BY DC CUEVA
Whether it's buying songs piecemeal to create my playlists for every major trip, having a brother in law who's done DJ gigs for a long time, or experiencing a meet & greet with my favorite band two decades ago, music is something that is a vital part of my daily life -- even though I am someone who doesn't sing or play an instrument. But live music is a different story: only a small handful of times that I have ever been to a concert -- most recently, a free live show by a local cover band on Fremont Street in downtown on my most recent trip to Las Vegas last Halloween weekend.
However, it is only part of a live music story that features thousands of gigs -- large and small, chart-toppers and up-and-comers, and stadium tours to club shows -- that crisscross the country and the world every year... most especially when the summer comes around. As the live music season gets underway once again, music fans have something to look forward to: major festivals from EDM events in Miami and Vegas to Lollapalooza in Chicago and Bonnaroo in Tennessee... not to mention major tours, stadium shows and lots more. But over time, one event has grown to becoming THE event in American music.
It may not be the largest one of its kind... nor does it take place during the actual summer months themselves. But like golf at Augusta signals the arrival of springtime in the sports world, it's the annual gathering of hundreds of thousands of music fans, fanatics and those lucky to get those precious tickets to an event at a polo ground 120 miles from the country's second largest metropolis that has grown from humble beginnings to become the single most highly anticipated annual live event in American music. That is the case with Coachella -- now twenty-five years young.
Over the past decade on that second weekend of April, it's become tradition for me to tune into YouTube and to enjoy, for free, the biggest artists and emerging talent from the Coachella festival. Unless I can chalk up that life's fortune, watching those streams -- upped to six for this year's event -- will be the closest thing I'll ever get to actually being on the grounds of that polo field near where my brother-in-law grew up there outside of the Palm Springs area, especially being that big music superfan.
There is something about this springtime tradition that has become American music's equivalent of the five-ring circus of the Olympic Games: the biggest names and new rising stars from all around the music world playing on multiple stages simultaneously, the hundreds of thousands that flock to this oasis for the ultimate Spring Break weekend, the dozens of celebrities and influencers who spend just chunk change to mingle with each other and other fellow festival-goers who adorn the most unique fashion, and the structures, artwork and the Ferris wheel that adorn this vast playground. But this event hasn't always been this quaint little event turned powerhouse of the live music scene.
When one of the icons of the emergence of Seattle grunge into American music in the early '90s mapped out their 1993 tour, Pearl Jam had hit an impasse with the same company that caused Congress to intervene after the blunder of the Eras Tour ticket presale three decades later. For their Southern California stop, Eddie Vedder and co. opted to bypass L.A. because of hidden service charges applied to ticket purchases by Ticketmaster, and they enlisted concert promoter Paul Tollett's Goldenvoice to find a suitable venue. He found a place two hours eastward in Indio, CA just outside of Palm Springs called the Empire Polo Club -- normally suited to six chukkers of soccer on horses.
Nearly 25,000 fans came to the Pearl Jam concert and packed this serene venue that, with its vast 1000 acres of space, proved Empire's capability of hosting large-scale events and gave Tollett a bold idea that, if the opportunity presented itself, it could host a major music festival. But for a regionally-based company smaller than that of larger national outlets like SFX Entertainment and the behemeth that would ultimately become Live Nation, Goldenvoice did not have the big resources of booking concerts around California. The promoter remembered, "We were getting our @$$ kicked financially. We were losing a lot of bands. And we couldn't compete with the money."
To get around those shortfalls, Paul decided to take a bold gamble by conceiving a music festival whose concept had rarely found success in the U.S., other than for the decades old Summerfest in Milwaukee each June, and the most iconic event of them all of Woodstock in 1969. But for his idea, he wanted not the biggest artists, but to book just those who trendy bands and artists who were not in the mainstream or on the charts just yet. And when he attended Britain's biggest music festival in Glastonbury in 1997, amidst the crowds and the majestic setting he handed fliers to prospective artists of the venue he would want to bring them to: the sunny skies of Palm Springs compared to the usually damp Southwest England countryside of Somerset.
Together, they had ambitions on emulating the success of the likes of Glastonbury, Pinkpop and others in Europe... and by summer 1999 both Tollett and Goldenvoice head Rick Van Sauten had their venue in Empire, the OK of the local city council, and forty acts by the time tickets went on sale in August. But it was before the box office opened that they had to contend with the fallout of Woodstock's second & most infamous revival, and insurance costs increased as did concerns about the festival experience -- especially with the warm weather and a short two-month window to delivery. And both wanted to prove that a music festival can go off without a hitch, and not with the looting, arson, violence and rapes that marred that weekend in upstate New York.
