Europe

You are in Virtual Festivals Global

Interviews

see all

'Band booking don' Martin Elbourne

United Kingdom | by Ross Purdie | 18 January 2006

Meet the man responsible for filling festivals with your favourite bands and stop sulking about there being no Glasto this year. If you thought it was going be a quiet year, then think again...

Martin Elbourne has been Glastonbury Festival's chief band booker for more than a decade and currently picks bands for a number of other top UK festivals too. We caught up with him at the recent EuroSonic Festival in Holland, where he was on the lookout for the latest ear-friendly offerings from across the continent - predominantly to book at his new Brighton festival 'The Great Escape' (read more about it here). We struck a deal; give us an interview and we'll tell you what EuroSonic bands we saw that would cut it in the UK. He agreed (so look out for Spleen United and Bacon Caravan Creek this summer..)

Virtual Festivals: What festivals in particular are you here to book for?
Martin Elbourne: I'm here for Guilfest, Global Gathering, Jersey Live, The Great Escape, and a new event that I can't talk about yet. But my main focus is on The Great Escape, which I'm starting up this year. It's going to be a similar set-up to here in EuroSonic. I've been coming here for eight years and it's definitely the inspiration. There are a lot of these kinds of events around the world but this is one of the best ones. There are others, in places like Norway and Sweden, but up until now there's been nothing in the UK apart from In The City.

VF: What's it all about?
ME: It's going to be in Brighton and it will be a world-wide thing, not just people from the UK or even just from Europe. We're getting bands and event bookers coming over from places like Australian, Canada and the States. So there will hopefully be a higher threshold and a better range of bands all round. We're going to have it in Brighton for the foreseeable future at least.

VF: How's it shaping up?
ME: We've got around 20 bands booked at the moment and 10 of those are Canadian, but there's loads going on right now and we're now booking more bands by the day. Every venue we use is going to have its own genre each night, so people will get a clear idea of what they're going to see. My vision of it is for people to go along and not see a shit band all weekend. That's what I really want.

VF: Britain is known as one of the more closed markets for foreign bands. Do we need something like this in the UK?
ME: Yes of course. The UK is the entry point to Europe and we've got a great bunch of bands here, which is fine, but you want to put them in front of a worldwide audience really, so that's what we're trying to achieve. We want the best bands to be playing and the best delegates from the music industry to be watching them. Australian bookers will want to be there, and the Japanese, because it gives them the opportunity to get good bands in a really fun environment. We're taking the EuroSonic concept to the UK, but it was never going to be in London. If EuroSonic was in Amsterdam it would be disastrous. You need to take people outside their comfort zone, somewhere they're maybe not accustomed to. It also needs to be somewhere people can get around easily and doesn't require 20 minute cab rides between venues.

VF: Why do British festivals need European bands when we've got so many trying to break through in this country?
ME: The best bands are often the random finds. Ten years ago you would struggle if you tried to interest UK promoters in European bands, but fortunately these boundaries have gradually broken down and you now simply have to look at other countries to get a greater variety of acts. The explosion of dance music started it all and it's spiralled from there. Greater access in terms of travel and the internet has helped play its part. Disco Ensemble, a young band from Finland, are a good example of this shift. They're already booked for The Great Escape.

VF: And what about selling UK bands to other markets?
ME: In the UK it's only just started. There's a guy called Phil Patterson who works for the DTI. He's our UK music export guy. He organises trade missions, which is something new to us. Every other European country has had someone like Phil for ages but we've only just got off the mark. We never really needed it before but now we're having to compete. It's worked huge dividends for some countries. Look at Finland and you can really see the results.

VF: How long have you been planning The Great Escape?
ME: It's been one and a half years in the pipeline. The idea was conceived at South By Southwest a couple of years ago. We farted around with names for ages but the ethos was never in question; it's always been about export ready bands, acts that haven't broken out of their home countries yet but have the potential to do so. Hopefully everyone will get something out of it.

VF: Are there going to be well known headliners?
ME: No, we thought about having headliners but only for commercial reasons. The whole thinking behind The Great Escape is about new, breaking bands but because this event will be slightly different than EuroSonic, with more emphasis on selling tickets to the public, it did cross our minds to have some big names to attract publicity. But that's not what it's about. We hope people will buy into it because they want to listen to new bands. You don't need headliners. You can see them anywhere.

VF: What's been your best ever booking?
ME: I booked Oasis off a demo tape for Glastonbury in 1994. They were great then but I can't stand them now. I really enjoy booking bands that no one knows and then seeing the reaction when people do hear them. Ralph Myerz and the Jack Herren Band are a good example. They opened Glastonbury two years ago and I found them here at EuroSonic.

VF: You've obviously seen Glastonbury grow. Has the festival got too big?
ME: I would have kept it smaller but I know for a fact that it'll never get bigger. It was getting out of control by 2000 and had to be brought back into line, so the fence and stricter ticketing are both positive things. They've helped make the atmosphere a lot better.

VF: Have you and Michael Eavis ever argued over bookings?
ME: Yes always! And then we'll argue about whose acts went down the best at the festival. Michael will claim he booked Muse, whereas I would disagree!

VF: Have there been any bands that didn't work?
ME: Maybe Kings Of Leon in 2004. They did really well but I don't think they were quite ready for such a high billing (second before Oasis). The Killers made the right move last year when they turned down the headlining slot to replace Kylie. We thought they'd be good for it but, in retrospect, I think they made the right choice.

VF: Is it true that some festivals pay headliners in excess of a million pounds?
ME: Yes, I know that more than a million has been paid for headliners in the past, by both V Festival and Reading and Leeds.

VF: How do you assess the state of the festival industry at the moment?
ME: Festivals like Beautiful Days are the ones that really excite me. There's a real growth in the number of smaller festivals cropping up, which is really positive for the UK festival market. The larger festivals are getting increasingly monopolised (Mean Fiddler being bought out by Clear Channel and MCD etc) and I just hope that doesn't ruin things for the smaller festivals. At the moment it's looking ok, although it's now becoming especially difficult to try and set up a new event from scratch because the established festivals and promoters set the price for bands. It's like the Chelsea effect of music.

VF: With no Glasto this year, what would be your recommendations?
ME: Well I'm a bit biased aren't I?! But I think the good ones this year will be Guilfest, WOMAD, Beautiful Days, Big Chill, and Jersey Live. I think a lot of the Glastonbury people will be going to them - and Benicassim.

The Great Escape takes place from 18-20 May at various venues in Brighton. Click on the links below for more.