Soundwave’s demise hurt Bluesfest: The revelations of Peter Noble

“We’re a bit like Gladiators I guess in a way: if we lose, we all get the thumbs down and they stick the spears in, and throw our bodies to the lions.”

Peter Noble’s Bluesfest has represented Australia for six consecutive years at the Pollstar Awards in the Best International Music Festival category. It also took out the Best Major Festival and Event award at the NSW Tourism Awards.

Yet, when speaking to TMN ahead of the 27^th Bluesfest in Byron Bay this month – where among the headliners are The National, Brian Wilson and Kendrick Lamar – Noble declares he fears for Australia’s festival industry.

“We’re going to do about the same numbers as last year; but God, we thought for a while we wouldn’t.”

At the end of 2015 Australia lost one of its game-changing music events. Soundwave promoter AJ Maddah was responsible for convincing some of the most behemoth names in heavy music to travel to the other side of the world. Yet when news broke of just how costly his 12-year expedition was, and that many of the artists remained unpaid, the announcement of the festival’s shuttering in December saw ticket holders lose faith. Soundwave ticket agency Eventopia were at first reticent to give fans their money back and it wasn’t until weeks after Soundwave’s cancellation that it announced all refunds had been processed. Noble says Soundwave’s demise damaged the industry, and Bluesfest.

“[AJ Maddah is] not remembered for the great contributions he made to make the industry what it is today,” Noble concedes. “The fall out from that cancellation and the fact the ticket agency didn’t want to give the money back to the ticket buyers hurt our industry.

“It made the public wary, ‘Is this going to happen to me if I buy a ticket to another event?’. We’ve had to work hard this year to get our numbers and they’re really coming home brilliantly late. Just like I’m told Laneway did, and Woodford did – everybody hung on to their money.”

The 2015 Bluesfest hosted 105,000 people over five days, topping the 85,000 it drew in 2013, and up more than 500 attendees from 2014; but it wasn’t without controversy. Ohio blues-rock duo The Black Keys cancelled their headline spot at Bluesfest just days out from kick-off on March 22, due to Patrick Carney injuring his shoulder the previous January. Earlier in the month Ben Howard decided to reschedule his visit “to ensure he puts on the best show possible”, and the month prior headliner Lenny Kravitz also cancelled his appearance, citing “scheduling conflicts”.

Noble says that while he wasn’t able to speak truthfully about the cancellations at the time, letting the acts’ official statements be the ruling correspondence with fans, he can now say the incidences had more to do with the “artists’ image” than anything else.

“The usual reasons for cancellation, they’re often not what [is said to fans]. ‘Due to unforseen circumstances’ – that’s got to be one of the greatest lines of rock ‘n’ roll.

“The Black Keys drummer had… his shoulder was shattered, it wasn’t dislocated,” says Noble frankly. “His bone was shattered from some body surfing accident in the Caribbean. The chances of him coming were very, very low. I don’t think that anybody should have been mislead about it – including myself who was only given medical reports a week out.”

Noble says any cancellation can damage his image: “In fact, it might even hurt our long-term business.” Perhaps this is why he also called out Lenny Kravitz in a Facebook Q&A on the Bluesfest account page.

“It seems Lenny Kravitz’ concert ticket sales in 2015 were low,” he wrote in January. “As a festival, we MUST have confidence that the artists who contract with us to perform will actually show up! We believe [he] should have came, and meet [sic] his contractual obligations. The fact that he didn’t, it is highly unlikely that we will have an interest in him in the future.”

It could be argued that Bluesfest is one of the few flagship national festivals that has not only achieved longevity, but which also has a seemingly bright future. Over its 27 years Bluesfest, in its many incarnations to appeal to wider audiences, has brought to Australia acts like Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, John Legend, George Clinton (who all played in the one Bluesfest in 2011), as well as ZZ Top, James Brown, REM, George Clinton and Iggy and The Stooges. According to Noble, the over-arching secret is simple:

“I just think the fans ought to be considered. I do it every day of my life. For me that’s why I’m in this business. I love it, I want to be in it, I want to work in it, I want to succeed in it, and I know I’m not there without the fans.”

It wouldn’t be a Peter Noble interview if the industry heavyweight weren’t lobbying for change. Noble uses this particular conversation to address the music websites using the click-worthy topic of failing festivals a little heavy-handedly.

“I’ve got to say that our industry and some of the blogs are really guilty of this: that is that some festival that no one’s ever heard of gets the lead story about it might be going to cancel – of course we know it’s going to cancel. And the next day it’s the next lead story, and they do that for their own reasons of readership,” Noble remarks. “But it’s hurting our industry, this ongoing story.”

Noble says that if the festival market is to thrive, the narrative surrounding it must be reframed. He calls for industry-wide support and less bias toward the death of small one-off music events that don’t represent the market as a whole. For as he suggests, doing so only puts another spear into the heart of the festival industry.

“It’s up to the media,” he jeers. “[…] which really needs to evaluate the damage being done to the industry. If the industry doesn’t support itself, and runs off the gossip of bad news, we’re no better than the gutter rags that we all say we wouldn’t read.”

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Ticketsare on sale throughwww.bluesfest.com.au.