Big Day Out Main Stages Auckland 2007 |
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| Location(s) |
Australia
New Zealand
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|---|---|
| Years active | 1992–97, 1999–present |
| Founded by | Ken West and Vivian Lees |
| Date(s) | Late January – early February |
| Genre | Heavy Metal, Rock, hip hop, electronic, Industrial |
| Website | Official website |
The Big Day Out (BDO) is an annual music festival held in several cities in Australia and New Zealand in late January. It started in Sydney in 1992, spread to Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth by 1993, with the Gold Coast and Auckland joining in 1994. As of 2003, it has featured seven or eight stages (depending on the venue) accommodating popular contemporary rock music, electronic music, mainstream international acts and local acts.
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The festival began in 1992 as a Sydney-only show with Violent Femmes as the headline act, along with Nirvana and a range of other foreign and local alternative music acts playing at the Hordern Pavilion. In the months preceding the event, Nirvana's Nevermind was released and became an international smash hit, therefore guaranteeing the success of the festival. Kurt Cobain was ill at the time of the show. In 1993, the festival was extended to include Melbourne, Perth, and Adelaide.
Since 1994, the Big Day Out has travelled annually to Auckland, the Gold Coast, Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth during a three-week period. The tour through the southern-hemisphere summer has become "the festival overseas acts want to be on". In 1997, organisers Ken West and Vivian Lees announced they were taking a year off, causing concern that the festival was coming to an end.[1]
American band Pearl Jam were booked to headline the 2001 tour almost 12 months in advance, as they had just started to do festivals for the first time since problems at festivals in the early 90s. On 30 June 2000 at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark, they ended their set prematurely after the crowd surged forward, crushing and fatally injuring nine people. They pulled out of the BDO, claiming that they would never play at festivals again. They did play Leeds & Reading Festivals, UK, in 2006.
The event reached the 100-shows milestone with the second of two Sydney events in 2010. With the impending milestone nearing, Lees boasted that the BDO has been able to build relationships with acts during their careers, which has become a part of the culture of BDO. The Australian said this has helped secure the BDO's world status and become recognised as one of the most successful and long-running rock festivals in the world, going on to say the festival is as much a part of Australian culture as the Melbourne Cup.[1]
In 2010, the caravan of artists and crew contained 700 people, compared to the 70 who crossed Australia in 1993. West said even the Australian bands were taking bigger crews, "Through that the festival needs more production, more riders, more hotel rooms, more everything." A solid infrastructure has been built steadily over the years to help cope with the increasing demand of the festival, with requests for video mixers, back projections and backstage internet connections obviously becoming a lot more frequent than when touring began in 1993.[1]
Due to increasing popularity of the event, in some years a second Sydney show has been held. The first time this occurred was in 2004, in recognition of the extreme popularity of Metallica. It occurred again in 2010, when Muse headlined, and also in 2011, with Tool and Rammstein headlining.
Since its inception in 1992, Big Day Out has attracted a large range of artists, with headlining acts including Nirvana, Blink 182, Muse, Violent Femmes, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, The Ramones, Soundgarden, Rammstein, System of a Down, Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine, The Prodigy, Marilyn Manson, Foo Fighters, Metallica, Tool, Neil Young and Red Hot Chili Peppers. The annual festival has also been a launching platform for many Australian artists, with various acts performing on the tour multiple times, such as Silverchair, Powderfinger, You Am I, The Living End, Jebediah, Grinspoon, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Kisschasy, and Wolfmother.
During the 2001 Big Day Out festival in Sydney, Jessica Michalik was crushed in a mosh pit during a performance by the band Limp Bizkit. She was revived and rushed to Concord Hospital, but died of a heart attack five days later.[2]
The band's frontman claimed the band had attempted to take precautions that fell on deaf ears, "We begged, we screamed, we sent letters, we tried to take precautions, because we are Limp Bizkit, we know we cause this big emotional blister of a crowd". The following day, Limp Bizkit had left Australia without telling the organisers, who only discovered the band's departure through a note left at the hotel.[2]
Senior deputy state coroner Jacqueline Milledge issued a statement saying responsibility was on the Big Day Out's promoters Creative Entertainment Australia, saying there was overwhelming evidence that crowd density was dangerous when Limp Bizkit went on stage. Limp Bizkit was also criticised in the report, Milledge saying that Durst could have taken the situation more seriously, with his comments on stage during the attempt to rescue Michalik were "alarming and inflammatory".[3]
Michalik's parents filed separate wrongful death claims naming promoters and security personal, and in one claim, Limp Bizkit. A New South Wales court dismissed the band and all parties connected with the band from the claim, finding they were not liable.[4]
In 2005, United National Insurance sued Limp Bizkit in an attempt to avoid paying legal fees arising from Michalik's death. The company claimed in the lawsuit, which was filed on 11 August 2005, that Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst incited the audience at the festival to rush the stage.[4]
On 21 January 2007 a decision was made by the organisers to discourage Big Day Out patrons in Sydney from bringing and displaying the Australian flag. The organisers said the decision was a result of recent ethno-religious tensions in Sydney, complaints that the previous year's festival had been marred by roving packs of aggressive flag-draped youths,[5] and recognition that some indigenous Australians take issue with celebrating the start of British settlement.
