisers Andrei Matveyev and radio magnate Mikhail Kozyrev also this year revived Maxidrom, an increasingly international festival at Moscow’s Toshino Airfield, where Korn, The Prodigy, Travis and Adam Lambert led the first line-up since 2008.

The entertainment media maintain a strong presence at Russia’s festivals. Just as Radio Maximum spins off Maxidrom, Afisha magazine produces the Afisha Picnic Festival in July at Kolomenskoye, a former imperial estate near Moscow, now a state-owned museum and nature reserve.

Melnitsa co-promoted and funded the show this year, drawing Hole, Kaiser Chiefs and Peaches, among others, and there are plans to extend the festival to two days in 2012.

Among the city festivals in Moscow are the indie festival Avant, which for seven years has mixed Russian alternative bands with acts from around Europe and the US, including, over the years, Devendra Banhart, The Horrors, Spiritualized, Deerhoof and I Am Kloot.

Running in June at Art Play, an art centre in a converted factory, Avant also brought British Sea Power, Chinawoman and the Frozen Orchestra to St Petersburg this year for a night at the Kosmonaut club, and promoter Maxim Silva-Vega told the St Petersburg Times of the need for Russia to develop an authentic festival culture.

“The middle class is still some kind of an abstract notion here, and there is a huge gap between poor and rich.”

– Maria Axenova, Melnitsa International “I think we haven’t got there yet,” he said. “Not just us – nobody in Russia. People here only go to what they’re accustomed to. Our goal was to get people… to go to something new and interesting. The festival is intended to help people to discover new things.”

If there is a barrier, promoters are agreed, it is in the lack of a thriving middle class, in a hugely polarised economy where very cheap and very expensive tickets sell fast and those in the middle won’t shift.

“It’s hard to predict the growth in the festival market in Moscow, since it’s subject to a growth of middle class,” says Melnitsa’s Maria Axenova. “The middle class is still some kind of an abstract notion here, and there is a huge gap between poor and rich.”

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Above: GreenFest

Money and Politics

Production Advances in personnel skills drive the sector...

Visas are far more negotiable than distance...

SINCE ALEXANDER STRIZHAK FOUNDED JSA in 1996, he has seen the industry gradually build from its grass roots.

“At that time, nobody was engaged in production management as a separate business in Russia,” he recalls.

“A year later, I bought a big set of stage structures and JSA became the first professional stage production company in Russia. We provide a full range of organisational and technical support services of any show-projects and concerts – mainly big outdoor events” Showtime Logistics was established in 2004, but Andrei Nedvetsky cut his teeth on big Red Square shows such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1998 and Paul McCartney in 2003. Nedvetsky testifies to the increased scale.

“We had an extra-big production for Paul McCartney which consisted of 24 trucks,” he recalls.

“But last summer we had U2, who were coming with 116 trucks, including the support band and everything else. The scale of the events has grown a lot.”

The next step, he says, is to take the larger acts out on the road. “I know a few promoters already who are putting together tours, and we are getting ready to go outside Moscow and find ourselves partners in the regions.”

Ed Ratnikov’s account suggests that shouldn’t be too hard. “In the last few years, local personnel have gained good experience in show production up to the international standards of live industry – rigging, power supply, crowd control,” he says.

“A lot of hotels are being built all around the country each year, new venues are being constructed, the old ones improved and upgraded. Local production companies have purchased up-to-date sound and lighting equipment.

Step by step, the Russian live market is developing and there is a real opportunity opening up to include it in the world circuit.”

BRITISH ROCK MANAGER MARTIN DARVILL has a bold claim to make for Russia. “It’s easier to tour Russia than it is to tour America now,” he says. “In the past couple of years, the red tape in the US, the tax situation, the visas, are all far tougher than in Russia. Can you imagine saying that ten or 15 years ago?”

While bands touring the US can expect to surrender 30% of their fee in tax, deals in Russia are done on a net basis, with the promoter picking up the tax bill.

Likewise, though artists need to be invited via the Ministry of Culture, they are eligible to travel on humanitarian visas, rather than the more bureaucratic personal or tourist kind. “Mostly, it is easy to come here,” says Tatiana Dalskaya. “It is not like it used to be.

