Reading and Leeds Festivals
The Reading Festival is an internationally renowned music festival in England, which takes place annually on a weekend in August.
founding
The forerunner of the festival was the National Jazz Festival in 1961, which was renamed the National Jazz and Blues Festival in 1964. The festival was initiated by Harold Pendleton , founder of the famous Marquee Club in London. In 1971 the festival - initially based in Richmond , then in Windsor - was relocated to Reading , Berkshire , and was named Reading Festival.
Genres of music
Initially the music program consisted of jazz , from 1971 it developed into rock , blues and heavy metal and gained more and more awareness and popularity. By 1975 the number of visitors had risen to 70,000 and many internationally known bands had already played at the festival. Up until the 1980s, punk and new wave were added to the previous musical styles. However, due to the variety of musical styles, violence among fans of the groups in the audience also increased.
No event took place in 1984 and 1985 as the conservative community allegedly claimed the space for other purposes and did not approve an alternative venue.
Until 1987, the music was still very much oriented towards rock and heavy metal and also had good attendance figures. When the organizers put more emphasis on commercial pop in the following year with Bonnie Tyler , Starship or Squeeze , audience numbers fell rapidly. Bottles were pelted at Meat Loaf , leading to allegations against Pendleton, who was ousted by the Mean Fiddler Music Group as organizer of the festival.
New organizer from 1989
Mean Fiddler Music Group (now Festival Republic), as the new organizer, managed to make the festival more popular again by the mid-90s. The performers now included bands like Nirvana , Suede and Blur . The performance of Kurt Cobain in 1992 , who let himself be driven onto the stage in a wheelchair, was spectacular .
Carling Weekend (1998-2007)
In 1998 the festival got a sponsor with Carling and from 1999 another branch in Leeds . The name also changed. The events were now called Carling Weekend Reading and Carling Weekend Leeds, respectively. A system was developed in which the interpreters who appeared in Reading on the first day played in Leeds the following day and vice versa.
While Leeds has been a recurrent issue of violence, the Reading Festival has become one of the UK's top selling events. Tickets for the 2006 festival were sold out in less than 2 hours as the Glastonbury Festival was not taking place that year .
After separating from sponsor Carling in 2007, the two events were officially renamed Reading Festival and Leeds Festival.
literature
- Ian Carroll: The Reading Festival - Music, Mud and Mayhem: The official History. Reynolds & Hearn Ltd, 2007 ISBN 978-1-905287-43-7
