Festivals & The Bloody Weather

Sun, rain, wind, lightning, farmer's arms, muddy boots, missing trousers live on BBC1 and almost splitting up Coldplay; The weather doesn't care who's playing, and I promised backstage anecdotes...

There’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothing, usually said by someone standing indoors, or me.

At festivals, weather isn’t just something that makes the audience reach for a bin-bag-thin poncho and regret buying white trainers; Backstage, the weather changes everything.

Sun burns you, rain turns the site into a muddy soup, the wind makes stages, screens, and tents creak, and flap, and the lightning makes everyone with a radio suddenly stand up a bit straighter, which is probably slightly more dangerous.

This is why I bring enough clothing to survive and work in all four seasons; a minor flood, a heatwave, wind chill and afterwards a hotel bar with air conditioning.

And yes, I have often joked that Speedos and wellies might be the perfect festival outfit, ideal for all weathers - it’s something I haven’t tried. Yet.

I may or may not have mentioned that I wear pretty much the same every day whilst stage managing. Fear not, I own multiple urban combat utility shorts and black shirts*, so I don’t stink, but I’ve found over the years it not only saves me time thinking about wtf I’m going to wear, people remember you for what you are wearing, so by keeping it the same every day, people remember you - and you are easy to find. “It’s the fat old bloke in army shorts”. Maybe I shouldn’t bother.

*I used to wear electric blue polo shirts until a certain politician ruined that colour for me. So now it’s show blacks. Nobody noticed. They just keep asking where the blue shirts have gone. Blame Farage.

But this post isn’t about old Geography teacher chic, nor stage manager GRWM.

It’s about what Mother Nature throws at you when you’ve got other shit to do. The perfect weather for a festival is Sun before and during the show, so the ground is hard. Followed by some overnight drizzle to keep the dust down.

As a stage manager, I’m worried about loads of things, but with the Bloody Weather, it adds a few extra concerns, including;

Can we move desks and stuff to the front of house easily, or will rolling heavy stuff get stuck in the mud?

Can we get the trucks in, and where do they park?

Can we store stuff safely outside, and how many rolls of waterproof Visqueen do we have if we need to protect stuff outside?

If it’s too hot, do we have stage fans or reflective sheets to cool down equipment and those working?

Is the stage safe? Can it withstand the wind, rain, and the rest? Do we have enough mops/squeegees/towels to dry it so it’s not slippery?

And if the weather is particularly bad, are we prepared to stop the show? (I’ll talk about show stops in another post, btw. Teaser alert!)

Let’s look at some of the stuff I’ve experienced over the years through a few anecdotes.

SUN

I’ve worked in the UK, the US, Europe and the Middle East, and the role requires a lot of walking around outside. The worst sunburn I’ve had was in Norway, but regardless, I normally finish the season with farmers' arms: tanned arms below the sleeves, tanned legs below the knee.

I guess wearing exactly the same thing all the time only makes this worse. In 2013, it was one of those lovely, sunny British summers, and without trying, I was really tanned in those exposed areas.

Proms In The Park takes place at the end of the season, and this story takes place in September 2013. It’s a mature audience: tartan blankets, picnic baskets, and the quiet but absolute belief that a £12 camping chair gives them legal ownership of four square metres of grass. They are there to watch well-known singers, ballroom dancers and celebrities performing with the BBC Concert Orchestra.

This is when I used to wear desert tan combat shorts, and my old electric blue polo shirt - but not for Proms, I was part of a new team brought in, and we were instructed to wear show blacks. I decided I’d wear a suit.

On show day, I accidentally left my suit trousers in the hotel, which, even by my standards, is a bold wardrobe decision for live BBC One

Owning up to the BBC’s head of Proms, I was told: “Don’t worry, Ritch, wear the jacket and the shorts; no one will see you from the waist down. It’s very ‘Proms’; it’s the newsreader look”.

This was until Dame Edna Everage spilt water from a bouquet of flowers, handed to her by Sir Terry Wogan, one of those that has a bulge of water in the bottom. Terry made a quip that Dame Edna “was leaking”, which spurred Dame Edna on, firstly tipping the flowers to spill more of it, followed by throwing them onto the floor.

Backstage, I was standing with Erin Boag from Strictly Come Dancing, who was having kittens. She was next and going to dance with Anton Du Beke with the BBC Concert Orchestra, and she was scared she’d slip in the water and fall over, live on TV.

