International Live Music Conference - March 9 to 11, 2001

Friday, 9 March / 15:15 - 17:30

Main Room, Lower Ground Floor
Royal Garden Hotel
Chairman: Carl Leighton-Pope (LPO, UK)

This is a transcript of the speech made by 'the godfather of European concert promoters', Fritz Rau, who had been convinced to come to the ILMC on his 71st birthday only to be surprised with a 'This Is Your Life' tribute during Carl Leighton-Pope's opening session. As they used to tell us all at school, 'read, learn, and inwardly digest...'

"I'm surprised and I'm confused, because I still feel just as a humble German ticket seller - which is the most important job we are doing. It's nice that you remember me and I feel very warm being with you.

I have had a very rich life. If you would ask me 'would you do it again?' I would say 'yes' - but I wouldn't say 'je ne regret rien'. I would do it again, but I would respect more the people working with me - I would respect more my wife, and my children. Thank God I have four grandchildren who give me the chance to develop my being - my human being... But if you devote yourself - and if you want to be successful you have to devote yourself 100% - even when you dream you're on an island in the Pacific, there is an open air stage... And so it starts. It's a 24 hour job and you neglect a lot of private obligations, but I tell you I'm fortunate and happy. I thank the artists, the agents, the promoters, the people who work for me - but above all I thank my wife, Hildegard, who made it possible for me to do all of this and kept my back free, and raised the children. One night I came home and said "where are the children?". "0h, they are at university!" and I asked "What..?!"

So please, as an old man I want to tell you, there are two sides your life. One is the business - and if you are fortunate enough to be able to do what you want to do - do it and do it - but keep 2 hours of 24 to think about people who are are related to you. There you are obliged to take care. Thank you".

(FRITZ RAU, FRIDAY MARCH 9TH, 2001)

[Pollstar Review ]

Saturday, 10 March / 15:00 - 17:30

Main Room
Royal Garden Hotel
Chairmen: Roberto de Luca (Milano Concerti, Italy) and Roger Barrett (Star Hire, UK)

"Crowd safety has never been higher on the ILMC's agenda. From a small breakout group in 1999, the level of interest has grown to overshadow the entire 2001 conference, with a major plenary session devoted to the subject. Led by Star Hire's Roger Barrett and Roberto de Luca from Milano Concerti, the afternoon's guest speakers included Mick Upton, Leif Skov (Roskilde Festival) and Paul Wertheimer from Crowd Management Strategies in the USA.

While the last 10 years have seen 170 deaths directly related to crowds at large-scale events, the total including permanent venues reached more than 350 fatalities in the last year alone. "The industry has a good record for safety," pointed out Roger Barrett, "but I would argue that this is because there are no records."

Citing the recent tragedies in Denmark, Australia and Brazil, the panel examined the current trends in crowd culture and behaviour, focussing on the practices of moshing, crowd surfing and swaying, all of which have been highlighted as representing a danger in a large audience. Mick Upton asserted, however, that as many accidents occur while the audience is entering and leaving a venue, as while a show is under way. At outdoor events, blackouts during set changes can mean a 90-second gap in stewards' ability to deal with a problem three times the length of time that is required to kill someone in a static environment.

While different authorities impose widely differing barrier requirements on promoters, Upton agreed that few regional bodies have the expertise on hand to understand the exact needs of every type of audience. Promoters and production managers were urged to think about whether the local minimum requirements are sufficient for their act, and to act responsibly in creating a safe environment.

As far as crowd behaviour is concerned, Paul Wertheimer singled out Limp Bizkit as an indication that the band's attitude can drastically affect the safety of their audience. The band is currently running an interactive game on its web site encouraging players to beat their way past security and actively hurt other members of the crowd around them.

"Kids get the idea of doing these things from the way they are portrayed on band videos and TV," he said. "It's presented as hip and cool they never get to see the kid who doesn't get up. They know that the bands want to see their music have an effect on the crowd. If you want to allow this, you have to make it safe."

