Who knew that we were all so festival fit? What was once a niche activity – watching rock and pop acts performing in tents and fields at the height of the summer – has become a staple of the season. Revellers in wellies trudging through the mud, air-guitaring politicians in top-of-the-range casual gear, rampaging children high on sugar and potential tinnitus: the cast members of these stories are well known to all at this stage of the game. You can probably see yourself in there. Howya Enda!
In a pointy-headed way, it's all part of a bigger picture around the how and especially where of music coverage. Reading I'm Not With the Band – Sylvia Patterson's superb memoir of her time as a writer for Smash Hits and NME during the golden age of music journalism – reminds you that music was in something of a walled media garden even up to 10 or 15 years ago.
You don’t need me to tell you this is no longer the case. Hell, you’re reading these thoughts in the paper of record. Music and entertainment have become common lingua franca on pages and in publications where such fare would only have been considered in times past on very rare occasions. Back then, it would take a Beatle or a Rolling Stone combined with a murder or a royal to get attention.
A new audience
Some of this change is naturally down to a generational shift and a new audience which wants stories about Beyoncé alongside the latest take on Brexit. Technology too will naturally look for its dues in this regard. The days when you had to wait for Hits or NME to appear to read about pop are over. With it, we also seem to have sadly lost writers with the colour, bite and spark of a Patterson.
So all has changed and changed utterly in every one of pop’s domains, and the most surprising turn of all is the current predominance of festivals. Festivals have always existed in one shape or other – Patterson includes some Glastonbury and Reading anecdotes in her book – but the manner in which participants, vested interests and observers now regularly lose all reason when it comes to these outdoor events can be a little baffling.
Festivals do provide fantastic moments again and again, but they’ve often very little to do with what’s happening onstage. The acts have become the backdrop for a gathering of friends and yet festivals now dominate gigonomics to such an extent that most bands spend the entire summer going from field to field to ply their wares.
Deplore and detest
Many acts will tell you when the tape-recorders are off that they deplore and detest festivals, with their poor sound and loosey-goosey logistics. But the fees which acts receive are so attractive that most just bite their lips and get back into their tour buses as fast as they can.
There's a sense that festivals are a great revenue stream for promoters and organisers, yet they are not all that lucrative. According to a recent report in the Financial Times, the company behind Glastonbury, which this year boasts such big-draw headline acts as Adele (above), Coldplay and Muse, made a pre-tax profit of just £86,000 on revenues of £37.3m in 2014. Putting on an event which pulls in all those people and all that attention is expensive.
Eventually, the cycle will turn, the emphasis will change and festivals will go through a media lull. For now, though, just follow the revellers through the mud.
