A day in the life of the Leeds Festival

So, up at 9am for the three Ts - tea, toast and telly. I always think that having a slow start is the best way to ease you into the day. Then it was time to head to Leeds.

Some petrol, Haribo and Buxton Water later and we’re there at midday to meet my contact who has our AAA passes. Unfortunately, the contact is an hour late so Wozz and I spent an hour listening to music in the ‘day’ car park. Despite not being part of a loose schedule we had tacked together, it did give me a chance to make some observations. Firstly, the crowd was predominantly under 23. Secondly, most of the guys were wearing big colourful shorts, whereas girls didn’t seem to be too interested in getting dressed that morning and looked like they had given up at the underwear stage. However, both sexes were united in their love for annoyingly flamboyant wellies, fashionably messy hair, or the classic one side fringe (none of which is to be commended).

We passed a further half-an-hour seeing how long we could balance our now empty water bottles on our fingers. Then we got a phone call. We were sitting in the red camping area and we were told to head to the yellow camping area. Not too difficult really...or is it? We headed to the nearest Leeds Festival official who told us to “follow that fence”. In any other circumstances I may have questioned somebody who gave me an instruction to follow something that doesn’t move, but we had tickets to get, so we followed the fence, that’s when things went wrong. We followed the fence, which subsequently had us turn right rather sharply into a wood, we them clambered through the wood without a single clue as to where we were heading. After around five minutes of wood-based adventures, our track was hit by a choice – left or right? We chose right, which was lucky because we later noticed that ‘left’ lead into a rather well-disguised swamp, although “right” didn’t end up being much better.

We came around a few more trees and were greeted with a sharp: “Oi! How did you get in there?” Oh no, security!

After stumbling through the fence opened for us, we tried to explain where we needed to be and why exactly we were clambering through woodland just outside a festival. For some reason our explanation of “we were following that fence” didn’t seem to manifest itself in a swift and understanding apology from the security men, who decided to frog march us through the woodland. After several silent minutes of walking, and countless flashbacks to horror films, I slowly began to accept that this was in fact the end for me. Then a security car turned up and they just took us to the yellow campsite. Hooray!On arrival we were greeted by Charlene, tour manager for Fighting With Wire and she dished out two shiny new Access All Areas passes. We wandered to the backstage of the Festival Republic area and met up with the rest of Fighting With Wire. After talking to frontman Cahir about tours, festivals and stalkers, we headed down to the VIP area. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Well, compared with the muddy rest of the festival it was, but in fact it simply consisted of some toilets, a bar, a media tent and a load of park benches.

I wandered over to the bar to buy a cheeky one and who should I see sitting on the hill but a fresh-faced young man by the name of Sam Ford – the One Night Only drummer. We stood in the sun for a while as Sam regaled me with stories from various shows, including a rather vicious incident that almost left Pob (One Night Only bassist) in hospital as he was struck in the arm by a flying scotch egg during their set the previous day at Reading.

After saying goodbye to Sam, it was off to see the first band of the day, Fighting With Wire. We strolled up the hill towards the back of the Festival Republic stage and stepped through a gap in the tent to the side of the stage. The set was fantastic with a pit at the front and a good percentage of the fans singing along to the Northern Irish trio. After seeing a brutal end to the set, in which front man Cahir O’Doherty threw his guitar a good 15ft in the air before catching it and playing the end note to the song all in one fluid action, we ducked backstage again.

Now, the strange thing about being backstage at a festival, other than the free food and drinks, is that there are a lot of famous people looking really bored and just milling about. We went back for a couple of beers with the Fighting With Wire team and we were joined by a couple of members of the band Future of the Left who had performed earlier that day in the Radio 1 tent, as well as that bloke from Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly. Around three beers later, we all headed back down to the VIP area and grabbed a table. After a brief sit, it was off to catch the first 10 minutes of One Night Only, before heading over to watch another band. That sums up the best and worst things about a big festival. You get to see loads of great acts in one place at one time. However, you also miss loads of acts you’d like to see because the timings overlap.

Just in case you don’t know, Leeds Festival has four main stages – The Main Stage, Lock Up Stage, Festival Republic Stage and the Radio 1/ NME stage. So you can find yourself in a position where you’d like to see four bands which are all on at the same time.

