Ten Things We Learned From ‘Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock’s Wildest Festival’
34 years ago, Perry Farell wanted to send off his band, Jane’s Addiction, with a bang. Rather than hold a traditional farewell tour, he set his sights on something bigger. A celebration of not only Jane’s Addiction but of the alternative scene in general. And so, Lollapalooza was born. He never could’ve guessed that his little festival would become a landmark event. Lollapalooza laid the groundwork for Riot Fest, Pitchfork Fest (RIP), Ozzfest, Knotfest, Lillith Fair, and countless others. Though it doesn’t resemble its devil may care, punk rock early days, it’s a musical rite of passage for artists and fans. It can break up-and-coming artists and revitalize established acts’ careers. Even though the festival is a multimillion-dollar production that has abandoned its alternative rock roots, you can’t deny its impact on the music industry.
Lollapalooza’s legacy is celebrated in the new book, Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock’s Wildest Festival. Written by Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour, it’s a “no holds barred” retelling of the festival’s early days, financial struggles, and reemergence as told by organizers, founders, organizers, crew, publicists, and many more. It also features stories from artists who played at the festival, including Nine Inch Nails, Green Day, Korn, Tom Morello, Henry Rollins, Ministry, Ice-T, Tool, Smashing Pumpkins, and more. The book is filled with wild backstage antics, the hard truth about keeping the festival afloat, and insightful tidbits about how the festival came to life. Here are ten of our favorite stories from the book.
Gibby Haynes pranked Siouxsie and the Banshees on stage with a shotgun
Butthole Surfer’s Gibby Haynes is responsible for a lot of chaotic moments during the inaugural festival. Oddly enough, his antics often involved shooting a shotgun on stage. Siouxsie and the Banshees learned about this the hard way when they invited Haynes to perform “Helter Skelter” with them on stage. When it was time to perform the song, Haynes was nowhere to be found. He finally showed up halfway through the song “looking like one of the Golden Girls,” to the surprise of Banshees guitarist Jon Klein.
“I see this large human in a big floral dress and a huge wig,” says Klein. “And, of course, it’s Gibby. He just walks out on stage, without a microphone, and starts stripping. I may be wrong, but in my memory, I seem to recall he had a Dr Pepper can gaffered to his knob.”
The striptease wasn’t the only surprise Haynes had in store for the Banshees. After stripping off his clothes, Haynes fired a shotgun he brought with him. This caught the attention of frontwoman Siouxsie Sioux, who wrestled him to the ground in an attempt to take the gun from him.
“Sioux suddenly stops and goes, ‘Right! Everyone – get him!’ And we just kind of piled on Gibby. It ended up this pile of bodies in the middle of the stage, with a few guitar necks sticking out of it,” says Klein. Haynes doesn’t have any regrets. “It wasn’t the last time Siouxsie tackled me. And it might not have been the first,” he said.
Henry Rollins and Al Jourgensen may have gotten into a fistfight
Henry Rollins and Ministry’s Al Jourgensen are intense guys. So it’s no surprise that things got heated when they had an unexpected run-in during the first Lollapalooza in 1991. Jourgensen attended the festival’s Chicago stop to see Trent Reznor, who previously acted as a roadie for Jourgensen’s band Revolting Cocks. Wanting to congratulate Reznor on the show, he hopped on the tour bus Reznor’s crew was sharing with Rollins. Rollins had no idea who Jourgensen was and demanded that he get off the bus.
“I was walking through the lounge and Al is there,” recalls Rollins. “Someone introduced me and I said ‘The world’s greatest scumbag,’ and kept walking. This was completely out of line. I don’t know him, have nothing against him, and shouldn’t have said it. Why did I? Youthful stupidity? I don’t know, but the long and short of it is that I had no reason to say that.”
From here, details get murky. Jourgensen claims he threw a punch at Rollins. “I just thought he was being a dick. So I took a swing at him, and he took a swing at me, too. I think I missed my punch, and he missed his, and then everyone got involved in holding us back.”
Rollins remembers things ending differently. “There was no physical interaction whatsoever. What’s that, like thirty-odd years ago? We’re so old now.”
Snoop Dogg recruited the Nation of Islam to be his armed security
With the murders of Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. still lingering in the air, Snoop Dogg wasn’t taking any chances. When asked to play at the 1997 festival, he brought a strapped Nation of Islam as his security. Snoop also had an armored van riding behind the tour bus for additional protection. Mischa Temple, lighting director, recalls a time when the armored van worked a little too well.
