Announcement before Wednesday 25th January

[t8yman]

Absolute Bollocks. Almost everyone loves queen, seriously I don't know anyone who doesn't like Queen. Of course they'd shift tickets, you know, being one of the biggest bands in the world. Faith No More aren't the biggest headliner, agreed, but the year they played Download they were coupled with 2 not so big headliners either and yet Download still sold, what? 90,000 tickets. And to say GNR won't sell tickets is just laughable, like I said, going by the Hall of Fame rumours, they'll be a lot of hype over them.

If you think those bands, with a good undercard can't sell out or near enough sell out a 60,000 festival, to the point "it'll possibly be the last sonisphere UK", then you clearly know nothing. Seriously, it's comments like that, that make people think you guys know nothing about festivals...

[jump]

Metallica & Sabbath are arguabley the 2 biggest draws of Download, based on these rumors GNR & Queen would be the biggest of Soni.

Looks like good booking sense to me. Download have got 2 massive metal headliners that Soni won't be able to compete with, why not go with a more rock based set of headliners? Makes plenty of sense to me.

[biffoire]

You are fucking hilarious kipper, Neil has been running efests since you were in nappies (almost), to suggest he knows nothing about festivals is laughable.

I can tell you now if it IS queen, gnr, and fnm - there are 13 people in our group that wont be going. so dont be so sure about what a great booking queen with xfactor boy are going to be. and we wont be the only ones.

Ive said it many times before - sonisphere might not be a purely metal festival, people can say its a rock/metal festival, but its certainly an alternative music festival, for alternative music, and alternative crowds. and queen and gnr will change the perception of the alternative crowd completely.

[kipper64]

You are fucking hilarious kipper, Neil has been running efests since you were in nappies (almost), to suggest he knows nothing about festivals is laughable.

I can tell you now if it IS queen, gnr, and fnm - there are 13 people in our group that wont be going. so dont be so sure about what a great booking queen with xfactor boy are going to be. and we wont be the only ones.

Ive said it many times before - sonisphere might not be a purely metal festival, people can say its a rock/metal festival, but its certainly an alternative music festival, for alternative music, and alternative crowds. and queen and gnr will change the perception of the alternative crowd completely.

[she bangs the drums]

Metallica & Sabbath are arguabley the 2 biggest draws of Download, based on these rumors GNR & Queen would be the biggest of Soni.

Looks like good booking sense to me. Download have got 2 massive metal headliners that Soni won't be able to compete with, why not go with a more rock based set of headliners? Makes plenty of sense to me.

[kipper64]

Plenty of people were bitching about RHCP and Green Day being rumours on the facebook page, both of those wouldn't go down well with a lot of the current sonisphere goers, but that doens't mean they wouldn't sell many tickets.

Just because something might cause some rage amongst people on the internet, doesn't mean it won't sell. As has already been proven, both Queen without freddy and GNR can still sell a crapload of tickets to festivals, or their own dates. So I really don't see that being a risk at all, and Queen are at least someone who hasn't played a major rock festival. If the organisers listened to idiots on the internet we'd have metallica headlining every year and they wouldn't make great bookings like Biffy last year, or having Bill Bailey play.

I'd like both to play, and I'd like the festival to not limit their bookings to try and please a boxed in opinion of how the festival should be perceived. It's thinking like that that lead to things like Download having to book Def Leppard last year (because they felt they needed a classic rock headliner, they didn't. If you don't like those bands, then don't go? You can't expect a festival to appeal to your own tastes every year anyways, just the way it goes, especially with headliners. But just because you don't like them, it's silly to assume there's not 60,000 people out there that disagree with you.

[Andre91]

Queen aren't Queen anymore and Guns 'N Roses aren't Guns 'N Roses anymore either. And I don't think Faith No More are much to get excited about. Me and a group of about 6 friends have been to Soni in 2010 and 2011 and based on these rumours, none of us want to return this year. I know that doesn't reflect everybody at all, but I think a lot of people wouldn't want to shell out a couple hundred quid for that. Slash won't play with Axl again unless Duff and Matt/Steven do also, that's my opinion. I just think that they need to produce something good to get past customers back.

