Fifty Years Of Bluesfest Director Peter Noble

The third and final day of BIGSOUND has arrived, and despite some bleary eyes and throbbing heads, a sizeable crowd has gathered to hear Peter Noble — the director of Byron Bay Bluesfest and a fifty-year veteran of the industry — sit for his keynote interview this morning.

It's a wide-ranging chat that covers a diverse range of topics from throughout Noble's extensive career, hitting a distinct note of poignancy when he discusses the dissolution of his partnership with Bluesfest founder Kevin Oxford, with whom he has not spoken in ten years (though not for lack of trying). It's a revealing topic of discussion, with Noble speaking at length about the professionally and personally destructive qualities of unmanaged anger.

Talk soon turns to another ex-partner, the venerated Michael Chugg, with whom Noble staged a number of tours and collaborated closely - although that business relationship has also since dissolved, Noble is much more positive about his current relations with 'Chuggi'.

Indeed, the talk seems to traverse everything from his early days as a touring musician in the 1960s and '70s to his leap to the agency and promotional side of the industry — a move spurred, he says, by a sudden firing from a band of which he was a member while in the US, and we hear quite a bit regarding his adventures Stateside in the heady days of disco's peak.

More contemporarily, Noble discusses his spiritualism - Buddhism agrees with him on a personal level, he says - as well as the shifting ethos behind the way in which Bluesfest develops its now-diverse line-ups despite its roots as a true blues-only festival.

After a spell discussing the likelihood of bringing on-board a naming-rights sponsor ("Sure!" Noble enthuses) and a few more tales about superstars of the ilk of Robert Plant and James Brown, the discussion ends with a lengthy rumination on the topic of drugs (and sniffer dogs) at festivals, and - somewhat unsurprisingly - Noble is steadfast in his condemnation for the presence of hard drugs at festivals... but he's not unreasonable about it - which is good, because he has zero plans on going anywhere any time soon.