Purple and Pearls

We’ve just spent the last 5 days sleeping in a tent, drinking vodka for breakfast, wading through mud, nursing sun burn and most importantly getting to see some of the world’s most greatest rock bands.

We were at the Download Festival at Donnington Park.

We  arrived on the Wednesday and quickly set up our “home” for the next 5 days.

The rest of the day and Thursday was spent sitting around our camp listening to music, drinking and eating.  The weather was pretty awful and at one point I had 2 coats, 2 hoodies, a t shirt and a long sleeved sweater on to keep warm!

Friday was the first day of the actual festival and the sun also decided to put in an appearance too.  We found out this year that my parents have known the festival organiser for years but had just lost touch.  He turned 50 this year so Mom and Dad showed up at his party as a surprise, he was so overwhelmed and happy to see them he gave us all guest passes, which was great for us we didn’t pay for a single drink all weekend!

On Friday we saw Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders.  Taylor Hawkins is the drummer from the Foo Fighters, Tyketto a band from the 80′s and Them Crooked Vultures A super group made up of Dave Grohl – Foo Fighters, John Paul Jones – Led Zeppelin and Josh Homme – Queens of the Stone Age.  The big headliner for Friday was the mighty AC/DC.

They even had their own stage complete with Rock and Roll Train, Hells Bell and Rosie – I’ve seen AC/DC before but this show was amazing!

I spent Saturday morning in the back stage area with my parents and managed to get pretty drunk on Vodka Red Bull…!  When they left I stumbled over to the third stage to see Rock Sugar, one of my bands of the weekend.  They take great rock anthems and mash them together.  They were awesome and really got the crowd going.

We then went to see Volbeat, a Danish rock band that sound a little like Elvis mixed with Southern American rock = amazing!

The sun had really started beating down by this point, combined with the fact that I’d had far too much alcohol and not enough water I really started to feel rubbish!  A quiet sit down and a bottle of water later, I was ready to enjoy Y&T and Skin

Saturday’s headliners were Rage Against the Machine, we’d seen them a week earlier so knew we were in for a good show.  The crowd went absolutely mental for Rage we stood pretty far back to watch them but even there people were going crazy.

Sunday morning was just as hot as Friday and Saturday, after ending each day with very red faces and knowing we were going to be sitting in the sun all day again we all plastered ourselves with sun cream and I brought a hat to protect my head after feeling the effects of the heat the day before.

The day started with a band called Dommin, the band FM stepped in to replace Ratt who had to pull out at the last minute due to the lead singer having emergency surgery.   Next up was Saxon (who’s song “And The Bands Played On” was written about Donnington Festival) and Cinderella.

My favourite performance of the weekend was Slash, ex-guitarist for Guns and Roses.  I loved every single second of his set and thought it was awesome!  Lemmy from Motorhead came out and sang with him which was pretty cool too!

… and then… the rain came.   We stood in the rain to watch Billy Idol, who really worked hard to get the crowd going seeing as the rain was really heavy.  Luckily I had a plastic poncho with me so the only thing to get wet were my feet.  Unfortunately the others had prepared for the sunshine so ended up soaking.  We squelched back to camp to get changed and waterproofed up.  This meant we had to miss Motorhead, but made it back in time to watch Stone Temple Pilots

Sunday’s headliner was Aerosmith, the perfect way to end the festival.  They came out and did a few of their earlier blues sounding tracks such as Mama Kin as well as their more popular hits like Sweet Emotion and Love in an Elevator.

I ache, I’m tired and I have a sun burnt face but it’s all been totally worth it, I honestly hope Has and I are still rocking festivals in years to come.  I love the whole atmosphere, everyone is there for the music and there is nothing better than being in the middle of 95,000 fans all singing out the lyrics to a classic rock anthem.