Sections of the community had strong views supporting or objecting to the policy. Former Prime Minister John Howard, New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma and Federal Leader of the Opposition Kevin Rudd publicly condemned the move. Iemma suggested the event be cancelled if the organisers could not secure the safety of attendees. Main stage act Jet performed in front of a large backdrop of a black-and-white Australian flag cut-out of their name, with lead vocalist Nic Cester adding, "I can't tell anyone else what to do but we as a band are very proud to be Australian and we don't want to feel we are not allowed to feel proud".[6]
However, other people including Andrew Bartlett of the Australian Democrats, sports writer Peter FitzSimons and members of the hip hop outfit The Herd expressed concern that the flag was being misused by a handful of aggressive attendees in a jingoist manner, and that rock concerts were not the appropriate venue to be waving a flag.[7]
On the first day of the 2007 Sydney Big Day Out significant numbers of patrons attended the event wearing Australian flag-related apparel or carrying Australian flags. No-one was refused entry and no flag-related material or clothing was confiscated. Since that date there has been no further suggestion of banning the Australian flag from Big Day Out events.
Drug usage is commonly associated with the Big Day Out,[8] with police searching suspected users and dealers by placing drug sniffing dogs at some entrances of each venue and patrolling the event.[9] At the 2008 festival in Sydney, police made 86 drug-related arrests. In 2009, identification of 258 suspects resulted in 107 people being detained for drug violations.[10] In Perth (2009), police made 59 arrests for possession of drugs, including four with intent to sell or supply. 129 tablets of MDMA, two grams of methamphetamine, six grams of cannabis, 75 cannabis joints, and 21 tablets of dextroamphetamine were seized by police.[11]
At the 2009 Big Day Out festival in Perth, 17-year-old Gemma Thoms collapsed after allegedly taking three ecstasy tablets.[12] She died 12 hours later in Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, after being transferred from the event's first-aid post.[13] The girl and her friend reportedly took one tablet each whilst at home before the event. After arriving, she reportedly saw police near the entrance, panicked, and swallowed another two tablets.[12] Police later denied responsibility for Thoms' death, noting that no sniffer dogs were being used to search patrons at the entrance she had used. Thoms had been driven by car and had not taken the train to the station where police were searching.[14] Police did not make any arrests, but officers did raid a house in their search for the dealer who had supplied the ecstasy.[12]
In addition, bands themselves have been caught in drug situations leading to death, especially in the case of Shihad, whose manager, Gerald Dwyer, died of a drug overdose in 1996 in his hotel room, just hours after watching the band's set at the Auckland BDO. The band skipped the Brisbane BDO in order to attend Gerald's funeral, and later rejoined the BDO tour in Sydney.[15]
In November 2009, gay rights groups in New Zealand protested after controversial rapper Beenie Man was included in the second round of announcements for the 2010 tour. Groups such as GayNZ.com cited controversial and homophobic lyrics from Beenie Man's songs such as "I'm dreaming of a new Jamaica/Come to execute all the gays". The group called for Big Day Out organisers to drop Beenie Man from the line up "to send a message that homophobia is unacceptable", and over 850 people joined a Facebook group to oppose his appearance.[15]
On 15 November 2009, the festival's Australian organisers issued a statement on their website, confirming that Beenie Man had indeed been dropped from the lineup. Whilst they acknowledged his commitment to the 2007 Reggae Compassionate Act and his promises to not perform the offending songs on his tour, they ultimately made the decision to drop Beenie Man because they felt his appearance would "be divisive amongst our audience members and would mar the enjoyment of the event for many."[16]
In early November in 2011, ahead of the 2012 Big Day Out, Odd Future were taken off the Auckland line up due to some of their lyrics being homophobic. [17]
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