Reading Festival

History The Reading and Leeds Festivals are a pair of annual music

festivals that take place in Reading and Leeds in England.

1970: The festival attempted to provide both

traditional rock acts and new punk bands. Throughout the

year the festival gradually became known for focusing on

heavy metal and rock acts. The line-up settled into a

pattern of progressive rock, blues and hard rock.

1980: During this decade, the festival followed a similar format to that

established in the late 1970s, with large crowds flocking to see the era's

leading rock and heavy metal acts perform on the last two days, it had a

more varied line-up for new bands and travelling music fans.

Late 80s slump: 1988 saw a disastrous attempt to take the festival in a

mainstream commercial pop direction, dominated by the likes

of Starship, Squeeze, Bonnie Tyler and Meat Loaf (the latter was "bottled"

off stage)

The future of the festival looked in doubt at this point. However, things

were to improve from 1992 onwards as the festival broadened its musical

policy and attendances gradually increased.

1990s: Nirvana played the first of their two appearances at Reading; this

is also the year the first brit-pop bands such as Suede and Blur started to

show themselves on the festival circuit.

2000s: The early 2000s saw a varied but predominantly

rock line-up, though as the decade has progressed the

Main Stage and Radio 1 Stage line-up has featured

mostly Indie artists.

Also a continued resurgence in the popularity of outdoor

music festivals led to the Reading festival selling out more

and more quickly every year.

This is a bird’s eye view of Reading festival in 2000

This is another aerial photo of Reading festival 2007

Reading festival is based in Richfield Avenue from the 22-24th of August

Average weekend ticket price: £213

Average Fri/Sat/Sun: £99

Average attendance is usually around 100,000-

150,00

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