Big Day Out Would Have Died Without AJ Maddah

An illuminating interview with big time festival promoter, and the AMID dubbed 'most powerful person in music', AJ Maddah on triple j this afternoon has shed some light on the extent of the poor performance of this year's Big Day Out, among other things.

Maddah, who came on board with the legendary summer festival late last year, said that, had he not stepped in, the event would have died.

“It wasn't going to go ahead this year until I walked in,” he told Hack's Tom Tilley. “They were literally, they were on the edge of the abyss, or the edge of cancelling the event. And, to my mind if they cancelled the event then it would be completely lost and you could never bring it back.”

He says that there is no specific figure for the amount of money lost on this year's event, but admits it is not a small amount of money and that media reports are likely to be close to accurate.

“We still don't know, but it's got to be ugly,” he said when asked how much was lost, going on to say it is “probably about the lower end” of the eight to 15 million dollar estimate being reported.

He maintains that the price of the event was ridiculous and has aimed to have the ticket price reduced somewhere in the vicinity of $25 for next year.

“It was just really, really dumb,” he said of the cost of tickets. “The price – $185 – was ridiculous.

“I don't want it to over $160 next year.”

Speaking of the line up for the recent years of Big Day Out, Maddah said the former bookers were out of touch, calling them “basically old age pensioners”

“To be blunt about it, up until I got involved the original promoters of the BDO are basically old age pensioners at this point and that was a lot of the problem because they over estimated certain bands, because that's the big bands they remember, that's the big bands of their time,” he said.

He also mentions the Sydney event will not be held on Australia Day in 2015, that mid-strength beer at Soundwave will cost six dollars per can and that the Adelaide instalment of Big Day Out will most likely return in 2015.

You can listen to the entire interview here.