Dream Festival: Tim Burgess

Fantasy line up...

Tim Burgess knows a thing or two about festivals.

Lead singer of The Charlatans, the frontman has spent the best part of two decades entertaining crowds across the UK, Europe and beyond. Gaining more than a few memorable stories along the way, Tim Burgess recently put down some of his more intriguing anecdotes into an autobiography.

Logically titled ‘Telling Stories’ the book is available to buy at all good book shops. To celebrate, ClashMusic invited Tim Burgess to curate his Dream Festival – here’s what he came up with…

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The first thing I was thinking when putting together the line up was how far to take this. Whether the ‘dream’ aspect allowed any band dead or alive. And then I saw the footage of the Tupac hologram at Coachella. Not only was the idea of someone having died, not being a barrier to me putting them in my line up, it seems like even in the real world, the inconvenience of death can’t get in with way of the entertainment.

Anyway, I decided to go old school and only use those that were still living. Although, I did hear someone answer the question “Who would you have at your festival, if you could have anyone, dead or alive?” with the rather cruel “Bono. Dead” – so rule number one is that they have to be present in flesh and blood rather than technology but otherwise we’d have seen Elvis topping a bill that included Arthur Russell, T Rex and Louis Armstrong – with Jesus headlining the comedy tent.

Location wise, I was thinking a cross between a pick of some of the stages from Coachella and Primavera in Barcelona (weather of both included) but with the convenience of a trip up to The Lake District. Now we just need a name and we can start calling a few agents. Is Timstock a bit self indulgent? OK, we’ll have that then.

Just glancing over to what I’ve been listening to most recently, there’s a definite spot for Dexy’s at Timstock – and Bill Callahan would be a must as he’s never far away from my turntable. Jim O’ Rourke would be on the same stage as Bill and, of course, so far none of these would clash. Timstock would be at least 5 days.

Bob Dylan, Factory Floor and Ariel Pink – I’m starting to think this might be real, just need to find where I put Bob’s number and we could have something – The Brian Jonestown Massacre too, just so I could watch a lot of these with Anton and we could squabble about what to go and see next.

The Charlatans would naturally be on there too – we might as well have Paul Weller, Ronnie Wood and Johnny Marr reprise their roles as our special guest, additional members to make sure we get ourselves a decent crowd while all of this lot’s going on around us too. I know this is all in theory, but, in my head this is happening next year, so there’s some practical stuff to consider too.

David Lynch would be the usher and curator of the cinema tent and Larry David is in charge of comedy with John Cooper Clarke on poetry duties.

On the Friday (yes, I’m taking it that seriously now) an evening and an exceptionally cool tent would feature all of the bands that have appeared on our label, O Genesis – a bill topped by our special record store day signing The Vaccines with R. Stevie Moore, Blood Music, Joseph Coward, Electricity in our Homes and a solo spot from me.

David Bowie
The Flaming Lips
Kate Bush
Burt Bacharach
Killing Joke
Kurt Vile
Lambchop
The Breeders
Leonard Cohen
Minny Pops
The Rolling Stones
The Fall
New Order
Yoko Ono
John Maus
Adriano Celentano
Fleetwood Mac
Wu Tang Clan
Orange Juice
Wooden Shjips
Brian Eno
Dr. John
Chris and Cosey
PJ Harvey
Dinosaur Jr.
De La Soul

I don’t want to get all Morrissey on everyone but there’ll be no smells of burning flesh to taint the air, nothing is going to be harmed in the making of this weekend – and the toilets would be spick and span at all times. Once you’d put in your favourite bands on my yet to be invented interactive clashfinder app – the line up will be adjusted so you don’t miss your favourites. It’s not going to be one of those massive festivals where you spend most of your time yomping across moorland, the opposite way to where everyone else seems to be going. Nope, this will be me, you and 10,000 other lucky blighters. And it’d be £50. Yeah, it won’t cover costs but don’t you worry about that, Timstock’s my treat to you, Bowie n’them are all showbiz friends of mine, so chances are they’d be doing it for the kudos anyway.

See you there, yeah, and don’t forget your suncream!

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‘Telling Stories’ is out now.

Tim Burgess is set to give a talk on the writing of ‘Telling Stories’ at the Southbank Centre’s ‘Caught By The River’ event on May 25th.

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