Hours after the Bonnaroo 2017 lineup dropped Wednesday morning, the Scene caught up with AC Entertainment honcho and festival co-founder and co-producer Ashley Capps. Talking via phone, Capps told us how the festival landed U2 ("That’s a booking that I guess was dreamed of long before there was ever a conversation."), how his company's — and Bonnaroo's — partnership with Live Nation effects the festival and more, along with hints that other events could soon crop up at Great Stage Park, the festival's site in Manchester.Â
What's it like on your end when the Bonnaroo lineup announcement is made? Is there nervousness over what the reactions are going to be?
There’s always a wide variety of reactions. The nature of the game is that people have a lot of opinions, you know, very varying tastes, so we always know that there’s going to be a wide span of reactions. Some people are obviously going to love it, we’ve gotten tremendous positive response, other people are going to be maybe less enthusiastic. That’s the nature of the business.
Do you lurk on Bonnaroo Reddit and Inforoo and those corners of the internet, where you’ve got the festival fan base and the armchair quarterbacks and the prognosticators and what not?
You know, every now and then. I used to do it a lot, and I still on occasion pay attention, but I have to confess that I don’t spend the time [lurking] through it that I used to. I’m actually much more interested in talking with people in person and really engaging with fans at the festival and those that I see out at shows during the course of the year. I think ultimately that’s where I feel like I understand the thinking of the fans better from those experiences than from just lurking online, because online is such a thing [laughs].
I think that all of us involved in Bonnaroo, we’re fans ourselves so we like to get out there and meet other fans and see live music, and I think it’s from those experiences that I feel like I keep really in touch as opposed to strictly social media. There’s only so much time in the day [laughs].
With music and the industry being the way it is now, and things being so fragmented in different corners, there aren’t as many bands like U2 that are so widely known. Has it become more difficult to program a festival when there’s so many different audiences now?
I think it has become challenging at times to program certain aspects of festivals because there’s so many factors that have to come together, especially for the major artists. There are a lot of moving parts to a major tour moving around, and these days there’s obviously a lot of festivals out there. So there’s a lot of competition, and I think the challenge across the board is trying to do what we tried to do with Bonnaroo from the beginning and create an experience that stands apart from other festival experiences. Part of that is having a unique lineup, and part of it is about simply the experience of being on the site — the full immersion of camping and being together, living in a community for the weekend. So that’s a factor too. Unlike some festivals, I think Bonnaroo was always based on a very rich depth and breadth of music. It was always conceived as an experience of plenty, like a cornucopia of music. It’s always been important to us to have the great rock bands out there, new alternative rock bands out there, but also program in great bluegrass, great African music, great blues artists, really represent the full spectrum, you might say, of what’s happening in the world of music: past, present and future.
As far as having a lineup that differentiates from other festivals, there’s no argument that booking U2 does that — the band has played a U.S. festival since the US Festival, where they were an undercard draw. How did you pitch playing Bonnaroo to them? Did you get a sense of why they chose to do Bonnaroo on this tour? It's their only festival date so far, at least.
It is, and I haven’t had the direct conversation with them of, "Why have you chosen it?" We like to think, “Of course they chose Bonnaroo!” But I did believe and I certainly know from the many artists who have played the festival that playing Bonnaroo is a very special experience for [artists and] audiences alike. It sounds a little corny maybe to say it, but there’s a little bit of magic there, and the artists feel it and the fans feel it, and it really has led to iconic performance after iconic performance on that main stage. It’s really unforgettable. I can’t think of an artist who has really come out there and underwhelmed. It’s usually just a completely amazing performance. I think the word gets out about that, and I think it’s rooted in the reality that so many of the fans that are there are diehard music fans, they’re not there just casually, they’re not there just to hang out with their friends, they are there because they love music. They’re camping out for a weekend because they want to experience and soak up all of this great music, and I think it’s something that the artists feel and sense, themselves, when they walk out on the stage. This is a special audience.
Just to give people an idea of how the sausage is made, a little bit, with a band like U2, how does that conversation start? Does it start with approaching their camp? In this case, did they come to you? How did this come together specifically on your end?
We’d actually approached them very seriously last year, and there had been conversations before that, and like I said, there’s a lot of moving parts and it can be a challenge for everything to line up. Obviously it’s never happened before, but the conversations, I suppose, laid the foundation because they called us this year and were like, “Would you be interested in this?" And we were like, “Um, yeah.” [Laughs]
Who makes that call to you?