Artists and tour managers always freak out about visas, but these days, it’s fine.” Nonetheless, it is a fact generally acknowledged that Russian dates come at a hefty premium for a large touring operation – largely, but not entirely, due to the costs of travel.

“In Europe, the distance between cities is about 200-400km,” says Finkelstein. “But if a tour goes from Helsinki to Moscow [a distance of well over 1,000km by road] the expenses increase considerably. There are always police cars escorting the touring. There were about 2030 escorting cars for the Rolling Stones show. All these expenses are carried by people who buy tickets.”

“Remember,” Zaretsky cautions, “not all of Russia is populated with crazy oil and gas millionaires, though now other cities are able to pay more than before and they are able to get more serious acts.”

Below: Rock on Volga crowd

“It is not like it used to be. Artists and tour managers always freak out about visas, but these days, it’s fine.”

– Tatiana Dalskaya, Dalskaya TOP Holdings

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eps

Laying the Groundwork Event logistics might not be the sexiest part of the live industry, but for 15 years, eps has been staging a quiet revolution. Adam Woods reports...

o

kan Tombulca and eps, the live event service provider he has operated for the past 15 years, are on a run of form. You can tell from Okan’s summary of his schedule as he speaks to IQ from Düsseldorf’s Esprit Arena, with something loud and vaguely familiar booming in the background.

“I was in Milano yesterday, with Roxette,” he recounts.

“The same day, I went to Locarno, where we had a Moon and Stars concert with Joe Cocker. Today and tomorrow, I’m with Bon Jovi,” he adds, pinpointing the source of the soundcheck-style racket. “Next week I’m flying to U2.”

Shakira, Lady Gaga, Vasco Rossi, The Eagles, Take That and Sting all figure in Okan’s rapid-fire summing-up of the year’s events so far. “There’s a lot of good stuff happening,” he notes.

Eps has had a healthy 15 years with Tombulca and fellow managing director Martin Steffen at the reins, but Okan doesn’t have to cast his mind back to pinpoint when this latest rash of good stuff started happening.

“U2,” he says. “The first show was in Barcelona two years ago. A couple of weeks after, Jake Berry was giving an interview and he was asked about all the new things he had on the tour. And he said, without these arena panels, we would probably still be in Barcelona for the load-out now.”

The aluminium panels aren’t glamorous; you’d never need them if you weren’t staging a stadium show. But as U2 production director Berry confirms, they were significant in keeping the band’s recently concluded tour rumbling across the known world.

“We have been on the road with the U2 360 tour for two years now, and it is safe to say that without eps the shows would have been 200% harder to work, and in some cases, not possible,” he says.

“When we started to put the tour together, we had to find a way to be able to drive cranes and forklifts on soccer, baseball and American football fields, which of course are all grass,” he added. “I looked at various types of field cover and not one system came close to the arena panels offered by eps.”

Two years laying down stadium flooring for Dublin’s

finest across Europe, North America, the Antipodes and South America has provided eps with something like a world tour of its own.

“That has been one of the key tours, because we were a part of the production and we travelled all over the world,” says Tombulca. “It has opened a lot of doors.”

In not much longer than the time U2 have been out on the road, eps has become a global business. Tombulca has the figures at his fingertips: €55million turnover, 138 staff. In fairly short order, eps has opened offices or facilities in nine countries and counting.

“Currently we are opening an office with storage in Brazil, one in South Africa and a warehouse in Italy,” he says. “We are already in Australia, US, Germany, France, Scandinavia and Poland. And all that has happened in the last three or four years.”

G

round cover, barriers, fences, seating, containers, tents, showers, cable protectors, flagpoles: these are the areas where eps has focused its efforts.

But when the company first set out, the site equipment sector scarcely existed.

“Site equipment, we discovered very early on, wasn’t very important to anyone except the audience,” says Tombulca. “At the beginning, it was, ‘bring all the equipment and we will see what we’ll do’. We were a subculture in the wider live business. Nobody paid any taxes; nobody had to go to school; health and safety people didn’t even know it existed. It was just the Wild West.”

The business on which eps was built predates Okan’s 1989 arrival by almost 20 years. Under Michael Steffen, it operated as a German promoter and equipment supplier at the dawn of the big touring age.

