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The Poshstock generation
Independent on Sunday, The, May 11, 2008 by WORDS BY SIMON USBORNE
As big-name festivals become increasingly corporate and bloated, 'boutique' events are springing up across Britain, offering everything from psychedelic trance to Venetian opera. Here, we meet the entrepreneurial aristocrats who are creating a whole new summer season
Glastonbury, V, Reading... it wasn't so long ago that the music- lover's diary was filled with names synonymous with summer, hedonism and rock. But across the country's green spaces, change is afoot. In the past few years, dozens of festivals have sprung up to cater for fans no longer willing to put up with the downside of the mega- festivals: sewage-soaked Portaloos, head-to-tail camping, interminable traffic jams, and - often - bottomless mud.
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These so-called boutique festivals sell tickets for a fraction of Glastonbury - where more than 170,000 people will rock up this year, 100 times the number who paid 1 a ticket in 1970, the festival's first year - but they are spreading across the countryside in ever greater numbers. By some counts, there are now more than 400 music festivals in the UK. "We don't keep figures, but there has definitely been an explosion of small to medium-sized festivals since we started," says Ross Purdie, the editor of Virtual- festivals.com.
It isn't clear whether the rise of smaller festivals is linked directly to Glastonbury's decline - ticket sales have been relatively sluggish this year and the line-up has been criticised - but many point not to an aversion to mud and traffic, but a cultural shift. Stuart Maconie, music journalist and Radio 2 DJ, says the big music festivals just aren't cool anymore. "The triumphalism of Glastonbury weekends seems to belong to a brasher, more old- fashioned age," he says. "Glastonbury used to be a counter-culture festival but isn't anymore - it has no ethos. People who want that are going elsewhere."
Increasingly for festival-goers, going elsewhere means heading to one of Britain's country estates. The nation's landed gentry, ever eager to diversify as maintenance fees soar and farming profits plummet, are turning over their gardens and fields to promoters looking to buy a slice of the booming market for alternative festivals.
Lord and Lady Rotherwick (see right) can claim to be among the most successful of the landowners-turned-festival hosts. In 2004, they opened the gates to their Oxfordshire pile, Cornbury House, where 3,000 people trudged across her manicured lawns to watch Blondie and Will Young in what has since been dubbed "Poshstock" (below). "We get all of the pleasure and not much of the pain," Lady Rotherwick says. "And we get to walk out of the house and, bang, we're absolutely right there. It's just the best thing."
Boutique festivals don't cater to rock fans alone. Literary types and opera lovers have become just as tired of the corporate atmosphere and crowds at big-money festivals such as Hay-on-Wye and Glyndebourne. "I've spoken at Hay a couple of times and it has become quite impersonal," says Charles Spencer from his Northampton estate, which, for the past five years, has played host to the Althorp Literary Festival (see page 15). "Last time I was there, authors were telling me they weren't particularly looking forward to coming back."
Whether you're into dad rock, psychedelic trance, the works of Tracy Chevalier or 17th-century Venetian opera, the summer calendar has never had so much to offer, and demand for boutique festivals shows no sign of slowing - whatever the weather.
The Cornbury Music Festival
Lady Rotherwick, estate owner
For most peers of the realm, the prospect of opening up their grounds to thousands of enthusiastic music fans would be enough to bring on an attack of the vapours. Not so Lord and Lady Rotherwick, whose country seat is Cornbury Park, which lies on the edge of Wychwood Forest in Oxfordshire. Since 2004, the magnificent sandstone house and its grounds, which include 6,500 acres of some of the most ancient woodland in the country, have played host to the Cornbury Music Festival.
"It's just fantastic," says Lady Rotherwick. "Everybody's in such a happy mood and the children have a ball. We all get terribly excited. The first year was like a big party with all our friends in the garden and it gets better every year."
Thanks to Hugh Phillimore, a music promoter who became acquainted with the Rotherwicks after renting a cottage at Cornbury, that "party with all our friends" included performances by Blondie and Will Young. This year, Paul Simon is headlining. "I'm a huge fan," beams Lady Rotherwick.The Rotherwicks' guests, whose number has more than quadrupled since the first festival, are invited to "share pies and a glass of champagne with superstars, toffs, rockers, crooners, morris dancers, farmers, urbanites, fashionistas, gourmet chefs and the little old ladies who make exceptional cakes". Lady R doesn't mind the "Poshstock" tag levelled at Cornbury. "It's true it has a middle-class feel to it, partly because of where we are and partly because of the acts we have."
