Lollapalooza Started Three Decades Ago
Here's a re-up of the story of its first ever show.
On July 18, 1991, Lollapalooza started its musical experiment with its first ever show in my hometown of Phoenix, Arizona. It was the middle of summer, but it wasn’t too hot for my best friends and thousands of other diehards to show up in a field with no shade to watch an epic lined up.
As Gibby from the Butthole Surfers put it, “That place was just a flat, thankless expanse of land. Fucking miserable.” Even to a Texan, our venue seemed desolate.
I want to reshare the store I wrote about that historic show. You can read it here in the Alive in the Nineties archive.
Jane’s Addiction headlined, of course, and played a memorable set, where Dave and Perry fought on the stage and bailed early. Thankfully, they crushed the songs they did play. Great day! (And hot AF.)
I love this, thank you. I saw the first “Lolla” in Atlanta. I’ll never forget that JA set although it’s a bit blurry now. I saw the 2nd year in SoCal after moving there, then the 3rd in Seattle (next to The Gorge) where I lived for 25 years. I stopped going after that. Lollapalooza was an obvious huge influence on my life trajectory when I was younger.