Reading and Leeds Festivals

"Leeds Festival" redirects here. For other uses, see Leeds Festival (disambiguation).

Reading and Leeds Festivals
Reading Main Stage in 2007 (Top) Leeds Main Stage in 2006 (Bottom)
Genre	Rock, indie rock, alternative rock, heavy metal, punk rock
Dates	August bank holiday
Location(s)	United Kingdom Various as National Jazz Festival (1961–1970) Reading (since 1971) Leeds (since 1999)
Years active	1961–present
Website	www.readingfestival.com www.leedsfestival.com

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. 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. In 2007, the capacity of the Reading site was 80,000 and the Leeds site was 70,000. This was an increase of several thousand on previous years. 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.

Stages

The festival typically has the following stages:

• Main stage – major rock, indie and alternative acts
• NME/Radio 1 stage – less well-known acts, building up to an alternative headline act
• Festival Republic stage (formerly known as the Carling stage) – acts with less popular appeal and breakthrough acts
• Lock Up Stage – underground punk and hardcore acts. Due to demand, from 2006 this stage took up two days rather than previous years where it was only one day.
• Dance tent – dance music acts, on the day that the above stage does not run
• Alternative tent – comedy and cabaret acts plus DJs.
• BBC Introducing Stage – Typically unsigned/not well known acts. (Formerly known as the Topman Unsigned Stage at the Leeds site).

History

Main 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.

1970s

File:Reading festival sticker 1976.png

Reading festival promotional sticker from 1976

The line-up settled into a pattern of progressive rock, blues and heavy metal during the 1970s. It did dabble with punk rock in 1978 when The Jam, Sham 69 and Penetration played. 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.

1980s

During 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.

Council ban

In 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 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.

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.

Late 80s slump

1988 saw a disastrous attempt to take the festival in a mainstream commercial pop direction, 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.

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.

1990s

The NME/Radio 1 tent at the 2005 Reading Festival

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.

Kurt Cobain's wheelchair

1992 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. 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. At one point in the show before singing "All Apologies", Cobain revealed to the crowd the recent birth of his daughter Frances Bean and succeeded in having the crowd chant "Courtney, we love you!" in unison.

Festival expansion

Over 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.

In 1996, The Stone Roses played their final gig at the festival.

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".

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. 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.

2000s

After 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. 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. Since then, security at both sites has increased and problems have been reduced.

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.

Fringe Festival at Reading

In 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.

2006

Arctic Monkeys playing at the Leeds Main Stage on 27 August 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 revellers happy with the Aftershock tent, an Oxfam tent and the Silent Disco.

2007

Leeds Main Stage on 25 August 2007 in-between sets by Kings of Leon and Razorlight

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. 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.

2008

The 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 and sold out in less than 2 hours. Tickets sold through HMV also sold out in just one hour.

This was the first year "BBC Introducing..." had a stage at the festival.

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.

2009

The pre-sale for 2009 tickets officially sold out in two days. A further release took place on March 30 at 7:00PM. Weekend tickets were sold out in a matter of hours for the Reading Festival. However, for the first time in many years, weekend tickets for the Leeds leg were not sold out on release. There will be no tickets sold on the door in 2009.

For Line-up see:Reading and Leeds Festivals line-up for 2009

Bottled off

While the mass-participation can and bottle fights of the 1970s and 1980s have long since ended, the Reading Festival 'tradition' of unpopular bands being bottled off (being forced off stage by a barrage of audience-thrown plastic bottles and cans) has continued throughout its history.

The 1983 reggae act Steel Pulse suffered possibly the most vicious bottling-off ever seen at the Festival, before or since, disappearing within moments of appearing on stage under an avalanche of missiles launched by the temporarily united ranks of punks and rockers waiting to see The Stranglers.

In 1988 Bonnie Tyler bravely completed her set despite an unending barrage of bottles, turf and litter. Unfortunately, the day's headliner Meat Loaf was not so brave, retreating ingloriously only 20 minutes into his set after taking a 2-litre cider bottle full in the face.

In 2000, Daphne and Celeste were inexplicably scheduled on the main stage after bullying their manager to get on the bill, and were bottled off after 2 songs.

In 2004, it was the turn of rapper 50 Cent, who was pelted with bottles. 50 Cent lasted nearly 20 minutes before finally throwing his microphone into the crowd in anger. The Rasmus were also bottled off following one song.

In 2006 at Reading, Panic at the Disco lead singer Brendon Urie was struck in the face with a plastic bottle, knocking him unconscious and forcing the band to stop mid-song. Urie received treatment from his road crew for several minutes, before the band continued from the point at which their song was interrupted.

In 2008, a crowd of approximately 3,000 people attended the BBC Introducing Stage to see unsigned band 'The FF'ers', after rumours that it would actually be a secret Foo Fighters gig were spread around the festival. The FF'ers were subsequently subjected to a large amount of abuse from the audience, including several bottles launched at the band. The Plain White Ts also fell victim at Reading to a storm of bottling, but still managed to make it to the end of their set.

List of headliners

Historical line-up posters can be seen on the individual official festival websites:

• Official Reading Festival website - dates from 1972
• Official Leeds Festival website - dates from 1999

See also

• Reading and Leeds Festivals line-ups
• List of music festivals in the United Kingdom
• Workers Beer Company, Workers Beer Company

Further reading

• Carroll, Ian (2007). The Reading Festival: Music, Mud and Mayhem - The Official History. Reynolds & Hearn Ltd. ISBN 978-1-905287-43-7.

External links

• Reading Festival official website
• Leeds Festival official website
• Reading & Leeds BBC coverage - performance videos, photos and interviews
• Unofficial RFO: Reading Festival Online
• Unofficial Fansite Reading Festival
• Unofficial Reading Festival
• Leeds Festival coverage from the past 10 years
• Recollections and photographs from over 20 years of the Reading Festival
• View from the Leeds Festival's local paper (Wetherby News)
• Review and footage from Reading 2007
• /Extensive History of Reading 1971-81
• / History of the Festival on the Reading Museum website
• Myspace dedicated to providing the latest news and info on the festival
• www.readingfringefestival.com. Website run by the organizers of the Reading Fringe Festival for new, left field and cutting edge acts