Lollapalooza

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This article is about the festival. For the composition, see Lollapalooza (composition).
Lollapalooza
Lollapalooza logo.svg
Lollapalooza 2015.JPG
Lollapalooza 2015.
Genre Alternative rock, punk rock, heavy metal, pop, hip hop, EDM
Frequency Annually
Location(s) Touring (1991–1997, 2003)
Grant Park, Chicago (2005–present)
O'Higgins Park, Santiago, Chile (2011–present)
Jockey Club, São Paulo, Brazil (2012–2013)
Interlagos, São Paulo, Brazil (2014–present)
Hipódromo de San Isidro, San Isidro, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2014–present)
Tempelhof Airport, Berlin, Germany (2015)
Simon Bolivar Park, Bogota, Colombia (2016)
Years active 15
Inaugurated 1991
Most recent March 14–15, 2015 (Santiago, Chile)
March 21–22, 2015 (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
March 28–29, 2015 (São Paulo, Brazil)
July 31-August 2, 2015 (Chicago, Il)
September 12–13, 2015 (Berlin, Germany)
October, 2016 (Bogota, Colombia)
Website
lollapalooza.com

Lollapalooza /ˌlɒləpəˈluːzə/ is an annual music festival featuring popular alternative rock, heavy metal, punk rock, hip hop, and EDM bands and artists, dance and comedy performances and craft booths. It has also provided a platform for non-profit and political groups and various visual artists.

Conceived and created in 1991 by Jane's Addiction singer Perry Farrell as a farewell tour for his band, Lollapalooza ran annually until 1997, and was revived in 2003. From its inception through 1997 and its revival in 2003, the festival toured North America. In 2004, the festival organizers decided to expand the dates to two days per city, but poor ticket sales forced the 2004 tour to be canceled.[1] In 2005, Farrell and the William Morris Agency partnered with Austin, Texas–based company Capital Sports Entertainment (now C3 Presents) and retooled it into its current format as a weekend destination festival in Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois.

In 2010 it was announced that Lollapalooza would debut outside of the United States, with a branch of the festival staged in Chile's capital Santiago on April 2–3, 2011 where they partnered up with Santiago-based company Lotus. In 2011, the company Geo Events confirmed the Brazilian version of the event, which was held at the Jockey Club in São Paulo on 7 and 8 April 2012.[2][3] In November 2014, the first European Lollapalooza was announced, which will be held at the former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin.[4]

The music festival hosts more than 160,000 people over a two or three-day period. Lollapalooza has featured a diverse range of bands and has helped expose and popularize artists such as Atlas Genius, Dev, Rollins Band, Nine Inch Nails, Jane's Addiction, The Smashing Pumpkins, Muse, Kid Cudi, Imagine Dragons, Babes in Toyland, Beastie Boys, Kings of Leon, Foster The People, Coldplay, Stone Temple Pilots, Depeche Mode, Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ministry, Pearl Jam, The Cure, Of Monsters and Men, Thirty Seconds to Mars, The Killers, The National, Rage Against the Machine, Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand, X Japan, Audioslave, Soundgarden, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Cage the Elephant, Alice in Chains, Björk, Lorde, MGMT, Tool, The Black Keys, deadmau5, Hole, Body Count, Ice-T, Queens of the Stone Age, The Drums, The Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, Calvin Harris, Thenewno2, Fishbone, Lady Gaga, Lucius, Betty Who, Butthole Surfers, Grouplove, Haley Reinhart, and Scramble Campbell.

Etymology

The word—sometimes alternatively spelled and pronounced as lollapalootza or lalapaloosa[5]—or "lallapaloosa" (P.G. Wodehouse, "Heart of a Goof") dates from a late 19th-/early 20th-century American idiomatic phrase meaning "an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or event; an exceptional example or instance."[6] Its earliest known use was in 1896.[7] In time the term also came to refer to a large lollipop.[8] Farrell, searching for a name for his festival, liked the euphonious quality of the by-then-antiquated term upon hearing it in a Three Stooges short film.[9] Paying homage to the term's double meaning, a character in the festival's original logo holds one of the lollipops.[8]

The word has also caused a slang suffix to appear in event-planning circles as well as in news and opinion shows that is used synonymously with other suffixes like "a-go-go", "o-rama", etc. The suffix "(a)palooza" is often used to imply (often in hyperbolic language) that an entire event or crowd was made over that term, e.g.: "Parks"-apalooza, "Nipple"-apalooza, etc.