Queen and Adam Lambert would be much more suited to T or Hyde Park anyway imo.

[Bisque]

Got to admit, listening to the live show of Queen & Mr. Butler at the EMAs (?) is a bit shit. He's dressed like a right bell too.

[hitmanhague]

Sounds like I'm the only person who would be happy with FNM and Guns n Roses as headliners! Any incarnation of Queen would be a joke though.

[t8yman]

Because him being older than me makes him right?

Your opinion of Queen and "xfactor boy" isn't necessarily the opinions of everyone else in the country/the world. They are a rock festival, GNR have played the 2 other rock festivals in the UK so far, so to think them being at sonisphere would "ruin" the crowd and image is laughable.

But then you said you'd be happy with them just repeating the same old rubbish to please your own strict rules of "Alternative only" apparently, which actually would run the festival into the ground quicker than booking 2 of the biggest rock bands in the world (Even in their current form, they still are before anyone starts crying about it).

[jump]

Plenty of people were bitching about RHCP and Green Day being rumours on the facebook page, both of those wouldn't go down well with a lot of the current sonisphere goers, but that doens't mean they wouldn't sell many tickets.

Just because something might cause some rage amongst people on the internet, doesn't mean it won't sell. As has already been proven, both Queen without freddy and GNR can still sell a crapload of tickets to festivals, or their own dates. So I really don't see that being a risk at all, and Queen are at least someone who hasn't played a major rock festival. If the organisers listened to idiots on the internet we'd have metallica headlining every year and they wouldn't make great bookings like Biffy last year, or having Bill Bailey play.

I'd like both to play, and I'd like the festival to not limit their bookings to try and please a boxed in opinion of how the festival should be perceived. It's thinking like that that lead to things like Download having to book Def Leppard last year (because they felt they needed a classic rock headliner, they didn't. If you don't like those bands, then don't go? You can't expect a festival to appeal to your own tastes every year anyways, just the way it goes, especially with headliners. But just because you don't like them, it's silly to assume there's not 60,000 people out there that disagree with you.

[biffoire]

Fine kipper, if you think that you know better than everyone else - based on what the members of the official boards have said, then you sit with it. What would be more realistic would be if you could imagine walking into ANY rock/metal/alternative club tonight, and do a straw poll of punters as to whether they would buy a weekend ticket for soni based upon queen and gnr. I guarantee you at least 80% would say no.

If you cant see that, you are more blinkered than I thought.

if that was the 3 headliners announced for download - there'd be a fucking uproar, and you know it. what makes soni so different?

at the end of the day you find it absolutely impossible to find any fault whatsoever with sonisphere. you are the ultimate fan-boy for sonisphere. you are the sonisphere organisers wet dream. you defend every shitty thing they ever do on the official boards, just like the other mods on there do, therefore your utterly biased opinion counts for very little. you come on here, pick up bits of info, and copy and paste it into the official board when it suits you, and then when it doesn't please you, you go back running there and slag off Neil and this board. The reason I stopped posting on there myself was because anything negative gets stamped on immediately. I lurk about to find info, and occasionally post bits here and there, but is the most weighted message board I have ever been a member of. And I'm guessing the reason you slag this board off on there is because you cant get your own way on here. people on here are punters, not ambassadors, not FMC members, and the members on this board (in the most part) know plenty about festivals, what festival crowds want/like and aren't afraid to tell it like it is.

[zahidf]

Did they sell a lot of presale tickets? Becuase they will be a lot of annoyed customers if they have and those are the headliners.

Faith No More: Second from top at best

Guns and Roses: Unreliable and terrible reviews of Reading

Queen with that guy i've never heard of before: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Maybe they are desperately trying to get Green Day to play, hence the delay...

