JIM KING
The seeds for BST Hyde Park were sown in 2012 at a pre-party for the Brit Awards, where King met AEG Presents chairman & CEO Jay Marciano for the first time.
“ Jay had recently come over to run AEG Europe, and he asked me‘ what do you think we should be doing in London?’ It was a party, and I might have had a couple of drinks at that point, so I told him exactly what I thought. I said,‘ This is a big company, and big companies should be doing big things. The Hyde Park tender is coming up, we should be running great events there, like we do in California with Coachella.”
The next step was to present the idea officially, a meeting King will never forget.
He says,“ I had a very simple deck loaded on the computer, I got to slide two and it crashed. Jay could see me repeatedly banging the forward button on the computer, and said‘ just pitch it to me’”.
Having run through the concept, including the Great Oak Stage hosting the biggest artists in the world, King got a second chance to present the idea more thoroughly with a working computer. It was greenlit, and during a series of meetings the concept was refined.
Says King,“ We had five or six meetings to develop and improve the concept, after which Jay said,‘ This is one of the best things I ' ve seen, and our company should be putting all of its resources behind it.’ That was a huge moment for me because I was still very much independent in mindset, and very much looking through that lens, but when a CEO of a company like AEG says they ' re going to put all resources that are required behind a project, you then really see what big companies can do.
“ AEG is unique in that it’ s a big and wellresourced company, but it still retains a culture of thinking and looking through an independent lens. This naturally
BST
connects with me. To be entrepreneurial. Quality over quantity. To deliver the best.”
Says Marciano,“ To see what it’ s become since we had that first conversation is a testament to the vision and execution Jim brings to all the festivals he runs. It’ s now a must-play for artists and a global destination for fans.”
“ To be able to sit down with Es Devlin, one of the best set designers and creative minds in live event production, and take my rudimentary ideas for the Great Oak Stage and turn them into what you see now – that was remarkable,” reflects King.“ I ' d never had access to that level of resource or creative mind before. To have the backing of Jay, and the resources available to be able to execute to the level, which you saw BST come in as, was a defining moment for me. It gave me the confidence that anything is possible.”
Much of the infrastructure at BST Hyde Park, including the Great Oak Stage and bespoke scenery, was built by Star Live. King recalls working on early creatives with Star’ s Roger Barrett in a Shanghai hotel bar:“ I drew the entrance arches with Roger, we wanted people to be able to see them beautifully lit from all approaches surrounding Hyde Park and know that something important was happening there, and that when people walked through these huge arches it felt like they were entering another world; a massive exciting event.”
Among the other key meetings King will never forget was pitching the event concept to Patrick Woodroffe, who has been the creative director for the Rolling Stones since 1989. Having successfully won him over, Woodroffe reported back to the band and the Stones played the first weekend of the inaugural BST Hyde Park.“ It was a no-brainer, as long as they could actually pull it off!,” says Woodroffe.“ The relevance of playing Hyde Park after the band’ s important show there in 1969, was clearly a big part of it all, but there was also the challenge of playing the weekend right after the band’ s performance at Glastonbury, which was also an unknown. Could they sell the tickets? Would they have recovered from one huge show and be ready to play another? Would both events retain their own identity? In the end it worked out fine and both shows became an important part of their legacy.
“ Jim had a pivotal role in the success of the BST show, in that he had the ultimate responsibility for producing the weekend, but he somehow did it in a way that belied the furious paddling that must have been going on beneath the surface.”
The Rolling Stones were also a prominent fixture at another landmark BST, with the band headlining along with acts such as Adele, Pearl Jam, Elton John and Duran Duran in 2022 – the first post-Covid edition. Expanded to three-
WHAT OTHERS SAY...
“ He’ s hands-down one of the best festival producers I’ ve ever worked with.”
AEG Presents chairman and CEO Jay Marciano accessaa. co. uk 29