Party at the Palace -- from inception to expansion

It's a fun exercise on paper: Pick the bands, arrange the line-up and sit back with a beer and watch as the money rolls in. The reality, as is often the case, is quite different. It will take a year of planning, can cost around £500,000, and you'll still have to work a full-time job alongside it. Not quite the glitz and glamour.

John Richardson is one half of the team which has organised Party at the Palace since its inception in 2014. The festival has been through a lot since but will be making big strides this year with the recently-announced sister event in Perth – Party at the Park. While 2020 will be the seventh summer that he and colleague Peter Ferguson have put on the two-day festival, they are still a while away from the Champagne lifestyle.

The duo have grown into their roles, and the festival has come a long way since the single-stage event on The Peel – the area of grassland directly underneath Linlithgow Palace. It is has since moved across the Loch, taken on board two more stages and has a kids zone and funfair. But it is no side project for John and Peter: it takes a full year of planning; more than few late nights and takes a toll on their personal lives.

"It never really stops," John tells The Weekender. "It's really not one of those 9-5 gigs. You need to be available all the time.

"It's Sunday night, 1am, and I get an email from some guy in America about a band. I reply, he replies, and while I'm waiting for him to get back again, I turn on the Super Bowl and do some work. Then I don't get to bed until 4am and I'm up again at 8am for the kids. It can be tricky to juggle the home life.

"We didn't pay ourselves for the first three years. It wasn't until 2017 that we started paying each other. But it wasn't a lot and we both had to have other jobs on. Even now, we are still way below minimum wage for the hours we put in. If it does well, we get a dividend. If not, we don't. The margins are crazy."

there is a huge weight of responsibility involved and we maybe didn't get that to begin with. And if you have 14,000-15,000 people coming to your event, you want to know that all those people got home alright."

It's been a long road – John still remembers the early stages of their first year. Could they even get bands to play? Would people come? With the year of the Homecoming in full swing, 2014 was the perfect year to launch a festival. With that in mind, John felt it was only fitting to make sure all performers were Scottish. Today, the line-up usually has a few acts from other parts of the UK – or even the odd act from America – but it remains largely homegrown acts.

John recalls: "Initially, we had no idea about how to get in touch with bands. I remember Googling: 'Simple Minds agent' for instance. Invariably, agents would say no and we'd reply: 'Please, please, please, please…' Eventually, we got one bad – I think Deacon Blue were first to sign up – and when you get one then it's sometimes easier to get others. And that was it. We managed to get 2014 on."

The crowds flocked: thousands of tickets were sold, and the sun came out. Everything seemed to fall into place. But 2014 quickly turned into a bit of a disaster. The catering company did not provide enough bar staff and the queue for drinks was the biggest talking point of the Saturday. There were only 12 people covering 6,500 people – a marked change from the 160 staff at Party at the Palace these days. Organisers were quick to fix the situation for the Sunday, but John admits the episode was a bit of a blow to he and Peter.

"I suppose we could have saw it coming," John says. "And you could blame us for not thinking it through. We put in a lot of work; it was a year in planning, but for something fairly trivial to ruin it was tough. People would expect a level of service and comfort for a £50 ticket, and we didn't deliver. We took it very personally."

To make amends, the duo went all out the following year. He adds: "A lot of people still say the Sunday of 2015 was the best it has ever been – we had Nile Rodgers and Chic. We didn't sell enough tickets, but we realised that a lot of people had stayed away because of 2014.

"When you get it right, it's great being in the town. When you get it wrong… After that first year, in 2014, I had people coming up to me in the street saying they were still waiting on a drink. I always felt people were talking about me or looking at me. It was quite difficult. But the next year, after bringing Nile Rodgers over from America it was the exact opposite. I felt like strutting down the high street."

Ash playing Party at the Palace back in 2017

On the back of an impressive 2015, John and Peter were keen to expand. They wanted to be the sort of festival that had dozens of bands playing across the weekend, over a few stages. After speaking with Historic Environment Scotland, they found they would be unable to continue at The Peel and moved 2016 across the Loch.

John remembers there were some criticisms of the move. He says: "Even then we were getting asked: 'How can you call it Party at the Palace, if it's not at the palace?' But then Kendal Calling is 30 miles from Kendal. T in the Park was named after Strathclyde Park and that moved to Balado. So, we were not too upset."

The following few years saw three events largely without incident. Party at the Palace was here to stay. The organisers had a rhythm and some major acts took to the stage: Kaiser Chiefs, Razorlight, Amy Macdonald, Texas, James, KT Tunstall, The Charlatans and Wet, Wet, Wet. Everything was running smoothly until a major storm threatened to derail the 2019 event.

