John Giddings - Outstanding Contributor to Festivals

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John Giddings joined the music business in the year of punk and began by managing The Adverts and The X-Ray Spex. He went on to manage Iggy Pop, Paul Young and Howard Jones, before putting on stadium tours with David Bowie, The Rolling Stones and U2.

So when the opportunity to hold a concert on the Isle Of Wight arose, he was never going a show of half measures, instead he opted to bring back the bit of history that put the garden isle on the map in the first place.

We caught up with him to talk about why he decided to bring the festival back to life, the infamous 1970 event and his gongs.

Virtual Festivals: Were you involved with reviving the Isle of Wight festival from the start?
John Giddings: “The Isle of Wight council went to every single person in the music business in 2001 and asked them to do a concert on the Isle of Wight for the Queen’s Jubilee.  But everybody in the music business ignored it because it’s an island that can only be reached by boat.  So we went down there for a day trip, just a jolly, and it was when I was down there that I remembered I’d seen Jimi Hendrix in 1970. I thought how exciting it was and decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea to start a festival on the island again. The original Isle of Wight festival was an iconic name - the Woodstock of Europe. There were 600,000 people who attended then so it seemed like a good idea. So in 2002 we did the first show with The Charlatans and Robert Plant and we had around 10,000 people turn up. It was a one day concert and it was held on the same day as the Jubilee at Buckingham Palace, which meant we were struggling for press and everything. Then the next year we expanded to two days and had Paul Weller and Bryan Adams with 15,000 people a day. Then, in the third year, we expanded to three days with The Stereophonics, The Who and David Bowie. We sold out 35,000 tickets and we’ve sold out ever since. It’s living proof that it was worth restarting the festival with the original name. The Isle of Wight is a holiday destination - people like to go there.”

VF: It must have been a great honour reviving the original event, especially having been there. What were your memories of it?
JG: “It was absolutely brilliant. My recollections are my friend smoking dope for the first time, and being able to talk to everybody because we were all having such a shared experience. I remember The Doors being rubbish and Hendrix being quite good, but it was more about seeing him live as opposed to what he was doing. I also remember seeing Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Even now, when I go and look at the original site it’s like you can see the ghosts of the people because there were people as far as the eye could see. I’ve never seen so many people in my entire life. It was great to discover that there were this many people in England that actually thought the same as you about modern music because you we just at school.  You could talk to anybody. It’s not like a football match when there is a supporter of another team who might kick your head in. You could chat to anybody about anything.”

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