in the mid 1980s, John Giddings flew to Los Angeles, got into a ‘huge limo with purple seat cushions’, and was driven to Prince’s house. He can’t quite remember where it was – ‘Laurel Canyon or somewhere’ – but he does remember the artist opening the front door and saying hello in a squeaky voice. ‘He was tiny. And wearing these little clicky black heels.’Prince asked what he wanted to drink. Giddings said coffee. ‘And Prince, I mean, I swear to god it was like he didn’t live there. So he tiptoes off, probably looking for a kitchen, and comes back 20 minutes later with two tea bags. And he said, “John, English breakfast or Darjeeling?”’ The musician had never made a coffee before and was stumped as to how to do it. ‘I mean, f**king Prince!’Giddings has lots of stories like this; the 73-year-old is, probably, Britain’s biggest music agent. Today, at the London office of his company Solo, the walls and corridors are packed with framed posters of the tours he has organised. There’s David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, Spice Girls, Lady Gaga, U2, Céline Dion. And there are also all of the line-ups for the Isle of Wight Festival, which he has arranged every year since 2002. Bowie headlines in 2004This year the festival (which runs from 18 to 21 June) is being headlined by Lewis Capaldi, Calvin Harris and The Cure, and, next year, it will be the event’s 25th anniversary since Giddings has been in charge. After that, he plans to retire. He is married (his wife Caroline, an ex-lawyer, is the festival director), has four adult daughters and lives between London and the Isle of Wight. ‘It’s my final fling,’ he says of the 2027 edition. ‘I’ll have peaked and I don’t want to be hanging around.’He grew up in St Albans and went to Exeter University, nominally to study ‘philosophy and sociology’ and actually because the campus had a big hall, which hosted big artists. Giddings became its social secretary and in three years booked Bob Marley, T Rex and Procol Harum. He was once outvoted by the committee when he wanted to host David Bowie during the 1972 Ziggy Stardust tour. ‘I had to go and see him at Torquay Town Hall.’ John with Sting and The Corrs at last year’s festivalThings were cheaper then, and artists more accessible; at Exeter, Giddings paid just £600 to book Genesis. He remembers going into the dressing room after the show, ‘and they were all drinking cups of tea and bickering’. What about? ‘Oh, they didn’t think the lights were good enough.’He graduated in 1975 and got a £30-a-week job at the music agency MAM. ‘It was a brilliant time to be in London. I signed acts left, right and centre’ – Adam And The Ants, Boomtown Rats, X-Ray Spex.By 1986, Giddings had started his own music agency, Solo, and was securing gigs for Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and David Bowie (now playing Wembley, rather than Torquay). In 1990 he was invited to Canada to meet the Rolling Stones’ manager who asked him to book the band’s European tour. John backstage with his hero: ‘Bowie was a class act’Giddings was buzzing – and keen to celebrate. But, before he could get to the nearest bar, another promoter asked him to watch an unknown local girl sing at a 500-seat theatre. ‘They gave me a ticket in the fourth row, and this woman sings for an hour and keeps looking at me. And I’m gagging for a drink.’ Still, he listened – ‘she was obviously good’ – and, afterwards, met the singer and her team backstage. ‘And they were wonderful. They said to me, “Can you get us a gig in London?” and I thought, I’ll do anything [for you]!’ That notably nice singer was Céline Dion – and Giddings went on to work with her for decades. In 1999, he arranged her sold-out, 50,000-seater show in Edinburgh, ‘and she said something that no artist has ever said to me before or since: “Are you making enough money?” And, stupidly, I said yes.’Giddings is positive about almost everyone. The Corrs? ‘I love them dearly.’ Pharrell Williams? ‘A great bloke.’ Mariah Carey? ‘A right laugh,’ actually. ‘I got p**sed with her once in Cologne, we were dancing in a bar at two o’clock in the morning.’ He also adores the Spice Girls. Even if, ‘trying to get them to reform is like trying to catch water in a sieve.’ Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight Festival, 1970Prince, though, does sound tricky. After that LA trip, Giddings booked two shows for him at Wembley. But, back then, Prince was refusing to be called Prince. ‘And he’d said to me, “The poster will say –”’ Giddings does a hand swoosh ‘“– live [at Wembley].” And I thought, who the f**k will know what that means?!’ He put the name Prince on the posters, sold half the tickets and Prince duly cancelled. ‘I had to sue him to get the money back.’His hero was David Bowie. They met in 1977, when Bowie was playing keyboard on tour for Iggy Pop. ‘He was just a class act,’ says Giddings. ‘David was a good bloke, really funny.’In 2000 Giddings arranged the singer’s now-famous Glastonbury set. There was, it transpires, tremendous back-and-forth about the occasion: the festival’s organiser, Michael Eavis, was unconvinced by Bowie’s new music and made a ‘poxy’ offer; Bowie initially declined because his wife, Iman, was having a baby; Giddings had to lie and say Madonna would headline in his place; and on, and on. Joni Mitchell at the Isle of Wight Festival, 1970Eventually Bowie agreed. As he was about to go on stage, he showed Giddings the setlist. ‘And I nearly fainted, because it was just the most incredible thing I’d ever seen. He said, “What do you think?” And I said, “What do you mean, what do I think? That is [these songs are] my life!”’ (The performance was ‘obviously incredible’, but Giddings’ memory is tainted by the fact that after it he ate a ‘dodgy egg sandwich’ and vomited in his car.)The first Isle of Wight Festival took place in 1968 and became so successful that by 1970 Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen were playing to crowds exceeding 600,000. Giddings, then 17, was there and remembers seeing all those revellers. ‘It looked like the Battle of the Somme.’The event was subsequently banned by parliament, until 2001 when the Isle of Wight council asked Giddings to organise its return the following year. It lost half a million pounds for the first two years, but in 2004, Giddings booked Bowie and The Who. The festival sold 35,000 tickets and broke even. ‘So the rest is history.’ Mick Jagger and Amy Whitehouse on the same stage in 2007The constrained nature of the island means that performers have to cope with fairly unglamorous circumstances. Mick Jagger, for instance, stayed in the nearest Premier Inn and, after Jay Z’s headline performance, the rapper had dinner with his wife Beyoncé at the local boat museum.Some stars, however, make requests. Paolo Nutini’s team asked, simply, ‘for weed’; Paul McCartney’s promoter enquired if there was anyone who could do last-minute acrylic nails. Giddings didn’t know what the latter were and recalls standing ‘in the middle of the field, looking in the Yellow Pages’. He found a beautician in nearby Cowes. ‘So she comes with her vanity case, and sits backstage waiting for Paul McCartney. I thought [the nails] were for one of the backing singers, but they were for him. Because he strengthens his nails to play Yesterday on the acoustic guitar. Anyway, he was so kind to her. He had dinner with her afterwards.’And then there were the Rolling Stones. On the group’s arrival in 2007, Giddings arranged for two articulated lorries to be placed back-to-back in a field, and for a running track to be laid down within them. ‘Because he [Mick Jagger] likes to run for half an hour before he goes on stage.’ Mariah Carey performs in Cologne in 2008 (before hitting the town with John)Meanwhile, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood requested a pool table to be installed, so they could play before the show. ‘So I hire a marquee and a pool table, and a bloke in a suit who levels the table. And they put these big things in the ground to hold the marquee up, screwing up the pavement – which I had to pay for after – and then they [Richards and Wood] just walked past it!’ Giddings, to be clear, says all of this while laughing and smiling.In fact, in the entire hour or so that we speak, he says almost everything while laughing and smiling. ‘I am the luckiest man alive,’ he concludes. ‘I’ve had the best job ever.’Sky will be showing full coverage of the Isle of Wight Festival from 19 June