“When I started, I was working for Michael, the brother of my partner Martin,” says Tombulca. “He did all the big bands – Rolling Stones, Genesis – and we were his production department, but we also did all the site equipment. We decided to do our own business in 1996.”

With an aim to do things better than they had been

Left: The Pope in Cologne, 1987. From Top to Bottom: José Carreras in Cologne, early 90s. Rock am Ring fence, 2011 Martin Wiesbaden at Pavarotti, 90s. Okan at Rock over Germany,Wildenrath 1993. SPLASH SwedenRock portaloos Grandstands Barrier Systems for AC/DC in Budapest. Okan Tombulca and Folkert Koopmans

eps Left: AC/DC Australia set up

S

done before, eps began its new life supplying floor covering and some seating, and found the German site equipment sector ripe for a progressive approach.

“We were the first people who started doing CAD drawings, timetables, planning,” he says. “We tried to give a structure to the whole thing. The authorities started to trust us, and the promoters loved the idea that we could help them to safely increase capacity, because more capacity obviously means more tickets.”

“

A lot of the other people working for me, we grew up together. One of our managing directors, I have known since I was 11.” - Okan Tombulca

Determined to grow only with demand, eps added fencing and barriers as customers requested them.

Unconventionally, having initially established itself in Munich, eps opened further German offices not for the sake of expansion, but for the convenience of incoming staff.

“We opened our office in Berlin because we met people there, thought they were great and wanted to have them,” says Tombulca. “We didn’t expect our people to come to us. A lot of the other people working for me, we grew up together. One of our managing directors, I have known since I was 11. Our logistics man was one grade below me at school.”

trong growth between 1996 and 2001 saw eps grow its turnover from €800,000 to €11m in its first five years, and it took on 21 further staff to add to its founding four. But Tombulca concedes that the growth was slightly out of control. In need of a steadying influence, eps sold out to British plc Peterhouse Group that year, whereupon that growth, controlled or otherwise, slowed right down.

“Becoming part of a large company, we realised it’s not all good,” says Tombulca. “We learned a lot about numbers and analysis and budgeting and planning, but we couldn’t move forward anymore. If you said, ‘we need some investment,’ they said, ‘make me an analysis’, which you did, and then there would be an analysis of the analysis and you ended up going crazy.”

Becalmed and frustrated, eps had bought security in exchange for self-determination. When Peterhouse was bought by the even bigger Babcock International in 2004, the new owners had no need of a lone German service company, so the directors fell on the opportunity to stage a management buyout. “Since then, it’s just been a rocket – we have grown and grown and grown.”

Bespoke products, such as the flooring beloved of U2 have helped to spearhead that growth, as have a number of parallel ventures and a bold – and so far apparently effective – plan for global coverage.

In addition to its music commitments, eps works for the armed forces in the US, Britain, Germany and France, setting up camps, providing (non-military) equipment and services. There is also a project design wing, creating and building conferences and exhibition stands.

“What we do is infrastructure,” says Tombulca. “The basic idea is always the same. Different sectors have different regulations and materials, but at the end of the day, it’s logistics and infrastructure: everybody needs toilets, showers and offices; everybody needs phone lines.”

The U2 360 tour has fuelled eps’s international ambitions, much as Robbie Williams in 2006 opened the door for an Australian office – their first outside Germany.

Just a few years on, eps also has branches in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth. “That was actually the start for us. Because suddenly we realised we could do it – we could go to other countries. The first step is always the most difficult one.

Once you do it, you realise, hey, this isn’t so hard.”

In eps’s favour is the fact that, while plenty of regional and local site equipment companies will ship their gear around the place, there are very few global players.

“You can get everything everywhere, almost,” Tombulca boasts. “Showers, toilets: why do you need a global company to do that? But the difference with us is, we are developing our own materials, and we are investing a lot of money to make things better, quicker, cheaper.”

For instance, the company developed a new range of emergency gates in response to the Love Parade tragedy in Duisburg last year.

“We had many, many meetings with health and safety and crowd managers about how we can make our barriers safer,” says Tombulca. “So we developed completely new emergency gates that didn’t exist before and today, whoever sees them, they want to have them.”

