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Dec 23, 2024 By Jimi Arundell Photography by Shaun Gordon Web Exclusive

Fast forward the festive holidays and skip New Year’s Eve because the real party is at Rockaway Beach! Our favourite festival returns to Bognor Regis Butlins for its tenth year from Friday 3rd to Sunday 5th of January, bringing with it a bumper lineup of massive headliners, revered legacy acts and all the heavy hitters destined to shape the sound of 2025.

This year’s headliners are rave renegades Leftfield, shoegaze pioneers Ride and euphoric space rockers Spiritualized who preside over an undercard including Under the Radar favourites Arab Strap, SPRINTS and Bloodworm.

The full line-up and running schedules are listed below.

In the meantime, we spoke to festival founder Ian Crowther ahead of the big birthday weekender to reminisce about past glories and to get a taste of the excitement to come.

Jimi Arundell (Under the Radar): On paper, a music festival in Bognor Regis Butlins on the first weekend of the year is an almost insane idea. But it’s so crazy it works. What inspired you to start Rockaway Beach and why choose that time and place?

Ian Crowther (Rockaway Beach): Two things drove the creation of Rockaway Beach. Firstly, I wanted to create a festival where really cool up-and-coming artists could share a bill and hold equal importance with the legends that inspired them. Secondly, I think live music sounds better indoors. Whether that’s in a room above a pub or in a purpose-built live music venue.

There are some great music festivals where the live experience is indoors, but they tend to be spread across cities rather than in one location. So, we needed a site with indoor venues, and Butlins offers that and so much more - like go-karts and bowling, and an inside toilet you don’t have to share with strangers.

It made sense to avoid the busiest period for live music. And even before you consider the British weather, who would camp when you can have a proper bed to sleep on at night? The first couple of weekends were in October, and it felt like the end of the Summer really. So, the idea came to move to January when we knew that music lovers are desperate to start again.

Talk us through some of your top memories. Which performances are amongst your
favourites?

I’ll try and restrict myself to three. I still have a very vivid memory of standing side of stage on the Sunday evening of the first ever Rockaway Beach, watching one of the most thrilling UK bands mesmerise the crowd in Reds. Time stands still when you watch Young Fathers perform live and it gave me space to reflect on the fact that we’d actually done it, put on a weekend of brilliant music for people just like myself who are passionate about a diverse music mix and love the experience of live performance more than anything.

I think NOVA TWINS took everyone by surprise when they exploded onto the Rockaway Beach main stage in 2020. Everyone except Leah who works on the festival, she had been telling me to book for them for months! They brought such power and energy and really set everyone up for The Jesus and Mary Chain headline show. It was such a good night.

I really enjoyed watching Hamish Hawk at Rockaway in 2023, it felt like everyone was falling in love with him exactly as I had when I first saw him play live. I’m thrilled that he has agreed to come back to Rockaway Beach in 2025 (the last album was superb) and he will be the first artist to play our brand new 3,000 capacity venue in January.

You’ve hosted some massive names over the years, including Johnny Marr, Gary Numan, Suede and Jarvis Cocker to name just a few. There must be an immense sense of pride that comes with having such stars associated with your big weekend. How do you pick the big hitters?

It’s a very privileged thing being able to book bands that I grew up listening to. We set out with some broad strokes each year of who we’d like to play. Really just going through the record collection. Then it comes to who’s available and within our budget. It’s a back and forth with agents who represent the artists to get things lined up, and eventually what we end up announcing is often version thirty of our original plan. Sometimes though you think you’ve got no chance, put an offer in, and get an instant yes. That always feels good.

In terms of pride, iconic names like those you’ve just mentioned, or John Cale, or Jesus & Mary Chain, definitely add a lot of clout. It’s brilliant to be part of those artists’ stories that go back generations, even if it’s just for ninety minutes or so.

There’s honestly just as much excitement in booking the next generation though. When we booked acts like Fontaines D.C. and Self Esteem, it was before their debut albums came out and then by time they played they were already, probably, too big for us. That’s a lot harder to do and get right, or get lucky, on. But it gives us even more pride I think than booking somebody that we already know is going to put on a huge show because they’ve been doing it for years. Take bands like Fat Dog or Big Special that played for us in 2024 (and) seeing how well they’re already doing. There’s a lot of pride in knowing you were a small part of the swell behind them breaking through.

Rockaway also acts like a cultural barometer, highlighting the crucial artists destined to shape the year ahead and beyond. And as you mentioned, you’ve previously had huge successes with Fontaines and Self Esteem. How do you always stay
one step ahead of the curb?

I listen to as much new music as I can, go to gigs, and keep my ears open. I go to events like SXSW in Austin and showcase festivals around the UK. I listen to the radio.