History

Creation

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor during the 1991 Lollapalooza festival.

Inspired by the Gathering of the Tribes concerts produced by Bill Graham, Perry Farrell, Ted Gardner, Marc Geiger, and Don Muller, conceived of the festival in 1990 as a farewell tour for his band Jane's Addiction.[10] Unlike previous music festivals such as Woodstock, A Gathering of the Tribes, or the US Festival, which were one-time events held in one venue, Lollapalooza was a touring festival that traveled across the United States and Canada.[11]

The inaugural 1991 lineup was made up of artists from various genres, drawing in headliners from post-punk such as Siouxsie and the Banshees to industrial music such as Nine Inch Nails, Ice-T, invited to represent rap (which backfired, as Ice-T used this platform to launch Body Count, a heavy metal band). Another key concept behind Lollapalooza was the inclusion of non-musical features.[12] Performers like the Jim Rose Circus Side Show, an alternative freak show, and the Shaolin monks stretched the boundaries of traditional rock culture. There was a tent for display of art pieces, virtual reality games, and information tables for political and environmental non-profit groups promoting counter-culture and political awareness.[13]

Success and decline

It was at Lollapalooza where Farrell coined the term "Alternative Nation".[14] The explosion of alternative rock in the early 1990s propelled Lollapalooza forward; the 1992 and 1993 festivals leaned heavily on grunge and alternative acts, and usually featured an additional rap artist.[15] Punk rock standbys like mosh pits and crowd surfing became part of the canon of the concerts. These years saw great increases in the participatory nature of the event with the inclusion of booths for open-microphone readings and oratory, television-smashing pits and tattooing and piercing parlors.[16][17] After 1991, the festival included a second stage (and, in 1996, a third stage) for up-and-coming bands or local acts.[18] Attendee complaints of the festival included high ticket prices as well as the high cost for food and water at the shows.[19] The festival played at the Alpine Valley festival in East Troy, Wisconsin on August 29, 1992, and also at Pine Knob Music Theater in Clarkston, Michigan (near Detroit) in 1991, where concertgoers ripped up chunks of sod and grass and threw them at each other and at the bands, resulting in tens of thousands of dollars in damages to the venue.[9]

Grunge band Nirvana was scheduled to headline at the festival in 1994, but the band officially dropped out of the festival on April 7, 1994.[9] Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain's body was discovered in Seattle, Washington the next day. Cobain's widow, Courtney Love, made guest appearances at several shows, including the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania show at FDR Park (usually taking time given to her by The Smashing Pumpkins vocalist/guitarist Billy Corgan), speaking to the crowds about the loss, then singing a minimum of two songs.[9] Farrell worked with rock poster artist Jim Evans (T.A.Z.) to create a series of posters and the complete graphic decoration for the 1994 event, including two 70 foot tall Buddha statues that flanked the main stage.

In 1996, Farrell, who had been the soul of the festival, decided to focus his energy to produce his new festival project, ENIT, and did not participate in producing Lollapalooza.[9] Many fans saw the addition of Metallica in 1996 as contrary to the festival's prior practice of featuring "non-mainstream" artists,[9] and described the crowds attracted by Metallica as being singularly focused on the headliner without respect for the other performing artists.[20] Moreover, festival cofounder Farrell felt that Metallica's macho image violated his peaceful vision for the festival,[21] for alternative culture of the early 1990s was generally against macho behavior.[22] Farrell quit the tour in protest.[23]

Responding to the controversial Metallica tour, Lollapalooza made efforts to revive its relevance to audiences. The festival booked eclectic acts such as country superstar Waylon Jennings in 1996, and emphasized heavily electronica groups such as The Orb and The Prodigy in 1997.[9] 1997, however, would prove to be the final tour from the initial series of Lollapalooza tours. The festival failed to find a suitable headliner in 1998, and therefore announced Lollapalooza's cancellation.[24] The cancellation served as a signifier of alternative rock's declining popularity. In light of the festival's troubles that year, Spin said, "Lollapalooza is as comatose as alternative rock right now."[25]

Revival and rebirth

Two women with brown hair signing on a scene. The first wears a yellow bikini and the second, who holds a microphone, wears a silver bra.
A blond woman stands on a scene while a man, who also has blond hair, is signing behind her..
Lady Gaga performed first at the festival in 2007 with Lady Starlight before she was famous. (left) She returned three years later in 2010 with the Semi Precious Weapons as an internationally known singer. (right)