"Last year was the first time we felt the pressure to really deliver something big," John adds. "But on the Saturday we had thunder and lightning and that was really quite stressful. The nearest lightning strike was about 500 meters away – so really, really close. You don't sign up for that. We were looking forward to people sipping gin cocktails on the grass, watching the bands in sunshine – you don't envisage sitting in a control room talking to health and safety and emergency services about evacuating 7,500 people.

"Overall, both Peter and myself are sensitive people. We take criticism to heart and take on board everyone's feedback. Beyond that, there is a huge weight of responsibility involved and we maybe didn't get that to begin with. And if you have 14,000-15,000 people coming to your event, you want to know that all those people got home alright."

A major aspect of Party at the Palace has been the community – from 2014 to now, John and Peter are keen to get local businesses involved and want the whole feel of the event to be different from the other big festivals in the UK.

"We've been fortunate – in six years, we've only had two arrests. When you compare that to other festivals, that's incredible. We have a great relationship with the police, and we see officers cutting around the festival with their faces painted – it's really relaxed."

John was inspired by the friendly atmosphere at Isle of Wight and wanted to replicate that in Linlithgow. As the years went on, it became more important for families to feel welcome and to have more than just music on offer. A small portion of ticket sales also go to charitable causes in the region.

That is not to say things would go off without a hitch. There was always something to deal with; fires to put out. Making sure the bands have all their requests met is an interesting challenge. Some of the more unusual items on the rider, can be a source of some amusement, but for John no detail is too minute. Whether it is oxygen tanks, coconut water, cranberry and pomegranate cordial, three pairs of black socks or 200 cigarettes, he is always on the case.

"The riders can be a bit funny," He says. "We get all sorts of requests. Sometimes, I reckon bands do it just to test your attention to detail: If we didn't get the Starburst they demanded, maybe we haven't made sure the band has the microphones they need or whatever. So, there is a point."

The future of Party at the Palace is bright, with the prospect of a sister festival in Perth set for 2020. But if the success of the event in Linlithgow is sustained and spreads across the country, it will offer more bands the opportunity to play before thousands of people.

In order to improve the offerings at Party at the Palace, the event was moved across the loch for 2016

John says: "We think we have a unique selling point in that we are somewhere in between TRNSMT and Rewind. Certainly, we are not a cool festival like TRNSMT and not quite as retro as Rewind. "We try to pick bands that don't offend anyone – we don't have any 'Marmite bands'. Most of our acts are pretty safe.

"We tried to be a bit different from other festivals. We had looked at Isle of Wight, for instance, and I loved that there was such a strong community involvement. On the main road to the site at Isle of Wight, there are rows of houses with people selling ice cream from a freezer in their garden – kids with buckets of ice, selling cans of coke for £1 – another family with a barbecue.

"They've obviously had a committee meeting beforehand: 'What are you doing this year, Janie? That's fine I'll do that sandwiches'. And I loved that – it was great to see the local community benefitting directly from the festival. There were these kids boosting their pocket money and families getting involved. And that's what we wanted for Linlithgow.

"We've been fortunate – in six years, we've only had two arrests. When you compare that to other festivals, that's incredible. We have a great relationship with the police, and we see officers cutting around the festival with their faces painted – it's really relaxed."

He adds: "The reality is that we need to do another one – there's not enough in it, financially, to just have one. There are some costs that can be shared. We don't think having an event in Perth is going to compete with Linlithgow. It tends to be a localised crowd here – we got a lot of people from Linlithgow, obviously, Bo'ness, Bathgate, Livingston Stirling, Clackmannanshire and we think they will still come to Party at the Place in Linlithgow. For Perth, we think it'll be from Perth, Dundee, Pitlochry, St Andrew's and other parts of Fife.

"We've already sold 2,000-3,000 tickets for the event to people who have no idea what bands are coming. They just know it's a good weekend out. There is something here for everyone. That's what we hope to see in Perth. We'd like to replicate that hunger that T in the Park had – where tickets were bought because people wanted to go to T in the Park, not that they wanted to see a particular band, James, Travis, Stereophonics or whoever. We just want people to say: 'We're going to Party at the Palace' and not: 'We're going to see James or Texas or the Proclaimers'. I think we're almost there with that."

• Party at the Place takes place on August 8-9, with Party at the Park set for June 27-28 at South Inch, Perth.