Ending a week of speculation (or confirming the inevitable, if you prefer), Soundwave promoter AJ Maddah has cancelled the Harvest Festival — and bought into Big Day Out.
Facing a loss of $5.5 million, Maddah will now split the major acts' appearances into individual tours that Harvest ticket holders will get the first shot at.
Harvest's cancellation was quickly overshadowed, however, by rumours that Maddah had bought out founder Ken West's 49 per cent stake in Big Day Out (West has been running the event with US promoters C3 Presents since his 2011 split with Viv Lees).
"As usual, the rumours are a bit exaggerated and not quite as sensational," Maddah said, without denying that he had bought some stake in BDO.
When asked by triple j for his thoughts on this turn of events, Viv Lees pulled no punches. "I'm a little dismayed that AJ has come into the picture," he said. "When I see the amount of work that has gone into building up the event over a 22 year period, and then to see [Maddah] come in to take it over really does alarm me. He plays fast and loose and he's quite an odious character. This event has been so instrumental to the careers of many Australian artists, and AJ's got no commitment to that."
Lees' comments led to this tweet from Big Day Out CEO Adam Zammit: "AJ Maddah was basically Viv Lee's only source of artist insight or music knowledge for a decade... why do the old always hate the young?"
You'll want to watch this one closely.
