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 more than 2.5 million applied for tickets?

Knebworth House's shows had a guest: Stone Roses guitarist John Squire joined Oasis on stage for Champagne Supernova and I Am the Walrus.

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

The Eurovision Song Contest began with just seven countries, each singing two songs, and the first winner was the host nation, Switzerland.

Which Texas publication's staff launched the SXSW festival in Austin in 1987?

The Austin Chronicle's staff planned the first SXSW in secret meetings at the paper's offices and expected 150 registrants; about 700 turned up.

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

Stormzy's vest turned up again that autumn, on display in a shop that Banksy set up in Croydon, south London.

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

Vienna's festival is hosted by the city's Social Democratic party, whose organisers count close to three million visits over the three days.

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 as headliner and mixed her own hits with covers, among them Kings of Leon's Sex on Fire and Alanis Morissette's You Oughta Know.

Which 2005 concert series reunited Pink Floyd's classic line-up after 24 years?

Live 8 was staged days before the G8 summit at Gleneagles to press its leaders over world poverty, and it was the last time Pink Floyd's classic four 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 festival 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 lost Sunburn to Pune in Maharashtra from 2016, then won it back in 2019 when the festival returned to Vagator.

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's 2020 edition went ahead on 14 and 15 March as the pandemic began, even though more than a dozen acts pulled out.

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 closes downtown streets to traffic for the festival and stages hundreds of free outdoor concerts alongside its ticketed indoor shows.

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

Liverpool's Cream began as a weekly house night in 1992; the club night ended in 2002 and its venue has since been demolished, but the festival it spawned carries on.

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

Tennent's festival had to leave its long-time home at Balado because a North Sea oil pipeline ran beneath the site, and it lasted only two more years at Strathallan Castle.

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 weekend and the organisers made it an annual fixture.

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

Atlanta's last edition, in 2015, was hit by rain that left thousands of festival-goers stranded, and the parent company's bankruptcy months later ended plans to return.

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

Las Vegas Motor Speedway won the flagship in 2011 after controversy drove the festival out of Los Angeles; a record 525,000 people attended over three nights in 2023.

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.

Which 2012 event's demand for police and portable toilets led Glastonbury to take that summer off?

The London Olympics turned 2012 into one of the festival's fallow years, the breaks it takes about every five years to let the farmland recover; the last had been in 2006.

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 co-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, right after the Coldstream Guards?

Status Quo opened with Rockin' All Over the World a year after a farewell tour billed as their last; Live Aid brought the band back together.

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

Jefferson Airplane's 1968 bill launched a festival that a year later coaxed Bob Dylan back to the stage, two weeks after he had shunned Woodstock, held near his own home.

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 lost its second edition at short notice: the French government cancelled the 2020 festival about a week before it was due to open, as the pandemic took hold.

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

Pinkpop does not always keep its Whitsun date: when the holiday falls early in May, the festival is pushed back to June.

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

Schleswig-Holstein's rain turned the 2023 site to mud, so organisers halted all arrivals and told ticket-holders still on the road to turn back.

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

Claude Nobs shared the running of the festival with Quincy Jones in the early 1990s, as it outgrew the town's casino and moved into the convention centre in 1993.

Which city became Rock in Rio's first home outside Brazil in 2004?

Lisbon staged the 2004 edition, and founder Roberto Medina kept the name Rock in Rio, simply adding Lisboa; Madrid got its own edition four years later.

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 park police let the figure be raised but not burned, and the event moved to Nevada's Black Rock Desert.

Bonnaroo took its name from a 1974 album by which New Orleans musician?

Dr. John's Desitively Bonnaroo turned up as the founders looked through old albums for a name, and they chose it partly to honour New Orleans music.

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 almost all the artists played for free and the 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 more than a hundred 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 lost the festival to Woodford in Queensland for two years because approval for its planned new home at North Byron Parklands was held up in a dispute.

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?

Festival Express carried its acts between Toronto, Winnipeg and Calgary on a chartered train, and the on-board jam sessions surfaced in a 2003 documentary of the same name.