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iven the duration and dense scheduling of modern, top-level tours, eps has identified seamless site equipment provision as an important global market niche. Astutely so, it would seem. Local offices and warehousing cuts down on shipping costs and transit times and keeps prices competitive with those of local firms, with the advantage of a single, ongoing supplier relationship.

“You take Bon Jovi,” he says. “Monday, we played in Bucharest. Today is Düsseldorf and tomorrow we are playing in Zürich, with 50 or 60 trucks. To make that possible, you need to have exactly the same conditions everywhere you go. We are saying, ‘Look, let’s make a tour deal, and we will give you the same conditions everywhere you go’. And they love that.”

“

We are developing our own materials, and we are investing a lot of money to make things better, quicker, cheaper.” - Okan Tombulca

Live Nation has worked with eps on recent Madonna, Gaga and, of course, U2 tours, and Global Touring VP Europe Tim McWilliams has praise for the way the company has managed its global expansion.

“Okan has expanded at the right speed, and he hasn’t let the service slip,” says McWilliams. “Instead of having to deliver to a region, they have got equipment that lives all over the world in a lot of different places. It makes it a lot easier than doing a show in, say, Estonia and having to wait for all the gear to show up from Germany. They are good guys, and Okan is a very good, business-minded person.”

Not everything, of course, is about tours. Festivals, Okan believes, are an increasingly guaranteed market staple, and one that is destined to grow and grow as mass-market audiences increasingly turn on to the pleasures of such

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summer events. Accordingly, eps moved into sanitation which has rapidly become one of its most successful sectors.

Folkert Koopmans at Hamburg-based concert promoter FKP Scorpio remembers just how the company came to get into sanitation in the first place.

“It was back in 2008 and I had a company I wasn’t happy with,” says Koopmans. “They increased the prices by 30% and we didn’t find a compromise, so I called Okan and said, ‘is there a chance we can do this together?’. He didn’t have the material then, so we financed it together, and in two months he did a much better job than the supplier I worked with before.”

T

here’s science – or at the very least, careful market research – at the heart of eps’s method. Okan is particularly proud of eps’s water-flush WCs, its shower containers and tents, because they have developed them themselves in response to customer demand. After handing out questionnaires at almost 200 festivals this year, the shower tents have mirrors and electric sockets – because festival-going girls insisted on them.

“These people are paying us, at the end of the day, aren’t they?” says Tombulca. “And if you look to the promoters for instruction, I have real doubts how many of them actually go to the campsite. They are mainly interested in the music, and I think that is a big mistake, because the campsite is where people are spending 70% of their time.”

And then there is all-purpose reliability. When Koopmans had 100mm of rain in a single night at Southside, he called in aluminium panels from eps on Thursday night, and on Friday morning the trucks rolled in.

KPS Concertbüro’s Roman Szemetat, likewise, enthuses about the drawings, field covering and the heavyduty basement under the stage when Herbert Grönemeyer came to Hamburg most recently.

“Dependability is a deciding factor in our business and we know we can count on eps,” he says. “We are glad to have eps and it is great to know them.”

Above: Eps U2 360 tour

Ride to live In June, Greg Parmley set a new Guinness World Record for visiting 26 music festivals in 30 days. He shares a few thoughts from the road…

Starting at Glastonbury Festival on 24 June, I set off

on a 5,500 mile trip through 13 countries to set a new world record for visiting the most festivals in 30 days. I travelled to Croatia and back by motorbike, but the record itself was not my main reason for going; I wanted to experience a bunch of European events first-hand, and, more importantly, try to figure out why the festival business is – despite recent press reports – in such rude health.

This piece might read a little like a classroom showand-tell following the holiday season, but I discovered – or perhaps confirmed – that the force driving millions to risk everything from trench foot to sunstroke each year extends far beyond headliners. And just as the motivation of many festival organisers is deeper rooted than turning a profit, community and the role of the audience is the

DNA of an event, guiding its growth and binding each festival together. I also saw that festivals are changing, and not everybody is keeping pace…

I’m a big fan of the festival season. I always

have been, ever since my first Glastonbury in 1992. Back then, gangs warred for control of holes they’d dug under fences, drug dealers manned pitches along paths between stages, and Ocean Colour Scene were cool. It was a world apart from Glastonbury today, and a universe from anything this 16-year-old had ever experienced. On the Sunday afternoon, after chugging back a litre of cheap red wine, I crowd-surfed for an entire Neds Atomic Dustbin set. My life – and the clothes I was wearing – were never quite the same again.

