‘It’s A Story Of A Lifetime, A Beautiful Dream Come True’: Herman Schueremans On 50 Years Of Rock Werchter

When you’re talking festivals, it doesn’t get much better than Rock Werchter, which celebrates its 50th anniversary at Werchter’s Festivalpark in Belgium, July 3-6.

From the first edition in 1975, which was advertized as a T-Dansant, the original name for Sunday afternoon dance parties in Belgium, the event has grown into a 88,000-capacity musical and culinary extravaganza that regularly brings together the world’s biggest and best acts across four stages, embedded in the beautiful nature of Leuven.

From sound to lights to hospitality, the production at Rock Werchter is some of the finest you’ll find in all of Europe. It’s one of the few festivals, where artists don’t have to compromise on their stadium production, which is why even the great Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band – not known for their extensive festival runs – has performed at the Festivalpark multiple times. Same goes for other huge acts, including REM, Foo Fighters, or Metallica.

The audience, crews, and partner organizations have grown into one big family along with the festival, which has become a firm part of Belgium’s cultural heritage. In this extensive interview, Rock Werchter founder Herman Schueremans explains the magic behind the one and only Rock Werchter, what makes him and his team “passionate freaks, not just in though, but in practice,” and why he never once considered throwing in the towel.

Pollstar: 50 years of Rock Werchter. What goes through your mind when you contemplate this remarkable number?
Herman Schueremans: What a roller coaster! Growing from a one-day, 1,000-capacity event organized by a couple of naive youngsters to a four day festival with 88,000 visitors a day for every year in the last 20 years; growing from a local event to an international event, from setting up a little party to organizing and building a city from scratch, a city of 100,000 people, if you count all who work here, the suppliers, the social organizations, etc.

We were youngsters who had a dream. Nowadays, we still have a dream, and a hell of a lot of passion, but we organize a city, so it’s a hell of a responsibility to make sure artists, their teams, and our visitors – I call them my kings and queens – are all happy and keep coming.

Allow me to say, it’s a story of a lifetime. It’s a beautiful dream come true: setting it up every year, making it a challenge, trying to do better every year in the interest of artists, their teams and the audience.

I always compare it to artists themselves: an artist is only as good as their last show. We, as a festival organization, are also only as good as our last show. It’s nice to be recognized all over the world, win prizes, etc. But once you are at the top level, it’s difficult to remain at that top level. That exactly is our challenge. It’s our passion, a passion of a whole team, and we go for it. We’re not just promoters who started a festival when the live market became the new El Dorado. No, no, we started 50 years ago. It’s like planting a tree: you have to plant it in good soil, water it, tailor it, and every year it’ll grow a bit. That’s how you eventually get a really big oak. It’s possibly the difference between what Americans call a brand, and something like Rock Werchter, which is more than just a strong brand: it’s cultural heritage.

What are some aspects that make Rock Werchter stand out from the rest?
We anticipate and plan ahead, we’re never looking for shortcuts. We did, right at the beginning, paid the price, and learned from our mistakes. Then we started planning ahead.

Moving from a one-day event to a multiple-days event, but one where the festivalgoer can still see the forest for all its trees, where they can enjoy top artists in top conditions, and still have time to discover something new, was a big move. I believe in multiple-stage festivals, but I think it’s so important to make a pre-selection, and make sure people still have time to discover acts.
To this day, we’ve kept it to four stages, the 63,000-capacity main stage, the 20,000-capacity Barn, the 10,000-capacity Klub C, and a stage dedicated to new acts.

Secondly, providing state-of-the-art production at all stages. When you play your own show at Rock Werchter, there’s no compromise. Stadium acts can do their own shows under top conditions on the main stage. Enabling that was the main reason Hedwig de Meyer and I started Stageco a long time ago. Top level artist, like Metallica, Talking Heads, Simple Minds – you name them – they love coming back.

Our 10,000 capacity Klub C marquee, and our 20,000-capacity barn are fully darkened, there are no pillars, the bleachers are arranged in the form of a U, which means that everybody can see, but it also gives you the best acoustics.

Another item is the Belgian and Dutch audience: they are real music lovers, and they love enjoying music in top conditions. Artists feel that. Artists feel the feedback, the interaction between them and the audience, that’s magic.