What’s crucial though is listening to what the audience and guests have to say. We read the comments, and chat with people about what they’re enjoying right now. Whether that’s people like yourself, or Chris Hawkins from 6music, or somebody I bump into outside the Burger King at 2am it’s always interesting getting as broad a base as possible.

Then you kind of hear some of the same names mentioned and then it comes down to just what feels right for us. Alex (who works on the festival with me) and I spend a lot of time arguing about bands, in a nice way. The exchange is a good filter and it means that pretty much everything that gets booked has been through rigorous debate, consideration, and ultimately quality control.

Are there any artists that slipped through the net that you wished you had previously
booked?

IDLES is somebody that we know our crowd want to see. For whatever reason we’ve not managed to get that to happen yet. We just missed them back in around 2018 and it’s not come back around again yet. But we have had both Joe and Dev from the band down to DJ at various points. Maybe one day we’ll get them to Bognor.

Talk us through the roster for 2025. Who are amongst your personal favourites playing this
year?

That’s like asking me to name my favourite child. They are all there because I think they’ve got something special, but a few do spring immediately to mind.

We’ve been hoping to bring Arab Strap, Bodega and RIDE to Rockaway Beach for some time now. This year’s festival feels like perfect timing on the back of them all releasing incredible albums in 2024.

SOAP BOX and EBBB are at different ends of the music spectrum, and they were two of the most memorable live shows I saw in 2024. Finally, a shout-out to Dublin punks SPRINTS and Meryl Streek. Both will bring a beautifully noisy blend of humanity and righteous anger!

Rockaway often sells out way in advance, which is no mean feat when many festivals
struggle to keep going. Why do you think Rockaway is so successful? Over one hundred festivals have been lost in the UK over the last couple of years which is sad for live music. That’s a lot of bands missing opportunities, engineers and other contractors out of pocket, and fans not getting those life-changing moments.

I suppose we’re quite abstract from most festivals though. We’re not in summer, there’s no camping, and just the nature of the location where we are at Butlin’s Bognor Regis as well. For the price you pay, you’re also getting a mini break. A holiday with a multi-million-pound swimming pool complex, bowling, pub quizzes, late-night films, mini golf, escape rooms, and a hundred other things. Everybody’s feeling the economic pinch more and more, so value for money has never been more important. Depending on how many people you buddy up with in a room, a Rockaway ticket comes in much cheaper than a lot of other festivals.

So many people book before we announce anything, which is increasingly rare these days in the festival landscape. It took a good few years to build up that trust, so we don’t take it for granted - and hopefully have always delivered a good weekend. We try and be visible to our audience as well. We’re not a big promotions company or a corporate machine. We’re music fans and we like meeting people and chatting with them. We’ve got a big chat group going with over five hundred people in it which anybody can join via our Facebook or on Messenger. We’re in there. That’s had its moments.

We get up and DJ ourselves. Alex and I will usually do the final silent disco together and we’re down the front with you watching the music, of course. We get stuck in and we like it when our crowd does too. We try and make Rockaway feel like it’s for all of us and being there is not just about the bands but feels like you’re coming home. Seeing old friends over the weekend and making new gig pals for the year ahead.

So, value for money and a sense of camaraderie.

Have there been any times when you’ve felt in over your head?

The only time we’ve felt really up against it to deliver something special was in 2022. We were the sole festival that happened in 2020 before the world fell apart around February of that year, and then we were forced to take 2021 off. Then when we were coming back in January 2022 it was during the peak of the Omicron variant of COVID.

Over the Christmas holidays and final week run up into the festival, we lost around a third of the bookings with artists getting sick or not being able to travel so (we) had to rebook so much while the music industry was in downtime. That wasn’t easy, by any stretch of the imagination. We didn’t want to disappoint anybody who was looking forward to it though after so many years off, so we pulled out all the stops we could, called in favours, and delivered something brilliant.

If you could rewind the clock ten years, what would you do differently and what advice would you give yourself?

Haha A few things that I wouldn’t want written down in print! But honestly, I wouldn’t change a thing, because we learn something every year and this helps us continue to evolve the weekend, and hopefully improve the experience for everyone involved.

And where do you want to take Rockaway in the future? Tell us about your ambitions for the next ten years. We’re as big as we’re allowed to go in Bognor Regis at present because all the rooms sell out each year. So, future plans would perhaps involve a second site or weekend. Or something maybe not even under the Rockaway name.

We’ve built a nice community at Rockaway and we might want to take some of those people in one direction on something, and other people in another. Watch this space.

We can’t wait to hit Bognor once again and Under The Radar will return with a full review of all the best bands and top moments of 2025. See you soon Beach Bums!