Big Day Out promoter Ken West: "It's always meant to be confusing."

Staring across the lush greens of Melbourne's Flemington Racecourse on an unseasonably chilly summer day, it's difficult to imagine where the Silent Disco will go. Or the booze tents. Or the thousands of music fans that will make walking around here in a few weeks time rather difficult. Apart from a brief (and sadly missed) stint at Princes Park in Carlton, this (and the nearby showgrounds) has been the home of the Big Day Out in Melbourne since its local inception in 1993 -- a year after Nirvana helped launch the then debut event in Sydney.

Talking to Ken West is listening to Ken West. The man has an affable, endless stream-of-consciousness, one that's surely honed from conversing with global superstars and toilet cleaners alike. Headlines and tidbits spill out of his mouth at a staggering clip. His gift of gab also means that he sometimes contradicts himself, going off on tangents that refute something he'd said earlier, or reveals a thought process that's nibbling at bigger stories. (The competition, money paid to headliners, ownership of ideas and behind the scenes industry jockeying, appear to be the elephants jostling in the room.) There's a code language too, which gears up and down, dovetailing among blunt truths. But it's never less than fascinating. And continuous.

As such, the interview actually begins with West heading outside to have a smoke while waiting for his lunch. In the foyer of the racetrack reception, under the oiled, dead-eyed watch of champion thoroughbreds, we talk about ticket prices, lining up outside record stores and the changing face of punter demand, all before the recorder is on. Once inside a small room bearing the site-map of the upcoming festival, we're on to discussing what sort of towels upcoming headliner Kanye West requires before we even take our seats.

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Ken West: The worst rider we've ever [had requested], and I know he won't mind me saying this because I've wound him up about it a few times, was [US rapper] Lupe Fiasco. Because he doesn't drink. So he substitutes it with all this stuff like, Playstation 3s and all this kind of thing. [I said], 'You know man, if you put all that on your rider, normally [it comes out of your fee?]'. He said, 'Really?' You know, like [as if] it all magically came from somewhere. So he went through and crossed of all this stuff. You probably add it up and over a year you've cost yourself a house! [laughs.]

They're never very logical. Especially in festival mode. I mean, sure, a lot of the riders are on the basis that they've got another twenty or thirty crew with them. And you've got to adapt all that. The Kanye people are alright. [But] it's a very affluent, spend it while you make it world...when we're talking RnB [laughs.]

TheVine: Well it's all based on showing your wealth isn't it?

Yeah. Which isn't commonly known to work here. Billy Corgan [from the Smashing Pumpkins] was the first artist to insist on it, a white stretch limo. In '94. Turned up to the first show in Sydney with it and all the [other] bands laughed at him. So he got rid of it straight away [laughs]. He never did it again, turned up in the Tarago the next time, like "Oops, that was uncool." [laughs]. He's got that high, whiny voice too. He's made a lot of money off that voice, but it's not impressive when you're arguing [laughs]. [See this article from 1994 for similar behind the scenes stuff with Billy Corgan and Soundgarden at the Big Day Out. - Ed]

So tell me what the main changes are this year?

Well in terms of the East Coast, there's not really substantial changes. The main thing this year is that the rethinking of the show has become pivotal. There'll be no playing the games any more, can't afford it.

There'll be no second show in Sydney, etc?

Oh nah nah, the thing is the Big Day Out has only survived on one basis: that it's adapted. It'll grow when it needs to and it'll shrink when it needs to. And it needs to be budgeted tightly so that you can take on massive acts if they want to do it. But only if the act wants to do it. Because you can't just bid for massive acts, 'cause you can't afford them. It has to be a fairly passionate process from the act to want to be a part of it.

And maybe to a certain extent that's part of the problem, is that we've gotten down to a situation with so many events [in Australia] that the process of [bidding]...I mean a lot of the line-ups are just really confusing this year. And I think they're all a consequence of people taking [acts] because they think somebody else wants them.

Do you think your line-up is confusing?

Oh fuck yeah. But it's always meant to be confusing.

But now, what used to be a two month process of explaining a show through record stores -- remembering the Big Day Out started pre-internet, it was created for the bands. Not for the audience. We didn't know there was an audience. But we knew the bands really wanted to play and it would be really good to bring the bands together. Everyone was so lost [then]. All independent labels, it was a really independent scene.

