Pod Insights ABC Rewind Inside the Big day Out | Flying too close to the sun About this episode Come on a wild ride through the extraordinary story of the Big Day Out; the festival which, for over two decades, was a summertime rite of passage for music lovers around Australia. Was it really a victim of its' own success?
Transcript 4,202 words · 17 speakers
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0:13 Speaker 01 Hi, Zan Row with part two of Inside the Big Day Out, the mother of all music festivals in Australia, and the one which some might say was a victim of its own success.
0:33 Speaker 01 In this episode broadcaster Gemma Pike picks up the story in the early 2000s, in the wake of the tragic death of 15-year-old Jessica McCarlik at the 2001 Sydney Big Day Out. During the noughties, the festival grew bigger each year, weathering the global financial crisis and competition from rival festivals. But inside the Big Day Out family, cracks were growing, especially between the event founders and co-owners, Ken West and Viv Lees. We join Gemma when everything, at least in the mosh pit, seemed happy and shiny for the Big Day Out.
1:13 Speaker 01 And given the nature of this story, expect some tech colour language and strong themes.
1:25 Speaker 02 I used to say the simplest thing to people is what happened with Big Day Out? I said it collapsed under its own weight.
1:30 Speaker 03 You find by the mid 2000s, we're actually very mainstream. The Big Day Out became a household name. And it started to become a very serious business in a lot of ways. And I think that's in some ways when the fractures started to appear.
1:52 Speaker 04 The Big Day Out just kept growing. Ticket sales were in the hundreds of thousands.
1:59 Speaker 04 Lineups went from 30 bands to 50 to 70. And then each city had its own handpicked selection of local acts.
2:09 Speaker 04 The expansion meant more hands on deck.
2:12 Speaker 03 The Big Day Out was the thing. And I walked in there and it was like, my dream job.
2:18 Speaker 04 Susan Forrester was the Melbourne event coordinator. I guess my life has never been the same since. Johanna Greenway looked after the sideshows. They both worked in the Melbourne office with Viv.
2:31 Speaker 05 It's really hard to put that into words. It was just the biggest thing ever.
2:36 Speaker 04 Behind the wheel of the biggest thing ever were two founders who couldn't get along.
2:41 Speaker 06 Before I knew them, everybody said Ken was art and Viv was commerce. The whole festival was art and commerce together.
2:53 Speaker 04 Ken and Viv did have a difficult relationship, but so far they'd worked out a way to deal with each other. There was a lot of crazy faxes that we used to see coming through.
3:03 Speaker 03 Primarily because they weren't talking to each other in person.
3:06 Speaker 07 Sometimes rather than have an emotional discussion on the telephone.
3:11 Speaker 03 Their conversations would get very heated.
3:12 Speaker 07 We'd put our thoughts down in writing.
3:15 Speaker 06 Some of the most vicious encounters were.
3:17 Speaker 03 Kind of rapid fire.
3:18 Speaker 02 You can get a texter and write fuck off and fax it back.
3:21 Speaker 03 Back and forth.
3:22 Speaker 06 The conduit in all of that was Sahara.
3:25 Speaker 03 As the years after that went on, there were decisions that became more and more contentious.
3:39 Speaker 04 Soon enough, one decision would go too far. And the Big Day Out flag, which had flown so high, would touch the sun.
3:49 Speaker 08 Thousands of young people converged on Cronulla Beach in the city. That has become a lightning rod for ethnic divisions.
3:55 Speaker 04 In December 2005, thousands of people were involved in racially motivated riots at Cronulla Beach in Sydney.
4:09 Speaker 04 Just a few weeks later, The Big Day Out rolled into Sydney. It was January 26, Australia's national holiday.
4:18 Speaker 03 When there's 330,000 people at a show, they're not all music fans. We started to see this thing where, you know, people were turning up to the show with Australian flags, like, you know, as capes, as headdresses, as bikinis, you know, whatever. It was taking on this real patriotic thing. You know, it's not a sporting event. There's no teams.
4:39 Speaker 04 Fans who attended The Big Day Out say some people were assaulted for refusing to kiss the Australian flag.