[she bangs the drums]

It does make me laugh when people slag off Efestivals on official forums for not knowing what they talking about but then use this website as a source of good information.

I'm fighting a losing battle on the official forum though I never expected anything different - If I had to put my money on a strong rumour posted on here by efestivals or something posted on the official Sonisphere/Download/R & L forum then it would be on efestivals everytime because they get it right more often than not and the information is reliable and not just assumptions.

There are lots of strong opinions on here from forum members with open minds and not just fan boys who act like lap dogs to festival organisers, my opinions might be a load of bollocks to some people but at least I have an open mind about festivals.

Edited January 27, 2012 by she bangs the drums

[kipper64]

Fine kipper, if you think that you know better than everyone else - based on what the members of the official boards have said, then you sit with it. What would be more realistic would be if you could imagine walking into ANY rock/metal/alternative club tonight, and do a straw poll of punters as to whether they would buy a weekend ticket for soni based upon queen and gnr. I guarantee you at least 80% would say no.

If you cant see that, you are more blinkered than I thought.

if that was the 3 headliners announced for download - there'd be a fucking uproar, and you know it. what makes soni so different?

at the end of the day you find it absolutely impossible to find any fault whatsoever with sonisphere. you are the ultimate fan-boy for sonisphere. you are the sonisphere organisers wet dream. you defend every shitty thing they ever do on the official boards, just like the other mods on there do, therefore your utterly biased opinion counts for very little. you come on here, pick up bits of info, and copy and paste it into the official board when it suits you, and then when it doesn't please you, you go back running there and slag off Neil and this board. The reason I stopped posting on there myself was because anything negative gets stamped on immediately. I lurk about to find info, and occasionally post bits here and there, but is the most weighted message board I have ever been a member of. And I'm guessing the reason you slag this board off on there is because you cant get your own way on here. people on here are punters, not ambassadors, not FMC members, and the members on this board (in the most part) know plenty about festivals, what festival crowds want/like and aren't afraid to tell it like it is.

Edited January 27, 2012 by kipper64

[biffoire]

It does make me laugh when people slag off Efestivals on official forums for not knowing what they talking about but then use this website as a source of good information.

I'm fighting a losing battle on the official forum though I never expected anything different - If I had to put my money on a strong rumour posted on here by efesitvals or something posted on the official Sonisphere/Download/R & L forum then it would be on efestivals everytime because they get it right more often than not and the information is reliable and not just assumptions.

There are lots of strong opinions on here from forum members with open minds and not just fan boys who act like lap dogs to festival organisers, my opinions might be a load of bollocks to some people but at least I have an open mind about festivals.

[eFestivals]

to say nobody knows who adam lambert is, isn't true. They got a massive amount of publicity with him when they did that performance at the MTV awards, and once the tour is actually announced, I imagine there will be a lot of promo

I've no idea when the tour is announced, but I do know there's loads of promo about to hit in about a week.

My take on that is that the promo stuff is about as likely to turn people off as draw some in, but that's my guess at this time.

To suggest that 2 of the biggest rock bands of all time would be poor booking is the stupid part

what makes them good or poor is the tickets they sell, or not.

Being able to sell out the O2 or whatever is a very different thing to selling festival tickets. An example, tho from a different genre, is Kanye failing to shift huge numbers of tickets for the Big Chill last year.

I don't believe that Queen would succeed in capturing much of the same audience that they got for their indoor shows with Paul R.

I can't see either not shifting enough tickets to cause the festival trouble.

I'd have thought that's what Melvin thought when he booked Kanye for the Big Chill last year. It's what every stage programmer thinks they're doing, but they don't get it right every time - there's alway the danger of a person's own tastes screwing up their view of how others will see it.

Either you or I are managing that with our view of Queen. One of us is wrong. It might be me. But I'm the one sat here making these types of judgements on every festival rather than just those that are to my personal tastes, and while I do get these things wrong most of the time I'm in the right ball park.

