Ja Rule’s Fyre Fest partner: ‘We were a little naive’
Fyre Festival is being rescheduled for 2018.
The planned luxury music festival in the Bahamas descended into chaos last week when concertgoers, who had paid thousands of dollars for their tickets, arrived to find "half-built cabanas that were actually disaster relief tents", low-quality food and luggage dumped out of shipping containers.
But Billy McFarland, who co-founded the festival with Ja Rule, insisted that it will go ahead next year, with free tickets for everyone who was left disappointed.
He told Rolling Stone: "There will be make-up dates, May 2018 in the U.S., free for everybody who signed up for this festival. We will donate $1.50 [per ticket] to the Bahamian Red Cross. It’ll keep the theme of being on water and beach. It’ll be not just music, but all forms of entertainment. The one change we will make is we will not try to do it ourselves. We will make sure there is infrastructure in place to support us."
Billy blamed the weather and a lack of experience for the disaster, which has left people stranded in the Bahamas.
He said: "The morning of the festival, a bad storm came in and took down half of our tents and busted water pipes. Guests started to arrive and the most basic function we take for granted in the U.S., we said, ‘Wow, we can’t do this.’ We were on a rush job to fix everything and guests were arriving and that caused check-in to be delayed. We were overwhelmed and just didn’t have the foresight to solve all these problems.
"The weather unfortunately delayed flights and made them run into each other in terms of being close to when a lot of people were arriving. That was unfortunately something we had no control of, but it made things unacceptable for guests and we feel bad for it.
"We thought we were making timeframes that were correct. We were a little naïve in thinking for the first time we could do this ourselves. Next year, we will definitely start earlier. The reality is, we weren’t experienced enough to keep up."