4:45 Speaker 09 Everyone did, until me, and then I got belted in the face twice.
4:49 Speaker 03 Oh my god, this has, you know, turned into kind of some weird, white nationalist type of pride thing, which deeply disturbed us.
4:59 Speaker 04 The following year, Big Day Out co-owner, Ken West, made a controversial decision. He banned the Australian flag.
5:08 Speaker 03 At the time, I don't think that we actually thought that it would have the impact and focus that it did.
5:15 Speaker 07 That is a really bad idea. I don't think you'd better do that.
5:18 Speaker 04 Viv was against the idea.
5:20 Speaker 07 It's a very emotional and inflammatory thing to do, and you just, you know, please don't do that. And next day, said I did it.
5:30 Speaker 04 For Ken, it was simple.
5:33 Speaker 02 I'm inviting 50,000 people over to my place for a party. I'm asking those people not to do that.
5:40 Speaker 04 The backlash was huge.
5:42 Speaker 03 Man, did it blow up.
5:43 Speaker 04 The Australian flags at home has ignited a national furore. Once again, The Big Day Out was front page news.
5:50 Speaker 07 We were getting it in the neck from everyone.
5:52 Speaker 03 And my phone started ringing about 5am.
5:55 Speaker 07 By this stage, this controversy was just raging. It was hot.
5:58 Speaker 06 Absolutely unbelievable how intense that was. The Prime Minister was talking about it.
6:04 Speaker 10 And the proposition that the display of the Australian flag should ever be banned anywhere in Australia is offensive to me, and it will be to millions of Australians.
6:16 Speaker 03 The Australian flag at the show wasn't being used in any type of respectful way. I don't think an Australian flag bikini is showing respect to the flag. And it became completely not about the music at all. Our show suddenly became political.
6:30 Speaker 02 Vivian was left with the spinning of it, "We didn't really mean that."
6:34 Speaker 03 Ken had made that call without consulting Viv.
6:38 Speaker 03 And Viv was pretty disconcerted by the knock-on effect.
6:44 Speaker 06 If Ken was gonna be a little bit of a loose cannon by something like that, perhaps that was why it was the breaking point.
7:03 Speaker 07 I guess it's probably gonna be a longstanding bone of contention between Ken and I, because up until that stage, nearly everything was agreed. And with that one, he just went down on it by himself.
7:17 Speaker 02 That helped destroy the working relationship, really.
7:28 Speaker 04 The unique individual traits that Ken and Viv brought to The Big Day Out were the same things that made it so difficult. Art versus commerce. The creative friction that sparked the biggest touring festival in the world had caught fire.
7:45 Speaker 07 The event was bigger than both of us.
7:47 Speaker 02 I saw it as art, he saw it as business.
7:48 Speaker 07 He's like that, I'm like this.
7:55 Speaker 03 There were times where they got on really well, and then there were other times where it was almost like they intensely disliked each other.
8:02 Speaker 06 I don't think what kept them together was money. It was the event that they had built together. It was kind of like a broken marriage.
8:10 Speaker 02 I used to say to people, probably from about 2006 onwards, you know, "We're just staying together for the kids, and not the audience."
8:21 Speaker 04 The bust-up over the Australian flag happened in 2007. With Ken working in Sydney, and Viv in Melbourne, and a fax machine between, they continued to work together for four more years. It wasn't just infighting that was testing their limits. The musical landscape they'd helped define was shifting.
8:41 Speaker 11 Big Day Out is something that happened two weeks a year.
8:43 Speaker 04 A.J. Madder was the music nut in the 90s who refused to leave Ken's office until he gave him a job.
8:50 Speaker 11 None of us, besides Ken and Vivian, and the full-time staff of The Big Day Out, could make a living by exclusively working those two weeks or having, you know, some bands on that two-week event.
9:01 Speaker 11 So we had the other 50 weeks of the year where we had to make a living and to try to make ends meet. Therefore, we all did have to do something independent.
9:09 Speaker 04 He ended up booking punk and metal bands for The Big Day Out.
9:13 Speaker 11 While it worked, it was a lovely relationship. It was a travelling family.