So, Rock Werchter is about tight organization, everything rolls smoothly, but it’s all done in the interest of the interaction between artists and the people. That’s where the nuance is, where you distinguish yourself from the countless other festivals out there. For example, when crews arrive in the middle of the night, there are warm showers, towels; people drink out of proper glasses, and eat with proper cutlery. It’s a bit like coming home, I’m just repeating what artists have said.

Anymore guiding principles that have allowed your team to take Rock Werchter to where it is today?
You’re only as good as your last show, you have to reinvent your festival. In the past, it was every 10 years, then it was every five years. I think nowadays, it’s every two to three years. Don’t ever think you’ve found the magic key. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, the wheel was invented a hell of a long time ago, but keep on fine tuning.

Music is very alive, something that changes. And it’s driven by young artists, and by an audience that keeps changing. Music is one of the rare items where you still find real freedom, and you should stimulate that. Festivals can help break acts. Of course, the act has to be good, but giving them the right conditions will definitely help.

In a society where people don’t communicate with each other anymore, where we’re sat in front of computers, or browsing through Tiktok, it’s important to remember: life is much more than that.
And Rock Werchter is one of those places, where people can gather for four to six days, and share a unique and real experience. I’ve been using this slogan for a long time, but it’s true: music unites. Music brings people together, where religions and politics, in a lot of cases, unfortunately, divide.

Has there ever been a point when you thought about throwing in the towel, ending the event for good?
Never. I’ll give you two examples: In 2016, we had a lot of rain. The key was to anticipate. We began planning on how to deal with the rain two months in advance, and the festival took place, while a lot of festivals in other countries had to be canceled that year. The same applied last year, 2024, when it basically rained for nine months straight since October the year before. The groundwater level was high, but we began pumping three months in advance, we drained the site of water with the help of huge industrial machines, we brought multiple tons of sand onto the site. Guests still brought their Wellies, but they stayed dry and clean for the most part.

Making sure a festival can happen under such conditions, offering 88,000 a top experience requires a fantastic team. How do you say in English? Kudos? Kudos to my Rock Werchter team, to Yo Van Saet, our Werchter festival director, and Walter D’Haese, our overall production manager, and their teams.

It’s all about anticipation, and it will be even more about anticipation going forward. For example, we’ve learned that the fees keep on going up. I can understand that, bands have big productions, their costs are up as well. But production costs have outgrown the artist budget. 40 years ago, let’s say, the main budget was the artist’s, the rest was secondary. Nowadays, production costs of a festival at the level of Rock Werchter are more than double the artist fees, and the artist fees went up substantially. Still those production costs, which you have to spend to make it to the top division, and create a state-of-the-art experience, go up even more. But setting up a festival is in our DNA. When we couldn’t find the right stages, we created Stageco; when we couldn’t find the right lights and PA, we created EML, which is now part of PRG; the Power Shop [dedicated to mobile and temporary, environmentally-friendly power supply] grew out of rock Werchter. We are passionate freaks, not just in thought, but also in practice.

You’ve been environmentally conscious for a long time.
A hell of long time. We have a deal with the Belgium railways and with the bus system: Wherever you step on the train in Belgium to get to the festival, it’s free. We encourage people to leave their cars in the surrounding villages, and do the rest of the journey by bike or public transport. The intention has always been to organize the inflow and outflow of the festival better, but also to show that we can do better as society. Think about all the people, who have to drive into cities for work, losing too much time in their lives sitting in traffic jams every morning and evening. We’ve been encouraging guests to come by bicycle since 10, 12 years. We guarantee proper, controlled bicycle parking, and over 20,000 people make use of that. It’s become part of the DNA of the festival. We are not hippies, but perhaps we are post hippies.

Werchter is a little village. When we started with 1,000 people, we straight away involved all the social organizations, the boy scouts, the local harmony, the local football club, the local workers club, they all grew up with it. They don’t see it as a danger. I once compared Werchter to a little society of farmers, like the Amish in Philadelphia, but with alcohol.

How much did Clear Channel coming on board in 2001, and Live Nation in 2005, change your game?
They always let me be free, and allowed us to be creative, and to handle business as we saw fit. The festival’s in our DNA. The best way to explain why not only me, but the whole team is still here, is because, one, we are allowed to do what we want, and, two, it’s our baby, and we handle it with lots of care, with passion and with love. We are all experienced enough to get that bill together every year, it’s our life’s mission.