But the inaugural Coachella proceeded that October with Beck, Tool and Rage Against the Machine headlining a festival that was coined "the anti-Woodstock" in many ways. The acts booked were based on simple artistical merit rather than on the usual popularity contest that dominates American music, and where the experience promised complimentary water & parking, misting tents and lots of restrooms. But the stifling 100° SoCal heat and its October positioning saw only more than half of the intended 70,000 tickets were sold at only $50 a pop... and despite it being named "Festival of the Year" by Pollstar the event found itself $850,000 in the red.
Coachella II was put off after that when Goldenvoice teamed with the creator of EDC, Pasquale Rotella, to stage Nocturnal Wonderland in its place in October 2000. But upon its return the following year, the festival was moved to the more weather-friendly date of April where it has remained since... and where difficulties looking for enough talent saw it cut to one day, one month after Tollett sold his company for $7 million to Anschutz Entertainment Group (the owners of what's now LA's Crypto.com Arena). It wasn't till months before they he found a headliner in Jane's Addiction, and it wasn't until the following year that the event began to find its footing when Björk and Oasis headlined the 2002 festival and the event began to break even as the vast space around the festival grounds began to open up.
2003 saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Beastie Boys and Iggy Pop headline the show as on-site camping was introduced as did increasing recognition and worldwide interest... and the following year saw its first sellout when Radiohead headlined bring the attendee count to 110,000, and 2005 when Coldplay and Nine Inch Nails played. It gave Rolling Stone reason to christen Coachella as "America's best music festival," which in 2006 welcomed its first pop headliner in Madonna, as well as Depeche Mode, Tool and Daft Punk. The following years saw the festival extended to present length of three days as RHCP, Rage and Bjork returned again to headline as did Prince, and also saw Goldenvoice expand its residency by adding country music cousin Stagecoach.
By the time of its tenth anniversary, Coachella marked that occasion in 2009 by welcoming Paul McCartney, The Killers and The Cure, followed a year later by Jay-Z, Muse and Gorillaz where amidst the Recession, the event shattered previous records with 75,000 attendees a day -- 225,000 in total. 2011 saw Kanye West, Kings of Leon, The Strokes and Arcade Fire headline as it reached $25 million at the gate... but the enormous demand for tickets became so much, a month after Goldenvoice announced starting with 2012 Coachella would expand to two weekends - with identical lineups for each and giving ticket goers a fairer chance to see an event that would grow in stature when that occurred.
And after tickets for the 2012 festival sold out in only a few hours, there the following year came the first such moment where Coachella had begun to garner considerable mainstream interest. While it was Radiohead that was the most-anticipated of the headliners once again, it was during Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg's Sunday set that provided an all-time showstopper: a projection of the late Tupac Shakur appeared on stage much to everyone's shock. The hologram, made possible by way of a Pepper's ghost created using a system called the Musion Eyeliner, created enormous buzz in the days following that the hip hop icons' set, it was the first time that a lot of casual music fans had even heard of Coachella as that year's event grossed over $47 million in gates.
Emboldened by that earthshattering Tupac cameo, ticket prices jumped the following year to $349 for a general admission pass... but it didn't deter from 180,000 people forking over the extra cash to allow Coachella to pass the $60 million gate milestone (67 in fact) as RHCP, Blur, Phoenix and The Stone Roses headlined the 2013 event, which saw Goldenvoice spend $30 million more to acquire more extra land around Empire for parking and additional logistical space for what has now become the world's most lucrative music carnival. And the next year saw 184 artists descend on the desert led by Arcade Fire, Muse and a reunited Outkast as tickets sold out within three hours and gross reached $78 million.
But the moment that cemented Coachella as the greatest happening in music actually had its roots that year: originally Beyoncé was going to headline 2017, but her pregnancy saw her defer her option to the following year in joining The Weeknd and Eminem as headliners of the 2018 event, joining a then-relatively unknown artist by the name of Post Malone. The two-hour set saw her Destiny's Child mates Kelly Rowland, Michelle Williams and sister Solange join her as did a college marching band and majorette dancers for a headline set that made history in many ways. It became the most-watched in YouTube history, as over 450,000 per-minute viewers (part of the 41 million that watched that weekend) stayed up well past bedtime to watch her become the first Black woman to headline.
