Gurten’s New Attendance Record

This year’s event, which is on a mountainside overlooking the Swiss capital of Berne, sold out its 20,000 capacity for three of the four days. It did 18,000 on the other day. That’s 2,000 up on last year’s previous record-breaking crowd of 76,000.

The festival also benefited from beautiful weather, apart from when a flash storm that interrupted Placebo for 30 minutes. Once their instruments and production had dried, the London-based rock act was ready to carry on.

The question at this year’s Gurten was whether the acts were entertaining the audience or if it was the other way around.

“This audience at Gurten is unbelievable. We’ve never experienced, that the audience is entertaining us and not us entertaining them. We want to come back next year,” was Franz Ferdinand’s opinion.

Other acts went online to say what a fantastic welcome they’d received in Berne.

Other acts being entertained by the Gurten crowd included The Prodigy, Biffy Clyro, Cypress Hill, The Kooks, Kodaline, Massive Attack, Sportfreunde Stiller, and Jake Bugg.