“I remember one day he turned up and there was this kind of ruckus around the armored van. Some sort of security thing had gone off in it, and they couldn’t open the door, so Snoop was stuck inside it. They had to call the manufacturer of this fucking thing and work out how to open it. It was like a full-on Spinal Tap thing. …He was in there for a little while and finally, they got it open.”
But as festival production manager Steve “Chopper” Borges learned, Snoop’s fear wasn’t unfounded. “Snoop’s main personal guy flew back to L.A. on a day off, and he got capped and killed and never came back to the tour. So it was real.”
Sinead O’Connor walked off the tour and didn’t tell anyone
Sinead O’Connor played the main stage on Lollapalooza 1995 but left early when she discovered she was pregnant. But instead of telling festival organizers, she left without a word. During a day off in Chicago, O’Connor grabbed her passport, didn’t take her luggage, and boarded the next plane to Dublin without telling anyone. Tour director Stuart Ross found out the hard way. “[Lollapalooza co-founder] Ted Gardner called me and said ‘Hey, somebody just told me that Sinead was in Melody Maker today, getting off a plane in Dublin.’ So I called the tour manager. I said, ‘Hey, is everything okay with your girl?’ He said, ‘Yeah, she didn’t feel very well. She’s got kind of a digestive thing, but she’s fine.’
Ross continues: “Ted called me back and said, ‘I don’t think she’s here.’ I called again, and of course, it was No, no, she’s fine.’ Well, what ended up happening is she got to Chicago, she left the hotel, took only her passport, didn’t even take her luggage, went to the airport without telling anybody, and got on the next flight to Dublin.”
The last-minute change worked in Elastica’s favor, who took over her main stage for the rest of the tour.
Korn refused to perform if the Eels played the main stage before them
After Tricky left the 1997 edition of Lollapalooza, rock band Eels were promoted from the headliner slot on the second stage to Tricky’s slot on the main stage. While the Eels were having a good time, one band was not happy about the change: Korn.
“Korn, who was also a main-stage act and who were playing before us, got pissed off and gave Lollapalooza an ultimatum,” said Eels singer E. “They said, ‘If the Eels get to play on the main stage, we’re quitting.'”
The Old 97’s guitarist Ken Betha adds: “They acted like total little bitch and folded their arms and said ‘We’re not performing before a second-stage band.'”
To keep the peace, the Eels returned to the second stage, but the drama didn’t end there. Once they learned that Korn demanded the change, they confronted the nu-metal band, who blamed the decision on tour director Stuart Ross. “I’m in the bus and E and his tour manager want to talk to me, and they come in and they’re really fucking worked up. And I said, ‘This was Korn’s decision, not mine. We were great with this. And they said, ‘Nope. Korn said they had nothing to do with it, and it was your decision.'”
“I thought it was petty, but whatever,” said E. “We got booted back to the second stage because of Korn.”
Lollapalooza 1998 was canceled after the disappointing sales of 1997
While not everyone was thrilled about the 1997 Lollapalooza lineup featuring Prodigy, Tricky, Tool, Snoop Dogg, Korn, Devo, and Orbital, the festival did well enough for organizers to plan for next year’s edition. The recently reunited Jane’s Addiction was going to headline but plans fell through due to internal band struggles. Additionally, Lollapalooza faced steep competition with the success of new festivals like Lilith Fair, Ozzfest, and H.O.R.D.E. Unable to book a headliner, organizers decided to cancel the event. The festival wouldn’t return for another five years.
Perry Farrell didn’t want Green Day to play Lollapalooza 1994
Green Day’s 1994 album Dookie gave the band a huge mainstream push, so it was a no-brainer to get them on the 1994 lineup. Everyone was on board except Perry Farrell. He considered the California punks as a boy band and said “I don’t want to book a boy band.” Singer Billie Joe Armstrong recalls, “all of sudden, [Perry] comes back in and he’s like ‘I don’t want them on the bill.’ He thought that we were a band that was put together by Mo Ostin at Warner Bros.”
