"It Doesn't Get Bigger Than This", published in Weekend Extra, The Daily Telegraph, 23 January 1999
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IT DOESN'T GET ANY BIGGER THAN THIS IT�S VERY LATE Sunday night-cum-Monday morning. All the Young Liberals who are here for their annual convention have long gone to beddie-byes, leaving the Gold Coast International Hotel to be overrun by a species seemingly bred for this sort of nocturnal existence. A few hours ago, several hours ago now, the doors closed on the second Big Day Out of the season, leaving the nearby Parklands looking like a war had just danced through it. And now here in this bar, its main protagonists -- the artists, the organisers, the foot soldiers -- are all letting their hair down, celebrating another job well done. The Big Day Out circus only landed on the Gold Coast yesterday morning, having travelled from way across the Tasman. In a few hours, it will have moved on. After the cleanup, there will be virtually no evidence it had ever been here. Except for some snaps and tens of thousands of memories. But for the moment, it's party time. Over on the couches, a couple of the members from the Irish band Ash are laughing it up with Huey who fronts the Fun Lovin' Criminals out of New York. Near the bar, a pair of Courtney Love's cohorts from Hole are reacquainting themselves with an old friend. The lads from Korn are here, they're always up for a drink. And throughout the rest of the room, a handful of Australia's musical finest are mingling too. For those on the inside of the Big Day Out, this is what it's all about. A chunky whack of the most innovative and popular music minds from every corner of the globe mixing it up together, melding in this unique biosphere they've created. As history has shown again and again, by the time the circus reaches its final port in Perth, it all feels a bit like a family vacation. Only there's more than 400 brothers and sisters hanging around. For those who only get to live one Big Day Out a year -- the punters, the fans -- well, the event can be any of a million things. This year's six Big Days across Australasia will be attended by a total of over 200,000 folk. As anyone who's ever been to one before will tell you, a Big Day Out can change your life. If that's the case, then six in a row should theoretically kill you, shouldn't it? THIS YEAR�S BDO tour began in earnest a couple of days earlier. In Auckland at 6.30am last Friday week, an unexplained incident in the shopping mall adjoining the Centra Hotel, the temporary home of most of the show's artists and crew, sets off a full-scale, near-deafening fire alert that sends everyone scurrying for the stairs. The scene down in the foyer would make an interesting fashion spread for Rolling Stone magazine, the likes of Sean Lennon, Ash's frontman Tim Wheeler, Powderfinger's singer Bernard Fanning, all milling around in their nightwear. Hardly anyone's talking and, despite the absurdity of the moment, even fewer are wearing their smiles. Nocturnal creatures don't react well to being up at 6.30am, not if they've been to bed at all. "First rule when you hear a fire alarm," murmurs one tour manager as if he's reiterating a passage straight from the basic rock 'n' roll survival manual. "If you don't smell smoke, don't get out of bed." An exception is Ken West, co-founder of the Big Day Out. He can afford to laugh. He was up already anyway, dressed, packed, ready to make his way down to the site. West has a theory about what's happened. "I reckon the guy behind the counter just realised how many wake-up calls he had to make and thought, `F. . . it!'," he suggests, pushing his finger forward to simulate someone hitting an alarm button. The Auckland Big Day Out is the first in almost two years. After the last round of shows in early 1997, West and his partner Vivian Lees decided to give it a rest after six straight years of virtually dedicating their lives to the thing. They're back a year earlier than they thought they would be, probably because both realised they couldn't live without the adrenalin. As soon as you arrive at the venue -- in Auckland it's the Ericsson Stadium -- and start walking through the wades of multi-coloured youth, you're hit by that old, virtually patented Big Day Out feeling, an intoxicating air that suggests anything can happen over the next few hours. In fact, time itself has been known to stand still. In the main arena, there's the familiar huge twin-stages. As soon as a band finishes playing on one, another superstar act starts up beside it. Among the outfits featured between these two stages today, six had top 10 albums on the Australian charts last year. One of them, The Living End from Melbourne, was unquestionably the most successful new local act of 1998, their debut album entering the charts at number one. The last time the Big Day Out was on, singer Chris Cheney went along as a fan. This time he's one of its stars. "I remember when it first started out," beams Cheney. "I remember asking guys in [Melbourne rockabilly outfit] the Fireballs, friends of ours, what it must be like touring around with the Big Day Out. And I've been to a couple of them before, out in the crowd and I've thought: `Man, to be on that stage playing to this.' And here we are. It's great." Today is only the second time The Living End have played in New Zealand, but Cheney describes the performance as "mind-blowing". In fact, he's been having a pretty good time of it all round. Not everyone is having as good a day of it. In fact, over on one of the secondary stages, critics' darlings Sparklehorse from Virginia are having a shocker. Constant power surges play havoc with their equipment, delaying their start by nearly half an hour. "I'm so f. . . ing happy to be here," singer Mark Linkous says once the music finally starts. With another band due on, Sparklehorse only manage to get through a handful of songs. "I'm not really sure we belong here playing festivals," a mournful Linkous says afterwards. "I don't think we would ever do festival shows if it didn't help finance being able to do club gigs." The Fun Lovin' Criminals, who are on the same stage shortly afterwards, are struck by similar difficulties. But they push through it, abandoning their faulty technical wizardry in favour of good old guitars and a straight-up rock 'n' roll show. "A lot of our shit broke but we don't give a f. . . ," announces Huey. For these hip hoppers, it's a first at playing the rock star thing. Come the end of the day, many point to this energised performance as their favourite. "We thought it was rather cool too," smiles the lead singer afterwards. "We saw the promoter and we were like: `You