Big Day Out co-founder Ken West has said that the cancellation of AJ Maddah's Harvest festival wasn't part of the deal when Maddah joined the Big Day Out team.
Maddah pulled the plug on Harvest after two promising years in September, hours after it emerged he'd acquired a stake in Big Day Out.
Speaking in Melbourne at the Face The Music conference today, West was asked whether Big Day Out had benefited following Harvest's misfortune, given their markets overlapped.
“I didn't do that, no,” West said.
Standing by his claim that Maddah is a “financial anarchist” as an observation rather than criticism, West said that they shared a lot of similarities.
“My craziness in the process and unwavering belief in that if you put on the best show you possibly can and if people don't like it then that's tough,” is what the festival boiled down to, he said. “A few years ago when the show shouldn't have been announced because it wasn't together… [we] paid the price for it.”
He continued, “I like AJ's craziness, but he's not a bean counter… it has to be about passion and he's got all the passion in the world… He's analysed it to death, so he's the best person we can have.”
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During the panel West also admitted that it was a bad financial decision to go ahead with their ill-fated Auckland leg in 2012, but wasn't prepared to lay-off the New Zealand staff involved. Promoting is an addictive chase, he sad.
“You might put the pipe further out into to sea, but the turds will still wash up on the shore.”
