The inaugural Stone Music Festival took over Sydney’s ANZ Stadium this past weekend with two days of rock from international and domestic veterans alike, including a co-headline set on Saturday night from Aerosmith and Van Halen, while Sunday night’s closing slot belonged to Billy Joel.
While reports from the festival seem to follow the trajectory of small numbers, big response, Stone Music Festival promoters have revealed that they have a three-to-five year business plan for the event and also some lofty ambitions to rope in some big acts for Stone Music Festival’s 2014 edition.
Speaking to The Music, Stephen Duval of financiers SEQ admitted that ticket sales for this year’s launch were less than expected, allegedly selling just half of the 25,000 tickets allocated for the Saturday half of the event, while Sunday’s was significantly less again. But Mr Duval has said that the fans’ response and the feedback from the weekend’s event is enough to convince organisers to continue with a three-to-five year business plan for Stone Music Festival.
“Sales were lower than what we had hoped,” said Mr Duval. “[But] we’re definitely confident it will be back, we’re backed by one of the biggest financiers in the world in JP Morgan out of New York.”
“We knew it was going to be a difficult push but we were looking at the event itself,” Duval said of the festival’s perceived success, “if the festival had a bad response then we’d look at the future [but] you can always come back from the financials.” “Sales were lower than what we had hoped… [But] we’re definitely confident it will be back.” Stephen Duval, SEQ
The financier also discussed the numbers in relativity to what is currently an ailing festival market. “It was quite a fatigued market at the moment and we knew the economy wasn’t great… but sales weren’t so low that it wouldn’t be back.”
The rock aspect of the event will remain and after the success of scoring ‘Diamond’ David Lee Roth and the Van Halen family for an exclusive 90-minute headline slot, without any sideshows to compliment their visit, Stone organisers are looking at replicating the model for future events.
“You do have to pay [more] to get the band for a fly-in-fly-out when there’s not other shows, but in another sense you’ve got a wider range of acts available because you don’t have to build a schedule,” says Mr Duval.
He emphasised that Stone Music may not focus on the ‘oldies’ market in future either. “It’s not always the ‘70s or ‘80s, we might be looking at late ‘90s, 2000s or current bands next year,” he says. “It could be Muse or Kings Of Leon or Pearl Jam, or it could be The Eagles, but it will always be rock and they’ll be exclusive.”
A financier for global, sport music, and entertainment industries with offices in London and Sydney, SEQ started out simply as Stone Music Festival’s financier, but soon took a larger role in the event once some questionable background information about original promoter Richard Cartwright emerged – including asking bikies to help finance a remake of the 1974 cult flick Stone, after which the festival got its spiritual name. “It could be Muse or Kings Of Leon or Pearl Jam, or it could be The Eagles, but it will always be rock and they’ll be exclusive.” – Stephen Duval, SEQ
“The promoter got less involved as we got more involved,” Duval says democratically. All references to Cartwright or his company Platinum Entertainment were swiftly removed from Stone Music Festival’s marketing and promotions, including a clause in entry fees that banned bikie gang associates entry into the festival.
It was just one of a string of bizarre turns in Stone Music Festival’s conception, including Baby Animals pulling themselves from the bill in February, with frontwoman Suze DeMarchi issuing a statement notifying of their withdrawal, saying “it wasn’t feeling right to us.”
The controversy continued when Stone Music Festival’s legal team contacted Tone Deaf directly about reporting on some disparaging remarks made by rival concert promoter, Andrew McManus, as well as the festival’s response to his allegations, leading to the amendment and censorship of several articles.
Then McManus partnered with the festival, announcing that Aerosmith – the band he had booked to tour Australia – would be absorbed into the Saturday night lineup for Stone Music Festival, and in turn becoming Aerosmith’s debut show of their Australian tour just weeks out from its kick-off.
Not bad for a festival debut, and especially one coming seemingly out of nowhere from the relatively unknown Ardline Media.
As for the event itself, despite some visually discouraging crowd numbers and sound issues inside the booming hearth of the stadium, Mr Duval says the response has been “overwhelmingly positive.” Speaking of its plans to return, Mr Duval says SEQ are considering not labelling Stone Music a festival next year as organisers “will be reviewing whether it will be post-summer or pre-summer festival,” to move it away from its competitive April slot.
View our gallery of Stone Music Festival HERE