Organizers finally convinced Perry on one condition: Green Day performed half of the tour while the Boredoms played the other half. “For us, it was really disappointing because Perry was someone that we really respected,” continues Armstrong. “I think that made us want to play it even more, actually, because we wanted to prove that he had his head very far up his own ass.” They have since headlined the festival two more times in 2010 and 2022.
Al Jourgensen and Gibby Haynes destroyed a tour bus
The Butthole Surfers’ Gibby Haynes and Ministry’s Al Jourgensen caused a lot of chaos and destruction when both bands were invited to play Lollapalooza in 1992, but nothing tops the time they blew up a tour bus. During a stop in Houston, Jourgensen bought a batch of “bootleg pyrotechnic fireworks” from a gas station. He and Haynes decided to light them all while on the bus. As you’d expect, the bus caught on fire.
“The bus immediately filled with deathly smoke. And then the bus driver slammed on the brakes. And if you’ve ever been on a tour bus when the driver slams on the brakes, it’s not like a smooth thing,” said Haynes. Jourgesen recalls the bus driver pulling over, kicking them off the bus, and calling the cops. Luckily, no one was injured, and they saved precious cargo.
“Somebody had gone back into the flames and gotten our keg of beer off the bus. So we were sitting there on the side of the road drinking beer, and this guy’s screaming at the cops saying we’re Satan incarnate, we’re evil, and this and that. And then these fucking cops just went ‘Well boy, what’d ya expect? This is s’posed to be rock n’ roll, not Moat-zart!’ And that was it. We got on the bus, the driver took us to the next show, dropped us off, and quit. And then we got a new bus.”
Courtney Love and Kathleen Hanna’s infamous brawl
Wherever Courtney Love goes, drama seems to follow. It was no different during the kickoff show of the 1995 edition of Lollapalooza. One of Love’s most infamous moments came when she allegedly punched Bikini Kill‘s Kathleen Hanna. But what happened that night? Love seemed to have beef with Hana due to her friendship with her late husband, Kurt Cobain. Things spiraled from there.
Hole’s Eric Erlandson remembers handing Love a bag of candy and suggesting she offer it to Hanna as a joke peace offering. It didn’t go over well. “[Love] grabbed the candy and just threw it at her. Everybody was like, ‘Oh my god, she punched her in the face,’ but from what I saw, she threw the candy, and kind of slapped her in the direction of her face. I don’t know if she actually hit her or what.”
Hole bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur adds, “Courtney did a fake cat hiss, like a joke. Like a ‘We’re at war’ kind of thing, like ‘Sss!’ making a weird joke in passing. Next thing you know, there’s this explosion of arguing. Maybe a shove, I can’t remember.”
Hanna says she was watching Sonic Youth when Courtney walked up and attacked her. “It’s a real bummer to be assaulted. It sucks. It’s a real bummer if you’re a feminist and you’re assaulted by another woman because it’s just kind of heartbreaking. Especially a woman where you were hoping that you could be some kind of allies.”
Metallica changed how Lollapalooza operated in 1996
Though you wouldn’t imagine it now, Metallica was a controversial choice to headline the festival in 1996. While some organizers thought they were credible, others felt they went against everything Lollapalooza stood for. Organizers also booked acts like Soundgarden, Rancid, Ramones, and Screaming Trees to retain their alternative edge, but it wasn’t the same. Metallica didn’t only change the atmosphere of the festival, they changed how it operated.
Because Metallica had their headline tour booked that year, they didn’t want to play in major cities. Stuart Ross says Metallica refused to play amphitheaters, where the festival usually took place. “They said, ‘We’ll do outside fields or we’re not doing the show.’ And it became a serious point of contention…They took the position that it’s their show and they’re gonna do things the way they want to.”
The festival moved to outdoor spaces in smaller cities to accommodate, but this posed another problem. Because they were in fields, they needed to build stages, bring in generators, porta-johns, gates, fencing, outside catering, and other things they normally wouldn’t need in an amphitheater. This drove up the price of tickets.
“Our expenses were considerably higher,” says Stuart Ross. “I don’t remember what we paid Metallica, but it was way more than our usual budget would allow. So our ticket prices went up for the first time ever, from $27.50 to $35….It was not a stellar year.”
Unhappy with the direction of the festival, Perry Farrell quit the tour in protest and focused on his new festival project, ENIT. Metallica would return to headline the festival in 2015 and 2022.
Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock’s Wildest Festival is out now, via St. Martin’s Press.
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