And so you've got this situation now where you spend few months just trying to explain [the line-up]. Because we're trying to do what's done [elsewhere] in a three day festival, in a one day festival. Glastonbury got crucified for having Jay-Z on beforehand, got praised for having him afterwards. Got crucified for having Beyoncé on, praised afterwards. Lady Gaga was on the Saturday night at Lollapalooza a year or two ago -- [with only one night at the Big Day Out] I can't mesh it like that!

And so we've tried to mesh as [many acts] as we can. The pressures of the 20th year, meant we tried as hard as we could to get the most amazing things that we could. And it just didn't quite click. The roads that [we] went down were, 'Well we could pay more. Or there's this and this bidding war', and the art of the process got off track.

Fundamentally it needs to come down to one thing, 'Do you want to play the Big Day or not? And if you don't want to play the Big Day Out then we shouldn't be talking to you. And if you do, then it can't be a bidding war.'

Is that something that C3 Presents [the US booking agency that recently became a partner of the festival] will help out with in future?

They're amazing and that's an amazing relationship. I can't emphasise it enough.

Are they already involved with this one?

Not this year. But we're fully involved. They connected on the basis of them getting in touch and saying, 'We've heard the Big Day Out needs help, do you need any help?' And that was the first time that someone's [asked].

It has to be run on a very fair system. And you can't have inconsistencies on such large scales, that you need to pull back millions here or millions there [to be able to afford an artist]. You know, you can't pull it back out of site budgets and things like that. [So] it's the talent fees that have got to come into line with logical expectations. It has to be more artist driven. Back to where it was. And it has to be that the artist wants to be on the same show. So it does take a lot longer to build it.

There's meant to also be some faith in what we're doing is not just haphazard. There's a chemistry that's designed. It'll work. It works off paper, I always work off timesheets. It works. And that on the day it works. You very rarely get a situation at the Big Day Out where it doesn't work on the day.

That references also why Vivian [Lees, co-founder who left the business late last year] decided he didn't want to be a part of it anymore -- he started to think that it couldn't work. Amongst other factors.

Well I mean, he was right. It can't really work. But that doesn't mean you don't do it. Because that commitments been made, you've got to choose if you're out of the music industry or you're in the music industry. It's a high-risk venture. There's always risk. I've been in the music industry for thirty years, as long as I remember. And it's always been hard -- it just got soft for a while. But it's always a gamble. 'Will the [audience] embrace it or won't they embrace it?'

We were freaking out about the Neil Young year [2009]. And it got embraced probably due to the fact that we added The Prodigy. The people [who saw Neil Young on the bill and] went 'Errgh,' saw The Prodigy on the bill and went 'Yeah OK, we can do that now.' The fact that Neil Young played to probably some of the smallest crowds as a headliner that we've ever had, was what we knew [would happen]. Because [the younger audience] would go, 'Alright let's look at a song or two and [move on]', but [at least] they'd give it something.

That was more of a show for the fans, for the believers and the whole industry to go, 'Neil Young's amazing.' And [Young] wanted to play to a younger audience specifically, so it wasn't about money. There's money still involved of course, substantial money, but it wasn't a bidding war. It was a very specific way of approaching it.



There always seems to be a crowd that comes for the headliner, whether it's the Tool fans or the Rage Against The Machine fans...

That's a presumption, there's no presumption of anything anymore.

Well it feels like that in the crowd.

Yeah, but I mean we have four headliners. Green Stage, Boiler Room, as you know...and the main thing is that it's still a smorgasboard and it's trying to represent what is going on, in the best quality acts that we're happy to work with. There's some pretty good acts that I can't work with, because they're too geared around themselves. There's reasons why Green Day don't do festivals really, there's reasons why Radiohead don't do many festivals. Because it's very much about them, and we have to go, 'Well we don't know if we can compromise that much.'

Surely Kanye is one of those acts.

Yep.

So this year is a litmus test?

Litmus test we didn't really need to have, we knew that beforehand. We went down a long path with Prince, for 20 years we though that would be amazing. They contacted us, the year before. It seemed to be [happening] but the finish line never got pulled. And we weren't strong enough to call the deadline early enough and move on. It ended up being very late. Same with Blink-182. The Soundgarden thing -- I'll defend any band on the show to the death. They're all great. And it all came together fine. I think Kanye's an incredible performer. Whether it's worth the grief and headache for us is another story.

But it is always a tightrope, high-wire kind of act to try balance these kind of things. And within such a short timeframe to convince these people, plus having to move back [having tickets] on sale because we didn't have our headliners together, and having to pay [the headliners] more than we should have because it was on a short timeline...that's just business. It's nobody's fault. It's not the agents fault. It's our fault. Simple.

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