Six In A Row For Pinkpop

Pinkpop sold out for the sixth year in succession but festival chief Jan Smeets wasn’t really in the mood for celebrating after breaking his wrist in a motorcycle accident.

More than 60,000 per day turned up at Landgraaf, The Netherlands, and Smeets claims it was one of the best editions of Pinkpop, which is in the Guinness Book Of Records for being the world’s oldest annual pop festival.

“The weather was good, the bands were great and so was the atmosphere,” Smeets told Pollstar. “I have emails from bands saying what a great event it was, although I have to say they had a lot to do with it.”

It still turned out to be a painful weekend for him after he’d been held up in traffic and was in the process of switching lanes.

“I put my arm against a delivery truck that had stopped in front of me and suddenly it pulled away,” he explained, describing how the bike toppled over and left him face-down in the ground.

The acts at Pinkpop June 11-13 included Foo Fighters, Coldplay, Kings Of Leon, The Gaslight Anthem, White Lies, Elbow, Kaiser Chiefs, Volbeat, and Simple Plan.