Thom Yorke and Lily Allen performed to 35,000 apparently happy campers at last weekend’s Big Chill festival at Eastnor Deer Park but Pete Lawrence, co-founder of the event, wasn’t enjoying the party.
“It’s lost all of its relevance,” Lawrence tells Beehive. “It has followed the general trend for blanding out and a lot of people I know, no longer go. The whole festival concept has got tired.”
Lawrence, a pioneering club promoter and talent-spotter on the chill-out scene, co-created the first “boutique” music festival in 1994. Newcomers like Rob da Bank’s Bestival adopted and commercialised the formula.
But he’s now saddened by corporate events where “big headliners, who turn up in their luxury tour buses, play a set and leave and a lot of the heart and soul of what attracted people in the first place disintegrates.”
Lawrence was inspired to create the first Big Chill club night and festival by Glastonbury but he feels that event too, in the search for mass appeal and bigger and better headliners, has also lost its “radical, cutting edge.” He says: “I loved Glastonbury but for me, it has lost its heart and soul in recent years.”
It comes down to money. “People who came to the first Big Chill weren’t expecting big name headliners. Now you need an obvious headline act to sell tickets to make the money back early to stage the event. So at this Big Chill you got a lot of young kids popping pills, not the chilled out audience it had originally.”
Lawrence though has been burned by the festival experience. The Big Chill was the first club empire to build a social network via the web and was described by The Times as “the leader in multi-media entertainment.”
But Chillfest Ltd, the company that licensed the festival between 2002 and 2009, ran into financial difficulties and was liquidated with debts close to £1.2m. That included £608,894 owed to more than 30 creditors.
One year’s below par ticket sales and competition from Bestival and other new festivals, which upped the ante, brought the company crashing down, says Lawrence.
The Big Chill was taken over by Melvin Benn’s Festival Republic, which also stepped in to rescue Glastonbury when that festival’s size and licensing difficulties required more hard-edged management.
Chill co-founder Katrina Larkin remains and Benn argues that his company has brought more “care and attention” to the event and greater cohesion to the line-up.
Lawrence, who booked Lily Allen for £500 in 2006, doesn’t like the corporate sponsorship and VIP areas that the modern festival has spawned. But Beehive’s Amy West had few complaints about Thom Yorke and co at this year’s event.
Lawrence, who is a broadcaster, author and record label founder, isn’t giving up on his original vision of a multimedia event populated by like-minded people united by a desire to “think outside of the box”.
“I see the future in a very different style of event and community gathering, designed and crafted by communities who will determine its ethos and content collectively,” he says citing Festinho, Green Man and Haselstock as events which retain a community feel.
“People want to return to the ‘village life’ that has been slowly disappearing from society over the last fifty years.” Next month he’s going to unveil Pic-Nic Village, a new (primarily online) experience built around the social networking ethos of the original Chill. Don’t expect to see Kings of Leon.
“There could be philosophical talks, the best thing I saw at this year’s Chill was Paul Morley talking about Michael Jackson’s legacy. It won’t be passive entertainment and it won’t be 10,000 people standing in front of a stage.”
“I would hope there will be a return to the more radical roots of festivals with smaller, more intimate festivals that are as much about the people, the community spirit and new forms of creative expression as they are about the music, sponsorship and profit.”
So small is beautiful. Given Lawrence’s track-record, if anyone can put a big chill up the large-scale festival operators, it will be him.
Festival Republic however is adamant that the Chill magic still lives on. Melvin Benn said: “The Big Chill was a fantastic success this year – from the powerful comeback performance of Massive Attack and the rare acoustic set from Thom Yorke to the upbeat celebration of what could possibly be the last performance from Lily Allen for some time.
“The weird and the wonderful were covered in full from the visually stunning Ziggurat of Flavour to the playful Illusion installation and the cherry on top was when the sun came out for the Spencer Tunick piece (participatory nude installation).”
It’s true I agree with Mr C, PL does bang on and on about this, talk about egotistical. It was just a party that not everyone wanted to go to with loads of terrible decisions made musically and financially so there must have been problems all along. But now it might live on for the thousands who like it as it was/is why spoil their fun?? And that’s the mother of your kids you’re attacking every single time you lay these comments down in writing PETE, who still works at this event. Most people who go like the intimacy of it all. Did you know you can get colour TVs these days too, things have moved on that much??
Pete,
Calm down bro.
Mr Chillaz
In reply to a couple of your points, people who know me will confirm that I have taken an anti drugs stance throughout the entire Big Chill history, which was also endorsed as early as 1997 by Ninja Tune with their “partying without pharmaceuticals” campaign.
If The Chill could be described as central to the Chill out scene, it may not have produced any big stars by your terminology but it did give festival debut opportunities to the likes of Amy Winehouse, Seasick Steve, Fila Brazillia, Lily Allen, Talvin Singh, Zero 7, Lemon Jelly and Goldfrapp to name but a few. Same old acts? Hmm, I booked a constant stream of new artists annually – roughly 50% of the 300 or so artists I booked each year were new names. So I’d number that as around 3000 different artists over the entire span of my time there.
For far from being bitter, I’m actually quite happy to not be involved nowadays and recognise that times change and things (as well as people) move on. I was quoted out of content in some of the Beehive article, but essentially still believe that by necessity a lot things will change under Festival Republic, as they did when Cantaloupe got involved from 2003.
And just to set the record straight – the festival actually was my idea in the beginning, alongside Katrina, conceived under a tree under a glorious starry night in the Black Mountains of Wales, in the same field as we ended up doing the very first event exactly a year later.
Interesting what Pete has to say about the “blanding out” and what essentially is commercialism and the corporate machine that is taking over Big Chill. This year was the first chill that I’ve attended since the Naxos days in the early noughties and it is an entirely different ball game, you certainly wouldn’t get 35,000 people going to Naxos! I have to admit that the intimacy of earlier chills has pretty much dissappeared and that I did miss but it was great to hear some more up-tempo music. Early chills I found just too chilled sometimes but then it’s all in the name isn’t it!? Will I go next year? I need to think on that for a bit. S
I totally agree , the soul has gone. And as for ” care and attention ” if you were Sky tv or Ugg boots you had the attention but i know of smaller artist , bands and alternative therapists who were totally shafted by the big chill, even Norman Jay ( a Big Chill tradition ) was bumped to a warm up slot. Money talks and sponsorship is censorship.
Pete Laurence what a self indulgent twirp. The entire festival was based on drug taking and the same old acts that couldn’t go on any longer because people just stopped coming. The Chill out or trip hop scenes of Big Chill’s youth just don’t exist anymore and never created any new stars.
His crowd grew up conceived their best mates kids and grew up. Meanwhile the company drifted into administration it was never taken over was only ever saved by the new group. And to appeal to a new generation of people you need to bring in new acts, that roll in on those tour buses and roll out again. That is the industry.
And the festival industry is the UK’s brightest star, something we have yet to teach the world. For this bitter old man to cast aspersions on it because he is not involved is not fair at all.
Pete – do one… It wasn’t even your idea in the beginning.