By – Jackie Lo

My first music festival was Lollapalooza. It was 1997 and my friends and I piled in to whoever had the most reliable car at the time and drove the 3.5 hours to see Julian & Damian Marley and the Uprising Band, James, Korn, Tricky, Snoop Doggy Dogg (as he was billed back then), Tool, and Prodigy on the main stage with Failure, Pugs, Lost Boyz, Demolition Doll Rods, Skeleton Key and Orbit on the 2nd stage. Growing up in a small town, I’d never been to a show that big. I was used to 50 people piling into the VFW for a DIY show if we were lucky or crappy acoustic cover bands playing while I tried to eat chicken fingers at the one place in town that had “live music”. But, what I wanted was MTV’s 120 Minutes and I wanted to see the bands that I’d been listening to on my alternative radio station. I remember getting patted down at security and my friends’ cigarettes getting opened and searched for weed and once we were inside the gates I immediately fell in love with the crowd. These were my people. We were lucky that we had shaded seats, and it was a perfect view of the mosh pits erupting in circles at the front of the stage and, my favorite part, was when we had to dodge projectile joints being thrown at Snoop when he got on stage and asked if anyone had any weed. “Ya’ll got my back if the cops try to get me?” he asked and the whole Lakewood Amphitheater roared in applause.  It’s one of those beautiful days where you can play the highlights on repeat, even 28 years later.

This book, “Lollapalloza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock’s Wildest Festival” tells the story in chronological order of Lollapalooza’s inception in 1991 by Perry Farrell all the way through 1997 (and how the resurgence in 2003 took place) and does a great job sharing the stories of what made each year special in this initial run of shows. The book includes hundreds of new interviews with headliners, main stage acts, 2nd stage hopefuls, tour founders, festival organizers, promoters, publicists, stage crews, record label executives, reporters, roadies, and more. Reading the stories in their words makes it so much better.

Tickets to the first festival in 1991 were only $27.50 and combined groups like Butthole Surfers, Fishbone, Ice-T & Body Count, Jane’s Addiction, Living Colour, Nine Inch Nails, Rollins Band, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and more. That first year was wild with Butthole Surfers bringing a shotgun on stage for a few shows, NIN having literal equipment meltdowns, and where Ice-T met Henry Rollins and was impressed by his stage presence and even admits to being inspired by some of Henry’s stage persona and incorporating it in his own with his future tours. Through battling intense heat, equipment issues, and incredible stage crews that somehow made it all work, 1991 paved the way to bring what was once only a single city festival format in the U.S. on the road and allowed kids like me who didn’t live close to the typical festival major cities the opportunity to see bands I never thought I’d get to see.

You’ll travel through each year with the stories from crazy weather/hurricanes, Eddie Vedder climbing the stages and hanging from rafters, insane freak shows, lots of drugs, monks, Beastie Boys bringing their own basketball goal to every show and getting whooped up by Robert Pollard, an arrest or two, nudity, a Courtney Love assault, Sinead O’Connor leaving with no word in the middle of the tour and you’ll follow 2nd stage acts as they return to become headliners. Do yourself a favorite and read this book and then follow it up with the three-part docuseries that came out last year – Lolla: The Story of Lollapalooza. I loved going back and revisiting this docuseries to put visuals to these stories. This book does a beautiful job giving the readers a behind the scenes look of a festival that brought a lot of joy to me and so many others and to this day in Grant Park in Chicago hosts an estimated 400,000 people each July and sells out annually. It’s become one of the largest festivals in the world and one of the longest running in the United States and it all started with this 1991-1997 run as a way to bring underground and alternative music to the masses.