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"Leeds Festival" redirects here. For other uses, see Leeds Festival (disambiguation).
The Reading and Leeds Festivals are a pair of annual music festivals that take place in Reading and Leeds in the United Kingdom and are run by Festival Republic (itself owned by Live Nation and MCD). The events take place simultaneously on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the August bank holiday weekend, sharing the same bill. Between 1998 and 2007 the dual festivals were known officially as the "Carling Weekend", until parting ways with their sponsor Carling in November 2007. The Reading Festival, the world's oldest popular music festival still in existence, has had various musical phases, as detailed below. In the twin-site era, rock, alternative, indie, punk and metal have tended to dominate. The festivals are run by Festival Republic, which was divested from Mean Fiddler Music Group.[1] For promotional purposes during 1998-2007 they were known as the Carling Weekend: Reading and the Carling Weekend: Leeds. Unsurprisingly, these titles were seldom used when not required, although NME did so as part of its involvement. In November 2007, the organisers welcomed "Reading Festival reclaiming its prestigious name" when the sponsored title was abolished after 9 years.[2] In 2007, the capacity of the Reading site was 80,000[3] and the Leeds site was 70,000.[4] This was an increase of several thousand on previous years.[5] The Reading festival is held at Little John's Farm on Richfield Avenue in central Reading, near the Caversham Bridge. The Leeds event is held in Bramham Park, near Wetherby, the grounds of an historic house. Campsites are available at both sites and weekend tickets include free camping. Day tickets are also sold.
[edit] StagesThe festival typically has the following stages:[6]
[edit] HistoryMain article: National Jazz and Blues Festival The Reading Festival originates from the National Jazz Festival, which was conceived by Harold Pendleton (founder of the Marquee Club in London) and was first held at Richmond Athletic Ground in 1961. This festival, in turn, took inspiration from events held in America. Throughout its first decade the festival changed names and moved around sites several times, being held at Windsor Racecourse, Kempton Park and Plumpton, before reaching its permanent home at Reading in 1971.[9] [edit] 1970s The line-up settled into a pattern of progressive rock, blues and heavy metal during the 1970s.[10] It did dabble with punk rock in 1978 when The Jam, Sham 69 and Penetration played.[11] The festival attempted to provide both traditional rock acts and new punk bands, leading to clashes between the two sets of fans. Although The Ramones played the following year, the festival gradually became known for focusing on heavy metal and rock acts.[12] [edit] 1980sDuring this decade, the festival followed a similar format to that established in the late 1970s, with large crowds flocking to see the era's leading rock and heavy metal acts perform on the last two days, with a more varied lineup including punk and new wave bands on the opening day. [edit] Council banIn 1984 and 1985, the Conservative Party-led local council effectively banned the festival by reclaiming the festival site for 'development' and refusing to grant licences for any alternative sites in the Reading area. In 1984, many acts were already booked to appear, tickets were on sale with Marillion (2nd on the bill on Saturday night the previous year) due to be one of this year's headliners. The promoters tried in vain to salvage what they could but a proposed move to Lilford Hall in Northamptonshire failed. The resulting gap in the British festival calendar kick-started the rise of the minor CND benefit event at Glastonbury from obscure beginnings as a "hippie" festival in the 1970s. After Labour regained control of the council in 1986, permission was given for fields adjacent to the original festival site to be used, with a line-up put together at just three months' notice.[13] The following year saw a record attendance at what was considered by some to be the last of the "classic" rock years of the festival, with headlining acts such as The Mission, Alice Cooper and Status Quo. [edit] Late 80s slump1988 saw a disastrous attempt to take the festival in a mainstream commercial pop direction,[14] dominated by the likes of Starship, Squeeze, Bonnie Tyler and Meat Loaf (who was "bottled" off stage), and the ensuing recriminations eventually saw the ousting of original festival promoter Harold Pendleton by the Mean Fiddler Music Group organisation.[15] Pendleton initially tried to continue at a new site near Newbury using the name "Redding Festival" but this failed to take off. Meanwhile, the official Reading Festival, now under Mean Fiddler guidance, continued at the Thames-side site in Reading, pursuing an almost completely Goth and indie music policy that alienated much of the traditional fan base and saw attendances continue to fall. The future of the festival looked in doubt at this point. However, things were to improve from 1992 onwards as the festival broadened its musical policy and attendances gradually increased. [edit] 1990s In 1991, Nirvana played the first of their two appearances at Reading, midway down the bill. This is also the year the first britpop bands such as Suede and Blur started to show themselves on the festival circuit. [edit] Kurt Cobain's wheelchair1992 was one of the most famous in the festival's history. Nirvana played what was to become their last UK concert, and one of their most famous. Their 1992 live performance was later released as live album Live at Reading in November 2009. The band's frontman, Kurt Cobain took to the stage in a wheelchair pushed by music journalist Everett True, parodying speculations about his mental health. He then went on to join the rest of the band, playing an assortment of old and new material.