Bruce Dickinson Blames Corporate Greed for Why It’s the Same Festival Headliners Every Year
As someone who makes a living writing and talking about this heavy metal game, there’s one question that keeps coming up between my colleagues and me: who’s the next [insert major band here]? Who’s going to take the mantle from aging acts like Judas Priest and Metallica? And why do we always see those same acts headlining every major festival every single year?!
In what may be the least surprising bit of news, Iron Maiden vocalist and likely D.A.R.E. anti-cannabis supporter Bruce Dickinson‘s got a theory on that. Having been in the business since the late 70s, the man’s seen some shit and during a recent interview with Swedish radio station Bandit Rock (as transcribed by Blabbermouth), he laid the lack of new headliners solely on one thing: greed.
“I was with a big promoter in when I was in Brazil last week. I was at Comic Con [CCXP23] in São Paulo launching [my upcoming solo album] The Mandrake Project…. So when I was there, one of the big Brazilian promoters was there and I was chatting away to him. And he goes, ‘It’s a real problem for us now, big festivals, promoters.’ He said, ‘There aren’t any headliners.’ You can count the headliners on the fingers of one hand, people who are capable of — you put them at the top of the bill and people say, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll go and see that.’ And, unfortunately, the reason for that, I believe, is the big corporations took everything over, and they’re interested in making money, so they propagate the big headliners, but they don’t bring on the bands that create the drama to create the fanbase, to create the dedication to bring it up. Because you don’t become a headliner overnight. You become a headliner by doing loads of gigs at loads of places and fans and people follow you and all of a sudden you’re at Wembley Arena and you’re thinking, ‘Oh my god, these guys are playing arenas. And the next step up from arenas is, ‘Oh, they’re gonna go and headline a festival. Oh, yeah, great. They’re a festival headliner.’ And at that moment you go take a step up into that world.
“In the USA, for example, when I was first touring with Maiden, all the arena shows we’d do, and we were like special guests or something else like that. But that’s the point — we were special guests on a three-act bill, building a band in Chicago. And it would be one promoter who did Chicago, and there’d be another one that did New York, and there’d be another one that… And the promoters in all those places would go, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna bring you back in. We’re gonna do this show with you. And then we’re gonna do this. And we’re gonna build you in Chicago. And we’ll build you up to the point where you’re gonna headline that place. And then when the reaction is, like, really cool, we’ll bring you back and we’ll headline something double the size.’ And every promoter would do that for bands. And then, unfortunately, fortunately — I mean, we get paid a huge amount of money by Live Nation — but what they don’t do is really bring on bands in the same way. You have to figure out that promoters, those individual promoters, were all taking individual risks. So they’d promote one show and they’d lose their shirt. And then they’d promote another show and go, ‘Oh, we made some money this week. That’s fantastic.’ So you can see the temptation when along comes — I don’t know where the money comes from, a hedge fund or something or whatever, venture capital, I don’t care.
“But you can see the temptation when somebody comes along and goes, ‘We’d like to buy your thing that you do in New York or Chicago or wherever, and we’re gonna give you a shitload of money. But the deal is, you can’t do anything after that. You’re kind of gonna work for us a little bit or just take a holiday, ’cause we’re gonna run the show from now on.’ And they just kind of hoovered everything up. I mean, they were smart businessmen. But artistically, for the health of the live scene, I think it was troubling. I mean, I may be unfair, but I get the impression that the scene was much more vibrant in terms of upstart bands that could come up and surprise people. And the other thing as well, which I think has, sadly diminished is the number of small venues where bands can just get up and do a gig. And that diminishes the grass roots of people who go out and go, ‘Oh, my God. I went to a live gig the other day. Whoa, it was cool. It was so much better than sitting in front of a screen.’ … And you’ve just got to have the places to do that.”
Ever the wordy dude, Dickinson is speaking the truth. We all know how major companies like your Live Nations and Ticketmasters of the world basically run the show these days. Why would they ever take a chance on a young upstart act when bands like Megadeth and Tool rake in the big bucks as festival headliners?
To that end, Dickinson said the industry needs to do more to prop up young bands and smaller venues whenever possible.
“I mean, there’s an argument in London at the moment, that somebody’s, they’re gonna try and build the Sphere [venue], like in Las Vegas. I mean, what a waste of time. A waste of time, waste of money. You’d be much better off converting half a dozen old pubs into venues and saying to kids, ‘Hey, there’s a free venue. Go play.’”
Whatever the cause, things could start getting hairy as legendary bands begin dropping off the live show circuit. Who do you think could take the place of these headlining acts? Let us know in the comments below.