In 2003, Farrell reconvened Jane's Addiction and scheduled a new Lollapalooza tour. The festival schedule included venues in 30 cities through July and August. The 2003 tour achieved only marginal success with many fans staying away, presumably because of high ticket prices.[9] Another tour scheduled for 2004 was to consist of a two-day festival taking place in each city. It was cancelled in June due to weak ticket sales across the country.[1]

Farrell partnered with Capital Sports & Entertainment (now C3 Presents), which co-owns and produces the Austin City Limits Music Festival, to produce Lollapalooza.[26] CSE, Farrell and the William Morris Agency—along with Charles Attal Presents—resurrected Lollapalooza as a two-day destination festival in 2005 in Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois, with an even greater variety of performers (70 acts on five stages) than that of the touring festival.[9] The festival was generally successful, attracting over 65,000 attendees, despite a 104 degree Fahrenheit Sunday (40 degrees Celsius) heat wave (two people were hospitalized for heat related illness).[27][28]

It returned to Chicago on August 4–6, 2006. On October 25, 2006, the Chicago Park District and Capital Sports & Entertainment agreed to a five-year, $5 million deal, keeping Lollapalooza at Grant Park in Chicago until 2011.[29] Lollapalooza ran August 3–5 in 2007, August 1–3 in 2008, August 7–9 in 2009, August 6–8 in 2010, August 5–7 in 2011, August 3–5 in 2012, August 2–4 in 2013 and August 1–3 in 2014. After a successful 2008 festival, another deal was signed to keep Lollapalooza in Chicago through 2018, guaranteeing the city $13 million.[30]

In December 2015, it was announced that Lollapalooza 2016 would be 4 days long, July 28th to July 31st, to celebrate the event's 25th anniversary.[31]

International expansion

Chile

In 2010, it was announced that Lollapalooza would debut in South America, with a branch of the festival staged in Chile's capital Santiago on April 2–3, 2011. The Lollapalooza Chile line up included Jane's Addiction, Thirty Seconds to Mars, The National, Manny and Gil The Latin, The Drums, The Killers, Los Bunkers, Ana Tijoux, Javiera Mena, Fatboy Slim, Deftones, Los Plumabits, Cypress Hill, 311, The Flaming Lips and many others.[32]

Brazil

A Brazilian version of the event was confirmed in 2011,[2] and had its inaugural edition at the Jockey Club in São Paulo on April 7 and 8, 2012.[3] In the following year, Lollapalooza was again held at Jockey Club during Holy Week, this time expanding to three days that filled the whole Paschal Triduum - March 29–31, 2013.[33] The third edition was moved to the Autódromo José Carlos Pace in São Paulo's borough of Interlagos, happening on April 5 and 6, 2014.[34] Interlagos remained the festival's home for the following editions, on March 28-29, 2015,[35] and March 12-13, 2016.[36]

Argentina

On September 10, 2013, it was announced that the following year the festival will also be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina; thus expanding the South American branch after the festivals in Santiago and São Paulo.[37]

Germany

On November 4, 2014, it was announced that the very first Lollapalooza Festival will be held in Europe, in the German capital of Berlin. It is scheduled for September 12–13, 2015, the proposed location is the historical airport ground of Berlin-Tempelhof. In true Lollapalooza fashion, this urban location serves to incorporate regional partners in presenting international events.[38] In the official press release, festival founder Perry Farrell stated that, "Berlin's energy, vibrant art, fashion and music scenes are a mirror reflection of what Lollapalooza is all about and I can’t wait to share in this cultural exchange".[4][39] Lollapalooza Germany will be produced by the Lollapalooza U.S. team in addition to Melt! Booking and Festival Republic who have helped run both Reading and Leeds festival in England.[40]

Other

On August 7, 2012, Perry Farrell announced that Lollapalooza will be debuting in Tel Aviv, Israel. Farrell described Isreal as an "international music community that listens to everything we all listen to, but the artists weren’t traveling there so it was an opportunity."[41] The event was scheduled for August 20–22, 2013 in Hayarkon Park, the city's largest urban park.[42] However, the event has been postponed to an unknown date.[43] While there was no definitive reasoning for the cancellation of the Isreal date, various news sources report there are often financial challenges that attribute to producing a large-scale show with international artists within the political situation in the Mideast.[44]