It was a hard act to follow for the twentieth annual edition of Coachella in 2019, and women were among the prominent headliners again: Ariana Grande became the fourth female headliner and its youngest at age 25... but on the outer stages, the future was on display in an up-and-coming singer six years Ariana's senior in Billie Eilish, and the first Kpop girl group to play in Blackpink. Childish Gambino and Tame Impala also joined the queen as headliners, as did Kanye and a choir. But it was also here that trouble started brewing over poor working conditions for security working behind the scenes, a year after a damaging claim of sexual harassment and assault by one attendee.
And this year, the world has returned once again to Indio for Coachella 2024: this fortnight, it has once again seen a microcosm of music and pop culture collide under the scorching sun. This was the latest stop in the Taylor & Travis Tour, where nostalgia ruled again in No Doubt, Sublime, Deftones and Blur taking the big stage as did Raye, Peso Pulma, Renee Rapp and Sabrina Carpenter, and where Kpop further staked its hold here in upstarts Ateez and Le Sserafim. As always, there's been a slew of big names, emerging talent and surprise guests: Lil Nas X, Shakira, Justin Bieber, 21 Savage, Lauryn Hill, Nelly Furtado, Anitta, Paris Hilton, Juvenile, and even the USC marching band.
When anyone steps foot on the 78 acres of the Empire Polo Club (and whose footprint gets increased eight-fold to accommodate ample room for parking, RV's, camping and related logistics every April), they become immersed in all of the facets that makes Coachella the marquee event in American music. Once they enter, they are greeted with a slew of sculptures and visual art installations that gives additional validation of the event's actual expanded name, from a large astronaut to its signature multi-story circular structure, and the abundance of outstanding work of visual artists.
The Olympic Park in any Summer or Winter Games host city usually is where most of the action happens in the biggest spectacle in sports with several disciplines having their venues situated on a central area. The same premise is true when it comes to Coachella, where the equivalent of the Olympic Stadium as the focal point is always the Coachella Stage -- the main venue where the biggest acts almost always perform including the headliner at night's end, and thus it by far draws in the largest crowds. Next door is the Outdoor Theater, a smaller stage that also brings its share of good music.
The rest of the stages are located in tents named for deserts located all around Southern California and the surrounding area, and where the most high-profile of these mid-sized stages is the Mojave named for the desert that's home to Death Valley and LA's gateway to Vegas. Here, artists from multiple genres and from varying stages of development are hosted in this place near the rose garden... and this was where Sahara once stood: that is the hub for EDM dance music, located in a large tent the size of an airport hanger that's 80-feet high, and hardly an oasis compared to that in Africa.
A fifth stage that's been in use since the start is Gobi, which like Mojave is mid-sized and also hosts different genres and artists of all ranges. And as Coachella has grown, new stages have been added over the past decade: emerging DJ's call residency inside the small Yuma tent, the growing Latin genre and big punk acts have the intimate Sonora stage to do their thing, and fans can chill out to vintage club music inside the Despacio tent. There's also a big dome called Antarctic for 360-degree video, the small Heineken House with renowned acts and live mash-ups, and the new Quasar stage for long DJ sets.
And like the Olympics, Goldenvoice has gone out of its way to make sure Coachella is as big as it can be: a lawsuit filed in 2018 brought into the open the various clauses acts who perform there have to adhere to in that they can't play other festivals before theirs in April or any on the west coast beforehand among others. And the brand is so distinguished, GV has the money to go after others who brand their event with the suffix "-chella," as well as embracing corporate sponsorship much like the five-ring circus. But the festival has also become a leader and trend-setter when it comes to the environment in making sure to recycle most of the litter from the event, among other initiatives.
As this year's Coachella comes to a close today, it's hard to think that the idea of a modern-day American music festival that can match the likes of Glastonbury was a long-shot back at the turn of the last century considering how it came after that last Woodstock. But this annual gathering in California has grown from strength to strength to become the biggest event of its kind in the most coveted music land in the world: a festival that brings rock, hip-hop, dance, pop and everything music for two amazing weekends every April, not to mention a third for just the country folks. As a documentary that substituted for those years without this event can comprehend, Coachella has earned its place as music's biggest weekend.
🎵 🌴 🎡
As DCBLOG evolves for our next generation in this tenth anniversary season, this year we are broadening our focus to feature music posts alongside our signature MTV Reality show coverage and the upcoming 2024 Summer of Sports. This includes a look into a radio station that is actually located outside where I call home, but who is actually the same age as me and taps into my broad musical tastes. Later this summer through our second film review of a documentary on them, we will look at the rags to riches emergence of New York pop radio station Z100 and its rise "From Worst to First."
- I AM DC
@DC408DXTR
Bibliography: Wikipedia, Photography: Various Sources