Chatting with the BBC Show Caller Graham, we came up with a plan; the director would focus cameras on Terry and Dame Edna, and away from the floor.

Once the cameras moved shot, Graham ran on stage with towels to mop up the water and remove the Bouquet. The crowd reacted. Terry was distracted; Edna quipped that the floor manager was used to working with ‘very nervous’ stars.

But the stage was still wet. The BBC instructed Terry and Dame Edna to ‘fill’ for a minute; this is dangerous - the show is completely scripted, and this is Dame Edna… and this was a time when the BBC was still shaking from the Jimmy Savile revelations.

Dame Edna’s opening ad-libbed, non-scripted fill-in to Terry was, “I always felt safe around you, Terry, whilst at the BBC” I sensed everyone working take a sharp intake of breath.

Grabbing more towels, the floor manager and I ran back out. This got a bigger cheer, the crowd loving this addition to the show.

Anyway, the front few rows were distracted - they’d come to see classical music and ballroom dancing, but they found this unexpected entertainment hilarious. I’ve talked about anxiety dreams in another post, and we all have them when we’re naked/near naked in public (well, I do).

Maybe this is another unconscious coping mechanism for me, as from a distance, my tanned legs, against my tanned combat shorts, but with a suit jacket on, looked like I had no trousers on at all.

The audience loved the spectacle; several of them started chanting “where’s your trousers gone, where’s your trousers gone!!”, which makes a change from ‘you fat bastard’.

At this point, eager for ammunition for gags, Dame Edna reacted to me, and the cameras pulled out to reveal all: me, on my hands and knees in a suit jacket and seemingly no trousers, my head at the height of Dame Edna’s groin.

“This is good television” she said, Sir Terry sarcastically quipped “thank goodness this is not live”. This was going out live primetime on Saturday night on BBC1.

Lucky for me, it’s not on the BBC iPlayer, but some bugger did film it from the crowd.

Anyway, I now carry sunblock and suncream and have changed the colour of my shorts.

RAIN

I’m British. It’s grey and rains a lot, but it’s what makes us - our humour, outlook and conversation stem from the changeable weather. At a festival, it’s a pain backstage- sorry, backside- the revellers get wet, their campsites get muddy, and it makes for a generally damp, miserable atmosphere.

For us, working in those conditions makes everything much harder; we need to move heavy stuff and vehicles around, and we can’t churn up the ground or get stuff stuck in the mud. It also means we can’t use outside spaces for storage (never enough space!), everything takes longer (never enough time!), and sometimes the rain makes its way onto the stage, which is dangerous because of all the electrical equipment literally everywhere. But the show must go on!

In 1999, when I ventured up North to help start Reading’s sister festival, Leeds and was stage managing the BBC Radio One / NME Stage (aka Stage 2), it was particularly grim. Not a “bit muddy by the loos” grim, proper grim.

The Temple Newsam site was so bad that we couldn’t open the arena until it was safe to do so; a lot of wood chips were being thrown around - there really isn’t anything else the site team can do.

Unfortunately, this delay affected the stages: artists were due to start at 11:30 am, but the doors were not open, and the audience was still outside.

With tight schedules and no wiggle room in the running order (never enough time!). So, the Stage Managers had to give artists a fairly unappealing choice: play to nobody and hope the arena opened while they were on, or pack up, load out now and let us get the next band ready.

Look, I know this sounds harsh, but that’s the deal when you are first, second, third on the bill.

Which is how I found myself accidentally causing the first band on my stage to have an absolutely massive row.

I’d forgotten all about it, to be honest; it was only when Chris Evans on his BBC Radio 2 show asked Coldplay what the biggest argument they’d ever had was - and it was this moment. So technically, I could’ve caused Coldplay to split up before they’d properly started.

Another great service to music narrowly avoided (to be fair, their first 3 albums were amazing)

Anyway, I now carry a brilliant Berghaus waterproof coat gifted to me by 4Wall, Berghaus waterproof slacks, and waterproof ON boots - I carry wellies, but never wear them. I don’t bring Speedos, even if the hotel has a pool. My farmer’s-arm tan stops so abruptly it looks like I’ve been assembled from two different versions of myself.

WIND

Rain makes everyone miserable, despite the waterproof choices they are wearing, but wind makes us all nervous.

Rain is annoying. Rain is mud, wet socks, and people pointing at the sky and saying “it’s easing off” when it absolutely isn’t. Wind can be even more annoying because it makes things move, and sometimes those things are big.

