From Donington To Download

by Ian Carroll

  We then hit the main stage to watch the day’s headliner, Audioslave. Not quite as energetic as Rage was, but an amazing band none the less. Soon I was on the way back to the busses to find the after party in full swing. First we ran into the singer of Mudvayne who told us how much he hates touring. I found Josh and we went over to the Bouncing Souls bus where Fat Mike was in effect. Besides being a great guy, Mike always has the best booze and is very generous. You just can't beat getting wasted with the boss!!

  After a bit the party moved outside and I stumbled back to our bus. Downstairs Cappy was giving a girl a backrub and Jordan was making a sandwich. Thrice's TM Nick was outside talking with some girls so I jumped in the conversation. Ahhh... there’s something so comforting about a girl with a British accent. This one was really cute so I gave her a big kiss as they started to leave. Gotta keep up international relations right?

  The sun was starting to rise and it hit us...we're at a freaking racetrack!! Making the most of the situation we borrowed Cappy’s girl's car to take out on a lap. So at 5:30 am Jordan, Nick, Angel, Cappy and myself took this girls early 80s Volvo through the Ferrari garage and right onto the Speedway!! We did a quick lap and snuck back out without anyone noticing!!! Hahahahahhaha, its official it was my craziest rock filled day ever!!!”

  Jake Kiley (Strung Out - Guitar)

  “We were on the Deconstruction Tour at the time and they combined most of the bands to play at Download. On our stage was NoFX, Boysetsfire, TSOL; but we also had ‘special guests’ who were Metallica, who played on our stage!

  It was insane! Metallica actually played before us, so we got to see them perform eight songs and it we were standing next to their guitars and it was unreal man; but the whole day in general was just really fun.

  We got there at nine in the morning, it was just a whirlwind of craziness, there were so many bands playing and all our friends from that tour and we were all just hanging out.

  We watched other bands and hung out with other bands; it was a treat just so much fun, it was a blurry day!!

  We watched Chris Cornell with Audioslave and Billy Corgan with Zwan and Jordan our drummer had a great time talking to James Hetfield. Awesome, good times!”

  Chris Aiken (Strung Out – Bass)

  “Well, it was like any other day of a gig for us, grabbed a transit van from a local van rental company and loaded in the gear. You'd never have thought we were playing Donington, a toilet like venue called the Donington Arms more would have been more apt. I mean, how many bands on that day’s main stage rolled in all crammed in a Ford Transit?

  It summed Stampin' Ground up really, from our humble days of playing back rooms of pubs, to touring with Anthrax and Arch Enemy and headlining our own shows, nothing really changed. I can honestly say the fame and the money never really got the better of us...we were always the underdog of the UK's metal scene.

  So, the show. I don't think any of us really let it sink in before we played. We set up and played just like always, just that 30,000+ metal fans we're waiting for us. Myself and the guys actually laughed at each other as our intro tape rolled, Adam our singer even said, how the hell did we get here? It was more disbelief than pre gig nerves. Were we honoured to be able to play that day? HELL YEAH, but we deserved it; it’s along road to get there.”

  Scott Atkins (Stampin’ Ground – Guitar)

  “The day Metallica opened for us.”

  Jack Grisham (T.S.O.L. – Vocals)

  “We opened up the main stage and played to about 20,000 people. It was pretty early and extremely hot and I was pretty hung-over, since we'd been partying and camping at the festival the night before. It was a good show for us too.

  My main memory though was the fact that Metallica were doing a secret show the same afternoon in the tent. The buzz had started to go round by the time we were on stage and it was a bit of: is it true? Is it really Metallica? Within the crowd. And then towards the end of our set Frank announced to the crowd, all excited, that yes it was indeed true...Megadeth were playing in the tent! There was a sort of muted grumble of disappointment from the crowd. I fucking pissed myself laughing!

  I checked out the Metallica gig later though, pretty cool to see them open with Blackened!”

  Gareth Smith (Raging Speedhorn – Guitar)

  “It was a big backstage area, loads of band mincing around and we just went into stupid drunk mode and it was a drinking contest.