didn't even have to pay us, man. We're really glad you did, but you really didn't have to.' " Of course, any Big Day Out isn't just about the music. There's so much happening everywhere you look at any given moment. Across from the main stages, the skate ramp has a constant flow of kids launching themselves into the air. On the Lilypad, as always, resides the Ambience Team. Led by the inimitable Duck Pond ("Duckie" to his friends), the Ambience Team are described in the official BDO manuals which are handed out to bands at the start of the tour as "generally objectionable", "conveyors of jokes and overlords of all things lurid". At the back of the venue behind a line of trees are hundreds of market stalls. Stand here for 10 minutes surrounded by Legalise Marijuana posters and you wouldn't be blamed for thinking it's 1969. But all of this still doesn't quite encapsulate the breadth of experiences on offer. The shape of your Big Day Out really has everything to do with what you choose to make it. You can rush from one side of the field to the other, trying to catch all the bands you marked off on your little list before you left home. Or just lose yourself in the ebb and flow of the massive crowd. TWO DAYS AFTER Auckland and the Big Day Out is in full bloom on the Gold Coast. It's the same here as in Auckland, only difference: the idiosyncratic geography of each venue secures a distinctive feel for each city's event. Some, like the Gold Coast, are set in sparse and open spaces allowing easy access from one spot to another. Others, like the stadium in Auckland and the old Showgrounds in Sydney, have lots of tight passage ways, forcing you to constantly press the flesh with your fellow Big Day Outers. (We'll have to wait until the end of today to know what sort of Big Day Out the new Showgrounds in Homebush will give us.) Backstage at one of the support stages, Sean Lennon has received sad news. His grandmother, Yoko Ono's mother, has passed away. Lennon still allows himself a chuckle as he spots some 30 gate-crashers burst through security and disperse into the crowd. (Lennon's not to know that the incident leaves a female security guard with a broken leg.) Like any problem within the confines of a Big Day Out, it is rectified immediately. Lennon is a newcomer to this festival stuff, having only ever played a couple of similar shows. "I haven't really figured it out yet but I'm trying to," he explains. "I've never played to such big audiences every day. I guess it's different but I have no experience with it." Regardless, Lennon impresses, his collection of sweet, lilting ballads make for perfect listening on a sunny day. Just as Lennon finishes his set, the tranquil sound is replaced by the noise of helicopter blades. "That's Courtney," explains the Fun Lovin' Criminals' Huey with a grin as everyone looks skywards. "Man, no matter how big we get, you'll never catch my little Portuguese arse coming to a show in a helicopter, ever." Later in the day, Courtney Love arguably the only genuine superstar on this year's bill -defends her rather grand entrance. "I'm just trying to piss off Marilyn [Manson]," Love baulks in her usual manner. "He crawled here. "Helicopters aren't that expensive and it was totally out of, you know, Streisand, Kris Kristofferson --A Star Is Born! But my helicopter pilot is such a wimp, he wouldn't go over the crowd. I was going to totally moon the crowd. "It was like 300, 400 bucks. It really wasn't that much money. It wasn't as extravagant as it seemed. It just seems decadent coming out of your mouth: `I'm taking a helicopter, take it out of my share.' "Because I can't dress like a bat," she continues. "He had me trying on this shirt yesterday and I was like, `I feel like Bruce Springsteen next to you, covered in mechanic grease.' You know?" It's certainly an experience being drawn into Courtney Love's crazy world. As soon as Love meets you, she grabs your arm and drags you into her caravan, demanding you dance and mime to a Journey song while her friend videos you. Love gives you no opportunity to refuse. "Now remember," she screams at you as you stumble out of her sanctuary, "you're going to be in our f. . . ing movie." You sense a tinge of blackmail in her voice. If meeting Love is a dazing experience, then meeting Marilyn Manson face-to-blue-face is quite simply surreal. There he stands, over six feet tall, wearing only a black see-through body-stocking, feathers sprouting from his shoulders. Once he opens his mouth, his college professor demeanour undermines the presence of any true evil behind those red contacts. "There's always a sense of humour to what I do," he tells you in a very controlled tone. "I think a lot of people, especially the conservative ones, miss some of the irony in my work. I think the fans get it. That's what's important." Before the Big Day Out tour began, Love and Manson had been involved in a personal bitter feud fought out through the international media. They've since appeared to have made up, announcing they'll tour America together. Manson says it was simply money that revived their friendship. Love says there was never a problem in the first place, just Manson having one of his mood swings. As is to be expected, both the headline acts are phenomenal once they're up on stage. Tonight, while Manson plays, Love pops her head through a curtain side of stage. She watches a bit of the show, pokes her tongue out to the audience to distract from it. "They were really on," Love says a few days later. "It's hard to go on after something like that and play to 40,000 bored people." She need not have been concerned. Hole were spectacular too. BACK IN THE bar of the Gold Coast International Hotel that evening and the Big Day Out feels like a lifetime ago. But organiser Ken West is having a minor anxiety attack. The incident that left the security guard with a broken leg has stressed him out. Since the first Big Day Out back in 1992, the event has been virtually drama-free on that sort of front. But it's got West questioning the whole merit of the Big Day Out. It was always meant to be a means by which to introduce kids to the latest sounds from around the world, to broaden their minds. Now West fears it's become a placebo for coolness. "They come to the Big Day Out and they think they've had their fix for the year," he argues. "They don't go out to see anything else." Okay, but so what if he's right. West knows the Big Day Out is now a bona-fide mainstream event. He also knows there's some 40,000 young Queenslanders trying to get to sleep right now, their minds overflowing with memories from what was arguably one of the best days of their lives. And there's nothing negative in that.
