The Bamboozle is returning for the first time in over 10 years come 2023! All we know right now is that the festival will run between May 5 and 7 somewhere in New Jersey. The Bamboozle originally existed between 2003 and 2012, at which point founder John D'Esposito dissolved it due to creative differences. D'Esposito detailed the issues the festival had in an interview in 2013.
"There were obviously strong creative differences. For the anniversary we wanted to bring it back to Asbury Park and I paid for my own flight to Beverly Hills to convince Michael Lapino and Arthur Fogel to bring it back there. We had the site and we had everything in place, but the partners wanted to bring someone down to watch us.
"We were in a situation where we wanted to be bigger and we went to LiveNation because we thought we’d be their Coachella, their brand. Our first real year we didn’t get the support that we hoped from them in terms of talent. And the second year really crushed us with this festival when All Points West popped up. We never got Jay-Z, yet this festival pops in and gets Jay-Z at last minute notice to replace the Beastie Boys. When you go to a company you go there for their strengths, and we didn’t get those. We had to fight our own fight to get talent from within and then we had to fight to protect the exclusivity because every LiveNation promoter was out for themselves and radius clauses were just trampled on.
"If last year’s festival was done the way the founders and creators wanted it to go, it would have yielded at least 1.5-2 million dollars without sponsorship. And instead, they still haven’t clarified how much they lost because they can’t and don’t want to. I built the car, I built that engine, and for ten years I drove that and won that race. So somebody is going to tell me to go in the backseat and drive my car? Good luck, but when you crash it, don’t call me. It wasn’t LiveNation that did this — House Of Blues did. House Of Blues is 100% responsible for the damage of Bamboozle."
