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The Reading and Leeds Festivals, officially called the '''Carling Weekend''', are a pair of annual Music Festival s that take place in Reading and Leeds in England . The events both happen on the Bank Holiday weekend in August (on Friday, Saturday, Sunday), and share the same bill (usually with one or two exceptions). Reading festival has had various musical phases, as detailed below. In the twin-site era, Rock / Alternative / Indie / Punk / Metal have tended to dominate. The festival will typically have the following stages:-
The festivals are run by does so as part of its involvement. In 2005 the capacity of the Reading site was 66,500 and the Leeds site was 57,500. For the 2006 festival, capacities were increased at both sites with 80,000 at Reading and 70,000 at Leeds. The Reading festival is held at Little John's Farm on Richfield Avenue in central Reading, near the Caversham Bridge . The Leeds event is held in Bramham Park , the grounds of a historic house. Campsites are available at both sites and weekend tickets include free camping. Day tickets are also sold. EARLY HISTORY See Also: National Jazz and Blues Festival The Reading Festival originates from the National Jazz Festival , which was conceived by Harold Pendleton (founder of the Marquee Club in London) and was first held at Richmond Athletic Ground in 1961. This festival, in turn, took inspiration from events held in America . Throughout the years, the festival changed names and moved around sites a few times, being held at Windsor Racecourse , Kempton Park and Plumpton , before finally reaching Reading in 1971. 1970S The line-up settled into a pattern of Prog Rock , Blues and Heavy Metal during the 1970s. It did dabble with Punk Rock in 1978 when The Jam , Sham 69 & Penetration played. The festival attempted to provide both traditional Rock acts and new punk bands, leading to clashes between the two sets of fans. Although The Ramones played the following year, the festival gradually became known for focusing on heavy metal and rock acts. 1980S During this decade the festival followed a similar format to that established in the late 1970s, with large crowds flocking to see the era's leading rock and heavy metal acts perform on the last two days, with a more varied lineup including punk & new wave bands on the opening day. Conservative ban Then, in 1984 and 1985, the Conservative Party-led local council effectively banned the festival by reclaiming the festival site for 'development' and refusing to grant licences for any alternative sites in the Reading area. A proposed move to Lilford in Northamptonshire failed, and eventually a Labour Party council election win in 1986 saw the festival restored to fields adjacent to its original site with a line-up put together from scratch at just three months' notice. The Arts & Entertainments councillor responsible for the re-introduction of the festival was Martin Salter, Now MP for Reading West, the constituency where the festival is held. Late 80s slump The following year notched up a record attendance at what was to be the last of the "classic" rock years of the festival, with headlining acts such as The Stranglers , Alice Cooper and Status Quo . 1988 saw a disastrous attempt to take the festival in a mainstream commercial pop direction, dominated by the likes of Starship , Squeeze , Bonnie Tyler and Meat Loaf (the latter two being "bottled" off stage), and the ensuing recriminations saw the ousting of original festival promoter Harold Pendleton by the Mean Fiddler Music Group organization. However, Pendleton's rival "Redding Festival" failed to take off. The future of the festival looked in doubt at this point. However, things were to improve once again in the 1990s... 1990S In 1991 Nirvana played the first of their two appearances to massive crowds. This is also the year the first Britpop bands such as Suede and Blur started to show themselves on the festival circuit. Kurt Cobain's wheelchair The next year was one of the most famous in the festival's history. Nirvana played what was to become their last UK concert, and one of their most famous. The band's frontman, Kurt Cobain took to the stage in a wheelchair pushed by music journalist Everett True , parodying speculations about his mental health. Then he got up and joined the rest of the band, playing an assortment of old and new material. At one point in the show, Cobain revealed to the crowd the recent birth of his daughter Frances Bean and succeeded in having the crowd chant "We love you, Courtney!" in unison (reference to his wife, musician Courtney Love ). Festival expansion Over the next few years the festival continued to grow as the popularity of outdoor festivals increased. Britpop and indie continued to dominate along with rock. Notably, Rap acts such as Ice Cube began to appear regularly on the main stage. In 1996, The Stone Roses played their final gig at the festival. In 1998 it absorbed the failed Phoenix Festival . This resulted in the infamous on-stage spat between The Beastie Boys and The Prodigy over the song 'Smack My Bitch Up'. In 1999 the festival gained another leg at Temple Newsam in Leeds , where V Festival has been held in 1997 and 1998, when it was clear that the Reading site was far too small to deal with the demand. A system where the line up of Reading play Leeds the following day, with the bands from Leeds' opening day playing the final day in Reading, soon developed. 