Good to see you ignored all my valid points though when picking through my post. Sonisphere is a 60,000 capacity festival, it doesn't need to sell 60,000 to be financially successful

True. It would need to sell 55,000+ to be financially successful if everything is about even with other fests - AND if the likes of Queen and GnR aren't demanding stupid fees.

The difference between success and failure is much smaller than you're believing.

and it's half the size of it's competitors at full capacity as it is, so surely those headliners even if they were a little weak at Download or Reading or whatever would still easily fill sonisphere.

you presume far far too much. Melvin thought he'd sell no problems for R/L last year. Instead - from bits and pieces fed back to me - he was so off the mark it resulted in some rather weird paranoia on his part, that people were out to get him and not that he'd got it more wrong than he thought.

Fact is, people don't drop the £200 just for headliners, and a lot of the time most people just want headliners they like, or have an interest in seeing, doesn't have to be someone that they are a fan of. Queen and GNR have a lot of casual fans (as well as die-hard fans) amongst the rock community, so them being on the bill would definitely be a big draw to a lot of casual fans, you know, the people who might not pay to go to one of their own gigs, but would still like to see them, assuming the undercard is strong too.

The headliners aren't everything but they're BY FAR the primary driver for sales.

As I've said already, many of the Queen fans are not the types who'll do fests.

The undercard will of course make a difference one way or another - but that might be seen as off the mark as much as the headliners might be. Until we see it we can't possibly know.

[kipper64]

Now that's a fair rebuttal. As you say maybe I am over-judging the appeal of both Queen and GNR. But I still stand by my statement that they both are big enough to appeal to 55,000+ punters and by suggesting that the UK leg could be cancelled is silly.

If it does turn out to be them I guess we'll see who is right. Interesting about the supposed promo that may be hitting soon, though, that's what I figured would happen. Cheers for the info, I guess you guys aren't completely useless (Note: this is a joke before T8yman has a go at me for hating on efestivals or whatever)

As for everyone else - you can do the whole calling me a fanboy if you like, I don't care, it means nothing to me, at least I'm actually trying to have a discussion based on what I think is the case using information from other festivals, not just having a personal go at any of you, or saying you are wrong because you love one festival more than any other. I disagreed with something efestivals said, and they've responded, that;s how forums should work, surely, not just everyone agreeing with each other that everything is rubbish or good or whatever.

[eFestivals]

How would there be an uproar? TWO OF THEM HAVE PLAYED AND HEADLINED DOWNLOAD BEFORE

true - but it's also true that both of those bands are a lesser draw now than they were then.

And it's also true that they played with other big-draw headliners.

It's the combination of the three (if it is that three of course) that makes me think sales will be down.

You can't because their touring sales are FACTS.

In the case of Queen their touring sales has very little to do with how well they might cause festie tix to sell. That's far from an irrelevance.

I also didn't attack efests, I just said remarks like that one are one of the reasons people on the internet always go on about how efests don't know anything.

PMSL

You mean like when we said who the download headliners were for several years and had the download boards saying "efests don't know anything, it's never them".

And then when we were proven right, they sasid "efest got those names from us".

I wet my pants.

There's a reason why efests is the most successful festivals website in the world.

[eFestivals]

Now that's a fair rebuttal. As you say maybe I am over-judging the appeal of both Queen and GNR. But I still stand by my statement that they both are big enough to appeal to 55,000+ punters and by suggesting that the UK leg could be cancelled is silly.

GnR are a decent draw if the other headliners are right. If Queen & FNM are the other headliners I'm far from sure that GnR will be their normal draw.

I've not said it would be cancelled this year, I've said it *might* (might, not will) cause it to give up on the UK in future years. There's far more competition for an audience in the UK, and that's a part of the basis for that possibility - not purely on these rumoured headliners being perhaps less of a draw than some are thinking.