Ride to Live But as much as I now write about festivals year round, and spend summers bouncing around a handful of events, I wanted to experience more of them, and more directly. So I spent eight months planning how I could take some time out for what proved an inspiring, illuminative journey. By blogging for the UK’s Daily Telegraph and on a dedicated Facebook page, and filming for Virtual Festivals, I was able to persuade BMW to lend me an R1200R motorbike – a great, broad beast of a machine that I came to love dearly. Meanwhile, Olympus agreed to provide some camera equipment so that I could document my trip. And in March, Serge Grimaux, whose new company Intellitix is breaking ground for festival ticketing and payment systems, kindly agreed to cover many of the costs involved.

So on 24 June, after my shortest ever Glastonbury experience (90 minutes wallowing in mud that properly tested a new pair of biker boots), I rode to Hard Rock Calling in London and then to Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, then east through central Europe to Croatia, and across the Adriatic Sea to Italy (Ok, I didn’t ride this bit, I got a ferry), up through the Alps to Switzerland and then back to the UK for four final festivals and home. To bed.

There was a lot to learn, and not just about

what makes festivals tick. Having got a motorbike licence just six months before leaving, travelling up to 400 miles a day took some getting used to. And then there are the unwritten rules of the road, like the fact that when Euro bikers stick out their leg when passing, they’re not actually trying to boot you off. It’s a sign of respect, apparently, although the first time it happens at high speed on a Belgian motorway, dying does cross your mind.

I had a satnav to direct me but soon after leaving we had a few relationship issues. Undoubtedly the most mature personality on the trip, it chided me constantly.

I was either going too fast, or in the wrong lane, or I’d forgotten its birthday, again. In Luxembourg, returning from the small but perfectly formed Rock-a-Field festival, it navigated me into a storm drain. Fortunately, it hadn’t rained recently, or we may never have got out. And on arriving in Hradec Králové in Czech Republic for the undiscovered gem that is Rock for People, it urged me onto a cobbled street, resulting in my first encounter with the police.

“You cannot drive on the pedestrian street,” said the policeman, blue lights bouncing around the main square.

“Yes, but my satnav told me to,” I pleaded. It was as though I’d claimed the dog had eaten my homework.

The weather was diverse too. Riding 350 miles across Germany on the autobahn was one of the lowest points, with rain so hard it stung through four layers of

Above: Greg and Team Pohoda Middle: Nothing like a festival sausage...

Bottom: Metalcamp revellers take a walk in the woods

“Festivals are about the energy of community and looking out for each other. Big groups of people can make change. You can have civic intention and we may be in our infancy about what festivals can do.”

– Marian Goodell, Burning Man

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clothing. And when I finally reached With Full Force at Löbnitz airfield outside Leipzig, I was met with a column of muddy metallers trudging in the opposite direction as much of the site was washed out and winding down.

Not that the heat doesn’t present its own problems on a motorbike. Through Serbia and Croatia, service station refills became F1 pit stops. Without the breeze that kept me cool above 80mph, it was a race against time to remove all bike gear before litres of sweat cascaded down into my boots. I might have been faster out on the road, but for quickly buying lunch or not looking like a sex pest, four wheels win hands down.

Still, the trials of the road – which also included insect genocide across every forward facing part of my body, dropping the bike twice, and a run in with a lorry on a hairpin bend up in the Alps – were far from the most exciting element of the journey. The festivals soon became the main adventure, and it was a list as diverse as the weather. From large-scale events like Hard Rock Calling and High Voltage in London, and Graspop Metal Meeting and Rock Werchter in Belgium, there was jazz at both Montreux in Switzerland, and Umbria Jazz in Italy. And from metal events like Metalcamp in Slovenia to electronica at Garden Festival in Croatia and the downright bizarre at Secret Garden Party in the UK, each event had something unique about it; something which draws fans back annually.

