The disaster that was Fyre Festival has been well acknowledged at this stage, but what viewers didn’t see on the widely-successful Netflix and Hulu documentaries was just how close certain artists came to being caught up in the on-the-ground chaos.
Speaking with The Music ahead of his keynote at BIGSOUND next month, Fyre Festival event producer Andy King said that headliners Blink-182 and Lil Yachty “were all literally 10 minutes away in an airplane in Nassau”.
“They could have flown in, started playing on that stage,” King said.
“They would have served hamburgers and hotdogs and tequila on the beach. And kids would have been in their bikinis and bathing suits and in and out of the water. Part of it would have worked.
“As you remember from the documentary, my wish to Billy when I first got there six weeks prior was, change the messaging: let all the kids know there are no luxury villas and no superyachts, they're staying in tents.
“We would have lost 10% of the population. Or maybe 20. But everybody else would have come and we could have managed their expectations.”
Speaking with NME in April of this year, Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus said the outcome of the 2017 event was "shocking but not entirely surprising” and they “had indications kind of early on that there were problems”.
"Our production crew was having problems getting even the most basic of answers as to staging, power and things that you would normally have well in advance of the show,” he said.
BIGSOUND 2019 takes place in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley from 3 - 6 September. Tickets for this year's conference and festival are on sale now via Oztix, head to the BIGSOUND website for all the info.
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