Branded In Rock

This year’s gathering on the southern Baltic coast at Solvesborg June 4-7 sold out its 33,000 capacity for the eighth year in succession.

That was just within a few days of Live Nation’s Stockholm Fields breaking the country’s festival attendance record by pulling 51,863 to see heavy metal favourites Metallica.

At the end of the month in Norrköping, German promoter FKP Scorpio has Iron Maiden headlining one of three days of its Bravalla Festival. Last year Persson admitted to being a little worried about “strong competition and a weak market,” but needn’t have bothered as his festival still sold out.

On that occasion, apart from headline shows from Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Iron Maiden, and Bon Jovi, Bravalla had acts that would appeal to a rock crowd in the likes of Rammstein and Green Day.

“At the moment it appears as if the festival is bigger than the artists that appear on it, which makes it a very special brand,” Persson explained. He said rock fans are confident they’ll get four days of the sort of music they like, regardless of the particular names on the bill. That view is supported by the fact that people from 52 countries were at Sweden Rock, many of them visiting for at least the third, fourth, fifth or sixth time.

The only glitch at this year’s event was the industrial action from Swedish train drives, which meant festivalgoers were deposited about 20 miles away at Bromölla.

The festival used buses to ferry them in from there. Acts helping to keep Sweden Rock’s name written in stone included Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, Volbeat, Rob Zombie, Billy Idol, Ted Nugent, W.AS.P., Joe Bonamassa, and Within Temptation.