Thirty years of Big Day Out: the memories we’ll never forget

It’s 30 years since the first Big Day Out, on January 26, 1992, was staged at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion. For $40 a ticket, you got to see 21 acts, headlined by Violent Femmes, though history records it was Nirvana who blew everyone away. It wasn’t the first major music festival in Australia, but for much of its 22 years, Big Day Out was the most important. Here, some of our writers recall their biggest days out.

1992

To say it was hot was an understatement. I can remember the steaming and dimly-lit inside of the Hordern Pavilion and the pressure as thousands of kids shoved forwards waiting for Nirvana to take the stage. I was worried. There was a crush and it was hard to breathe. There was a roadie with a hose spraying water on the crowd. A moment of relief. Was this a band to die for?

Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain plays at the first Big Day Out in Sydney in 1992.Credit: Andrew Meares

I’d only heard them a couple of times before - listening to the album Nevermind in my mate’s car as we drove around Sydney’s southern suburbs. There was one song I liked. Smells Like Teen Spirit, and I was keen to hear it live. Kurt Cobain came on stage and Nirvana ripped into their line-up. The crowd went wild. It was intense and the gig was a test of endurance. Too hot, too many people. I was glad to escape. I watched Krist Novoselic intently, blasting away on bass guitar, maybe because Come As You Are was the only other song I knew.

The Big Day Out in 1992 was as exciting as it got. My first rock festival in Sydney. I’d just finished school and I loved going to gigs. A chance to see international and local acts. I wanted to catch the local indie band The Welcome Mat, whose EP I had listened to over and over. They opened the festival, so it meant a long day. Nirvana didn’t headline, it was the Violent Femmes. Thirty years on the day is a blur. I remember a giant skate ramp, I remember thousands of people and most of all I remember the excitement as Nirvana played. David King (national editor)

1993

I don’t remember how we pulled it off, but somehow three very junior staffers from a suburban newspaper blagged media passes to the Big Day Out when it came to Melbourne in 1993.

Too broke to afford to go to gigs all that often, I treated the Big Day Out like a dizzying all-you-can-eat buffet, trying to see as many acts as possible. At one point we ran at full speed across the grounds to watch the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy on one of the smaller stages. We were young enough to think the song Television: Drug of the Nation was deep, but when Michael Franti started denouncing Victoria’s 30 per cent unemployment, we were journalists enough to just roll our eyes. The recession was bad, sure, but his facts were wrong.

Iggy Popp performing on the Big Day Out tour in 1993. Credit: Andrew Meares

Nick Cave started grumbling imperiously about the mix before saving the set, as he always did, with From Her to Eternity. Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth was a goddess, getting us all to ask “are you gonna liberate us girls from male white corporate oppression?” (It’s catchier than it sounds.)
Iggy Pop was one of the final acts. When he dropped his trousers, I realised from way over the other side of the showgrounds, that bloody hell, you could see why he wasn’t embarrassed. We couldn’t stop laughing. Michelle Griffin (world editor)

1994

Soundgarden’s Kym Thayil ripped a final, explosive blast from his electric guitar, a squall of feedback filling the night sky over Melbourne as he perched the instrument high on a speaker stack and ever so calmly, left the stage.
It was 1994 and after missing Iggy Pop at the first Big Day Out the year before, I wasn’t missing out this time. All reports out of the ’93 BDO were of seriously good times and the ’94 line-up was almost too good to believe.

An afternoon entree of Sydney’s mighty Celibate Rifles kicked off my day, as friends debated what band to see next. I was happy just watching Damian Lovelock and his mates crank out one blistering song after another.
International bands that year included Smashing Pumpkins, the Breeders, Primus, Teenage Fanclub and Icelandic star Bjork, whose stunning album, Debut, was released only the year before. Urge Overkill, who released my favourite album of 1993, Saturation, rolled onto the stage dressed head to toe in black and threw down one of the coolest rock shows I’d ever seen.

The crowd at the 1994 Big Day Out.Credit: Paul Jones

However, the main course for me was the Ramones and seeing Joey, Johnny, Marky and C.J. pump out Teenage Lobotomy, Blitzkrieg Bop, Wart Hog and 20 other blistering songs, bang, bang, bang, “1, 2, 3, 4...” They were spectacular.
Soundgarden were about two months away from releasing their chart-topping Superunknown album when they hit the main stage. Thayil, whose guitar wizardry was taking the world by storm, and the band’s late frontman Chris Cornell were in scintillating form, along with drummer Matt Cameron and bass player Ben Shepherd. An epic version of Slaves and Bulldozers closed out an incredible set before the band’s huge hit Jesus Christ Pose turned out to be the icing on a very big day indeed. Martin Boulton (culture reporter)

1996

The Big Day Out defined summers in the 1990s when I was a 20-something in Perth. The smell of crushed grass dying in the sun on whichever doomed oval was hosting that year, the throb of the stages layering and mixing in the shimmering heat, the water from water bottles flying through the air, cooling our heads for a split second in the mosh pit before evaporating into the city’s desiccated air along with our sweat. And the descent of evening, the shadows on sunburn, the second wind as the headliners arrived.

Nick Cave performing on the 1996 Big Day Out tour. Credit: Dallas Kilponen

Oh yeah, the music. The Big Day Out was always about arguing with those you went with over what to see next, then splitting up, then failing to find each other again for hours because either we didn’t have mobile phones yet, or the network was hopelessly congested and it took an hour to send a text and another hour to receive it.