[kipper64]

I still stand by the fact both have had successful tours in their current form (to some extent though), you're right it doesn't always equal the same ticket sales festival-wise, but I'd surely think it's at least some indication? For Queen there's not much else to go by, and I'd be more than happy to admit they don't have the draw they once had, but they were much bigger than 60,000 capacity venues in their prime, so a downsize from that doesn't mean much. GNR have never really had bad sales for festivals or tours, despite Axl being a dick, so they'd have enough draw to sell quite a few tickets.

Faith No More, new album possibly on the way, haven't done the UK since 2009 (albeit they did the 2 competing festivals then), but they seem quite in demand still anyways, and I'd have imagined they won quite a few fans at Download, wouldn't be the biggest booking ever, but again, much smaller than Download and Reading, so I still think they'd fit fine.

The festival has done well in establishing itself in quite a short time, and has the backing of Euro legs too, so even if it did have a bad year, I can't see them pulling the plug on it straight away, which is why I thought even suggesting that was silly. I mean, even in 2010 when Download basically sold out with over 100,000 people, they still managed to have a good year, did they not? Reading and Leeds sold out that year too I believe, so that proved to me that there is space for all 3 festivals in the UK, and competition doesn't mean much assuming all have strong line ups. I mean 2010 Sonisphere was only really a 2 day festival as well, with 2 real headliners and it did fine despite being far less value in a sense, and it did even better last year now that it's basically a 3 headliner festival.

As I said anyways, I just think those are the 3 most likely headliners, GNR mostly because they seem to be touring, Dublin in May, and a 5 date tour of France in June, and a Polish date on the 30th, but I could be off the mark. We'll find out soon anyway.

Edited January 27, 2012 by kipper64

[t8yman]

How would there be an uproar? TWO OF THEM HAVE PLAYED AND HEADLINED DOWNLOAD BEFORE

What info have I ever picked up from here to post over there? If I recall most of the stuff I post on here, rumour wise, is either from myself or from someone over on the official boards, like the Queen rumours, which are a month old.

I never said my opinion was right either, I just said to think there aren't 60,000 people (or enough for the festival to be somewhat successful which isn't completely selling out) out there that want to see Queen and Gnr and Faith No More is incredibly stupid, because queen and G n R in particular have quite recently sold out massive tours in their current forms, please tell me how exactly that's me being a fan boy or being wrong? You can't because their touring sales are FACTS. That's not me being a fanboy at all, it has nothing to do with Sonisphere, we're talking about the appeal and draw of the bands on their own, as it stands, and as it stands, both have proven they can sell tickets.

I also didn't attack efests, I just said remarks like that one are one of the reasons people on the internet always go on about how efests don't know anything. Feedback, you know, I'm sure he can take it, and if he thinks I'm wrong, then he can tell me himself, as he has, I'm sure they don't need you to do it for them

But of course, you have no real substance for your side of this argument, so instead you jump to the age related remarks, as well as the "Sonisphere fanboy" remarks, which doesn't make you right about anything. Grow up.

[jump]

A vid of Adam Lambert/X Factor Boy has popped up hinting at Queen dates this year...

http://www.examiner.com/celebrity-headlines-in-national/adam-lambert-hints-performance-with-queen-possible-2012-video

"I actually think this year there will be some more Queen stuff," said Adam Lambert during a Yahoo overview of his upcoming album Trespass. "I would just be honored to sing with them again.”

Pressed on when the entertainer will be on the stage again with the famous band and Lambert wasn’t able to dish on any other details as the band has requested, like in the previous performance, the when and where is kept secret. “Again, I am not allowed to tell,” said Adam Lambert

[eFestivals]

Neil, you are still a c**t.

I try my hardest. I'm glad to see it's still working.

[eFestivals]

“Again, I am not allowed to tell,” said Adam Lambert

I'm sure he'll be blabbing like a supergrass next week.