Leeds and Reading Festival
Leeds and Reading festival take place on the same weekend of the August bank holiday in Leeds and Reading, both are run by Festival Republic and have the same line-ups. The festivals were originally sponsored by Carling and called the Carling Festivals however the sponsorship ended in 2007 which is when they became known as the Leeds and Reading festivals.
Reading Festival is known for its varying themes of music, with phases of indie, rock, alternative, punk and metal all taking over during the years, with metal being the gene that has always taken over. Reading festival is held at Little Johns farm on Richfield Avenue in the centre of Reading, the Leeds festival takes place at Bramham Park and both places offer camping tickets.
Reading festival first came about after the National Jazz festival, as well as festivals in America and was held at a number of other locations before Reading in 1971, some of these locations include Kempton Park and Windsor Racecourse. When the festival first started the line-up was very rock oriented although heavy metal was the main gene in 1978 some punk rock bands appeared in the bill with the likes of The Jam and Sham 69 playing. The festival wanted to open up the gene playing there by having heave metal acts as well as new punk acts, though this caused a few issues between the 2 different types of fans. In 1979 Reading was seen as a rock festival with the likes of The Ramones playing.
Unfortunately in 1984/85 the festival was banned due to the local Conservative party council who closed the site down for development, this was a major problem for the organisers as tickets were already on sales and the line-up had started to be set. They had tried to get the use of the opposite fields for the festival but weren't successful. However in 1986 Labour took over and allowed them to hold the festival at its original location, organisers had to quickly put together a line-up.
In the 80s organisers tried to make the festival more main stream by bringing pop acts onto the bill such as, Bonnie Tyler and Meat Loaf who was bottled off stage. After this the original promoter of the festival got ousted and Mean Fiddler Music Group took over, they made the festival massively goth and indie orientated which resulted in them losing a lot of the original Reading festival goers.
However the festival was again a hit in 1992 when Nirvana famously took to the stage with their front man Kurt Cobain in a wheelchair this was around the time when people first started to talk about the state of his mental health. The band went on to release their album Live at Reading'. After this the festivals popularity began to climb again and it was in 1999 when they gained the Leeds location (which had previously been used for the V festivals). At the start the Leeds line-up was the same line-up as that which has played the day before and Reading, with the Leeds festival being from Saturday to Monday and Reading being Friday to Sunday.
With festivals getting more and more popular Reading continued to sell out, although the Leeds side of the festival was having increasing problems with fighting due to this the location changed to the north-east of Leeds at Bramham Park. The music gene of the festival was more varied with a lot of indie acts performing on the Radio 1 stage but Sunday was still dedicated to heavy metal music.
In 2006 the ticket sells hit a record selling out time in just under two hours of being announced they completely sold out, when it was later announced that Glastonbury festival would not be going ahead, more tickets for Reading and Leeds were released and sold out in less than 30 minutes. The festival also went on longer than it had before holding a silent disco.
Last year the first release of tickets sold out in 2 days and when more tickets were released they soon sold out in a couple of hours. However for the first time since the very start of the Reading and Leeds festival all audience members were banned from taking flags and banners with them. Some of the artists on the bill for 2009 were; Kings of Leon, Arctic Monkeys, Noah and the Whale, Placebo, Fall out boy, The View, Jamie T, Lostprophets, AFI, Little Boots, Billy Talent, Chipmunk, Atreyu and La Roux.
This year's Reading and Leeds Festival is set to be another great on, pre-sale tickets went out in September, further tickets as well as the line-up is set to be released in March. There are already rumours out about who is going to be on the bills, some artists that are rumoured are, Blink 182, Biffy Clyro, Fall out Boy, Elbow, Dizzee Rascal, Green Day and Blur.
