A new oral history of Lollapalooza recalls the alt-rock music festival's wildest days
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Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. The

The music festival economy is a bit in flux these days, particularly small ones, whether we're talking about experimental music festivals in the desert or the Bluegrass Festival by me. A bunch of them have had to cancel because it just didn't make dollars and cents. But the big ones are still around. And one of the biggest is Lollapalooza, which started in 1991 and had a massive impact on rock music, music festivals, and popular culture at large.

Richard Beanstalk and Tom Bourgeois are two music writers behind a new oral history of Lollapalooza titled Lollapalooza, the uncensored story of alternative rock's wildest festival. And in this interview with Empire's A. Martinez, yeah, they talk about the wacky hijinks that happened on stage, but also about the kind of idealistic vision at the root of the festival. That's ahead.

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Learn more at Betterment.com. Investing involves risk. Performance not guaranteed. In the early 1990s, American rock music was just beginning to emerge from the hair metal era. And one of the most influential bands to lead the transition was Jane's Addiction.

Just as Jane's addiction was starting to gain traction, though, the constantly feuding band announced their final tour in 1991. Frontman Perry Farrell invited some of his favorite bands to hit the road with them, and he called the traveling music show Lollapalooza, and it was chaos right from the start. They come out on stage the first night, and the two principal members, Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro, start brawling on stage.

That's Richard Beanstalk. He's one of the editors of a new oral history of Lollapalooza. Tom Beaujour is the co-editor. He added that the band Nine Inch Nails also had a rough first show.

The entire Nine Inch Nails musical system is plugged into this one electrical drop box and it just shorts out. And Trent Reznor freaks out, smashes his equipment, everybody else smashes their equipment. Instead of folding on day one, Lollapalooza went on to define what rock would become in the 1990s.

Richard Beanstalk and Tom Beaujour interviewed hundreds of people responsible for making that traveling circus possible, including its founder, Perry Farrell. His vision was really to represent a diverse set of bands, which he did. He had Ice-T, Suzy and the Banshees, but also a diverse set of ideas. So that's why he developed the idea of having all of these booths.

and tense around where he would hopefully, as he said, have the NRA next to Greenpeace and really showcase opposing ideas. He was really idealistic and maybe unrealistic, but that was his brief. He really wanted to make something where different ideas came into contact with each other. It was exciting, chaotic, a lot of fights, a lot of drugs. What's your favorite story that you heard from the people you interviewed

There is like a lot of very, very weird stuff. I think the strangest thing that happened was in 1994 when the band L7, who were an all-female punk rock band, teamed up with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

And they were so bored that they decided to create paper mache cars and wigs and reenacted the Kennedy assassination on stage and not only on stage, but in Dallas. And it went over very badly. That really sort of shows off the kind of bad judgment and cabin fever that can occur when you spend eight weeks on a bus.

Richard, you were there, right? You were there for the first three years. So, I mean, it lasted for actually maybe longer than anyone would have thought considering how it started. How did Lollapalooza eventually find its footing?

I think that even with all the technical-type difficulties that we're talking about on the first night, Perry had a great vision. Some of the other organizers, these were people that were pros and were pretty keyed into the scene. Some of it is also just being right place, right time. Lollapalooza 1991 happens less than a month after it finishes. Nirvana's Nevermind comes out.

So by the summer of 1992, alternative music is fully mainstream and Lollapalooza is fully in the center of that. And Richard, one of the unique things about Lollapalooza is that it really tried to cross boundaries and mix genres. Ice-T on the first tour, along with his heavy metal band Body Count, then Ice Cube, Coolio, Snoop, they all played Lollapalooza. What was the idea behind bringing all of these genres together in one place?

It really was a unique thing at the time, and now it's something that we just kind of take for granted. I mean, if you look at any of these festivals, Coachella, Bonnaroo, it's hip-hop and pop and rock and all these things right next to each other. But that was not happening in 1991. And again, that was one of the main conceits of Lollapalooza, that you could do something like this. So the fact that they were doing it should not be...

underestimated. It really was a unique thing at the time. Yeah. And the thing is too, like with Perry Farrell, as much as he was the genius and inspiration behind Lollapalooza, if he had gotten his way on certain decisions when it comes to lineup, there might not have been Pearl Jam at Lollapalooza in 1992. There might not have been Green Day at Lollapalooza. I mean, how many creative clashes were there when it came to figuring out who exactly would be at Lollapalooza, Tom?

I think that there was a lot of behind-the-scenes friction. And the founders say to us, you know, we were music snobs. So they really did...

not book a lot of the sort of more popular alternative rock bands of the era. So there was a constant push and pull between what was cool, what was commercial enough. And of course, this sort of ends up with the festival booking Metallica as a headliner in 1996, which is pretty much considered the moment when Lollapalooza jumps the shark. Perry Farrell is so incensed

by Metallica being made the headliner that he actually steps down from the festival altogether. And while it does draw more people, it really doesn't do that well because of the increased cost. And it never really recovers the gleam of being this alternative bastion and sort of North Star.

Richard, considering that you were there as a teenager watching the first few shows, is this book a bit of a love letter to Lollapalooza as opposed to the uncensored story of Lollapalooza?

I think in some ways it probably is. I think even if you love something, if you just show that side of it, then you're not really showing much anyway. So within all of the gritty details, I think that the real personality of it comes out, and hopefully that's what we captured. It's also a little bit wistful because according to all of the people involved with the festival, given the economics of touring now,

A festival like this that would tour around the country with this many artists of that stature is actually impossible to do. So it's really an artifact of a bygone time. It's not going to happen again. So it's a celebration of something that can't be reproduced. Richard Beanstock and Tom Beaujour co-wrote Lollapalooza, the uncensored story of alternative rock's wildest festival. Richard, Tom, thanks for taking us back. Thanks for having us. Thank you so much for having us.

Lollapalooza does still exist, but now it's just a four-day affair in Chicago's Grant Park with a few international spin-offs. And just a reminder that signing up for Book of the Day Plus is a great way to support NPR's book coverage and public media. And you'll get to listen to every episode sponsor-free. So please, go find out more at plus.npr.org slash bookoftheday.com

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