[16] [edit] Festival expansionOver the next few years the festival continued to grow as the popularity of outdoor festivals increased. Britpop and indie continued to dominate along with rock. Notably, rap acts such as Ice Cube began to appear regularly on the main stage to mixed receptions. Public Enemy headlined the second day of the 1992 Festival. The Beastie Boys were about halfway down the bill for day three. In 1996, The Stone Roses played their final gig at the festival.[17] In 1998 it absorbed the failed Phoenix Festival. This resulted in a now infamous on-stage spat between The Beastie Boys and The Prodigy over the song "Smack My Bitch Up".[10] In 1999, the festival gained a second leg at Temple Newsam in Leeds, where the V Festival had been held in 1997 and 1998, when it was clear that the Reading site had become too small to deal with the increasing demand.[18] The first year saw all bands play the Leeds site the following day to the day they played Reading, with the Reading leg running from Friday to Sunday and the Leeds leg running from Saturday to Monday. However in 2001 the current system where the line up of Reading play Leeds the following day, with the bands from Leeds' opening day playing the final day in Reading, was introduced. [edit] 2000sAfter a successful first year in Leeds, a continued resurgence in the popularity of outdoor music festivals led to the Reading festival selling out more and more quickly every year. The Leeds leg, however, was plagued by riots and violence which led to problems in retaining its licence.[19] The worst of these was in 2002, after which Mean Fiddler moved the festival to Bramham Park, near Bramham north-east of Leeds in 2003.[20] Since then, security at both sites has increased and problems have been reduced. (Although the Bramham Park site presents more challenges to the stage builders, it is far better suited to the needs of festival goers)[21] The early 2000s saw a varied but predominantly rock line-up, though as the decade has progressed the Main Stage and Radio 1 Stage line-up has featured mostly Indie artists. However, one day (Sunday in the case of Reading) is still traditionally set aside for hard rock and metal. In 2005, the main stages at both Reading and Leeds were made larger, featuring unique cantilevered video screens. [edit] Fringe Festival at ReadingIn 2005, the Festival spawned the Reading Fringe Festival in the town. Much like the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, this sees venues in the town hosting fringe acts hoping to draw crowds and industry figures from the larger festival. The Reading Fringe has run annually since then. [edit] 2006 The announcement of the line-up and ticket release for the 2006 festival saw weekend tickets for Reading sell out in just under two hours, breaking all records so far, and emphasising the growing desire for live music because of the "rock revival" of the past few years, and the fact that the Glastonbury Festival was not taking place. Further Weekend tickets went on sale again soon after and sold out in 26 minutes. Also in 2006, Mean Fiddler announced that they were using the Government's new licensing laws to keep the festival going later into the night (an attempt to quell some of the unrest of earlier years). The organisers kept attendees happy with the Aftershock tent, an Oxfam tent and the Silent Disco. [edit] 2007 The 2007 festival ran from 24 to 27 August. However, concerns were raised at the Reading site due to the torrential weather conditions in the UK.[22] The River Thames burst its banks causing floods at the festival site and the introduction of contingency plans to move campsites and car parks if the floods persisted. In 2007, Kaiser Chiefs played a 'secret' set in the Carling Tent at the Leeds site only (Leeds being their home city) under the name Hooks For Hands. [edit] 2008The Reading and Leeds Festivals took place on the weekend of the 22 to 24 August. Tickets had been released on March 31 at 6:45pm[23] and sold out in less than 2 hours.[24] Tickets sold through HMV also sold out in just one hour. This was the first year "BBC Introducing..." had a stage at the festival. This replaced the Top Man Unsigned stage at the Leeds leg and was a new addition to the Reading site. The 2008 Reading Festival saw a large number of site changes, including relocation of the wristband exchange to the external gates, the Reading Festival Bridge over the River Thames in order to connect the white campsite to the main area, and numerous security improvements. A combination of the box office changes resulting in disorderly queues of as many as 50 people or more wide at places and higher demand than previous years due to several festival-goers having purchased tickets from fake websites, meant that people queued for 15 hours or more in some cases. The Leeds Festival site saw incredibly heavy rainfall and was completely waterlogged from the Thursday onwards, causing massive problems travelling between campsite and arena. The bad weather plus many thousands of people resulted in campsites up to a foot deep in mud. [edit] 2009 The pre-sale for 2009 tickets officially sold out in two days. A further release took place on March 30 at 7:00 pm. Weekend tickets were sold out in a matter of hours for the Reading Festival. Flags were banned from the Reading Festival site for the first time in 2009[25]. Flags and banners have been a traditional part of the Reading Festival scene ever since the early 1970s, originally used to enable motorbike groups and others to identify themselves and find each other inside the main arena. With their banning in 2009 yet another Festival tradition has been lost. A new sound system was used in 2009 at both the Reading and Leeds sites, and the general consensus was that the sound quality in the field was markedly improved.
[edit] Bottled offBottling acts offstage (being forced off stage by a barrage of audience-thrown plastic bottles and cans) is a popular 'tradition' at the festival.[26] While the mass-participation can and bottle fights of the 1970s and 1980s have long since ended, unpopular bands have been bottled offstage throughout the festival's history.[27] Examples include:
[edit] List of headliners
Historical line-up posters can be seen on the individual official festival websites:
[edit] See also
[edit] Further reading
[edit] External links
[edit] Notes
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