Radiohead's Long Island festival moves to Giants Stadium for one day

Field Day, the two-day festival Radiohead and the Beastie Boys were to headline at Calverton on Long Island on 7 and 8 June, will not happen there. On Wednesday 4 June Robert Kozakiewicz, the Riverhead town supervisor, said the town would not approve it, citing the traffic the crowds would bring to its rural roads. Within hours the promoters had moved it to Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, as a single day from noon on Saturday. Andrew Dreskin, the executive producer, says 16 of the original 35 acts have agreed to play. Radiohead and the Beastie Boys are two of them, and Capitol's list of those confirmed adds Beck, Blur and Underworld.

In the interest of the health, safety and welfare of the residents of the Town of Riverhead and the public, I believe that the event should be canceled.

Robert Kozakiewicz³

About 50,000 tickets had been sold for the two Calverton days. None is valid at the stadium; they are refunded automatically to the card used, booking fee included, and new tickets are on sale through Ticketmaster. W.A.S.T.E., the band's mail-order and ticket service, has secured stadium seats instead, so its customers' Calverton tickets are transferred for collection at the venue, and any of them who can no longer go can ask for a full refund.

The trouble started when Suffolk County police declined to help police the festival. On Tuesday 27 May county health officials refused a mass gathering permit, after Riverhead's police chief, David Hegermiller, told them his small force could not handle crowds of up to 40,000 a day alone. The same day the Long Island Pine Barrens Society sued the town and the organisers, arguing that the crowds would disturb a sparrow in its nesting season.

Dreskin called the refusal premature and procedural, kept building the stages and offered to pay for the extra security himself. We have a fleet of attorneys chomping at the bit to sue these guys.¹⁰ On Friday he stood at the site with Kozakiewicz and Hegermiller to say planning was going ahead if more police could be found, and Dreskin and the town were negotiating to bring in as many as 200 state troopers from upstate. A state court threw out the environmental suit, but the county's permit and the town's were still missing. On Tuesday evening, facing an injunction from the county, the Riverhead Town Board tabled its vote, which amounted to a refusal.

A week ago the festival's staff were still telling worried ticket holders by email that Field Day is too big to cancel⁹.

How Field Day left Long Island