Action on the band's part may fuel a situation, but as Wertheimer pointed out, no one is immune from prosecution should the unthinkable happen. "We have been involved in around 50 litigation cases that have coma about from injuries at festivals," he explained. "Ninety-eight per cent of these were settled in favour of the plaintiff. The promoter, the band, the security company and the venue are all sued in these cases in the USA. Litigation will come your way if you don't do something about it. If you can't do it right, better not do it at all."

STANDARDS
Following the session, it was agreed that a Safety Focus Group should be set up, to work towards pan-European standards and controls on a variety of key issues, including safety lighting for pit crews during blackouts, and the nomination of a single person at each show who would have the authority to stop the performance for safety reasons."

"Crowd safety turned out to be the conference's keynote session, confounding sceptics who professed that the issue would be boring. In the event, the two and a half hour session was packed to capacity and, under the chairmanship of Star Hire's Roger Barrett and his vice-chair, Roberto de Luca of Italian promoters Concerti di Milano, raised ILMC's temperature with a fiery debate that explored the responsibilities of promoters, stage managers, artists and audience members in creating a 'safe show'.

In the wake of the recent tragedies at Roskilde, Australia's 'Big Day Out' event and elsewhere, this session and its issue was sufficiently high profile to gain a BBC Radio 1 Lamacq Live broadcast on March 12. Interest was also heightened by the launch, at ILMC, of the UK Crowd Management Association, the UK's first grouping of crowd management and security companies at the forefront of music and sports events in the UK."

Harry S. Truman was president of the United States between 1945 and 1953. He had a sign on the front of his desk which read, "The Buck Stops Here."
No, this isn't a history lesson. It's more of an examination of where, in the international live music industry, does the buck really stop? Hopefully, it stopped on Saturday March 10th in the conference suite of London's Royal Garden Hotel at around 5:20 p.m., when the ILMC decided it would set up a special working group to investigate how and when it could improve crowd safety at its outdoor festivals.

There was really only one point during the two-hour-plus debate when the entire room wasn't of one accord, and that probably had more to do with semantics than a radical difference of opinion.
Italian promoter Claudio Trotta described how many bands are becoming aggressive, violent and "trying to be more ugly," and that the kids in the audience are trying to emulate them. He said there are social phenomena developing among a generation reared on weird computer games, for which he felt he could not be held responsible.

Of course, he is completely right. However, as much as he may not be responsible for worrying changes in a generation's behavioral trends, he does remain responsible for that generation's safety when they turn up at his shows. Stuart Galbraith of SFX told him, "If you can't make the environment safe, then you can't do the show."

During the course of the past year, much has been written and said on the subject of crowd safety, stimulated by the tragic loss of nine lives at last year's Roskilde Festival. There have been times when the press have probed the happenings of that night and been critical of the event's organizers, and there's also been times when the press themselves have been criticized for doing so. However, when such an accident happens, it has to be thoroughly and impartially investigated.

When a car goes into a ditch, someone has to determine if it happened because of road conditions, a wonky wheel-nut, a suspect steering-column or a dodgy driver who'd fallen asleep at the wheel. If that investigation is not carried out as meticulously as possible, then there'll be a ditch full of cars and nobody will know how they got there.

But this wasn't an afternoon for pointing fingers, it was an afternoon for scratching heads and trying to find a way in which those working in the international live contemporary music industry could accept a collective responsibility to smarten up their acts.

Galbraith's 1988 Castle Donnington show cost two lives. In 1989, the promoters didn't do what had previously been an annual event because they were not confident that they would be in control of the crowd. That's the equivalent of not getting in the car and, if there's reason to believe that it may go out of control, it's a decision that should be warmly applauded for its common sense.

Too many shows have been done by too many people who had too little control over what they were doing and if the industry cannot come up with the self-determination to put a stop to it, then governments will come up with legislation that will.

