50 Fun Facts About Music Festivals

Which dairy farmer hosted the first Glastonbury festival on his Worthy Farm in 1970, charging £1 a ticket?

Michael Eavis was moved to host it after seeing Led Zeppelin at the 1970 Bath Festival of Blues; the Kinks dropped out as headliners and Tyrannosaurus Rex topped the bill instead.

Whose 21-minute Wembley set at Live Aid was voted rock's greatest live performance in a 2005 industry poll?

Queen opened with a shortened 'Bohemian Rhapsody' and closed with 'We Are the Champions', a six-song set the BBC's David Hepworth called the greatest display of community singing the old stadium had seen.

Where did Oasis play to 125,000 people a night in August 1996, after 2.5 million applied for tickets?

Knebworth House's two nights drew 2.5 million applications for 250,000 tickets, enough for 20 sold-out shows, and were then the biggest outdoor concerts the UK had seen.

Italy's Sanremo Music Festival, held since 1951, was the model for which international competition launched in 1956?

The Eurovision Song Contest has run every year since 1956 except 2020, making it the longest-running international music competition on television; its first edition was staged in Lugano.

South by Southwest co-founder Louis Black named the Austin event as a play on which 1959 Alfred Hitchcock film?

North by Northwest lent its name when SXSW launched in 1987 as a music conference run by Austin Chronicle staff; the film and interactive strands were bolted on later.

Which rapper headlined Glastonbury in 2019 wearing a Union Jack stab-proof vest designed by Banksy?

Stormzy's set made him the first black British rapper to headline Glastonbury, in the same year 'Vossi Bop' gave him his first UK number-one single.

Which city has hosted the free Donauinselfest, a three-day party on a Danube island, since 1984?

Vienna's festival has claimed crowds of around three million and bills itself as the world's largest open-air music festival, with 11 stages strung along 4.5 km of the island and the city's Social Democrats as host.

Which Milwaukee festival, first held in 1968, did Guinness World Records certify in 1999 as the world's largest?

Summerfest fills Henry Maier Festival Park beside Lake Michigan, yet its inaugural 1968 edition was scattered across 35 sites and included a film festival and an air show.

Which prime minister's granddaughter Arabella co-organised the free 1971 Glastonbury Fayre?

Winston Churchill's granddaughter shunned interviews, yet the children's area she went on to organise at the festival became the seed of the charity Children's World.

Whose claim that hip-hop was wrong for Glastonbury led Jay-Z to open his 2008 headline set with 'Wonderwall'?

Noel Gallagher's criticism got a tongue-in-cheek answer: Jay-Z, the first major hip-hop act to headline the festival, walked on strumming the Oasis anthem before his own set.

Who closed Glastonbury 2011 on the Sunday night, becoming the first woman to headline the festival since 1999?

Beyoncé followed U2 and Coldplay on a bill whose tickets had sold out within four hours in October 2010, and the festival then took the next year off.

Which 2005 concert series, timed to the G8 summit at Gleneagles, reunited Pink Floyd's classic line-up after 24 years?

Live 8 fell on the 20th anniversary of Live Aid, and the reunion was the last time Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Richard Wright and Nick Mason played together.

Which benefit did Willie Nelson launch in Champaign, Illinois in September 1985 after a Bob Dylan remark at Live Aid?

Farm Aid drew 80,000 to Memorial Stadium and has run nearly every year since, after Dylan suggested from the Live Aid stage that some money should go to American family farmers.

Lollapalooza gave up touring in 2005 to become a destination festival in which Chicago lakefront space?

Grant Park's 2005 relaunch offered 70 acts on five stages, more variety than the travelling festival Perry Farrell started in 1991 ever managed.

Which capital hosts Sziget, the week-long island festival that began in 1993 as a student event?

Budapest's 'Island of Freedom' started as Diáksziget (Student Island), ran so far over budget that the losses took until 1997 to repay, and spent 1996–2001 as Pepsi Sziget.

Rock am Ring, founded by promoter Marek Lieberberg in 1985, takes its name from which German motor-racing circuit?

The Nürburgring's paddock in the Eifel hills hosts it, while twin Rock im Park runs the same weekend 200 miles away on Nuremberg's Zeppelinfeld with a near-identical line-up.

