Fuji Rock to mark 20 years as Asia’s premier music festival
After headlining the debacle that was the debut event, Red Hot Chili Peppers will join Sigur Ros and Beck on anniversary line-up at the region’s biggest music event
Fuji Rock couldn’t have got off to a worse start. “I remember being backstage in 1997 and saw [Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bass player] Flea bouncing up and down, screaming into the horizontal rain: ‘This is f***ing insane!’” recalls Hong Kong-based Australian Silas Hickey.
However, not long after the Chili Peppers – the headliners of the debut Fuji Rock – took to the stage, the plug was pulled on the festival as a typhoon raged through the site near Mount Fuji, marking a dramatic and inauspicious ending for the inaugural event. “It obviously had great potential and got people super-excited, but ultimately people were wandering around in waist-high mud, getting electric shocks from the equipment. I even remember hearing that hypothermia was a concern,” adds Hickey.
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Two decades later, this July, the Chili Peppers are again headlining but in dramatically different surroundings. The three-day festival kept the name but in 1999 was moved to Naeba, a ski resort in the stunningly beautiful alpine region of Niigata Prefecture, where it has remained since.
Someone else who was there in 1997 was former Boomtown Rats keyboard player Johnnie “Fingers” Moylett, who has been working with the organiser, Smash Japan, since the festival’s beginnings. He admits that the cancellation of the second day in 1997 was his lowest point, but says Fuji has come a long way since those dark days.
“We have grown up – or should I say, have found our own identity,” he says. “Although we put on the festival, select the artists, set the themes and run it the best we can, there’s a large audience that comes back year after year for the spirit of the festival itself.”
In the years in between, Fuji has made a name for itself as the Glastonbury of Asia. In fact, Masahiro Hidaka, president and founder of Smash, modelled the event on the UK festival and was a frequent visitor. With Fuji having attracted every major name in music, from Radiohead to the Pixies – and pulling crowds in excess of 100,000 – it’s easy to see why. Great bands, great scenery, great food and orderly toilet queues – it’s Glastonbury but without the grime and the squelch.