9:20 Speaker 11 Where you and a couple of hundred of your closest friends who'd gone on the road. Certainly the best days of my life were on The Big Day Out.
9:26 Speaker 04 In 2004, AJ branched out. He left that family to start his own festival.
9:32 Speaker 11 Part of the ethos behind Soundwave was to create something that brought fans of guitar music together.
9:39 Speaker 06 All of a sudden, there was an epidemic of festivals.
9:46 Speaker 04 While Livid and Home Bake had been around for years, others like Good Vibrations, Field Day, Stereosonic, Parklife, V-Fest and Future Music were also cropping up. It wasn't just AJ matter trying to take a piece of the festival pie.
10:10 Speaker 04 An increase in touring festivals was always going to impact The Big Day Out. Ken and Viv's initial risk to figure out production, logistics, bookings on a massive scale was now a proven formula.
10:22 Speaker 07 This was the model that everyone else was adopting. And furthermore, they were using our staff members and our sites. And we're finding people just replicating.
10:33 Speaker 11 All of them were being cherry picked to work on other people's festivals. So our intellectual property is just being off. All the things I've trained everybody to do is now being given to somebody else.
10:45 Speaker 04 In September 2008.
10:53 Speaker 04 After the global financial crisis, Johanna says the cost to book hairliners went through the roof. So many festivals were now bidding for the same top-tier artists.
11:03 Speaker 06 There were some really stupid and reckless promoters out there that were just offering Mad Bank to bands.
11:17 Speaker 04 Okay, 2010. The Big Day Out can now drink, legally. It's been 18 years since Nirvana in 92. The festival's grown into a cultural behemoth. Every year, bigger than the last.
11:34 Speaker 04 But the team was struggling.
11:36 Speaker 02 The Big Day Out had become cumbersome. It was 700 people on the road. Massive cost, no room for any failure. It was scary.
11:49 Speaker 03 I started self-medicating. And I was able to disguise that as partying, really.
11:57 Speaker 03 Yeah, ended up in rehab. My last active year was 2010. I was around for 2011, but only in a tokenistic way. Several people had tried to do an intervention with me. I had literally been fired, but I kept turning up at work because I didn't think they could cope without me.
12:19 Speaker 03 I think Ken actually ended up changing the locks, which is probably the rock bottom that I needed to then actually seek help.
12:28 Speaker 04 When Sahara left, it was a huge blow to the team. And it wouldn't be the last.
12:34 Speaker 04 The Big Day Out found it harder and harder to put together an exciting lineup. For a long time, The Big Day Out had first dibs on acts. But that all changed when Queens of the Stone Age decided they wanted to do Soundwave instead of Big Day Out.
12:51 Speaker 11 That created a real problem. That was when Ken and Vivian both got the shits. They declared war on Soundwave at that point.
13:00 Speaker 11 The penny dropped, I think, for them that they had a problem.
13:03 Speaker 04 So for 2012, they lock in Soundgarden and Kanye West to headline.
13:09 Speaker 04 The team had their reservations about announcing the lineup.
13:12 Speaker 06 I was really concerned about the lineup that year. Even though I love Kanye and he's my favourite and I wanted him to be there, I didn't think that Australia was ready for him to headline the festival.
13:28 Speaker 02 We've never seen so much venom on the website.
13:32 Speaker 07 Soundgarden fans hated Kanye, Kanye fans hated Soundgarden.
13:36 Speaker 02 It was the end of it for Viv in pretty much straight away. I know it affected him pretty badly.
13:43 Speaker 07 I had hospitalisation, I was kind of getting to my health. And it was costing me my marriage at that stage to make a decision, you know, about my own health and wellbeing. I couldn't be in the crazy world anymore, it was getting too crazy.
14:06 Speaker 04 Viv and Ken were still 50/50 owners. So Viv pitched an idea to Ken to make things easier.
14:13 Speaker 07 That's what I wanted to do, is each of us reduce down to 30% each and find someone else to recapitalise the event. But he wouldn't go for that, so that was my decision to leave at that stage.
14:26 Speaker 02 And it was just over.
14:29 Speaker 04 Since then, the pair haven't stayed in touch. Lee's and West, music promoters, were done. One of the most influential partnerships in Australian music was over.
