Lollapalooza Music Festival Revived After 6 Years
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Six years after the Lollapalooza traveling music festival played its last note, some of the top names in rock will hit the road for a new version this summer, organizers said on Monday.
Lollapalooza will be headlined by Jane’s Addiction — the alternative rock quartet who conceived the event in 1991 as a way to mark its brief swan song — and emerging acts Audioslave, Incubus, Queens of the Stone Age and Jurassic 5.
Members of the bands gathered at a Hollywood record store to announce the details, and Jane’s Addiction performed three songs for the press corps and several hundred fans.
In its seven years of operation, Lollapalooza grouped such disparate acts as Pearl Jam and Ice-T (1993), Smashing Pumpkins and Nick Cave (1994), and Metallica and Devo (1996) on the same bill. Fans could watch a dozen bands on a single day, and also take in various exhibits. While such festivals are commonplace in Europe, they have been slow to catch on in America.
“When Lollapalooza first emerged, it completely changed the face of popular music,” said Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello, who previously played a few shows during the 1996 installment with his former band Rage Against the Machine.
“It took a lot of cutting-edge bands and forged them into a musical community that changed music in America. It was probably the most important tour to ever trek across the United States,” Morello added.
But the juice ran out of Lollapalooza by 1997, when the lineup was headed by hard rock bands Korn and Tool. Some fans and critics complained that the event was becoming too mainstream.
“It’s never a bad idea to take a rest especially, when you’re exhausted, to think about things and restrategize and wait for — I would call it the perfect wave,” said Perry Farrell, the Jane’s Addiction singer and surfing enthusiast who co-owns Lollapalooza.
Dates and venues will be announced imminently, a spokeswoman said. Lollapalooza will visit 27 U.S. cities and Toronto over July and August. More bands are also expected to be added to the bill.
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