When it comes to Splendour, music fans often focus on the great bands in the line-up but rarely stop to think about what goes into making an event like this work. The festival is the result of a lot of hard work by many team members under the organisation of the DHP family.
The DHP family are most known for running the historic music venue, Rock City which has recently celebrated over 40 years in business in Nottingham. Surprisingly, it's still a family-run business although they have added many more venues to the list since then.
Managing Director George Akins took over running Rock City in the 90s from his father, George Akins Senior. He has been involved with organising events, festivals and live music across the city ever since including Splendour and other gigs at Wollaton Park.
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George said: "DHP is a family business that started with Rock City in the 1980s. I took over running it in 1994 and the business doubled in that time. We now have Rock City, Rescue Rooms, Bodega, Thekla in Bristol, The Garage in Highbury, Oslo in Hackney too."
Splendour started as an extension of the gigs that DHP organised in the venues around town in 2008 with headline performances from The Specials, Jake Bugg, Blondie and Happy Mondays. George has many happy memories of the festival over the years.
"Splendour has so many great memories and it's been wonderful to see how it's progressed over the years to the multi-stage event that we do now. The Specials played here which was pretty incredible as well as Rag and Bone man. They were both wonderful experiences that went down well. All Saints over on the Confetti stage were great too."
As well as the wonderful memories, there have been some difficult ones such as bad weather and also an outbreak of Foot and Mouth at Wollaton Park in 2001 which threatened to cancel the event. Luckily the team were able to move it to the Embankment and save the day.
He said: "There are some bad memories of things like rain which was really only for one year. The great thing about Wollaton Park is that even if you do get bad weather then it runs off easily because the ground is clay based. There aren't a lot of issues there but things can always go wrong like a water pipe bursts or a stage company goes bust. These things happen so you need to roll with the punches and get it all figured out."
George has a 'hit list' of bands and artists he would love to see headlining Splendour. Although the artist that tops the list may surprise Splendour fans.
"We have a hit list that we try each year to get but we've been very fortunate over the years to get some great acts. Human League is always a great band that I want to try and get. This is the second time they have played here so you can see I'm clearly a big fan. There are normally some big names you want to try and attract and you never know, it might happen."
He added: "Kylie would be one that we would love to see headlining but there are others like Noel Gallagher or Stereophonics. There are some bands like Tears For Fears too. There are people that we talk to every year hoping it will align with their stuff but then there is the band that everyone wants which is Madness. We had Madness on the second year and it had the most requests from our audience so we always try to get them back."
This year marks a triumphant return after Covid saw the festival closed due to restrictions. DHP made the decision to extend it to two days instead of one and stuck to almost the original line-up for 2020. During this time, they opened live events at The Arboretum so that fans could get their music fix during restrictions.
George said: "It was tough as we had all the issues with Covid but we did it again last summer. We were trying really hard to keep people occupied but with no real knowledge of what was going to go on with Covid. We didn't haven't good weather and then only a handful of people would turn up so we tried a lot of things but this year we will be more succinct. We are only doing three events there."
When it comes to the next steps after a massive event like Splendour, George will no doubt take a well-deserved rest but he says Covid has had a tough effect on the industry in terms of ticket sales and shows.
"We'll definitely have a holiday after this. The students will start returning then for another iteration of Nottingham nightlife so Rock City and places have been very busy with that. We will have a lot of concerts on throughout the year which we are always working on."
He added: "It's a very odd period at the moment so we are going to get through about 18 months of people holding on to tickets for gigs. You have these shows where there are people who haven't seen them from before the pandemic. It's a weird time where we need to get people through the shows they still have tickets for so they can see the shows. People are also still worried about covid too although that's getting less and less. We should start to see a normal touring cycle next year."
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