That came from their touring director.
Is the festival's partnership with Live Nation a contributing factor, since this U2 tour is a Live Nation tour? As far as what that brings to the table, does it make access to an artist like that easier?
Certainly, but that’s a relationship that we’ve cultivated for years. The Police were a Live Nation tour; Jay-Z, the same way. We’d been working at cultivating that relationship before we were partners with Live Nation on Bonnaroo, but who’s kidding who? It’s these types of relationships that Live Nation brings to the table that will enable Bonnaroo to continue to evolve for years to come.
There was some inevitable backlash over the Live Nation partnership. Do you think that affected the festival's ticket sales, or do you have a different theory on why there was a downtick last year?
I don’t think that was really a factor, and really I think the downtick was overplayed. I think it’s important to remember that we were still the largest camping festival in North America last year. The people who came last year also had one of the best festival experiences at Bonnaroo that they had ever had. We were able to introduce some of the infrastructure improvements, which the partnership with Live Nation made possible. We now have fully running water at the site. And the first bona fide showers and bathrooms, which the people there loved. Really, I look back on last year very fondly because it was one of the best Bonnaroos ever, and that’s the feedback that we got from the fans. I think the attendance itself was frankly probably a victim of the exploding festival scene. There’s so many options for people to consider, and I’m sure that played into it. It’s inevitable at some point that, you know, if someone decides to go to this festival over there, they can’t necessarily go to another festival over here, so the competition is something to certainly take into account.
What about the raise in prices?
If there’s anything with the tickets, we wish they could be less expensive, but we’ve really tried very, very hard to keep prices affordable. And certainly with comparable festivals out there, I think we compare very positively.
Since selling your company, partnering AC Entertainment with Live Nation as well, in addition to the Bonnaroo partnership, has your role changed much in terms of curating the festival and programming it and planning it?
At this particular point, the role hasn’t changed a lot. It’s really been a “getting to know y’all” kind of experience for the past year-and-a-half, and I’ll have to say that Live Nation’s approach to the festival has in fact been very respectful of what the festival represents, very respectful of its history. They wanted to become partners on Bonnaroo because of what Bonnaroo represented, what it has become, and because of the potential that they see in it continuing to evolve over the coming years, so it would be foolish for anyone to come in and carelessly change it, you know? ... Year after year after year, we’re constantly looking for ways to improve the festival experience, we’re constantly trying to keep it fresh and exciting for the fans. We’re continually looking for memorable experiences that will help create that unforgettable weekend for everyone that’s there, and now those discussions are with a larger team, there are ideas we’re talking about that will take years to bring into fruition, but once it happens it’ll be amazing.
When Live Nation came into the picture two years ago, we talked about the desire to have other events at Great Stage Park. I wanted to ask specifically about the rumored Guns N’ Roses booking. Is that a real thing?
It’s just a rumor. We’re certainly interested in hosting other events and potentially stand-alone concerts at the Bonnaroo site. We’ve been discussing that for years. It’s challenging.
Is there not a Guns N’ Roses show? Was that ever discussed specifically?
There have been so many shows discussed and I would be lying to you if I told you what I thought was going to be real, if anything, this year. I think there’s a good chance that one or two of the discussions that we have going on right now will still come to fruition in 2017, but I would be misrepresenting everything and everyone if I pretended to know which ones.
Has there been much discussion about producing other festivals at the site? I know there was a lot of talk about a country festival that didn’t come to fruition last year.
Sure, there have been many ideas discussed over the years, and for a variety of reasons they haven’t come to fruition yet, and I think one of the challenges out there is the rapidly proliferating festival landscape. [Laughs] First of all, our No. 1 goal is to make Bonnaroo the most amazing experience it can possibly be, so no one wants anything to interfere with the planning for Bonnaroo, the experience of Bonnaroo, restoring the land after Bonnaroo.
There are a lot of considerations to take into account as we discuss possible events. At some point it will happen. I think the introduction of some of the infrastructure — like running water and showers and bathrooms — will also help us to accommodate a wider range of potential events. I’ll be pretty surprised if we don’t see one or two new events of some sort. I’m not sure if they’ll be a festival, might be a stand alone concert, might even be some extreme sports, which we’ve had some conversations about. In the next year or two, I think we’ll see the site used for a couple of other fan experiences.
Going back to U2. Are they planning on bringing the same production they’re touring stadiums with to Bonnaroo?
My understanding is everybody is going to get a full-on U2 experience.