2000S After a successful first year in Leeds, a continued resurgence in the popularity of outdoor music festivals led to the Reading festival selling out more and more quickly every year. The Leeds leg, however, was plagued by riots and violence which led to problems in retaining its licence. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/2216223.stm The worst of these was in 2002, after which Mean Fiddler moved the festival to Bramham Park , near Wetherby to the east of Leeds in 2003. Since then, security at both sites has increased and problems appear to have been quelled. However, this has also lead to an increase in demand. The first few years of the 2000s saw a varied but predominantly rock line-up, however as the decade has progressed the Main Stage and Radio 1 Stage line-up has followed music trends and featured more and more indie artists, that have become very popular in the British music mainstream. However, one day (Sunday in the case of Reading) is traditionally set aside for hard rock and metal. This was most pronounced at the 2006 festival, which saw little hard rock on the first two days, but featured bands such as Mastodon , Slayer and Pearl Jam on the Sunday. However this can arguably laid down to the growing popularity of the Download festival in June providing a solely metal, hard rock and punk outlet. The then largely unknown Arctic Monkeys famously filled the Carling Tents, with crowds outside, at both festivals in 2005. In 2006 it was they were the second headliners (after reportedly turning down the Headline Slot) - a remarkable jump up the bill. The Evening Session tent has also had its share of infamous sets, like Feeder 's set in 2002 which saw the tent heavily overcrowded, with many people watching from outside as a result. The band decided to play the second stage to keep the show low-key, as it was their first official appearance after the death of their drummer Jon Lee . The announcement of the line-up and ticket release for the 2006 festival saw weekend tickets for Reading sell out in just under two hours, breaking all records so far, and emphasising the growing desire for live music because of the "rock revival" of the past few years, and the fact that the Glastonbury Festival was not taking place. Further Weekend tickets went on sale again soon after and sold out in 26 minutes. In 2005 the Festival spawned the Reading Fringe Festival in the town. Much like the Edinburgh Fringe Festival , this sees venues in the town hosting fringe acts hoping to draw crowds and industry figures from the larger festival. A second Fringe followed in 2006 and at the time of writing plans for a 3rd festival in 2007 are well under way. 2007 in-between sets by Kings Of Leon and Razorlight ]] In 2006, Mean Fiddler announced that they were using the Government's new licensing laws to keep the festival going later into the night (an attempt to quell some of the unrest of earlier years. The organisers kept revellers happy with the Aftershock tent, an Oxfam tent and the Silent Disco . 2007 Tickets for the festival were released on the 19th March and sold out within hours. However over 3,000 fans found that their tickets were cancelled due to computer errors which caused a confirmation e-mail to be released even though the payment was denied2. The 2007 Festivals started on the 24th August carrying on until the 27th. However concerns were raised at the Reading site due to the torrential weather conditions in the UK 3. The floods caused the River Thames to burst its bank causing floods at the festival site. Melvin Benn, the festival organiser said "I'd guess about 25% of the campsite is under water at the moment and before long someone will be saying that the festival is in danger, so I just wanted to state that the festival will definitely take place""This is the Carling Weekend: Reading Festival site", NME , 4 August , 2007 . Plans were put in place to move campsites and car parks if the floods persisted. These plans were layed down by Melvin Benn in an e-mail sent to those signed up to the Reading Festival newsletter and on the official Reading Festival website
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