Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

MUSIC

Ticket holders miss out after Hultsfred closure

Hultsfredsfestivalen AB, the firm behind the iconic Swedish music festival which has filed for bankruptcy, is unlikely to offer refunds to any ticket holders, with total debts for its parent company totalling almost 30 million kronor ($4 million).

Published: 24 August 2010 15:05 CEST
Ticket holders miss out after Hultsfred closure

“The company has only 60,000 kronor in assets,” Kalmar county bankruptcy administrator, Bengt Stridh told the local Barometern newspaper, referring to the Rockparty subsidiary which has debts of 14.8 million kronor when it filed.

Hultsfredsfestivalen AB was one of three companies within the Rockparty concern which filed for bankruptcy in June ahead of the 25th anniversary festival.

The firm was formed last winter to work with securing the finances for the festival which has battled financial difficulties in recent years. The firm is 49 percent owned by Hultsfreds kommunala industriaktiebolag, a municipality-owned firm.

The remainder of the company’s debts are for the most part made up of artist fees.

Bengt Stridh told the newspaper that the chances of the 5,000 ticket-holders receiving any refund once an auction of the firm’s assets is completed were “very small”.

The other firms involved in the Rockparty concern are Rockmetropol i Hultsfred AB, with debts of 7.8 million kronor, and subsidiary Music Linc Hultsfred AB with a deficit of 380,000 kronor.

The Hultsfred Festival 2009 attracted 23,000 visitors but due to unfavourable US$ exchange rates made a loss after paying the artists. Attempts were made to ensure that break even was achieved at an earlier stage in 2010 but weak ticket sales led to the cancellation of the event just two weeks ahead of time.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

SHOW COMMENTS