SJM Concerts' Chris York co-promotes the Country To Country festival, which returns to London, Dublin and Glasgow this weekend. Here, the live music heavyweight discusses the rise of country music in the UK, promoting Oasis at Knebworth and his first meeting with SJM's Simon Moran...
The gig that changed my life was…
“The Sisters Of Mercy at Leeds University: March 15, 1985. I hold my hands up, I’m an old Leeds goth! I’m originally from Otley, just north of Leeds, and that was a pinnacle moment of that period. If you were into that alternative scene at the time – in what was a pretty dour city – it was a gathering of the clans. That was a great night in my musical history.”
The first time I met Simon Moran...
“Was at a Levellers gig at Brixton Academy. It was a lively exchange, but we both came out of it with a positive view of each other. I worked for a different organisation at the time, but we decided to join forces later on down the line and that was the start of a great business and personal friendship that has lasted nearly 30 years.”
There was a sea change in the perception of country music in the UK...
“When C2C launched in 2013. Our partnerships with the CMA [Country Music Association] and BBC Radio 2 gave prominence and profile to the acts we were bringing over. It was also probably the first time there’d been any significant effort to build a country community online. The C2C social element has been a real driver of interest, in partnership with things like Spotify and YouTube, where people find new music. And Bob Harris has to take a lot of credit as well for that. The sort of numbers that we have on C2C socials would indicate that there’s a lot of people very invested in it and very keen to be part of that community. They’re very vocal and they’ve all got opinions – some very positive, some not so positive – but the one thing that’s important is their enthusiasm for it.”
The best decision I ever made was...
“Probably listening to the white label of [Oasis’] Columbia that fell into my hands. It was one of those hairs on the back of your neck moments – a great mixture of snarling rock‘n’roll and a bit of the Sex Pistols. You could see the fervour of the fans at their early shows, but I don’t think anybody in their right mind could have predicted how big it would get and how fast. When you’re stood at Maine Road, watching them perform in Manchester and seeing the sheer lunacy of it, you get a sense of how big it could be. But as a precursor to selling 250,000 tickets at Knebworth, nobody could have predicted that really.”
Oasis’ two Knebworth shows in 1996 were…
“Big! The sheer scale of it was bordering on insane. It was an event I don’t think anybody could ever recreate or even attempt to. People have subsequently played Knebworth, but not on the peak of a wave. It was that zeitgeist moment that encapsulated how big Oasis had got. Everything was on a monumental scale on those two days, it was teetering on the edge of too big. But the fan experience wasn’t just related to the show, it was the whole event and there was a real coming together moment that probably saw us through.”
What I’m most proud of in my career is…
“All the artists that I’ve worked with over the past three decades, and there has been some classic stuff along the way: Radiohead, Oasis, the Foo Fighters, Green Day... I did Jeff Buckley’s shows in the UK, God rest his soul. He would probably have been one of the biggest stars in the world if he was still alive today. I also get a lot of pleasure out of working with Teenage Cancer Trust, which I’ve been doing for the last 13 years and we’ve got another season looming.”
