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Every summer since 2013, a small city has been trucked into London's Hyde Park, assembled into stages, mini restaurants, viewing areas and more for a series of concerts presenting dozens of world-class artists for an average of 55,000 people a night across a week and a half, and then trucked back out.
This year, between June 29 and July 14, the British Summer Time (BST) Hyde Park Festival staged nine multi-artist evenings of music, with headliners SZA, Stevie Nicks -- who was joined by Harry Styles -- Kylie Minogue, Morgan Wallen, Robbie Williams, Andrea Bocelli, Shania Twain, Stray Kids and Kings of Leon. Over the years the series has literally hosted the world's biggest artists: the Rolling Stones -- who wrote the book on Hyde Park concerts when their 1969 one drew some an estimated quarter-million people -- Taylor Swift, Celine Dion, Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand, Adele, Neil Young, Blur, Pearl Jam, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Guns N' Roses, the Who, Billy Joel, Blackpink and loads more.
The giant festival grounds, which sprawl across 60 acres in the park, resemble a movie set -- the mini restaurants are decorated in the style of the food they offer, reaching two or even three stories tall; there are areas to relax; a merry-go-round, and a giant viewing stand to the left of the stage. The lawn seating areas are divided by ticket price, increasing as one gets closer to the massive stage, which, like Coachella, has enormous video screens on either side. When artists aren't playing, the screens show a video of a woodsy area that blends in with the park's treeline.
It's as if a slightly smaller Coachella, Glastonbury or Bonnaroo festival was just plunked into the middle of the park that has kept central London sane since King Charles I opened it to the public in 1637. It is no small feat of engineering, let alone entertainment booking: All of the stages and buildings must be trucked into the park through one of the most densely crowded urban areas in the world, assembled by cranes, host nine nights of concerts, and then dissembled and trucked back out, all within six weeks -- and it must be done very cautiously and with an eye toward sustainability, with respect for one of Europe's greatest urban parks.
The series is a collaboration between AEG Presents and the Royal Parks department, and at the center of it all is Jim King, CEO of AEG Europe's festival division and a 16-year veteran of the company with decades of experience -- not just at AEG, where he oversees events from London's All Points East to Rock en Seine in Paris and the recently launched Forwards Festival in Bristol; earlier in his career he held senior posts at Cream (famed for its giant Creamfields dance-music festivals in the early '00s) and his own LoudSound company.
Despite a rainy evening for Bocelli, "On every level, I think this year is one of the best that we've ever done, with some amazing surprises as well," King says, "Which is what you want from Hyde Park. These aren't regular nights, you know -- these are designed to be special events in one of the world's most beautiful sites. We always say that on a summer's evening in Hyde Park, magical things can happen."
AEG Presents CEO Jay Marciano says, "BST really has grown into a global destination these last few years. It's magical to walk over to the site every summer and know you're in the middle of one of the greatest cities on earth, while the festival itself feels like a bubble inside the park."
Inspired by legendary Hyde Park concerts such as the Stones and Blind Faith in 1969, Queen (which drew between 150,000 -200,000 people) in 1976, Elton John, Blur and others, King and Marciano oversaw the launch of the first BST Festival in 2013. They began with a bang: the Stones, performing their first concert in the park since the legendary 1969 show. Even after the blockbuster shows of the last 11 years, King speaks of that one with a special pride.
"One of the big elements that we wanted was for the whole of the event site to become part of the performance -- not just what was going on onstage. Jay and I had a meeting with Patrick Woodruff, who's the Stones' creative director and lighting designer, and I was explaining to him, 'All the buildings are lighted, every single surface that you see is fully controllable by LED [lighting], you can actually light the entire field in the park.' I was getting just a bit carried away with it and I said, 'So when the Stones play "Sympathy for the Devil"'... and he finished the sentence and said, 'We can make the whole place go red.' 'Yeah, exactly like that!' I said.
