MEMORIES AND METAL
Rockfest founder Alex Martel looks back on festival’s history
Even a rock festival that draws 200,000 people can have its quiet moments.
Montebello Rockfest founder Alex Martel recalls one such moment as possibly his favourite memory in the 13 years he’s been putting on his “punk-rock Woodstock” in a small Quebec village an hour east of Ottawa.
As he tells it, Tim Armstrong of the punk band Rancid had found a spot outside the festival grounds, away from the din and the dirt, and started to play his acoustic guitar.
“At first, it was like two or three people,” Martel says of those paying the singer any mind as he performed outside a local church.
“And by the end, there was maybe 100 people around, and people were freaking out. … I just remember seeing the happiness in people’s faces at that moment. I just felt it really captured the whole vibe of what I wanted to build.”
The other memory that comes to mind for the soft-spoken, 31-year-old festival founder with a trademark black hat, is standing on stage with his father in 2013, surveying the sweaty sea of humanity that had descended upon their hometown.
“Right then and there, I had never seen so many people in Montebello at once. I remember he said something like: ‘Don’t forget this image.’”
The two moments in time, one intimate and one intense, spiritually bookend what Martel calls the Rockfest vibe, a term he utters with what just might be reverence.
And fair enough. The annual summer festival, the latest iteration of which starts Thursday, is, after all, a veritable church of rock that Martel built.
From 2005, when he put on a one-night event — three bands separated from a 500-person crowd by orange snow fencing (“very, very amateur,” he says) — to a lineup this year headlined by a hard-rock super group, Jack Black’s comedy rock band Tenacious D and such other heavymetal heavyweights as Five Finger Death Punch and Lamb of God, Rockfest has turned into a phenomenon.
Each year, the community of Montebello — located pretty much exactly halfway between Montreal and Ottawa — becomes the threeday home of campers and metal lovers from around the world ( be it Saguenay, Toronto, Brazil, Japan, or elsewhere).
It’s part location — fans come to camp out in “the middle of nowhere” — part strong lineup, and part “one in a million” luck that the planets aligned to make the show a success in a town of just under 1,000 people, Martel says.
“It’s this really unique vibe and unique experience. The music almost becomes the soundtrack to that experience in stead of the main thing.”
The years’ massive growth have been accompanied by attendant growing pains.
Martel’s low point? “Pretty much all of 2013,” he says with a chuckle.
That year made headlines for all the wrong reasons: from the infamous overflowing porta-potties, to the long lines and organizational chaos that left everyone from fans to performers frustrated.
“It really sucked living it,” he said.
“Just getting crucified on page one of all the papers in Quebec and Ottawa and everywhere. But it was really a learning experience.”
It’s also hard to keep pleasing everyone — from agents trying to get their bands as much money as possible against the backdrop of a faltering record revenue, to contractors, suppliers and even those renting their land to the event.
Last year, Rockfest played host to a fire-breathing extravaganza from the German metal icons Rammstein, which required a whole new level of stage preparations. A festival within a festival, as Martel characterizes it.
Martel said even festivalgoers — not just his, he caveats, but those everywhere — have been “spoiled” by some of the all-star lineups they’ve seen.
“We always joke that people are like: ‘I want the exact lineup of bands that I like, in the exact order that I want, in my backyard, for free. That’s basically the expectation.”
Martel says he’s managed to delegate more in recent years. Last year, he reconstituted his own band, the Deadly Apples, for a show at Rockfest just before the Rammstein headliners. The band’s just come back from a tour of South America, and are heading out to play in front of Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson this summer.
But despite the challenges, and the allure of other projects, he insists he hasn’t lost his love for the festival he gave birth to.
“I see all these festivalgoers taking over a small town and this amazing vibe and everything and people having fun and thanking me and seeing all these bands playing literally in my backyard, then I’m like, it’s still worth it.
“I guess if I stop having fun I’ll just stop doing it . ... I hope to be able to do it for as long as possible, but if it ends tomorrow morning, I’m still going to be happy that I achieved everything that I was able to.”