Lollapalooza revolutionized the way Americans experience large musical festivals with its multiple stages, carnival midway and cross-genre acts, bringing a taste of England’s famous five-day Glastonbury Festival to the United States.
Lollapalooza ’95, which occurred 14 months after Kurt Cobain died, was the beginning of the end for alt-rock. Imagine a time with mosh pits but no WiFi or smartphones. A year later commercial bands like Matchbox Twenty and Third Eye Blind were taking over the genre.
Twenty years later, The Washington Post is looking back at Lollapalooza ’95, offering an oral history featuring interviews with and videos of the bands that made up that year’s line up, including Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, Sinead O’Connor, and Melissa Auf der Maur and Eric Erlandson from Hole.
Highlights include David Yow from the Jesus Lizard dropping his pants at a show in Cincinnati and being handcuffed and fined $250, a pregnant Sinead O’Connor leaving the tour and being replaced by Elastica, and tension between Courtney Love and just about everyone on the tour.
The video above shows attendees in Charles Town, W.Va., flinging mud at Pavement. When frontman Stephen Malkmus was hit in the chest, the band walked off stage. “Pavement is the band that did in Lollapalooza,” Pavement’s Bob Nastanovich says in the video.
[Via The Washington Post]