  Download backstage gay! They had masseurs it’s hardly rock ‘n’ roll!!”

  Alex Copeland (Spunge – Vocals)

  “As we turned up we actually found the controls for the lights, by the bridge. All the other bands were asleep in the buses and we doing the green for go and had people running under the bridge as we did the stop and start lights on it.

  We took the sunroof off the coach and turned the music up and we were dancing on top of the coach.”

  Damon ‘Des’ Robins (Spunge – Guitar)

  They also had a tent, showing off all the amps and stuff for the weekend, we actually took over the tent for the whole weekend. We were actually told to turn it down by both Iron Maiden and Metallica’s people, how cool is that? Someone came along from their entourage on both days, we’d played 4 ½ gigs before we’d even taken to the stage.

  Chris ‘Jarvis’ Murphy (Spunge – Bass)

  “The best part of Download was not the gig or the music, but the fact we parked up in the racing pits and a bloke came and got us in a transit and we blagged him to take us around the track in his transit. It was an absolute fuckin’ bargain.

  I went to go to the loo in the portakabin bollocks you get backstage and I was in there and the biggest scariest black bloke in the world came in and said “Could you please leave the toilets” and said that I was half way through, it was because matey boy from Metallica wants to come in!!! How gay is that?

  Although you got passes and could only go into your own bit, we were in the working class tent, I walked straight down to the posh end, whilst Iron Maiden were playing and I must admit they were really shit. I walked straight past all the security and was actually stood behind all the barriers with the photographers, but they wouldn’t let me out, what kind of security is that? But what I do remember was that he had on the ‘biggest whitest gayest’ Hi Techs ever.”

  Wol Gurney (Spunge - Guitar)

  “We were sponsored by Scuzz (on the Scuzz stage) and the hospitality backstage was fantastic, there was free food and free beer. Then they were like you’re giving out free beer to everyone and free food and you’re scaring everyone.

  Jem King (Spunge – Drums)

  “We play after the special guests of the festival who are not listed on the

  bill. We don¹t know who it is and we couldn¹t care less but we wonder why

  there are about 7563 Marshall stacks placed on stage and all of them got the

  name METALLICA written on em..... Nevermind...

  After this band called Metallica finished their set promoting their new album called ST. Anger or whatever, their roadies start to empty the stage and take away the 7563 Marshall stacks and another 35 bass drums, 17 cymbals, 35 toms and 53 bass cabinets.

  We set up four amps of ours and a drum kit and start one of the heaviest and most emotional concerts of our entire life in front of 26 people who surrendered the Metallica show.

  Finally we end up doing our encore in front of 2000 people who made their way back from the hospital just in time to hear us play LET ME IN and some more of our favourite tunes.

  Thank you Donington, Thank you Metallica...

  Heavy metal is the law!”

  Beatsteaks

  “When we played Download we'd only just hit the UK charts a few months prior, with ‘I Wish I Was A Girl’ charting at number 25. The singer and I were only 18 at the time, so to be playing Download festival was incredible. We played the 'Scuzz' Stage, playing after Chimaira (who opened the stage that day), and Arch Enemy.

  I was a big fan of both ban
ds at the time, and that was the first intimidating experience – going on after two 'Real' bands! I remember we all felt so nervous we could have been sick, and the wait at the side of the stage was absolutely horrible.

  We went onstage, got bottles of piss thrown at us by the dregs left behind from Arch Enemy, and launched into our first song. The crowd were a bit unsure on dancing at this point, but we had a lot of fans in the audience and all it took was for our singer, Rodney, to ask them to go mad, and they did. Personally speaking, onstage at Download 2003 was the best moment in my life. Nothing has come close to the feeling of being watching by thousands of people, and hearing those numbers of people singing along to your songs is unreal.

  I made sure I caught the bands we toured with prior to the festival, so I hung out with and watched 'A' and Instruction. One of the weirdest things was finishing playing and having Taproot wander up to us and saying 'hey, they really liked you guys! You're playing with us in a few days so we thought we'd check you out!’ It was unreal.

