Geoff Ellis & George Kyle exclusive eFestivals interview

eFestivals interviewed T in the Park organiser Geoff Ellis and George Kyle ahead of this summer's Scottish event.

It’s clearly a line-up of festival favourites, are you pleased with the line-up so far?

Yes, very much so. It has a strong showing from Scottish bands on there as well. They’re there on merit, but it’s over 10 years since we’ve had a Scottish band headline the main stage at T in the Park, so Biffy Clyro will be the first Scottish headliner for a long, long time. Calvin Harris with Paolo Nutini up there with him on the Saturday is great to see as well. Then as well as the strong Scottish representation there’s Arctic Monkeys, Pharrel Williams, Ed Sheeran, Jake Bugg, and everybody else. I think it’s a very storng line-up as well, but to have three Scottish acts at the top of the bill is something special for Scottish music.

Did you see Biffy when they first played T in The Park and did you think straight away, “There’s a future headliner?”

They played King Tuts in the early days as well, I don’t think anybody would be so bold as to say they had that crystal ball, but they’ve always been a great live act, and they’ve always had great songs, so, if you put 10 bands in front of you from around that time, you might have said Biffy was the band that had the best chance. They were an unsigned act when they played T Break, they got record deals shortly after that, and they’ve worked very hard. They’ve had a lot of good albums out there, and they headlined Reading and Leeds last year and we wanted them to headline T. The stars have aligned this year and we’re delighted to have them. Also with Paolo and Calvin they’ve both played T in the early stages of their careers, perhaps not quite so early for Calvin, but Biffy is one of those great big emotional stories. That’s all down to their hardwork, their incredible talent, and their fantastic live shows they put on.

You have decided to add a full day on Friday, is that right?

Yes, we felt it was time, originally Friday was just for the campers, then we extended it out to everybody. We thought, actually it’s one thing to start it at 5 o’clock but most of the campers are all there before midday anyway, and more than half of them are there from Thursday, so let’s convert it to a full day of music. At the same, let’s extend the hours on Saturday until 1am for the main arena, and obviously the entertainment there goes until 2 o’clock every night anyway. We felt it was the right time to do it, and hopefully people will appreciate that, they’ll certainly get to see more acts on the primary stages.

Does that mean there’s anything on Thursday night?

Thursday night always has stuff on in Sunset Strip, so the comedy tent is open in there, and the dance structure. We had Arcadia’s Afterburner in there last year, we will have another structure in there which will be DJ focused, and there will be other entertainment going on, but not live bands as such, in Sunset Strip, so there’s plenty to do on the Thursday. We’ll put the Slam Tent on on Thursday Night to with DJs in there as well.

Is the plan to have DJs finishing off the main entertainment each night in future?

Well with Calvin yes, but next year we might not have a DJ. It’s worked well on the Radio One stage, going back to Swedish House Mafia, Calvin, and guests has worked well and had huge audiences, it’s definitely a plan for people to see DJs late at night, and on Friday at the Radio One Stage we go from Alesso into Steve Angello at the end of the night and that will be a big electronic end to Friday night. Then there’s obviously the main stage with Calvin on Saturday, but it’s the right time to have Calvin on the main stage. I know he’s excited about it, and it will go down an absolute storm among his fans at T in the Park.

If Scotland goes for independence will it be keeping all the Scottish acts within it’s borders as well?

(Laughs) well that will be a good reason to vote for independence. I think the whole thing with Scottish bands is that it’s not just about being big in Scotland, it’s about having an international profile and bands like Chrvches, and Franz Ferdinand have had that. I saw them headline the Fuji Festival in Japan. The Slam guys are well respected from Berlin to Detroit, and Calvin, Paolo, and Biffy all do well internationally. I don’t know that we want to keep Scottish bands to ourselves, we want to tell the world how great the music is in Scotland.

Just to quickly go over, the gas pipe controversy is still rumbling on, I wrote about it years ago, is there any plans to relocate the festival in the future?

People say move away from Perth and Kinross, but no we’re not. You hear Perth and Kinross Council saying they want the event to stay, and that they are happy to licence the event. It will probably come up every year, as we have to apply for planning each year. The opinion comes out from the HSC, and certain journalists like to try and create a story out of it. But, you can see that Perth and Kinross Council are very happy to licence the event, they think it’s very safe, as do Scottish police and the medical services. They feel it’s perfectly safe, if it wasn’t there wouldn’t be lots of other things built close to pipelines. The fact that there’s a lot of people at T in the Park isn’t really the issue, because even if there was 100 people, if it’s not safe it’s not safe, and if it’s 100,000 and it’s safe, then it’s safe. It’s safety that comes first and T in the Park is a very safe event.

