With Black Sabbath, Soundgarden, Faith No More, Motörhead and Soulfly (and Wolfmother…) set to fill the main stage of a day at British Summer Time festival in Hyde Park this July, it struck Raziq Rauf that the same bill could easily have been announced in 2000 to the same fanfare. What has (or has not) happened in the last 14 years for this to be the case and what does the future have in store?
What is the future of music festivals? I’m not talking 2015 (because 2014’s summer season lineup is just about fully lined up), I’m talking about something more like 2025. What is going to happen to our music festivals in the next ten years? Will Metallica still be headlining on a rota with Slipknot, Iron Maiden and Linkin Park? The classic rockers like Aerosmith, Def Leppard and Black Sabbath have a shelf-life. Are Avenged Sevenfold or Rammstein the answer? While they sell out arenas in London and that simply translates to headlining Donington or Knebworth, neither have ever had quite the same impact as those first mentioned few and they likely never will.