So over to catch the first couple of songs from One Night Only on the Radio 1 stage. It went down really well with the crowd, as Leeds is essentially ONO’s home festival. The crowd responded amazingly, jumping around and singing along. Happy that the local boys were doing a good job, it was over to the Main Stage to go and catch a bit of British rock in the form of Scottish three-piece Biffy Clyro. Biffy played an amazing set on the main stage, which is somewhere they have deserved to do for far too long but not got there. If you’re unfamiliar with Biffy, it’s taken them 12 long years to get to the point they are at now, which is a truly great band made up of three consumate performers and musicians. The set featured a lot of songs from the ‘Puzzle’ album and there was a sing-along feeling in the late afternoon sun. The highlight for me was probably listening to ‘Machines’ which is a really pretty acoustic song and a bit of an anthem really. With around 40,000 people singing right back at the band, you could see a smile come to everyone’s faces as they all knew that they were part of a real festival moment. Other highlights from the set were ‘Living is a Problem’, ‘Who’s got a match’ and their forthcoming single ‘Mountains’. Back to the VIP area and Charlene had scored us a couple of food tickets for the artists’ food tent. This tent was hidden away near the tour buses at the back of the main stage, without a nasty-tasting £5 burger in sight! I went for jerk chicken and rice followed by some chocolate cake. As we sat down at the table, who should wander in and sit a couple of feet away but a tall ginger bloke and a couple of other rock looking types.

Wait…hold on a minute! That ginger bloke and the rock-looking types were in fact the whole of Queens of the Stone Age!

Yep, that’s how strange. As the immediate issue of my empty stomach was taken care of, I started noticing my surroundings, and to my surprise Biffy Clyro turned up in their blue trousers, straight from their set on the main stage, for a bit of food too.

Back to the VIP area and who was that standing in the corner, suspiciously near the men’s toilets? It was Mark and Pob of One Night Only fame. After having a quick chat about their set and about Pob’s assault by a scotch egg, it was time to put a jumper on.

Unfortunately, the desired hoody I had brought with me was in the car which was right over the other side of the festival site. I took this opportunity to walk through the main area of the festival to check out what was going on. There were free batteries if you needed them, but everything else was disgustingly pricey. Suitably wrapped up and ready for the evening, we headed back through the mud and the camp site which sported tens of thousands of tents, with some pitched on worryingly harsh gradients. After a couple of beers and a lot of talking nonsense with various people, it was getting close to half-past nine. That could only mean one thing – Rage Against the Machine.

After waiting for an extra half-an-hour, the crowd erupted into a wall of screams as the lights when out and the sirens came on. The atmosphere was electric and you could really feel the anticipation in the air. It had been seven long years since Rage Against The Machine split up, and because they split at the height of their popularity, coupled with the ongoing uncertainty about their future, the crowd was instilled with a sense of ‘I may never have the chance to see them again’. Rage are one of the most popular and influential bands of all time and that was apparent in the reception they received. It was amazing to see the charismatic vocalist, Zach De La Rocha, flying around the stage and really using the energy from the crowd to great affect. The biggest cheer of the night and my personal highlight of the festival was the performance of ‘Killing in the Name Of’. This song has tormented me for years, as it is generally the song that most bands at the rock schools learn, but all completely murder. However, because the song is so well known, every single person was singing along with all of the belief and fighting spirit for which the song was written. Now, you can’t go and watch some living legends deliver an awesome set that has pits springing up everywhere without attempting to enter one yourself, can you? Yep, that’s right, I took all 5ft 10in and 10st of myself into one of the most brutal and hardcore pits going!

As I entered the pit I threw myself around for roughly 20 seconds before being roughly thrown around for another 20 seconds, ending when a huge forearm to the left side of my ribs, just below the armpit, took me out of action. I stumbled back to an upright position and with a huge amount of pain decided to leave a pit the only way you should, by crowd surfing.

The same giant who wiped me out in the pit became my launch pad to crowd surf. However, with him being at least 36 times my size, when he launched me he really launched me!

I flew a few metres through the air before surfing along to the front of the crowd. I dropped over the barriers and wandered back round to the safety of the side to enjoy the rest of the set, followed by a cracking encore.

Back through the muddy campsite with thousands of other people, into the car and home by 1am. Classic day of fun – see you all there next year!