10 major festival fuck-ups

Ah, Woodstock. It’s a name that conjures up images of hippy wholesomeness and the values of peace, love, unity. These certainly weren’t present at its 30th anniversary edition in 1999, with a lengthy list of calamities afflicting the festival. Firstly there was a heat wave, which melted areas of tarmac at Griffiss Air Force Base site. Attendees also weren’t allowed to bring any food or water on site, and bottled water was priced at $4 a pop. There were free fountains, but with 220,000 people in attendance (which temporarily made the festival the third most populous city in New York State) the queues for these were exhaustingly long. Hundreds of people were treated for heat exhaustion and dehydration. Another issue was crowd fights and rioting, sparked by triggers such as Insane Clown Posse firing $100 bills into the audience of the East Stage. The most serious riot followed the Red Hot Chilli Peppers performing a rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Fire’. Punters took the track a bit too literally, and set about setting the site ablaze. Vehicles were flipped, tents piled into bonfires, vendor trucks used as fuel. Eventually New York State Troopers were called in to calm things down. The summer of love must have seemed like a very distant dream.

Blocs festival’s graduation from Butlins holiday park to London’s unfortunately named Pleasure Gardens is one the worst dance festival disasters in recent memory. Crowds of thousands were squashed into unmoving queues outside the event, with the Met Police pulling the plug on the event at around 1am, while most ticket buyers had failed to gain entry. Reports from the queues were harrowing: people saying they feared for their lives within intense crushes. Others decided to get their thrills by jumping naked from an old warship into the adjacent canal. Or by mimicking techno beats by pounding on shipping containers, as you can see in the footage above. Full marks for inventiveness.

In 2015, Bloc returned, sheepishly heading back to the Minehead holiday park where it began. There was still a lot of anger and resentment over the 2012 debacle, but with memories of banging Butlins times still lingering, and a typically incredible line-up locked in, the people came back around and the festival was a raging success. In 2016 they did it all again. Things didn’t go as smoothly in the lead up, ticket sales flagged, and the organisers slashed prices and announced this would the final Bloc festival. The festival itself was a triumph: a suitably chaotic, debauched climax. Everyone was left with glowing memories of Bloc festival, despite everything. Then co-founder George Hull published an article in right-leaning publication The Spectator slagging off the youthful crowd for being “safe and boring” and criticising concepts such as safe spaces. You’d think he’d have learned to try and avoid PR disasters by that point. Read all about it here.

If you’re planning an illegal party, keeping it secret from the authorities is pretty much priority number one. So when an unlicensed Melbourne Beach Party aiming to celebrate Triple J radio station’s top tracks of the year made a public Facebook event, attracting over 20,000 interested attendees, some social media-savvy police hopped on it pretty sharpish. A post on the wall read: "Hi Jai and Clint. This is Victoria Police. We know this party is not sanctioned by Triple J, so we're assuming you haven't got any permits from Port Phillip Council either? If that's the case, we'll pay you a visit on Australia Day and let's hope we don't spoil your party!" Awkward.

“Worst festival ever” is quite a claim, but it was directed towards ZOO8 from more than a few corners following the disastrous event at Kent’s Port Lympne Wild Animal Park (pictured above, in more peaceful times) in 2008. Pretty much everything that could go wrong, did. Queues to get in lasted over four hours, the camping conditions were abysmal with limited space and drinking water, artists weren’t paid and refused to turn up, the second stage was permanently closed on the second day due to a broken tent pole, perimeter fences collapsed. Attendees were not pleased, with one commenting on Facebook: "I cant believe how fucking shit this was. Would have had more fun camping in my back garden with some heroin and a razor blade."

One of the primary requirements for booking a festival is having a license in place so you can actually run the event. It was public knowledge that Australia’s Maitreya festival had failed to secure a permit allowing it to take place, and the event was under fire from wary punters concerned about the party being cancelled. Organisers insisted it would, then lied about having secured a new site down the road, before finally pulling the plug the day before it was due to start, and refused to pay refunds despite around 10,000 people paying between $150 to $300 per ticket. For some unknown reason a 2017 event was planned, and some people were foolish enough to buy tickets. This was subsequently cancelled as well. A total shambles.

We can understand the draw of confirming a big name headliner for your debut festival, but generally a sound policy for booking line-ups is to steer clear of notorious racists and homophobes. Born & Bred pulled a bit of a clanger when it locked in Azealia Banks last year. Predictably the acid-tongued artist went on a foul-mouthed and offensive rant before Born & Bred took pace and the organisers did the right thing and scrubbed her off the bill. The US rapper didn’t take the reaction on her chin, retorting "most of the people coming to this on my day were only coming for me".

It’s hard to imagine that an entire festival could hang on the balance on Avicii’s attendance, but apparently that was the case for Holland’s The Flying Dutch party last year. The entire event was pulled after organisers couldn’t secure guarantees of Avicii turning up to play his set. This is despite EDM heavyweights already being well represented with the likes of Alesso, Steve Angello, John Dahlbäck, Icona Pop on the bill. A festival is never about just one artist, but apparently it was in this case!

Uncomfortable sleeping positions and chilly, wet nights can be a downside of festivals, but all the music and partying more than makes up for that. Having the former without the latter is no fun, though. That’s many Sunday ticket holders had to go through at TomorrowWorld in 2015. The festival claimed adverse weather conditions made the car park and drop-off locations inaccessible, meaning only people already camping onsite could attend the final day. The shuttle buses arranged to take punters staying away from the site were also cancelled, leaving hundreds of people stranded outside the festival site in the rainy night with no shelter, food or water. One attendee liked the situation to a refugee camp. Check footage here.

Patrick Hinton is Mixmag's Digital Staff Writer, follow him on Twitter