All stages have a weather station that measures and predicts the weather. Strong winds and gusts can knock things over, push things around, make the stage doors flap violently, and in extreme cases, lift entire big top tents and throw them in the Atlantic (Boardmasters 2014)

At Reading/Leeds 2024, Storm Lilian came in; that’s not a band, btw; it was a yellow wind warning with gusts of over 70mph for the early hours of Friday morning.

I was at Reading and walking the traditional pre-show TGI’s with Wookiee on Thursday night; yeah, it was bad, but Leeds was a lot worse. That’s the thing with wind. It doesn’t need to be dramatic to be dangerous. It just needs to find the one thing someone thought would “probably be fine.”

Overnight fences, toilets and revellers’ tents were knocked over or simply blown away. A few folks suffered minor injuries, but the Radio One stage tent was trashed, a massive rip in the tent roof directly over the stage meant the stage was closed for the weekend, acts like Skrillex, Good Neighbours and headliner Beabadoobee had their shows cancelled too.

Back down South, we were lucky, the Reading site was ok.

As the two festivals share their line-up, we’d get Friday’s acts from Leeds on Sunday at Reading.

Beabadoobee arrived Sunday morning to load in, a great set-up that resembled the inside of a garage, complete with shelves and bits and bobs stuck on them. Including part of the ripped tent from Leeds, on the bottom shelf. “A Piece Of Leeds” made my future BBC Introducing Band Name list for that year.

Anyway, I now have a brilliant windsock with ‘We do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they would be easy’ printed proudly down the side.

LIGHTNING

I’m a bit of a weather nerd; I have all the apps and love seeing the extremes of what Mother Nature can lob at us - but Lightning is scary, unpredictable, and for that reason needs to be taken very seriously. Most shows have a show-stop policy that closes stages when a storm is within 5 miles - that means a full switch off for all audio, lighting, screens and generators, until Event Control say its ok to restart. Any properly run show should have a clear lightning policy. I’m very fond of boring safety paperwork when the alternative is guessing.

As part of my pre-show reminder of the show stop procedure I do with every artist, it includes inclement weather, including Lightning.

Should lightning come within those 5 miles, I’ll be told (though I’ll be tracking on my Lightning Pro app) that we are stopping the show - I’ll go into show-stop procedures on another post, but it means immediately stopping the performance and doing it as fast as possible.

With the pre-show warning, artists are generally aware that this might happen with lightning - so it’s quite easy. I wander onto stage and tell the lead singer to stop or tell their TM to tell them immediately.

I’ve done this many times in my career, but one highlight must be Futureheads at Latitude, for their attitude.

I told them about the nearby storm; they walked on, did one song, started the second, and then came the radio call from event control. I walked on stage, told the lead singer mid-song, and he stopped, with a shrug and a moan, and quipped to the audience, “Oh no, I really like this song!” before helpfully telling them about the storm and why they had to stop.

As soon as they stopped, the showstop procedure kicks in, all audio stuff is switched off, all lighting stuff is switched off, all screens are switched off, and once this has happened, the power company can finally switch off all the generators. Why do we do this? To protect the equipment, a single lightning strike could wipe out the stage infrastructure, leaving us unable to restart at all.

The audience at Latitude spontaneously started a game, throwing a rugby ball from stage right to stage left, a massive game of piggy-in-the-middle.

Unfortunately, the storm hung about for about 90 minutes, and FutureHeads couldn’t return to the stage. Why? Because there’s never enough space and never enough time.

Anyway, I now have a kite, a stepladder and a sense of adventure, which is also how you become a PowerPoint slide at a health and safety conference.”

Looking back, the weather has nearly set fire to me, drowned me, blown away bits of festival, and left me apparently naked on BBC One, as well as nearly splitting up Coldplay before they were Coldplay.

So what’s the worst festival weather as a stage manager?

The real problem is that weather doesn’t care about who’s playing, the running order, how tight the changeovers are, or the fact that folks have travelled hundreds of miles to be there - It just turns up, and sends months of planning out the window, and we have to deal with it, and ensure everyone is safe and that if possible, the show goes on.

And as ever, this unpredictable, ever-present British element is thrown into the recurring fact that there’s still never enough space and never enough time.

Btw, I always bring a big sports towel. For the rain, but also for the hotel's pool, I never have time to jump into.

Maybe Speedos and Wellies WILL have their day.