14:44 Speaker 04 But the Big Day Out wasn't. With no Sahara and no Viv, Ken pushed on.
14:53 Speaker 12 Hey, I'm at Big Day Out and it's about 30,000 degrees out here.
14:57 Speaker 13 We drove 18 hours from Townsville to be here today.
14:59 Speaker 14 It's so awesomely hot!
15:07 Speaker 04 2012 was the year of Soundgarden and Kanye West.
15:11 Speaker 06 It might not have gotten out through the gates like that, but it did pick up and it was actually a brilliant year.
15:24 Speaker 04 Johanna Greenway says Kanye's tour requirements were next level.
15:30 Speaker 06 I don't remember the brutal details of it, but everything had to be white in his area. Like, if it was off-white, it wasn't okay.
15:42 Speaker 06 And then there were things like he had to have presidential suites booked and he had to have a fleet of specific model Mercedes-Benz cars, but presidential suites, they're not refundable. So that tour was like just taking a wheelbarrow full of money and tipping it out in the street.
16:05 Speaker 04 They lost a stack of money on 2012. They'd also lost two of their key organisers. But Ken decided to push on.
16:14 Speaker 05 I remember Ken saying to me, "I'm not going to let this go down the toilet." And it was great. It was like, "Okay, all right."
16:20 Speaker 02 We foolishly went ahead.
16:27 Speaker 04 You can understand Ken's determination. He'd built this thing from the ground up. He'd lived and breathed it for 20 years. But to keep it going, he'd have to buy Viv's 50% share.
16:40 Speaker 04 Adam Zammert worked on sponsorship for The Big Day Out since the late 90s. When Ken needed to buy Viv out, Adam went on the hunt for a new business partner.
16:51 Speaker 15 I had the support of Ken and the rest of the Big Day Out team to do it because it was everyone's livelihood and in the future, the event was on the line.
16:58 Speaker 04 Despite local interest, three Texans called Charlie, Charlie and Charles and their company C3 landed the deal.
17:06 Speaker 15 I really liked the Charlies. Genuinely good guys. They're music people. They believed in the brand. They'd always admired the brand. It was, along with Lollapalooza, the original international touring festival.
17:20 Speaker 04 Ken had his new business partner. With C3's decades of experience running Lollapalooza, The Big Day Out 2013 was in safe hands.
17:30 Speaker 05 Lollapalooza and Big Day Out, it was a similar philosophy, you know, and a similar trajectory.
17:41 Speaker 04 Ken and C3 started booking bands for the 2014 tour. C3 wanted Pearl Jam.
17:49 Speaker 15 The Charlies had great relationships with the band and they had real success with their band in South America and it was a close relationship.
17:58 Speaker 04 Booking Pearl Jam was bittersweet. They were meant to headline in 2001 but cancelled and were replaced by Limp Bizkit at the last minute. Now was their chance to bring them out.
18:09 Speaker 15 So there's this history, then Pearl Jam's back on the table. Pearl Jam comes in at a big price and that's a lock. But everyone feels good about it because like, well, you know, you never know.
18:18 Speaker 04 When it came to booking the second headline act, Ken and C3 couldn't agree. Ken wanted Blur, but...
18:27 Speaker 15 The Americans want Arcade Fire, pretty sure they can get it, have good relationships. But Ken wants Blur and they want Arcade Fire. And we can't afford both. We never could afford both.
18:38 Speaker 04 Whoever locks in their artist first wins. Ken flies to Mexico to meet with Blur.
18:45 Speaker 15 Deal doesn't close there but it feels good. We were literally sitting around the office and it would have been after midnight and it was in a very short period of time that both, on that same night, that Arcade and Blur confirmed.
18:59 Speaker 15 Then all of a sudden we have a headline bill because no one's backing down and both the booking agents are saying, "No, no, we're locked."
19:10 Speaker 15 So we have three headliners.
19:16 Speaker 15 A headline bill which demands this festival break records to break even. Now, in no business do you have your break even set against breaking records.
19:27 Speaker 04 The months leading up to the 2014 Big Day Out were rough. Ticket sales were terrible, artist fees were astronomical, and the second Sydney show had to be cancelled.
