A moment that changed me: I had a drunken idea to start a music festival – so I sold my house
![A moment that changed me: I had a drunken idea to start a music festival – so I sold my house](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/87934fc8d03d672cb21d9fa3eebde46e29a88aa3/0_37_925_554/master/925.jpg?width=460&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=7c7499c1316700acf296f809f094e2ae)
I left school at 14 and became a builder, but I had always wanted to work in the music industry. Setting up the festival proved harder and more rewarding than I ever expected
I was always obsessed with music. I would play, badly, in bands, go to all the gigs and festivals I could, and lie about my age as a teenager so I could DJ in clubs. I would have loved to have worked in music, but I left school at 14 and set up a building and decorating business. By my early 20s, my partner and I had bought a house and we had two young children, but I still wanted to be involved in music in some way.
In 2001, I went to the festival All Tomorrow’s Parties, where the lineup was curated by bands and artists. I was jealous. I thought I should either work at being in a band big enough to be invited to create our own lineup, or somehow try to create a festival myself. The latter seemed more doable. I came to that realisation after we had been watching the American indie rock band Yo La Tengo. I stood at the bar with my friend Jason, working out on the back of a cigarette packet how much it would cost. We thought it would be about £120,000. I looked around, and there were 1,500 or 2,000 people at the festival, so it seemed within my grasp. Before then, I’d been going to big festivals and I wouldn’t have had a clue how to put on something of that size.
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