Download festival 2012, Castle Donington

It was June 1995 and the Ugly Kid Joe singer had been climbing the rigging, skidding around on the wet stage and generally being a bit lairy in front of 20-odd thousand people at Gateshead International Stadium. Then he dropped his breeks... and my memory shuts down after that.

Seventeen years later - yesterday, in fact – he was back on British soil with UKJ for Download 2012, for which part of the line-up had a distinct 90s retro feel with Soundgarden, Sebastian Bach, Little Angels, Choirboys, Terrorvision, Gun and Europe among the 150-or-so bands on offer.

The half-hour set was exactly what we ageing music fans would have expected, with most of the songs hailing from the 1992 hit album America’s Least Wanted, (Neighbor, Cat’s in the Cradle and Everything About You being among them), and Crane was just as odd and over-confident as last time I saw him, albeit a little more subdued by age. This was obvious by his shorts staying exactly where they were meant to be.

The word ‘shorts’ is not one I would have expected to use in this review because the weather on the run-up to the 10th anniversary event at Castle Donington was the one thing that threatened to overshadow everything. Biblical rain for around 48 hours beforehand had completely waterlogged the huge site, at the Donington Park race circuit, and showers during Friday – the official first day – only made things worse.

The mud situation had become so bad that the start was delayed by a couple of hours as workmen scurried around laying beds of thick hay across the worst areas, and even when the gates did open half of the hill in front of the second stage was cordoned off for more work to take place. But the impact of 100,000 people tramping through fields can’t be delayed forever and within hours the site was a quagmire of epic proportions. And I’m not just talking about little areas here and there that make for good TV footage – the whole site was under six inches of thick wellie-threatening mud and traipsing around was a hell of a struggle. The campsites were just the same.

So it’s a shame that the headline act for Download 2012 was Mother Nature herself, who forced rescheduling and general chaos, because the organisers had managed to pull another great show out of the bag with The Prodigy, Metallica and Black Sabbath filling the main stage headline spots over the three days.

The man behind the bookings, Andy Copping, makes a big thing of “something for everyone” and he’s right. If you’re a rock/metal music fan it’s impossible not to want to see someone at Download, no matter what strain of the genre you’re into – thrashy, trashy, punky, melodic, hardcore, gothic... although the addition of Radio 1 sweethearts Chase & Status was a bit puzzling to me, I have to admit.

Which brings me to a brief Twitter conversation I had with Mr Copping in December when it was announced that Metallica were to perform the Black Album in its entirety as Saturday headliners. It went like this:

@murraykelsoWN: Not a criticism, Andy, but do you sometimes think Metallica headline UK fests too often? They're awesome, but too much gets samey.
@Maverick_AC: I think that Metallica doing The Black Album in full is the coup of the Century! It will be epic.
@murraykelsoWN: I agree it'll be a great show, but I'm still left thinking "again?". Too much of a good thing and all that...
@Maverick_AC: There'll be something else to watch as an alternative, you don't have to watch Metallica.

And that was true, of course, but nevertheless Metallica have appeared at Download three times now and have headlined the similar UK Sonisphere event another couple of times in recent years. I’m wondering if people are beginning to be a bit Metallica’d-out because I know I am, despite the consistent brilliance of their live shows. I say this because once again, despite the cameras showing impressive crowds stretching all the way to the back of the arena on Saturday, there was a lot of room between people near the front where I was – and I couldn’t imagine that happening, say, six or seven years ago.

Nevertheless the 20-song set was predictably energetic and polished but I don’t share Mr Copping’s views about the “coup of the century” being an airing of the Black Album (they did it in reverse, presumably to close with Enter Sandman). For many fans, including myself, that was the sea change in the band’s progression and marked their shift from raw, energetic music to over-produced commercialism courtesy of Bob Rock. Not their best by a long chalk. Now, when the band surprised everyone by playing the Master of Puppets album in full in 2006... that was a coup!

My wife tells me that Friday’s headliners The Prodigy were also brilliant. Having seen them a couple of times before I know they put on a spectacular, powerful show although I’m not really in to the band’s music as such, but nevertheless I hung around to keep the missus company and was ready for a good gig. That was until a full pint cup of very warm ‘recycled’ beer arced gracefully through the air in slo-mo and walloped me full in the hip, drenching my leg down to my socks. So I went back to the tent alone, found the baby wipes, got changed, and sulked for a bit.

As for the Sunday headliners, Black Sabbath, all I can say is that Rise Against, headlining the second stage at the same time, were very good. I just find Ozzy and pals far too dreary and they were before my time, so Sabbath was never a band I paid much heed to. Sorry and that, but just because a band is romanticised and regarded ‘legendary’ it doesn’t mean everyone has to like them. I don’t even like The Beatles, The Stones or Led Zep all that much. What can you do?

Rise Against were strong finishers to the festival’s second stage though, although the crowd was little more than half that of Ugly Kid Joe and not a patch on Soundgarden’s. They had tough competition against Black Sabbath however, and as the ear-bursting main stage sound bled across the second stage Rise Against’s audience thinned more and more. It was such a shame.

Anyway, I could spend the rest of this haphazard look-back giving the same pearls of ill-informed, subjective opinion about bands that other people do, but I won’t.

Instead I’ll do it this way (in no particular order and not including every band I saw):

• Soil – 7/10
• The Quireboys – 8/10
• Corey Taylor – 9/10 (the tent was way too small for the crowd)
• Shinedown – 7/10 (great voice but very MOR)
• Rise Against – 8/10
• Halestorm – 5/10 (it’s very rare that I ‘get’ female rock singers)
• Terrorvision – 6/10
• Soundgarden – 9/10 (despite the pointless, meandering, feedback-driven close)
• Biffy Clyro – 8/10 (superb guitars)
• Fear Factory – 7/10

I’ve said this before too, but festivals are about so much more than the music. They’re about beer, new mates, old mates, beer, messing around, sleeping, shouting, screaming, beer, The Toilets of Doom and having stuff nicked out of your tent (our neighbours had £200 tea-leafed).

The music, in some respects, is just the excuse because festivals are exactly what you make of them. And once again, Download was great. And the sun came out eventually yesterday, which was nice.