For ten nights this summer, some of the biggest names in music will be entertaining huge crowds on Lytham Green
Somewhere in the world right now, Kylie Minogue could be doing the drying up with a Lytham tea towel. And when she’s finished that, she may well put her feet up and enjoy a pint of Lytham beer.
Meanwhile, Rod Stewart might be sipping a glass of Lytham gin while the Stereophonics reminisce about the best view they’ve ever had from a stage during a gig.
In just a few years, an event that started as a one-night Proms performance with an audience measured in the hundreds has grown into one of the biggest music festivals in the north of England.
This year, the Lytham Festival will bring world famous groups and artists to the mile-long stretch of green beside the Ribble estuary for ten nights of performances which will attract tens of thousands of people and give the local economy a huge boost.
Among the artists who will be at this year’s festival are Diana Ross, Lewis Capaldi, Duran Duran and The Strokes. Elbow, who formed in Bury 25 years ago, will headline one night of the festival, while Rochdale’s Lisa Stansfield and Liverpool-born dj Craig Charles are also on the bill.
The event is organised by Daniel Cuffe and Peter Taylor, friends who admit they couldn’t have foreseen how the festival would grow.
‘Lytham punches above its weight in terms of festivals,’ said Peter. ‘We are getting stadium level acts and arena level acts – big names on the global music scene – to come to Lytham.
‘Whenever people asked me “Why Lytham?” I’d say “Why not Lytham?”. The second year we did the Proms, we had Status Quo and people thought we’d booked a tribute band because they couldn’t believe we’d have the actual Quo. Now we’ve got The Strokes, Simply Red and Duran Duran, among other big names.
‘The fact we can attract those names is testament to the audiences – it always sells very well. We’ve always said we’ll do it for as long as people want to come, and every year it gets bigger and the expectation on us has got bigger as well.’
This year’s festival will be ten days long because the pandemic meant the festival couldn’t happen as planned in 2020 or 2021, so some acts were held over to this summer. In 2023 it is planned to revert to being a five-night festival, but Peter’s wish list of artists he wants to bring to Lytham could fill at least ten nights every summer.
‘There’s enough names on there to keep us going for 20 years,’ he said. ‘And I’m adding more names all the time. The Rolling Stones have been at the top of my list for a long time, along with Bruce Springsteen, but we’ve never managed to make the dates work for everyone.’
They have attracted plenty of big names since the Proms event started to evolve about a decade ago. And whoever they are, and wherever else they have played, it’s unlikely many of them will forget performing in Lytham.
‘Everyone who plays the Lytham Festival loves it,’ Peter added. ‘The artists get the best view – they can look out from the stage and see the windmill to one side, the estuary to the other and the houses along the front.’
All the acts find a selection of locally produced gifts in their dressing room – Lytham gin, locally-brewed beer, a tea towel and postcards.
Peter grew up in Lytham and his childhood ambition was to be on the stage, but his fledgling career faltered after a performance at the Lowther Pavilion when he was 13. A reviewer suggested he needed singing lessons and Peter started to re-think his plans.
He was on stage for one of his most memorable festival moments, though: a torrential storm forced a break in the performance at the Proms one year and the crowd joined a rousing rendition of Singing in the Rain.
Among his other highlights was Kylie’s spectacular performance in 2019 – ‘she put so much into the show and we’d wanted to bring her to Lytham for song. That was a magical night’ – and the second coming of Quo. ‘They are the nicest people and they were really encouraging to us in those early years.’
It’s not just the huge crowds and the artists who enjoy the festival, though. There are benefits for the whole region.
‘Seaside towns need to diversify because in spite of Covid and the rise in domestic holidays, people tend not to go to the seaside like they used to,’ Peter said. ‘Events are a way seaside towns can attract people and we have become one of the premier events in the region.
‘Lytham is never as busy as it is during the festival: hotels, restaurants, shops, taxis and bars are all busy. The money they spend stays in the local economy and benefits people and businesses across the area.
‘Estimates suggest people coming from out of town to a music event spend an average of about £100 a night on top of their ticket price. About 40 per cent of the people who attend the Lytham Festival come from out of town and stay over. So that would mean that in 2019, people attending the Lytham Festival from out of town brought about £4.5m into the local economy. That was just a five night event, and that figure doesn’t include people who live locally and went to a bar or a restaurant, or took a taxi.’
READ MORE: 2022 Lytham Festival - headliners, line-up and ticket details revealed