19:37 Speaker 02 There was so many things being chipped away at it.
19:40 Speaker 15 Something was dying and a lot of ugly things had to be done to try and save it.
19:46 Speaker 04 The Charlies, who didn't return our request for an interview, had appointed Adam as CEO.
19:51 Speaker 15 It was part of my role in the leadership of it, it was part of what I owed Ken, to keep the heart ticking.
19:58 Speaker 04 Staff were sacked, the Melbourne and Sydney offices were merged, cheaper contractors were hired, but it wasn't enough. And Ken West was about to lose everything.
20:08 Speaker 15 The reality was when the 2040 went on sale, there was going to be a significant loss.
20:12 Speaker 02 It felt very, very, very, very broken. Like you're trapped in a cave.
20:21 Speaker 02 You can see the light somewhere, but no, you can't get there.
20:25 Speaker 15 If Ken had have warned that loss, it would have left him in a very, very bad position.
20:29 Speaker 02 That's it. I'll go broke. Let's cancel it. Don't blame me. See you later.
20:34 Speaker 15 A very bad position for the rest of his life arguably. And he'd put 20 years into this thing. I couldn't conceive of him walking away in a devastating state.
20:42 Speaker 02 I kind of hoped somebody might be able to save it, but I kind of knew what it was.
20:46 Speaker 15 He'd been financial supporter of a lot of people. He'd lent a lot of money over the years to people that he never got back. He'd supported many people with that business and that idea. And he'd been one of the most generous people I'd ever met. So I put forward an idea.
20:59 Speaker 02 Adam called and wanted me to, you know, come and meet with Ken. I met with Ken and then, you know, he wanted me to meet with the C3 guys and...
21:08 Speaker 15 I think AJ would buy this from you.
21:12 Speaker 04 AJ Matta.
21:15 Speaker 04 The former Big Day Out employee who is now in charge of multiple rival music festivals.
21:21 Speaker 02 In the meanwhile, I had, you know, everyone whose opinion I value saying, "Ron for the Hills, don't do this."
21:27 Speaker 15 And that money would cover the loss. But it was going to mean the end of Ken's ownership of the festival. But it would give him a bit of what Viv got, you know, which is an exit.
21:40 Speaker 15 The deal took a long time. It took months. People were pissed off. They were pissed off at me for doing the deal, but...
21:46 Speaker 02 It was either AJ came in or we pulled it.
21:49 Speaker 05 When Viv and Ken finished, it should have stopped.
21:51 Speaker 04 The deal was done. It wasn't easy for Ken to lose his share of his life's work.
21:57 Speaker 02 I've always seen The Big Day Out as my art. And I've always seen it as not only a living entity, but a sculpture. Because I'm a sculptor.
22:08 Speaker 04 AJ Matta paid a hefty price for a 50% stake in The Big Day Out. $400,000 in shares, millions in capital.
22:17 Speaker 15 It was just the fact that I grew up at The Big Day Out. You know, the best times of my life. It was incredible being part of it, being on the road with it. And it was like trying to save my childhood home.
22:31 Speaker 04 Just days before it was made public, AJ had announced he was cancelling Harvest.
22:36 Speaker 16 Now, whether or not the purchase of The Big Day Out affected AJ Matta's decisions around Harvest is unknown. AJ Matta did not return our calls today to confirm this news and also refused the offer of an interview.
22:48 Speaker 04 Former Big Day Out owner Viv Lees voiced his concerns on Triple J's hack.
22:53 Speaker 07 He's a gambler and he's quite an odious character.
22:56 Speaker 15 This is what happens when businesses merge. Someone comes in and says, "I'll help, but there will be a prize." From there, it was going to be hell.
23:06 Speaker 06 I left very soon after the arrival of that guy.
23:12 Speaker 04 Johanna Greenway walked out after a decade with the festival.
23:15 Speaker 06 That's when it wasn't the same anymore, so I jumped ship.
23:19 Speaker 15 AJ already had an operation with Soundwave and he wanted to move everyone out of the Surrey Hills office and certain people that he liked and didn't like. And there were certain ways that production was done that he didn't want. There were site managers he had that he didn't want to use over the site managers we had.