  I got to meet our label mates in Deftones and Zwan (Billy Corgan being a personal hero of mine, though he was without a doubt the nastiest musician I've ever had the misfortune of meeting), and got autographs of Chris Cornell, Tom Morello, Lars Ulrich, Casy Chaos, David Draiman and a few others for my girlfriend who only came for the day we played.

  We discovered on our arrival of the second day that AAA passes were only given to people playing on the day they were playing, so I used my imagination and rubbed off the marker pen that had the date of the AAA on it, and quickly scribbled in the second day's date in my best 'other person' handwriting, and it worked.

  Being interviewed by Scuzz TV during the build-up and excitement of the 'mystery' band was cool. Rodney said to me 'oh my god!' excitedly, as the amps were brought onto the stage, 'look, it was a 'M' on them!’ I said 'whoa, it can't be?' and he said 'yeah! It’s Mudvayne!’ We found out a few minutes before they went onstage it was Metallica playing, and we all had to vacate the area, swiftly. They arrived by helicopter and then got a golf cart to drive them to the Scuzz stage where they played.

  All in all, it was absolutely amazing. Any young band wanting to play Download on a stage bigger than the smallest one - just write a song that will hit the charts and you'll get to play a metal festival with your heroes! It's worth it.”

  Tom Steenvoorden (Violent Delight – Guitar)

  “The way that we booked ‘Monsters’ it didn’t actually have the capability to move on; we were still booking big headliners and we hadn’t grown it out into a festival, it was still a one day concert. It had got to the point where many of those big headliners could instead go out and play their own stadium shows, so Monsters really ran its course, primarily because we didn’t develop it. If we had, I think we would still have been at Donington running a thing called Monsters of Rock still.

  However, we didn’t and in 1996 the last Monsters was held with Kiss; then in 2001 we had Stereophonics with ‘A Day At The Races’ and then in 2002 we did Ozzfest. We did Ozzfest and what became clear to me was that it wasn’t going to be the success that Monsters of Rock was, a) I wasn’t sure how many years Ozzy would still be on the road and b) Ozzfests focus was America and it wasn’t always going to be able to come to Donington. So we decided that we needed to create a ‘modern day ’ Monsters of Rock, but that we would use the Monsters Of Rock still as a heritage brand, hence the Monsters of Rock at Milton Keynes and a few MOR tours.

  So, we decided that Monsters & Ozzfest weren’t the way forward and we sat down to create what we thought a modern day UK rock festival should be. Donington was the obvious place to do it, the spiritual home of rock. We agonised for days, weeks and months on what to call it and eventually I think that it was my assistant who came up with the name ‘Download’ and the Download Festival was born.”

  Stuart Galbraith (ex – Donington Organiser)

  “I got quite interested in new music again. I decided that I'd go see Audioslave next time they were in the UK.”

  And that was when I heard of Download. Audioslave got announced - I didn't fancy going and camping, Donington was close enough to get there and back. I bought some tickets and took my best friends 14 year old son to his first ever festival (having taken him to his first ever gig - Rammstein - a month earlier).

  Though the gap between ‘96 & ‘03 was less than that between ‘88 & ‘96, Donington had achieved its "spiritual home of rock" status by now.

  Walking through the day ticket gate, I had my strongest ever "Donington" moment standing at the top of the hill as Raging Speedhorn did their thing.

  My ‘96 experience had prepared me for differences in layout and we had a quick explore over the site. A trip to the second stage was brief, but there wasn't anything on that I fancied as it was a punk themed stage that day... though I didn't notice an out of place Apocalyptica on the lineup.

  I'd heard rumours - some about Metallica, some about Megadeth, some about Iron Maiden - playing a secret set. I paid the rumours no notice and went to pick out a nice spot in front of the main stage.

  The Darkness seemed silly. Disturbed had a microphone malfunction. Stone Sour, Mudvayne and Evanescence were entertaining until someone nearby said "I've just seen Metallica". Sick as a dog.