For some festivals, like Pohoda, Rock for People and Rheinkultur, their success is a one-size-fits-all approach with a diverse line-up, art installations, NGO zones and more; for others, like Gurten, EXIT, Malta Festival and Live at Sunset it’s the natural beauty of the surroundings.

Montreux and Umbria Jazz rely on an ever-expanding reputation and international tourism for their city events, while smaller festivals such as Redfest in the UK and Garden Festival in Croatia target niche crowds (Redfest the local youth population, and Garden, British clubbers who benefit from a direct flight from London to nearby Zadar).

Then there’s the downright unusual. For sheer creative effort, Secret Garden Party near Cambridge, UK, was the finest example of what can be achieved on a Greenfield site. But hands down, Pennenzakkenrock in Mol, Belgium, was the scariest. When they said it was a teenage event, I was expecting some buxom 19-year olds with a penchant for balding journalists. What I got was a beachfront free-for-all with 23,000 eight-to-twelve-year olds going mental on the sand. Entire schools from across the country are bussed in and turfed out into this man-made holiday park. It’s a self-contained playground with a bombproof adult shelter at one side, and a phenomenal idea that could be replicated in many countries.

Above: Balaton Sound’s crowd waits for Portishead Middle: Lake Geneva, Switzerland Below: Paléo Festival’s main stage kicks off

Ride to Live The festival scene is no longer just about knocking back six pints of pear cider and waking up in a hedge. Along the route, I asked people what it was that sees more people than ever each year coming out in their thousands. The responses were as mixed as the line-ups. At Rock for People, promoter Stepan Suchochleb says it’s not just about music anymore.

“We survey our visitors every year, and it’s the completeness of our services that makes them come. It’s not just about the music. If you want them to come back you have to offer good facilities, food and entertainment apart from the music. We have theatre, arts and crafts as well – people have to be entertained, that’s the key.”

It’s a similar position to Brazilian musician Gilberto Gil who performed at Umbria Jazz. Gil, the former culture minister of Brazil who was once imprisoned for his art, told me that he takes a less political view of festivals today. “This social era is marked by consumerism, spending and people going places and buying stuff,” he said. “You see a big merging of sports and entertainment and leisure. It’s one of the marks of our times. We have a salary just to spend. Fashion, food entertainment – it’s one of the reasons you can go everywhere and see the performances and shows full of people.”

An agent friend of mine commented, “It’s one of the only remaining places where people are truly equal,” while another promoter told me it was about surrounding yourself with people who look and feel like yourself. Nowhere is this more apparent than at the metal festivals I attended, where regardless of country (Slovenia, Germany and the UK), the same band patches were worn as badges of honour. But of everyone I spoke to, it was Burning Man co-founder Marian Goodell whose ideas resonated most.

“We need them. We need the connectivity,” she told me. “We don’t have the town squares like we used to. When I was a kid we’d go into town to the square and there’d be music there. We’d walk around the square and say ‘hi’ to each other, but the world doesn’t have that anymore. Some of the small towns in Europe still have that structure but the young people move away to the big cities and they become isolated and disconnected. Technology plays a part in that – we have Facebook to connect with people, but we all yearn for that physical connection – that hug, or handshake or looking in people’s eyes.”

The more digitised and remote our lives become, the more festivals continue to thrive. Social media has allowed us to feel part of a tribe, and its application at festivals is far reaching, but nothing beats basic human interaction, a commodity now rarer than ever. Coupled with that is the sense of community that festivals give us. Not just during the event itself, but sometimes year round on forums, and dedicated social media pages.

“ Writing this piece in Camden, two days after riots razed buildings and decimated businesses in the capital, the notion of community, and the role that festivals can yet play seems more vital than ever.”

Above: Summerjam’s second stage Middle: Secret Garden Party’s adult playground Bottom: EXIT’s main stage

“ The festival scene is no longer just about knocking back six pints of pear cider and waking up in a hedge.”

“Festivals are about the energy of community and looking out for each other,” Goodell said. “Big groups of people can make change. You can have civic intention and we may be in our infancy about what festivals can do. Going to festivals is not just camping and listening to music, but walking out and having a new experience and sharing it with your friends and your neighbours and respecting each other… we need more of that, we’ve got to have more festivals.”