23:35 Speaker 11 The Big Day Out needed more of my time and energy and focus than, you know, Soundwave, Harvest and whatever else was going on at the time.
23:44 Speaker 05 I found it really difficult to work with AJ.
23:50 Speaker 05 Really difficult.
23:51 Speaker 04 So Melbourne event manager Susan Forrester focused on the job at hand.
23:56 Speaker 05 I was under a lot of pressure at the time to secure the international visas.
24:02 Speaker 05 And interestingly, as soon as I'd secured the visas, I was made redundant. And that was the end, just before Christmas.
24:15 Speaker 04 There was more drama to come.
24:17 Speaker 16 Yeah, the news coming out that Blur have pulled out of The Big Day Out.
24:21 Speaker 04 Blur cancelled eight weeks out from the festival.
24:26 Speaker 04 One of their reasons was a challenging relationship with organisers. The team scrambled to lock in three bands as a replacement: Liam Gallagher's BDI, The Hives and Deftones. But it wasn't enough.
24:41 Speaker 11 I was kind of mystified about how bad the ticket sales were. But I think it was more about the brand being tarnished than the actual lineup. I really don't think that in 2014, it very much could have saved the Big Day Out.
24:58 Speaker 04 The ship was sinking.
25:04 Speaker 04 Variety and discovery made the Big Day Out a unique experience when it started. In 2014, the music landscape had shifted. Music was easier to discover on the internet, and music festivals were everywhere. Punters were spoiled for choice. Top-tier internationals could be more picky about where and when they played. Ticket sales were so bad, AJ Matta tweeted they wouldn't do a Perth leg in 2015.
25:34 Speaker 04 At that stage, you didn't know, in 2015, there'd be no legs.
25:40 Speaker 16 Hello. Today, we brought you the news that the Big Day Out will not go ahead next year. And it's a sad day for the most popular festival in Australia's history. It started in 92, when Ken Weston-Viveles booked a band called Nirvana. Yeah, well, this morning, 2 AM, we got a statement from the American company that now owns the festival, C3, and they said, "There will not be a Big Day Out in 2015. We loved working on the Big Day Out and are excited about its future." But does it really have a future? And what went wrong? Now, at this point, I'd like to go to a quick reaction to one of the men that actually started the Big Day Out, Vivian Lees.
26:14 Speaker 14 I just think it's even more so, you know, he's a mega dickhead.
26:17 Speaker 16 AJ Matta, some very harsh words there. I find Vivian and all these claims are hypocritical at this point.
26:26 Speaker 04 AJ Matta sold his 50% share to C3 for $1.
26:33 Speaker 04 The agreement was that AJ could buy his share back for $1 plus capital whenever the festival was brought back. He lost millions.
26:42 Speaker 11 I took my losses on the chin and walked away.
26:45 Speaker 04 The Big Day Out was over.
26:56 Speaker 04 As far as we know, the ownership papers sit in a drawer somewhere in Texas. It's now wholly owned by three guys named Charlie, Charlie and Charles.
27:09 Speaker 14 The boiler room was insane. I was like so close to a bottomless day. Okay, all right, well go ahead, Brian. There's life before the first Big Day Out and life after the Big Day Out. It is a pinnacle moment.
27:25 Speaker 05 Every woman that worked on Big Day Out somehow and some way had someone younger underneath them and they mentored and they opened a path for them.
27:35 Speaker 02 It was passionately produced to drag Australia up by the jockstrap or whatever it is to kind of go, your time's come. We're not isolated. It was important. It was really important.
27:53 Speaker 01 Inside the Big Day Out was produced by Gad Burke. The supervising producer was Mike Williams. The sound engineers were Tim Jenkins and John Jacobs. This series was first broadcast in 2019 and is a collaboration between Double J and Radio National. You can hear the full series on the ABC Listen app.
28:15 Speaker 01 I'm San Ro. Catch you for more songs, stories and musical history every Friday morning on Double J.
28:26 Speaker 00 You've been listening to an ABC Podcast. Discover more great ABC Podcasts, live radio and exclusives on the ABC Listen app.
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