Event Industry Award 2007 Winner - Melvin Benn
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There can be few people unaware of the influence of Melvin Benn in the events industry.
In 2002 Benn became licensee of Glastonbury Festival and was instrumental in turning around the fortunes of Britain’s biggest outdoor festival. In recent years Benn has extended his portfolio to include National Adventure Sports Show events at the Royal Bath and West Showground and the annual St Patrick’s Day Festival in London produced on behalf of the GLA.
Benn is also the licensee for all Finsbury Park outdoor shows and sits as a representative on the Concert Promoters Association (CPA). He was influential in re-writing the Guide to Health and Safety at Outdoor Events (‘the Pop Code’), and regularly makes presentations to the Emergency Planning College, the police and other bodies.
Melvin Benn had a ten-year background of producing political and campaigning festivals throughout the UK before creating The Festival Office Ltd in 1989 to work alongside Vince Power to create and produce festivals for the Mean Fiddler. This was the same year that the Mean Fiddler took over the Reading Festival, which has sold out ever since to daily audiences of 80,000 and featured bands ranging from The Manic Street Preachers to Blur and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. In 1999, Benn took the three day camping event to the North of England: the Leeds Festival now takes place over the same bank holiday weekend as Reading and attracts 70,000 people each day.
1990 saw Melvin’s first new festival with Mean Fiddler with the conception of the ‘Fleadh’ Festival in London, which has now become a global phenomenon, firstly travelling to Ireland and Scotland and then in 1997 to the USA. In 1999, Benn produced Fleadh Festivals in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, New York and London. Van Morrison, Bob Dylan & The Corrs are just some of the past Fleadh headliners.
The Mean Fiddler’s promotion of large scale live music events led to Melvin securing the first ever UK licences for outdoor dance festivals such as Tribal Gathering and Creamfields in the face of opposition from the Criminal Justice Act. In 1999, Homelands took place in England in May, then in Scotland and Ireland in September; in 2000, 90,000 people attended the three events. Dance festivals have featured DJs such as Fatboy Slim, Pete Tong and Paul Oakenfold and live acts like The Chemical Brothers, Leftfield and Underworld.
Benn was also behind the Phoenix Festivals, the UK’s first ever four day music festival. In one year alone the line up included David Bowie, Neil Young, The Sex Pistols and Bjork. Other festivals in the Mean Fiddler portfolio have included dozens of one day outdoor shows in London parks, with acts as diverse as Madness, Pulp, Jamiroquai and Oasis and large scale New Year’s Eve Parties at London’s Alexandra Palace. The Mean Fiddler, under Benn’s directorship have also produced indoor and outdoor events for brands such as Holsten Pils Beer and Nescafe, as well as for trade unions and fund raising bodies, in venues from Newcastle’s Telewest Arena to London’s Royal Albert Hall.
In 1996 he took ‘The Festival Office’ to be part of the Mean Fiddler Music Group and became Managing Director of the Group. Then in 1999 he became CEO of the group taking Mean Fiddler and its associated companies into a plc structure. This made Mean Fiddler the first publicly quoted music company on the UK Stock Exchange.
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