Writing this piece in Camden, two days after riots razed buildings and decimated businesses in the capital, the notion of community, and the role that festivals can yet play seems more vital than ever. And winding around Europe, ethnicity, social background and economic wealth played very little role – in every case, each festival homogenised its audience, and united it with a common purpose.

In recognising the role that its audience play, events are thriving. Secret Garden Party uses 1,000 volunteers and lets creatives pitch ideas to create its adult playground, while Paléo festival (as well as having some fine fondue) changes the theme of some areas annually, and drafts in universities and NGOs to engage the audience with unusual structures. Many festivals now communicate year round online, meanwhile, I’ll Be Your Mirror in London debuted this year with a mixture of cinema, interactive art and music. In summary, the days of placing a ring of burger vans in a field with a stage at one end are long gone.

The elements of festivals that foster social interaction and community are those that will survive.

My journey took me across Europe, to some

of the most eye-opening festivals I’ve yet seen, but there were uniting factors at all. The kindnesses I witnessed on the road were widespread, whether it was Jana from Pohoda finding my clothes when I took everything I wasn’t wearing to a laundrette to be washed overnight, then promptly forgot them and went to Hungary, or Vladimir at Exit who rescued me no less than three times in a single day. (He wanted me to tell ten people that he’s a good guy. I hope I’ve succeeded.) And the generosity shown by so many festivals who either gave me somewhere to stay, or a hot meal. Too many thank you’s make up what was an unforgettable adventure, but you know who you are. Now, it’s just a question of how I follow this next year. Ideas on a postcard please…!

To see more blogs, photos and video – www.facebook.com/RidetoLive2011

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Top: Christophe Platel and Danny Hassenstein share Paléo’s secret fondue Middle: Live at Sunset, at sunset Lower Middle: Music Glue’s Mark Meharry & Tom Hopewell man the bar at Redfest Bottom: Rock Werchter’s second stage packs out

In Focus...

Do you have a photo for inclusion? email info@iq-mag.net

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7 1. Dolly Parton arrives in London to promote her Better Day World Tour. (L to r) her publicist Steve Guest, Dolly, manager Danny Nozell and Neil Warnock (The Agency Group).

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2. Organisers of Norway’s Øyafestival congregate backstage at the 9-13 August event. (L to r): Erica Leypoldt, Stein Blomseth, Arnt Olaf Andersen, Claes Olsen, Linnea Svensson, Anders Støver and Monica Larsson. Photo: Jan Erik Svendsen.

3. Festival promoters and more gather backstage at EXIT Festival for the launch of the Central and Eastern European Talent Exchange Scheme (CEETEP). (L to r): EXIT’s Ivan Milivojev, Adam Lewis, Greg Parmley (IQ), Ruud Berends and Peter Smidt (Buma Cultuur) and Hungarian Music Export’s Fruzsina Szép.

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4. UK festival Summer Sundae welcomed their Bergenfesttwinned festival colleagues over three days in August. Pictured backstage are (l to r): Stephanie Clive, Jeremy Arndell, Frank Nes (Bergenfest), Anke Links, Rebecca Challice, Martin Holmes, Rob Challice, and Bergenfest’s Gisle Johnsen, OleEirik Lerøy and Henning Kristiansen.

5. Claiming the title of Europe’s largest metal event, Germany’s Wacken Open Air sold out all 75,000 tickets at the beginning of March. Pictured are festival promoters Thomas Jensen (left) and Holger Hübner.

6. The audience at this year’s Sziget Festival in Hungary included some familiar festival faces. (Back row l to r): world’s tallest man Ruud Berends, festival junkie Adam Lewis and Giz Von Ice. (Front row l to r): Greek musician Magdalini Bougia, John Robb, musician Ioannis Gkantiragas, Isidor Berends, Ingela Fridh and Iceland Music Export’s Anna Hildur.

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7. Festival organiser Ivan Vlakov (left) speaks with Dimitar Nikolov the mayor of Burgas during his 12-14 August event in Bulgaria which boasted Gotan Project, Moby and Leftfield as headliners.

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Your Shout

“ What’s the most outrageous or unusual rumour you’ve ever heard?”

TOP SHOUT!