Which Indian state hosted the first Sunburn dance festival on one of its beaches in December 2007?

Goa's beach-party scene of the 1990s fed straight into Sunburn, which shifted to Pune in Maharashtra in 2016 before returning to Vagator in 2019.

Lollapalooza's first edition outside the United States was staged in April 2011 in which South American capital?

Santiago's O'Higgins Park hosted it, and the success spawned Lollapalooza Brazil at São Paulo's Jockey Club a year later.

Vive Latino, the Ibero-American rock festival held almost every year since 1998, takes over which capital?

Mexico City has hosted Vive Latino since 1998, skipping only 1999, 2002 and the pandemic year of 2021, and sponsorship has since branded it Amazon Vive Latino.

Which Australian festival debuted in Sydney in 1992 with Nirvana supporting headliners the Violent Femmes?

Big Day Out was founded by promoters Ken West and Vivian Lees at the Hordern Pavilion, and grew from that one-city show into an annual touring festival across Australia.

Which Canadian city hosts the jazz festival that Guinness World Records certified in 2004 as the world's largest?

Montreal's first edition in 1980 drew 12,000 people for Ray Charles, Chick Corea and Gary Burton, and the Guinness title followed in 2004.

Creamfields, the dance festival first held in Winchester in 1998, grew out of a superclub in which English city?

Liverpool's Cream nightclub ran it, moving the event to the city's old airport in 1999 before settling on the Daresbury estate in Cheshire.

Which lager sponsor gave Scotland's T in the Park Festival, held annually from 1994 to 2016, the T in its name?

Tennent's backed founders Stuart Clumpas and Geoff Ellis of DF Concerts, and the festival started out at Strathclyde Park in Lanarkshire before moving on.

Which English racing circuit hosted Monsters of Rock from 1980 and has been home to Download since 2003?

Donington Park's Download took a name that was then a dirty word in an industry fighting file-sharing, while Monsters of Rock began there as the last date of a 1980 Rainbow tour.

Reading Festival gained a twin site in 1999, sharing its bill with which northern English city?

Leeds took the second leg because demand kept rising, and the twin later moved to Bramham Park; Reading itself began life in 1961 as the National Jazz Festival at Richmond.

Which skate-shoe brand became title sponsor of Kevin Lyman's Warped Tour after its first run in 1995?

Vans stayed attached until the 2018 edition that Lyman billed as the final full cross-country run, with only three 25th-anniversary events following in 2019.

Which magazine's 25th-anniversary party in 1995 became an annual New Orleans festival of Black music and culture?

Essence meant it as a one-off, but 142,000 turned up that first July and the organisers made it an annual fixture that by the 2020s was reported to draw 500,000 people a day.

Tomorrowland's short-lived US spin-off TomorrowWorld ran from 2013 to 2015 near which city?

Atlanta's edition lasted three years before the experiment ended, while the Belgian original, dreamed up by brothers Manu and Michiel Beers in 2004, kept growing.

Electric Daisy Carnival, begun by Insomniac in Los Angeles in 1997, moved its flagship in 2011 to which Nevada venue?

Las Vegas Motor Speedway hosts the flagship each May; a record 525,000 people attended over three nights in 2023, making it the largest electronic dance festival in the world.

Which small Somerset village, not the town of Glastonbury itself, actually borders the festival's Worthy Farm site?

Pilton and neighbouring Pylle flank the farm, and the nearest town is actually Shepton Mallet, three miles to the north-east.

How often does Glastonbury traditionally take a 'fallow year' to give the land and the villagers a rest?

Every fifth summer or so the fields recover; 2012 was skipped partly over the likely cost of portable toilets and policing, and the 2001 gap was used to redesign the site's security.

From 2007, what did Glastonbury ticket buyers have to pre-register and submit to beat the touts?

A passport photo was security-printed onto each ticket, introduced the year the allocation rose to 137,500 and sold out in 1 hour 45 minutes.

Which singer founded WOMAD in 1980 and reunited with Genesis for a single 1982 show to rescue its finances?

Peter Gabriel and his old bandmates played as 'Six of the Best' at Milton Keynes after the first WOMAD at Shepton Mallet lost money, and the festival now runs worldwide.