Does the current stadium boom affect your business?
We already had a production bigger than what bands bring into stadiums 30 years ago. Bands have always been able to do their own show on Rock Werchter’s stages. It’s the key reason why acts during their stadium tour still play Rock Werchter, you have proof of that almost every year.

Did you have to increase ticket prices in recent years?
It’s something you don’t want to do, but have to do. The best way of explaining it to people, who don’t come to festivals, is by saying, ‘look, 50 years ago we organized a little party for 1,000 people – not all that well organized, let’s be honest. Now, we organize a city, which is a big difference. It has to be organized, and it has to be profitable’. The people, who know what we are doing, our dedicated audience, the people that come back every year because we take care of them, they know they get a lot of value for their money, from the bouquet of bands to the production, which includes top toilets, top stages, and top sound. If you’re a music lover, it’s like Christmas has come early.

What comes to mind when you think about what’s changed since the beginnings of Rock Werchter?
You have lots of different generations coming. Maybe the kids come for four or six days, and camp, and the parents or the uncles and aunties only come for one or two days, and they’ll bring fresh underwear or whatever is needed for the kids. Music, 50 years ago, was a generational conflict. Nowadays, it’s something that helps different generations speak to each other.

It’s always so surprising to me, how young people can sing every song of their heroes. We weren’t able to do that, because our English wasn’t that good. Today I see and hear young people sing songs of artists that are 40, 50 or even 60 years older than them. It’s amazing. It’s a joy every year. Rock Werchter is a gathering of people, who come to enjoy music and have a good time. You can’t imagine the number of people who found their partner at Rock Werchter over the years. People regularly come up to me and say, ‘we met at Rock Werchter, and now we have three kids, and are happily married’. It’s lovely.

Are there artists you’d still like to see performing at Rock Werchter?
Well, there was one, where I was too late, and that’s Jimi Hendrix. I’m a guitar music lover, so he’s one I feel we really missed out on. But there’s so much talent around, it’s unique. And then you have people say, ‘there aren’t enough headliners’. It’s not true. We have to create our own headliners. It’s not something that falls out of the sky, it’s something you build as a promoter. We have the tools to facilitate that. A lot of acts discovered what their bigger potential was for the first time at Rock Werchter, including bands like U2 or Simple Minds. It was here that they said, ‘we are much stronger than we thought we were. We appeal to many more people than we thought we did’.

A festival is a place where you can find a new audience. Otherwise, if you only play your own shows, in the end, you’re only preaching to the choir. If you cannot perform your show at a festival properly because of limitations of production, then perhaps you’re wasting your time. But if you can perform in a top environment, under top conditions, in front of a big audience, it’s a great opportunity to grow.

In Belgium, you go from Ancienne Belgique, which is 2,000 capacity, to Forest National, which is 8,000-cap, to Sportpaleis, which is 16,000. We helped build a lot of careers, and me and my team are very, very proud of that, and we get a lot of recognition for that. It’s the artist, who has to do it, but we have to facilitate them. We’re not promoters that run around artists like groupies. We are here to facilitate.

What was your role at the first edition of Rock Werchter?
I did the booking of all the acts, and I spoke to the media and made promo.

What does your day-to-day look like today?
I’m overlooking things, giving chances to teams, trying to inspire them, but also learn from them. I can learn a lot from young people by listening to them. Nowadays, when I go to the festival, I can enjoy music on the first day, and it gets less and less as the days progress. I still don’t sleep a lot, and I’m there in case some corrections have to be made together with the team. It’s a bit like a farmer, whose fields are healthy and producing plenty of crops. It gives you a lot of satisfaction and motivation.

Is there one aspect that hasn’t changed since the first Rock Werchter 50 years ago?
The connection with the local village, the connection with the local people, the connection with the local social organizations. That didn’t change. The scope became much bigger, but that connection is still there. Rock Werchter is not a festival that lands somewhere, and imposes things on a society. It grew organically with the people in the area, in the village, and the villages around.

Is there anything else you’d like to get off your chest about 50 Years of Rock Werchter?
It was a fantastic and beautiful journey. We love setting it up. It’s anarchy, but it’s well-structured anarchy. There’s just one unfortunate thing, which is that time flies even faster when you love doing something. But that’s a luxury problem, I can think of a lot more boring jobs than this one.

Head to rockwerchter.be/en/history to see every lineup for every Rock Werchter edition in its 50-year history.

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