If the situation is allowed to continue, then where (and when) the next deaths occur is what Martin Hopewell had referred to in his opening Flight Attendant's Briefing as a "grim lottery," and there's probably not a more cogent and concise way of describing it.

Crowd control can be difficult because of the rebellious nature of the beast. The more a crowd becomes excited, the less it will think. The Mean Fiddler Organisation's Melvin Benn said, "If rock 'n' roll ever becomes less than anarchy, it will become Neil Diamond," but John Mulder of Mojo Concerts used the measures taken at last year's 60,000-capacity Lowlands Festival in Holland as an example of how such things as upping the numbers of security staff, banning crowd-surfing and increasing the audience's awareness of its own responsibilities will work.

Although it was Galbraith who neatly teed up the discussion about forming a safety task force by arguing that governments are happier to talk to industry associations rather than individuals, the impetus that led to the group being set up can be traced back to last July.

Mick Upton and Bert van Horck of International Crowd Management and Security Group dropped the pebble that started the ripple by calling for a European code of good crowd safety practice only days after the deaths at Roskilde.

Their discussions with European Festivals Association (Yourope) led to that organization putting their weight behind the movement, and it will be represented on the panel by Roskilde's Leif Skov.

When Galbraith, one of the men you'd more readily allow to proverbially babysit your kids at an outdoor event, had the honesty to confess to being frightened of the responsibility of running his upcoming summer shows, it was obvious that the ripple started by Upton and van Horck was beginning to swell into a flood tide. It's fitting that Upton, van Horck and Galbraith should all be on the panel, the latter as a representative of the Concert Promoters Association.

Although he must surely support the principles of this crowd safety focus group, Leon Ramakers of Mojo Concerts, promoters of the Lowlands Festival, sounded a note of caution. Fearing the panel's efforts to seek European Economic Community funding to carry out an investigation into current European festival safety practices would merely cause a delay, he said, "I think we are fooling ourselves again. For the 13th time at the ILMC, we all speak very eloquently about all sorts of things and nothing is going to happen."

"We have to just make an association of people that are prepared to want to put a stamp on their festival that shows that it adheres to certain codes, and we have to pay for that privilege. We have to give, for example, one-tenth of 1 percent of every gross to a fund that enables us to do this. I'm sorry to be so negative, but we must come to the table and open our pockets because, if we don't do that, then nothing will happen."

That may well prove to be one of the most significant and prophetic utterances ever made at an ILMC but, for the sake of the industry, Ramakers himself would be first to hope that it isn't the case. He would certainly be one of the first to reach into his pocket but then that's to be expected because he's been investing in safety for years. Unfortunately, there are others who may not be so forthcoming.

The ILMC crowd safety group may not be the industry's cure-all panacea but, at the moment, it's as good as it gets. Through the initial efforts of Upton and van Horck, something has at least and at last been done. However, initiatives as worthy as the one they've started can come too little without the platform that the ILMC provides.

Martin Hopewell ensures that this platform exists. After the debate, he said, "As the conference organizer, an agent, a father, and (still) a bit of a fan, the 'Safety in Numbers' session gave me quite a lot to think about."

"From the ILMC's viewpoint though, it's pretty clear that this was one of our most significant discussions ever. Not only was it one of those rare occasions when the forum has directed its attention away from rather conceptual internal business issues to something practical that could be agreed and acted upon, but in this case it also involved a subject that could be regarded - quite literally - as 'a matter of life and death.'"

"At last year's conference, crowd safety was the subject of a small and quiet technical 'breakout meeting' of people from festival and production backgrounds, but I was happy to see from the packed Main Room this year that everyone had realized that this issue is one that affects all of us."

"It was our longest single session ever, but all the delegates stayed in the room and gave it their full attention. The ILMC is probably one of the few places in the world where you get so many 'decision-makers' from different countries and occupations, and where discussing something of this importance might actually make a difference."

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