Oh but, yes, sorry, the music. Um. I pick 1996. Radio Birdman nudeing up on a secondary stage, Aloha Steve and Danno. Hearing from a more cool friend about how good Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds set was. The Prodigy, mad, loud. Regurgitator, Spiderbait, TISM. And Rage Against the Machine at the end. The 1990s, heat-distilled into pure, perfect moments. Nick Miller (arts editor, The Age)

2001

I got my 2001 Big Day Out ticket as a gift for Christmas but then threw my Christmas card, ticket still inside, away. Refusing to pay twice, I sprinted through the gates of the festival that year. Like some modern-day Bonnie and Clyde. PJ Harvey has had a line for so many moments in my life, although my boyfriend got into the festa the normal way.

PJ Harvey performs during her 2001 Big Day Out tour.Credit: Domino Postiglione

The 2001 line-up was the first to include PJ Harvey and she’d just released her fifth album Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. That album and the song, Good Fortune, meant so much to me. My mother had just died, and I was starting to fall in love with a beautiful boy I’d end up spending my life with. A swirling kaleidoscope of grief and joy.

My sisters and I had just started wearing colourful clothing again after months clad in black to mourn mum. That year, a fan had also died during Limp Bizkit’s performance in Sydney, so maybe death was not so far from the thoughts of others there too.

Watching PJ Harvey that day, I felt transformed. She was so powerful and sexy - a magnificent presence who leapt on stage in a red halter-neck top and blue cowboy hat, refusing to be swallowed by a big festa crowd. Which really, that day, didn’t feel so big. Exhilarating, poetic, unbelievably beautiful, that moment was bliss. I felt my bad fortune slipping away. Daniella Miletic (deputy digital editor, The Age)

2004

It might be the lingering festival drought brought on by the pandemic, it might just be my age (geriatric millennials, put your hands up), but every Big Day Out I ever went to has suddenly blurred into one mega-festival. In my head, I swear I saw New Order and Sleater-Kinney perform on the same day, but Wikipedia says that’s impossible. (An abundance of Smirnoff Ices, the signature festival drink, may also be to blame for my recollection.)

Crowds at the Big Day Out in 2004.Credit: Dallas Kilponen

So let’s just go with some memories that do seem to line up with real-world data. Big Day Out 2004. I recall jostling near the front of the stage (not too close, I’m not a loser) to see The Strokes blaze through the ever-essential Take It or Leave It, and then riding a Ferris wheel while The Flaming Lips were doing Race for the Prize, swinging down from the top just as the song hit its joyous chorus synths, and actively thinking at that moment, “Wow, this is pretty amazing”. But then, that might’ve just been a scene from a Y2K-era rom-com, so who really knows? Robert Moran (culture reporter)

2006

Being somewhat herd-averse, I was a fan of the Big Day Out in theory more than practice. I attended plenty of sideshow gigs over the years, but only went to the event itself once, in 2006 - and even then only because my son insisted.

Liam was 11 at the time and a huge fan of The White Stripes, who were headlining, and only slightly less keen on Franz Ferdinand, who were number three on the bill. Sandwiched in between were Iggy and the Stooges, and that was enough for me.

We got there mid-afternoon, just in time to catch the tail end of Wolfmother’s set, but Liam’s main interest was the merch stand. I was sceptical but the overpriced Franz T-shirt I bought him - red and black stripes, felt letters - lasted him a good three years before being passed on to his younger sister. She got another few years out of it and fell in love with the Scottish band in the process.

The White Stripes play Big Day Out on January 26, 2006. Credit: Andrew Meares

The sound was terrible (it usually is at outdoor gigs) but Franz were great, and Iggy - shirtless, hyperactive, simultaneously ancient and young - was magnetic. But for Liam it was all about Jack and Meg. “Dad, can we please go in there,” he said, pointing to the mosh pit, bizarrely officially designated with a low white picket fence, a gate, and a security guard. “Really? It looks pretty rough.” “Please Dad, please. I really want to. It looks so much fun.”

We queued for 20 minutes, maybe more, inching our way a little further forward as each battered body emerged searching for respite, a toilet, a beer. My stomach churned at the prospect of having to shield my boy from the battering that no doubt awaited; I dreaded losing my specs to the trampling feet and the trampled earth of Princes Park.

Then, one gate swing shy of the pit, Liam looked up at me, a hint of dread in his eyes. “Actually, I think I’ve changed my mind. Can we just watch from out here?” Hallelujah! A big day outside the mosh pit - now that’s a gig worth celebrating. Karl Quinn (senior culture writer)

2013

It was my first music festival and the second last. 2013 is a long time ago and I’m sure the performances were excellent but the only memory of the day I have seared into my brain is of the sweltering heat. My friends and I had managed to make it to the front of the mosh pit (also a first for me) as the stadium filled for The Killers, the main reason we bought tickets. Luckily, the still-iconic Mr Brightside opened the set and we could expend all our energy on one of the greatest house party songs of all time. People were bopping about, arms bouncing through the crowd, iPhone 4s waving through the air.

The crowd during Red Hot Chilli Peppers performance at Big Day Out 2013. Credit: Rachel Murdolo

I think we lasted for about two songs before we had to leave the sweat pit, covered in...I don’t know what. I remember my friend’s shorts were cream-coloured when we entered the rave; they were pretty much dirt brown by the time we escaped to the outskirts. But adrenaline - what a rush! - as we plunged back in the midst of it all, just as the sun was setting, for an electric performance of When You Were Young.

They handed out water bottles, turned on sprinklers around Olympic Park, rejuvenating many depleted festival-goers just in time to catch the other headline act: Red Hot Chili Peppers. I was only a casual fan, but you bet I belted out Californication. Sophia Phan (deputy digital editor, The Sydney Morning Herald)

What was your favourite Big Day Out? Share your memories in the comments below.

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