Criticism

Recording engineer, guitarist, and journalist Steve Albini has criticized Lollapalooza for its corporatization of popularized "alternative" music. In a 1993 interview, Albini commented:

Lollapalooza is the worst example of corporate encroachment into what is supposed to be the underground. It is just a large scale marketing of bands that pretend to be alternative but are in reality just another facet of the mass cultural exploitation scheme. I have no appreciation or affection for those bands and I have no interest in that whole circle. If Lollapalooza had Jesus Lizard and the Melvins and Fugazi and Slint then you could make a case that it was actually people on the vanguard of music. What it really is the most popular bands on MTV that are not heavy metal.[45]

Both Jesus Lizard and the Melvins have subsequently performed at the event.[46][47]

In April 2010, it was reported that Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan had launched an antitrust investigation into the festival for imposing radius clauses on acts, contractually stipulating that they could not perform in cities within 300 miles of Chicago—including cities as far as Detroit, Indianapolis, and Milwaukee—for up to six months prior, and three months after Lollapalooza.[48][49]

Lineups by year

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Further information: List of Lollapalooza lineups by year

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 The Associated Press. "Lollapalooza 2004 cancels all dates". USA Today. June 22, 2004.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 lollapalooza.com, Announcing Lollapalooza Berlin 2015, retrieved 7 November 2014
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Hilburn, Robert. "POP MUSIC REVIEW - 'Lollapalooza' - Festival Concert With '60s Concept Isn't the Hoped-For Happening". Los Angeles Times. July 22, 1991.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 9.8 Grimes, Taylor and Longton, Jeff. "Lollapalooza History Timeline". Billboard. 2007.
  10. ↑ Reynolds, Simon. "POP MUSIC; A Woodstock for the Lost Generation". The New York Times. August 4, 1991.
  11. ↑ Pope, Janey. "Lollapalooza 2008". NME. August 14, 2008.
  12. ↑ Parvaz, D. "Lollapalooza: Then and Now". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. August 23, 2003.
  13. ↑ Wiederhorn, Jon. "Corporate Sponsors May Be Key To Lollapalooza's Return". MTV.com. January 15, 2003.
  14. ↑ di Perna, Alan. "Brave Noise—The History of Alternative Rock Guitar". Guitar World. December 1995.
  15. ↑ Nager, Larry. "A History of Lollapalooza". The Cincinnati Enquirer. July 13, 2003.
  16. ↑ Moses, Robert. "Lotta-palooza". The Phoenix. August 14, 1992.
  17. ↑ du Pre, Jolie. "2009 Lollapalooza Hits Chicago's Grant Park". Associated Content. August 8, 2009.
  18. ↑ Browne, David. "Lollapalooza's Second Stage". Entertainment Weekly. Jun 25, 1993.
  19. ↑ Volpi, Matt. "Lollapalooza festival alternates cool music with dumb people". The Daily Collegian. August 1, 1994.
  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. ↑ For example, see Mimi Schippers, Rockin' out of the Box: Gender Maneuvering in Alternative Hard Rock. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002. (Especially Chapter 1, and page 14.)
  23. ↑ Pillsbury, Glenn T. Damage Incorporated: Metallica and the Production of Musical Identity. New York: Routledge, 2006. See page 143.
  24. ↑ "Lollapalooza Cancelled". Billboard. April 6, 1998.
  25. ↑ Weisbard, Eric. "This Monkey's Gone to Heaven." Spin. July 1998.
  26. ↑ "Pixies, Weezer, Panic Set For Lollapalooza". Billboard.
  27. ↑ Matheson, Whitney. "Live from Lollapalooza: An hour-by-hour report". USA Today. July 23, 2005.
  28. ↑ Wehrle, Drew. "Choose or Lollapalooza". Spin. July 25, 2005.
  29. ↑ Herrmann, Andrew. "Lollapalooza to rock city for 5 more years". Chicago Sun-Times October 26, 2006.
  30. ↑ Kot, Greg. "Lollapalooza promoters still searching for Chicago identity". Chicago Tribune. July 31, 2009.
  31. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  32. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  33. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  34. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  35. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  36. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  37. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  38. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  39. ↑ Lollapalooza Announces Berlin Festival: Taking place at Tempelhof Airport September 2015, pitchfork.com, 6 November 2014
  40. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  41. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  42. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  43. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  44. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  45. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  46. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  47. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  48. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  49. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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