I left school at 14 and became a builder, but I had always wanted to work in the music industry. Setting up the festival proved harder and more rewarding than I ever expected
I was always obsessed with music. I would play, badly, in bands, go to all the gigs and festivals I could, and lie about my age as a teenager so I could DJ in clubs. I would have loved to have worked in music, but I left school at 14 and set up a building and decorating business. By my early 20s, my partner and I had bought a house and we had two young children, but I still wanted to be involved in music in some way.
In 2001, I went to the festival All Tomorrow’s Parties, where the lineup was curated by bands and artists. I was jealous. I thought I should either work at being in a band big enough to be invited to create our own lineup, or somehow try to create a festival myself. The latter seemed more doable. I came to that realisation after we had been watching the American indie rock band Yo La Tengo. I stood at the bar with my friend Jason, working out on the back of a cigarette packet how much it would cost. We thought it would be about £120,000. I looked around, and there were 1,500 or 2,000 people at the festival, so it seemed within my grasp. Before then, I’d been going to big festivals and I wouldn’t have had a clue how to put on something of that size.
