– It is sad. Sadly. Too bad.
the 68-year-old Søren Højberg looks thoughtfully out of the window. After 28 years cracked the Esbjerg Rock Festival in the last week. It was the well-known impresarios baby, which died. Højberg was the man who breathed new life into the festival.
Up to half a million visitors since the start rocket and rolled with the many well-known names, as Søren Højberg and friends through the years, brought to Esbjerg.
– It is over now. I hope that others will take over and try. I would like to help. I think Esbjerg will be poorer without a rock-festival. But it is not me who starts up again, says Søren Højberg to Ekstra Bladet.
A half million was missing in the box, since the result after this year’s festival was made up.
See also: Danish festival bankruptcy: Hit by ’the perfect storm’
Søren Højberg is not a second in doubt, that the Esbjerg Rock Festival will not be the last major festival in Denmark, which soon must turn off the stage lights and amplifiers.
– We are going to see very many festivals close in the course of the next five years. It has been really difficult to operate a financially sound business. There are too many festivals for the moment. They suck the power out of each other. I will not sit here and put the name of who survives and who dies. But think that right now we are in an economic boom. And yet it is difficult to get the economy to hang together. When the hallway ends, then it goes seriously wrong, says Søren Højberg.
Søren Højberg, who for many years operated a of the country’s largest booking agencies, points to several factors, which will hit the festival organizers hard in the coming years.
– Much of what today is called for the festival, after all, is just an old-fashioned town festival. Many of the festivals run by well-meaning people, just not professional enough. In addition, the really good artists have been significantly more expensive than when we started the Esbjerg Rock Festival.
the Audience requires more and more of both artists and organizers. Even the food should be better. In the good old days it was enough with a pizza, some sausages and a lot of håndbajere. And so was that otherwise partied through. It is not enough in the day, explains Sørensen Højberg.
Impresarioen is also concerned that the young people will continue to take on the festival in the same style as their parents have done for decades.
– The young people have an awful lot right now. It is pouring in with offers for them. They are concerned about what is happening on the web. Many of them care not at all for music in the same way, as we others did. The older ones are still on the festivals. It is no obstacle, the age of 60 years.
But what happens with the live music, when this generation of the audience die? And what happens when the big names – the old artists in the door. It is the especially those that draw people to. I am sincerely worried, says Søren Højberg.
See also: Festival shuts off the music after 28 years
The 68-year-old esbjergenser driver still Søren Højberg Booking in Esbjerg. And he looks with pride back on the many years of rock and roll in the west jutland town.
Højberg dangers suddenly out of the tall wicker chair in the office and over to a poster on the wall. When the man is particularly excited about fly oaths and curses out of the mouth of him.
– See right here. Well for satan. For the hell of da. It was the times. In June 1995 we had the very same day, Wet Wet Wet, Fleetwood Mac, Black Sabbath, 10 cc, Saxon, Smokie and Eletric Light Orchestra on the stage in Esbjerg.
Højberg, and shakes his head.
a few years ago left the Esbjerg Rock Festival the old concept of the 80-is music. It brought the minds of the movement of a part of the faithful audience.
– It was a joint decision of the board of directors. Maybe we shouldn’t have done it so quickly? Maybe we came to look like the other festivals too much? I know it is not. This is a capricious industry.
Previously covered Søren Højbergs holding company, the Neyine smaller the deficit, as the Esbjerg Rock Festival some years came out with. But it goes no further, after Højberg last year divested the festival to an association, which should drive further.
– I have still been on the board. And I have now lost a rather large amount. But how is it now even. I am in no way bitter. It goes up and it goes down in this industry. It has been great fun.
– It has damn.