"The Stones confirmed, and when 'Sympathy for the Devil' started, red flares went off and the stage was lit in red light, but when [Jagger] started singing, the whole of the site went red. That was a real magical moment for me because not only was it the first weekend, but also because the execution of that vision was so perfectly done by Patrick and the Stones' production team. It was like, 'Yes! It works!'"
Of course, it doesn't always run so smoothly. King says that Andrea Bocelli's performance this year, which featured an orchestra, choir and a partially seated audience (most concerts are primarily GA) was already the most logistically challenging one the team has encountered to date -- even before the rainstorm hit.
"It was a challenge just for the sheer number of people onstage and the different dynamics that need to be managed around those different performers," he says. "There's the maestro himself, along with a large number of special guests who joined him throughout his performance, as well as the artists playing before him. And then, within the performance space, there was one of the largest outdoor orchestras and choir ensembles you'll ever see, so you're getting nearly a hundred people on stage, all of them top musicians and performers. So within any environment, that's always going to be a great challenge -- and when you're doing it outdoors, especially with classical instruments, the complexity amplifies even further.
"Also, the fact that we chose to put in 11,000 seats and made it a split between allocated seating as well as lawn tickets behind it," he continues, "and getting those seats in overnight and then removing them again for Robbie Williams' performance the next day. It was certainly one of the hardest ones we put together, but it was very well planned and very well executed with his team, and with our own team all doing a great job pulling it all together."
As for production, King points to Taylor Swift's performance in 2015, which was elaborate even then, as "one of the more complex" the team has produced.
"She brought in her full production, complete with rotating [platforms] and a large number of stages, lifts and hidden reveals, which we had to build into the body of the stage -- all these are things you wouldn't normally accommodate on a festival stage. But the site is designed for us to be able to accommodate [major productions], and we actually encourage people to bring the biggest production they can muster -- we want the fans to be able to see the most amazing show that they possibly can. We're never saying no."
So how is that done in a matter of days? Most of the structures are "essentially shipping containers," he explains, "and each of them almost sits like a Lego brick, a building block, and can be moved in, one by one, on the backs of a series of trucks, and a crane can just lift and place them in order, like a jigsaw or a Lego set, so that they slowly build up into three or four levels, and can literally be clipped together in a very short period of time -- and then they can be broken down in a matter of days."
Of course, getting those massive container-like structures into central London is another epic task. "We have to keep our vehicle movements on a schedule that works for park users and for and city residents -- we're very mindful of that," he says. Most of the movement occurs late at night, and via "various different access routes, which allow us to minimize that disruption. We also want to make it easy for the contractors and the vendors, you know, to be able to get in and get away. Plus, there are a lot of areas in the park that you don't see, where we have large holding areas for trailers and other equipment."
And it takes a village -- the staff isn't even certain how many people in total but it may exceed a thousand, and that's another fine detail that King focuses on intently. While he's worked with much of the core team for "20 or 25 years," much of the event staff is only working on the site for a matter of days and needs to learn a lot of information quickly.
"I think the first [staff] person that any fan speaks to at any event is the most important one," he says. "Because if they ask a question and the [staffer] says 'I don't know' and just walks away, or points somewhere else, we've kind of already lost. We know fans will have questions, so we want every [staffer] who's asked where the bathrooms are or where they can do X or Y, or Z, to know that information. And at the same time, we have to be mindful of the fact that most people who work at major events, it's a part time job. So we work hard to ensure that the [short-term] staff can say 'OK, I understand how this works,' and be a great advocate for us, so that when someone asks a question, they feel empowered and have the confidence to say 'It's this' or 'It's over there' or "This is what happens,' and then project that confidence back into the fans."
Like any mass gathering of humans, festivals are complex entities where so much can go wrong. Yet for all its size and complexity, BST is easily one of the most elaborate and smooth-running events of its kind in the world -- and one of the most thoughtful as well as thought-out.
"We wanted to create different type of festival," King says, "so that when people come through those big entrance archways, they say 'Wow, I've never seen anything like this.'"
