INTERVIEW
John Giddings
Questions
and Answers
We asked John Giddings
some quick-fire questions,
and here are his answers.
Who is your favourite
band and your favourite
solo artist?
Band – Pink Floyd, also The
Doors. Solo – David Bowie.
Who is the most important
person listed in your
mobile phone?
Lindsay, my project director.
She helps me in my darkest
moments when I am
struggling, she get’s all the
bad bits - sorry Lindsay!
Which artist or group
has been the most
difficult to work with?
Morrissey. He didn’t turn up for
the 2005 IW Festival. However,
I got Travis to replace him at
the eleventh hour and they did
a better job. Thank you, Travis.
Who would you like
to work with?
Pink Floyd. They’re my
personal favourites. I
have no ambition to work
with any other band.
John Giddings...”I’ve
got common sense
not intelligence!”
“I would never get married again, and haven’t got
a girlfriend. Why would anyone want to go out
with me when I’m away half the time?”
There’ll be up to 50,000 people there, and countless
thousands who will wish that they were. This year’s
Isle of Wight Nokia Festival is a sell-out and, with a
fabulous line-up and an established reputation, it is
on course to replace Glastonbury as this summer’s
essential music experience.
But among all the crowds there will be one person
who will stand alone. Without him there would be no
festival, or certainly not one with the same sizzling
brilliance that fans have come to expect from the Isle
of Wight.
John Giddings is the managing director of Solo
Agency Ltd, who have promoted the festival since it was
revived in 2002. There were some who doubted that
after 32 years it could ever be the same as it was in the
old days, but they were wrong. There were a few early
teething troubles, but now the IW festival is firmly back
on track.
At 53, John Giddings is not exactly one of the music
scene’s young bloods, but it’s experience that counts in
this game, and he’s proved himself a great deal cannier
than any impertinent upstart. Perhaps the shrewdness
was inborn, for his mother was a Scot and knew that if
you wanted something, you had to work for it.
“Money does not motivate me. I used to think I was
doing my job for money until I really earned it, and then
I realised I was doing it out of pure ambition.”
Would you have liked to
have been a musician?
No. Being famous is a curse.
People dig up everything you
do. You have your family
and life plastered all over
the newspapers. I think it’s
really hard. It’s not for me.
Can you sing or play
an instrument?
I can’t sing, although I
tried at 16. I play the
bass now and then.
What’s the best thing
you have ever done?
The Isle of Wight Festival,
because I started it from
30
In John’s ever increasing bid to promote the Island he recently sponsored
a Formula BMW car at Brands Hatch in front of 30,000 spectators.
Island Life - www.islandlifemagazine.net