Which band opened Live Aid at Wembley in 1985 with 'Rockin' All Over the World', right after the Coldstream Guards?

Status Quo also squeezed in 'Caroline' and 'Don't Waste My Time', and Francis Rossi recalled Bob Geldof telling him it did not matter what they sounded like, so long as they were there.

Which San Francisco band headlined the first Isle of Wight Festival, a 10,000-strong affair at Ford Farm in 1968?

Jefferson Airplane topped a bill with Arthur Brown, the Move and Tyrannosaurus Rex at Hells Field near Godshill, before later editions moved to Wootton and Afton Down.

Which Glastonbury structure did Bill Harkin first build in 1971 from scaffolding and sheet metal over a 'blind spring'?

The Pyramid Stage was a one-tenth replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza, sited on a supposed ley line, and a permanent 1981 rebuild doubled as a hay barn and cowshed in winter.

Which Irish stately home's natural amphitheatre has staged giant concerts since Thin Lizzy headlined there in 1981?

Slane Castle's sloping grounds were opened to concerts by the Earl of Mount Charles, and U2 remain the only act to have played there twice in one year.

Roskilde's Orange Stage, now the Danish festival's logo, was a canopy bought in 1978 from which band's European tour?

The Rolling Stones' orange Canopy Scene became the symbol of a festival that two high-school students and a promoter had started in 1971.

Since 2019 Tomorrowland has run a March winter edition at which French Alpine ski resort?

Alpe d'Huez hosts Tomorrowland Winter in the second or third week of March, announced in 2018 as the Belgian brand's first cold-weather spin-off.

Which Landgraaf festival, named after the Dutch word for Whitsun, was first held in 1970?

Pinkpop started at a sports park in Geleen and has been at Megaland since 1988; only the 2020 and 2021 pandemic cancellations have broken the longest run of any annual pop festival.

Wacken Open Air, the heavy-metal festival staged in August since 1990, fills a tiny village in which German state?

Schleswig-Holstein's village of Wacken has hosted it since 1990, and the 2023 edition's 75,000 tickets sold out in a record five hours.

Who founded the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1967 with Géo Voumard and René Langel, helped by Atlantic's Ertegun brothers?

Claude Nobs later brought in Quincy Jones as co-producer from 1991 to 1993, by which time the event had outgrown the town's casino for its convention centre.

Which Brazilian advertising executive created Rock in Rio, whose 1985 debut drew 1.38 million people over ten days?

Roberto Medina built a purpose-made 'City of Rock' for it, later exported the brand to Lisbon and Madrid, and sold a majority stake to Live Nation in 2018.

Where in San Francisco did Larry Harvey and Jerry James burn a wooden figure in June 1986, birthing Burning Man?

Baker Beach hosted the ritual until 1990, when it moved to Nevada's Black Rock Desert and became the temporary Black Rock City, about 100 miles north-east of Reno.

Bonnaroo took its name, Creole slang for 'a really good time', from a 1974 album by which New Orleans musician?

Dr. John's Desitively Bonnaroo gave the Manchester farm festival its name when it launched in 2002, on a site that had hosted the Itchycoo Park Festival in 1999.

Which Memphis house band, in lime-green suits, backed Otis Redding's show-stealing set at Monterey Pop in 1967?

Booker T. & the M.G.'s opened with instrumentals before Redding joined them, at a festival where the artists played for free and all revenue went to charity.

Which French culture minister launched the Fête de la Musique, a free solstice-day music celebration, in Paris in 1982?

Jack Lang and Maurice Fleuret's idea, staged on the summer solstice, has since spread to some 120 countries as Music Day.

Splendour in the Grass, named from a Wordsworth ode, began in 2001 near which New South Wales surf town?

Byron Bay's Belongil Fields hosted it until a two-year detour to Woodford in Queensland; North Byron Parklands took over in 2013 and won permanent approval in 2019.

The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival's 1970 debut, staged near old Congo Square, drew roughly how many people?

Just 350 people turned up to a festival George Wein had launched as a non-profit, yet it was still judged an instant artistic success.

Which 1970 tour moved the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and The Band across Canada by chartered train?

Festival Express stopped in Toronto, Winnipeg and Calgary, and the on-board jam sessions surfaced in a 2003 documentary of the same name.