  I got over it though. I was interested to see Flint - being a Prodigy and Pitchshifter fan - even if it was strange to see such a short-lived solo project so high up on the bill.

  Zwan were next, and the heavens opened. I mean REALLY opened - scattering the crowd, who pulled up the matting walkways to shelter underneath. These weren't much help, so we got up to the exhibition centre, which was being used as a chill out zone, and dried off. I was all for going home if it didn't clear up - but it did, just in time for the end of Zwan.

  So I got to see Audioslave - a short set for a "headliner", but then Limp Bizkit had pulled out only a week or so before, and not replaced (other than the Metallica thing). An enjoyable return, but I wasn't going to miss out on anything like that again. So in January, when Linkin Park & Metallica were announced for the following year, I signed up for the message boards.

  As it turns out, that was quite a momentous decision.

  The message boards have stretched the festival experience out to five months (or even year round for a number of people) and made Donington the social event where - in addition to a great rock festival - you catch up with all your mates in one go whom you only see sporadically throughout the year. For the Download Message board regular, it's the biggest party of the year and makes the festival the biggest event in your lives. It certainly has for me.

  Somehow I managed to run up a high post count in that first year, and that somehow propelled me onto the moderation team. Nothing more than a handful of volunteers who could lock and delete rogue threads. There was no real interaction between Live Nation (still part of Clear Channel at the time) and the mod team, any communication that there was, was between Steve Jenner of Virtual Festivals who was looking after the boards at the time.

  By the time of the festival there was a core bunch of people who had met on the boards and it was great to meet people from the forums, share a beer with them. It was no longer the solo event it had been, when the only people you knew were the people you arrived with.”

  Phil Hull (Download Forum Administrator)

  “Donington was my first festival experience, at the very first Download in 2003.

  At the time, my favourite band, as an 18 year old teeny bopper, was Limp Bizkit, who were down to headline.

  They had sold it to me, but so many of my favourite acts were playing: Iron Maiden, Raging Speedhorn and Soilwork to name but a few. Despite Bizkit cancelling, I knew on the train down from Glasgow this was going to be one hell of a weekend- I had finished Uni that morning, jumped straight down on the train with one of my mates and arrived at the now "hallowed turf" of Donington to witness something special.

  The weekend that came and went blew away all expectations, and I have retur
ned to the festival in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and in 2009, along with a trip to Germany's Rock am Ring festival in 2005 and 2008.

  Each year as the headliners get announced, and the anticipation grows in my group of friends who come down annually (this has grown from one in 2003 to over 20 who I meet from all over the UK, some of whom its the only time I get to see them) and we start to buy our tickets, food, camping gear and most importantly, our booze.

  The routine is always the same, some come down Tuesday and sleep in the car park (myself included, twice) some arrive on the flight down from Glasgow Wednesday morning (and fly over the arena, and say it’s then that the hair stands up on your neck) right up until the festival starts on Friday, the mobile rings, you find their tent and you’re sharing a beer with friends new and old, chatting to strangers like you've grown up beside them, and nodding along to the cd player 20 yards away, or yelling out whatever that years campsite chant is.

  To me, the campsite experience is almost as big as the actual music itself. My Wednesday and Thursday nights I especially love exploring, sharing out beer and playing ”the chair game" which I will now explain, as I did to Corey Taylor who wished he could come play it with us...

  It involves a marker pen and a camping chair, and finding some of Downloads more attractive females, and asking if they would like to sign our Ladies Chair, in exchange for signing T or A. It’s proved a fun, popular game these past 2 years and in fact the only guy to sign our chair was Corey himself. We did not get to sign his boobs, or his ass.

  Musically, I have seen some of my favourite bands, I’ve seen some great bands, some not so great bands, and had some special moments, so many in fact its hard to define a favourite.

  Metallica in a tent is up there. Metallica minus Lars is up there. Prodigy and Korn "on the edges of" the tent are up there. I've discovered some bands I never knew of and become fans of them at Download....Bullet for my Valentine, Sylosis and Enter Shikari for example.