Q1 2008Feature62ILMC 7At ILMC 14 (l. to r.) Neo Sala, Claudio Trotta, Barry Dickins, Stuart Galbraith and Jose ArroyoHopewell wanted to introduce foreignpromoters and collectivise what was a ragtaggroup of individuals into something whichwould later be termed an ‘industry’. Later thatyear, enrolling the help of his assistant andwhile still concentrating on his roster of actsat Chrysalis, he posted out invitations to theinaugural conference.“We didn’t have a name for the thing,” hesays. “The invitations simply said, ‘we shouldhave an international live music conference’,and because there was nothing to refer to, itturned into the ILMC. I nicked the logo fromMíele kitchen appliances.”Like much of the ILMC’s history, the firstevent – held at London’s Mayfair Hotel – wascoloured by circumstance, happy accident andthe ability to turn disaster into direction. “Theoriginal plan was to do Friday and Saturdaybut we found out that Friday was stupidlyexpensive and we could get the weekendmuch cheaper, so we did that,” Hopewell says.The registration database consisted of acardboard sheet with hand written names,nametags were an afterthought, a banner waskindly donated, and Hopewell scribbled downsome notes for chairman the night before. (Aroutine that would last several years.)“We had no idea how to do it, productionwise,and neither did our technical people,” hesays. “I was working with Mick Kluczinski atthe time, who decided that if we hungmicrophones all over the ceiling, then anyonethat spoke anywhere should be able to beheard. When they were all turned on, it waslike standing under high tension cables andyour hair stood on end. We had to rethink it.”Hopewell initially invited 30 people:“Everyone was up for it as soon as they heardwho else was likely to come,” he says. “Thenother people heard about it, and they all wantedto be there too. On the day, 175 people showedup so it escalated out of all proportion.”Come the morning of the first ILMC, aqueue of promoters snaked around BerkeleySquare, all waiting patiently to get in, andnone knowing the other.“Everyone was taken with the way that allthe important people came in the first year,”says Rune Lem. “It became an important eventfrom the word ‘go’ which got it going –everyone wanted to be a part of that.”“The very first conference was a smallsensation,” says promoter Karsten Jahnke.“You met a lot of people that you normallyneeded half a year to visit. In the beginningthere were some very exciting discussions.”Speak to any of the delegates thatAt ILMC 15 (l. to r.) Carl Leighton-Pope, Dennis Armstead & Neil Warnock
FeatureFeature Q1 2008attended ILMC 1, and they’ll all recount the excitement that was felt atthe first event. And having succeeded in bringing the Europeanpromoters together, Hopewell thought his job was done.“I sat down to thank everyone for coming and Rune Lem asked whatwe were going to do at the next one,” he says. “It hadn’t even occurredto me.”The size of the ILMC has always been directly related to the lifeblood ofthe event: the conference sessions. And the meetings originally tookplace in one main room, with all topics covered by all delegates.“It worked beautifully as long as everyone was in the room,” Hopewellsays. “But in year three, I could hear voices coming from the bar on theother side of the partition. Forty or so people were in there having adrink – I was outraged!”“Marek Lieberberg got up out of his chair, threw open the doors andshouted into the bar: ‘Everybody into the conference room, HerrHopewell demands that you come in!’ and they all trouped in likenaughty schoolboys.”Triple A’s Pete Wilson recounts how the ambivalence of somedelegates led to the conference increasing in size: “Martin used to moanat everyone that they were out of the rooms every year, so I suggestedputting more people in. He was always reluctant to increase it at rapidjumps, so he’d let a few more join the fold each year.”“For the next eight or nine years we kept the capacity down to around250 because I didn’t believe you could have a meaningful conversationwith any larger number of people,” Hopewell says. “But that was allunder the assumption that they were all going to be in the conferenceroom. The current high capacity, in a way, is a measure of the failure ofthe conference sessions to enthuse the majority of the people.”But the serious debate and swapping of ideas and information was avital function of a growing entity, which attracted delegates from farflung countries for even the first outing.“There were two Japanese guys there who didn’t speak a word ofEnglish, who taped all of the sessions and took them home to betranslated,” Hopewell says. “There was another guy who’d hitchhikedfrom East Berlin, over the wall and across Europe to be there.”“Claudio was frog marched off into a policevan and driven away, pursued down the streetby 20 drunk ILMC delegates,” Hopewell says.“Everyone was screaming and shouting,and Harvey [Goldsmith] was ready with alawyer at 7am the next morning if I wasn’t out,but they let me out anyway,” Trotta says. “Theevent was a bit legendary and I spent a fewhours in a room with another guy. It wasremembered for ages – it increased mypersonal legend!”A couple of years later, Claudio wassurprised with a This Is Your Life presentationwhen the whole event was re-enacted, alongwith Lombard dressed as a policewoman. “Itwas because of that incident that we decidedto do a Sunday night dinner,” Hopewell says.Part of the ILMC’s success, and a key reasonwhy it’s thought of so fondly by supporters, isits distinctly different ethos to the wealth ofother conferences that have followed. It’sprobably as far removed from the corporate,slickly run approach of some other events asit’s possible to get.“We build a certain element of thehomespun into even the most sophisticatedILMC,” Hopewell says. “It won’t change itscharacter – it’s always been fun and done forthe enjoyment of doing it. The day that itbecomes a dry event will be the day that I loseinterest. I still don’t think it’s a properconference, it’s more like a gathering pointwith an element of the annual ritual, likeChristmas.”The numerous anecdotes from over theyears speak for themselves, such as sharksbeing swiftly removed from set pieces so asnot to offend DEAG executives, exploding dryice packs engulfing chairmen mid sentence,serving beef in the midst of the Mad CowDisease crisis, being stormed by armed policeafter blowing up Arthur Awards at the heightof terrorist bombings in London, or organisersgetting lost and leading an army of delegatesfor a lengthy midnight stroll around Soho.And neither are the delegates innocent ofsuch behaviour, whether it’s the impromptudrunken singalongs around the hotel bar’spiano (which led to the Delegates Jam),throwing the contents of hotel rooms out ofwindows, climbing the central palm tree in aThe ILMC World Cup at Wembley Stadium65Despite the serious debate of the conference sessions, the social aspectof the ILMC is one that has carried it through two decades. Successiveyears incorporated evening events, and while the Gala Dinner (begun atILMC 10) grew organically out of a meal in the hotel on Saturday night,the origins of the Sunday night dinner are somewhat different.“There was nothing on the Sunday night and a lot of people would behanging around until Monday or had meetings that next week,” Hopewellsays. “Around ILMC 4, some bright spark had rounded up 30 notabledelegates for an Indian meal. The first we knew was when the revolvingdoors of the Portman flew around and some very drunk delegatespoured in, led by The Goon [Mike McGinley] the tour accountant with abread basket on his head and a rose behind his ear.“It was the time of the Gulf War, and they’d decided that Claudio[Trotta of Barley Arts] looked a bit like Saddam Hussein, and they chairedhim around the room chanting ‘Saddamski’.”When some Kuwaiti citizens in the bar took offence, the hotel securitycalled the police and a scuffle ensued. According to legend, as the policejumped on Claudio, [Live Nation’s] Jackie Lombard joined in the fray,accidentally pulling open the uniform of a female officer.
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