It looks as though Rock Ness may not be happening this year, how are Scottish faring in general?

I think festivals have come and gone in Scotland. I don’t know what the situation is there, I’ve not heard anything either. There’s still a good balance of festivals, there’s still Belladrum, and Wickerman out there, and the small festivals are probably a bit more community focused, but they’re still going strong by all accounts. I think there’s still plenty of outdoor music in Scotland, there’s the Glasgow Suummer Sessions towards the end of August as well which is a series of one day concerts. I think there’s plenty of opportunities to see great live music in Scotland, so I think things are pretty healthy.

You’ve announced quite a few acts, have you still got a few surprises in the bag?

Yes, there’s quite a lot more to announce, there are some we add at the last minute with this announcement like Maximo Park, and The Rifles. There will be a lot more acts that we will be announcing in the forthcoming weeks and months, and obviously a lot of that is newer and smaller bands that perhaps are slightly too under the radar to announce now, and they tend to get lost. Obviously Clean Bandit are a new act that most people are talking about, and we don’t want to overshadow some of these great new bands that will be on the bill as well. Perhaps you’ll start hearing about those in April or May time, and we want to announce them at the point where people will know who we are talking about, and it will create a bit of a buzz.

Apart from the changes to the live music hours is there anything new this on the site itself?

Well not so much on the site, we’re keeping ticket prices as they were in 2013, the only price increase is a Friday day ticket, but that’s now for a whole day, so that goes to the same price as the Saturday or Sunday day tickets. But both weekend and weekend camping tickets will be at the same price as last year. Even though we’ve got a longer day on the Saturday, and a full day on the Friday.

We’ll be repeating a lot of the things that have been working very well, like sunset Strip. There was a great vibe in there the last couple of years, so we’ll have the dance acts in there, with a DJ focus, we’ll have the comedy, and cabaret arena in there too, and Healthy T will be back again. All the things that make in the Park great will be there. Some of the art installations will be there as well. We’re working with Glasgow Sculpture Studios again, they’ll have a presence on site, they had the giant skull made out of recycled plastic last year, and they’ll be back.

The most important thing is the audience really, they’re the people who really make T in the Park unique, and it’s them that come back and create that real energy and passion that makes T in the Park famous throughout the world.

T in the Park will be celebrating it's 21st year at Balado from Friday 11th until Sunday 13th July 2014 with early entry available on Thursday 10th July.

On Friday headliners Biffy Clyro, top a line-up that will include Ed Sheeran, Ellie Goulding, Bastille, Pixies, Steve Angello, Alesso, HAIM, You Me At Six, The Rifles, Maximo Park, Manic Street Preachers, Chvrches, Len Faki, and Pan-Pot.

On Saturday Calvin Harris will close the main stage with Paolo Nutini, joined by Pharrell Williams, Elbow, Rudimental, Ben Howard, James, Bombay Bicycle Club, Twin Atlantic, The 1975, John Newman, Embrace, Katy B, Nina Nesbitt, The Stranglers, Dave Clarke, Carl Craig, Metronomy, Clean Bandit, We Are Scientists, Ella Eyre, George Ezra, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, and Magda.

Arctic Monkeys are Sunday headliners, climaxing a day of music featuring Jake Bugg, Disclosure, Example, Imagine Dragons, Tinie Tempah, Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs, London Grammar, Kodaline, Above & Beyond, Sam Smith, Tame Impala, Passenger, Sven Vath, Newton Faulkner, Chance the Rapper, Slam, The Twilight Sad, Inspiral Carpets, Julio Bashmore, and Levon Vincent.

There are still many more acts to be announced.

buy tickets now >

They will be priced as follows:

A full weekend with Thursday camping (Thurs - Sun) £205
A full weekend camping ticket (Fri-Sun arena access) £194
A weekend (Fri-Sun) with no camping £184
Day tickets are priced at £82.50 for any day.

Saturday day tickets have sold out.

Prices do not include booking fee.

No under 5s. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult 21+ with a full priced ticket.

This year will be more music than ever before, with Friday extending to a full day of performances for the first time ever, and the party continuing right through to 1am on the Saturday night, plus tickets will be available at 2013 prices (with the exception of the Friday day ticket, which is now priced as per Saturday and Sunday).

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