Steve Jenner - Kilimanjaro Live

The best rumours I’ve ever heard all concern Axl Rose. The classic one was that, at Download 2006, he demanded the entire stage be carpeted and to receive a new pair of size five trainers after his original leather soles slipped on the beer-covered surface early on in the set. Rumour has it, every member of stage staff was asked to remove their shoes in a Cinderella-type ritual, until one was found that would fit the singer.

Then both he and one poor shoeless stage-hand went back to work!

Then there was the time at The O2 in Dublin last year where he stormed off stage only to find himself locked in the venue. After punching promoter Denis Desmond in the face, he was ‘secured’ by venue security and placed in a sealed room with Desmond himself. After half an hour, Rose emerged and dutifully performed the rest of the set. How I’d love to know what was said in that room if that one’s true!

Colette Grufferty – Ticketmaster UK

I went to church one day (many years ago) and heard the parish priest talking about the state of the church organ and how we as a community needed to raise the funds required to repair it.

The next day I met an elderly neighbour who told me with sadness that the parish priest’s health was poor and how he couldn’t afford to pay for whatever operation he needed to repair his failing organs! She had heard it from another lady who had been to the same service as I had!

Gary Prosser – All Night Long Promotions

Mark Harding – Showsec

The IQ team has become teetotal.

Martin Goebbels – Apex Insurance

Many, many years ago I worked with a guy that was totally deaf. A client (presumably also hard of hearing) called our switchboard to be told our colleague couldn’t come to the phone as he was deaf.

Before long clients were calling to pass on their sympathy for our colleague who they heard had passed away... leaving me to explain he was fine and only deaf – not dead!!

Simon Roth – Live.de

Charlie Sheen is a sex and drug addict.

Who would believe that, pleeeeaaase?

Vladimir Ivanković – Lupa Promotion

In March this year, a local politician from Split (Croatia) announced that he had arranged everything so that Robbie Williams would perform in the city this summer. He said his cousin, who was working as a policeman in Nice, had met Robbie.

Of course, the show never happened.

A few days later, another guy from the same city, said he was bringing Rihanna to Split: “The contract is already signed, but we still don’t know where to put the show – either to stadium or to arena.” The show in Split was supposed to happen on the same day as her show in Vancouver. Needless to say which show happened in the end. Those are the usual rumours we are dealing with in Croatia.

John R. Barker – Corporate Entertainment Consultants

That The Roundhouse was on fire last week during the London riots. What a loss that would be.

That agents are going to stop asking for outrageous fees when they hear the words “corporate event”!

Anonymous

Gillian Park – MGR Media

That Martin [Hopewell], Barry [Dickins] and Harvey [Goldsmith] were leading a pack of protesters to gut the IQ offices.

Ed Grossman claims to be Jesus. Ask him yourself if you don’t believe me.

Emiliano Tortora – Grinding Halt Concerti

Osvaldo coming to play for AS Roma for €16 million!

Will Page – PRS for Music

George Bush will get re-elected, circa 2003-04.

Ed Grossman – MGR Media

The most outrageous or unusual rumour I ever heard was about two years ago just after Michael Jackson died. At that time rumours were flying around like Fleetwood Mac platinum records. They were falling out of the sky like confetti.

One was that The Beatles were going to reform with Paul and Ringo being joined by a “bootleg” John Lennon and George Harrison and they would appear as if they were the original band. It was proposed that they would replicate The Beatles aided by enhanced imagery and that they would include a lot of George Harrison’s work and some McCartney songs.

The show would be at The O2 and the area in front of the stage would be for fans who only wanted to dance and the rest of the arena would be all seated. It was envisaged that this would replace the Michael Jackson shows and that there would be about 20 to 30 shows dependent on demand.

Unfortunately, this never happened, so it must have been a rumour.

Georg Leitner – GLP Artist Marketing

The strangest rumour I heard was that Grace Jones is in fact a man. After 25 years working with Grace Jones I can absolutely confirm to the world that she is a woman – and one of the most sincere, exciting and sensuous women on the planet!

Chas Cole – CMP Entertainment

That you get rich being a promoter!

If you would like to send feedback, comments or suggestions for future Your Shout topics, please email: info@iq-mag.net

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Above: Ed Grossman