Always the same, always different. This is how the legendary John Peel used to describe his beloved The Fall. However, it works equally well if we re-purpose it to describe Bloodstock Open Air. You see many components of the festival haven't changed in two decades. Its feeling of geographical familiarity is one of the many reasons that many of us describe it as “home”.

Some festivals start big and just accelerate. Download for instance had Iron Maiden as its first headliner, a statement of intent if there ever was one about the space that it wanted to occupy. Some however build from minuscule begins. The first Bloodstock was unrecognizable from the event we see today.  It was held indoors at Derby Assembly Rooms, it lasted just one day, it was headlined by Saxon (at the time as far from their heyday as they could get) and it attracted 700 people. However, it was a spark, a beginning, an opening gambit that has metamorphosed into a mainstay of the UK festival calendar.