Veterans of early Leeds Festivals, and even older Reading Festivals, would be somewhat surprised to see the type of people attending the festival this weekend.
Despite the obvious commerce involved, Leeds and Reading were once countercultural events. They were festivals mainly attended by punks, indie kids, metalheads and general misfits.
I should know because I was a bit of all the above when I went to Reading Festival in 1997. The first Leeds Festival was two years away so it meant a long bus or train journey south.
Read more: 28 brilliant Leeds Festival photos which perfectly sum up the first day at Bramham Park
It was probably one of the greatest times of my life; a whole tent city of like-minded individuals who eschewed mainstream culture and for whom the NME, Melody Maker (RIP) and Kerrang were bibles. We could dress in combat pants and tie-dyed band shirts without the derision of peers we'd disparagingly call 'trendy' or 'standard'.
The idea of festival fashion was nonsensical. You wore what was practical for three days of roughing it as well as a t-shirt of your favourite band. Reading was all about the music and maybe the warm beer and drugs you could enjoy away from rightfully concerned parents. There were big names playing Reading '97 – Metallica, Manic Street Preachers, Suede and Marilyn Manson – but there was plenty of far-out stuff too. The 90s equivalent of Ed Sheeran would have been bottled off stage back then.
The last time I went to Leeds Festival was in 2007. Sorry I've not been back but three days of tent-related squalor is not my bag anymore. Even 15 years ago it wasn't that different to how it was in the 1990s. It was markedly bigger – Leeds Festival moved from Temple Newsam to today's larger site at Bramham Park in 2003 – but it was broadly similar.
Then something happened. I don't know when exactly but when the most mainstream of entertainers, Bruce Forsyth appeared at Glastonbury in 2013, I knew it was over. Though bigger, Glastonbury was once considered the real alternative deal. Reading meanwhile was thought to be the more commercial upstart.
I sound like an old fart (I am) but looking through photos of punters at Leeds 2022, it felt light years from the Leeds and Reading Festivals I attended. Some of the crowd – the type you might today call 'normies' – would have likely called my 17-year-old self a 'mosher' and told him to 'get a haircut'. That is if it was 1997.
Going to festivals is just what people in their late teens and 20s do now, in the same way they eat at Nando's or wear Nike Air Force Ones. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Festivals that cater to a more niche crowd very much still exist and there's a lot more variety. This can only be a good thing. And while the 'normies' of 1997 would have mocked my long hair and ripped cargo pants, I'd like to think of now as a more tolerant time.
Young people are by and large, more accepting of difference these days. Perhaps the 'standard' festival goers of today would be less judgmental of my 17-year-old self – and he'd be less judgemental of them.
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