2024-02-02 06:30:01
Two studio albums were enough for Jane’s Addiction published at the end of the 80s, ‘Nothing’s Shocking’ (1988) and ‘Ritual de lo Habitual’ (1990), to radically transform rock. Taking inspiration from references such as Led Zeppelin, and The Doors, and Black Sabbath, and The Stooges, and The Velvet Underground, and David Bowie, and Bob Marley, and the Dead Kennedys, and The Germs, the Californian band created a completely different music to all of the above, ambitious and reckless, loud but sensual and, thanks to the manners of Perry Farrell – one of the most electric frontmen in history – also a bit ‘kitsch’. And meanwhile they paved the way for groups associated with labels such as ‘alternative rock’ and ‘grunge’ such as The Pixies, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day and Pearl Jam.
The members of Jane’s Addiction, yes, They couldn’t stand each other, and in 1991 they understood that it was time to separate. But, instead of doing it loudly, they decided to throw a big party, which immediately became a reference music festival, a platform for underground art and activism, and an icon of Generation X. It has just been presented at the Sundance Festival ‘Lolla: The Story of Lollapalooza’, a documentary miniseries that explores the origins of that eventthe historical context that conditioned it and its subsequent cultural impact.
It was specifically Farrell who, adapting the model festivals British like Glastonbury and Reading, he devised what was initially going to be just a farewell tour for the band and that at the same time would function as a showcase for his favorite musicians of the moment; It was also he who chose the name of the event: Lollapalooza, which means “something or someone wonderful….and a giant spinning lollipop,” he explains at one point in the documentary. To join them on the bill he recruited names like Living Colour, Henry Rollins Band, The Butthole Surfers, Ice T and his ‘metal’ group Body Count and Siouxsie and the Banshees; the Pixies declined the offer to participate. “It was something magical, I still can’t explain what happened“, comments in the documentary Trent Reznor, leader of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, for whom that first edition was a launching pad to the stratosphere.
Directed by Michael John Warren – to his credit he has two documentaries about Nicki Minaj and Jay-Z – and conveyed through both Television fragments and archive images of live performances like a succession of talking heads, ‘Lolla’ takes its time to demonstrate to what extent, through an extensive repertoire of extra-musical proposals and activities in favor of gun control and against censorship, Lollapalooza also served to channel rage against the institutions and the frustration that North American youth felt in the early 90s; and in the process, implicitly, it tries to establish parallels between the disenchantment that Generation X suffered in its day and that suffered by Generation Z now.
The overwhelming success of those concerts made the conversion of Lollapalooza into an annual event practically inevitable. And when its second edition was held, everything had changed. If the majority of the musicians who participated in the first were still unknown, a few months after its celebration the American alternative scene had already emerged, and immediately the festival began to focus less on bringing bands like Rage Against The Machine out of the underground and Alice in Chains than to serve as a showcase for others already established in the ‘mainstream’ such as Red Hot Chili Peppers or Pearl Jam, paying clearly insufficient attention to female and African-American groups.
The poster for the 1994 edition was headed by such established names as The Beastie Boys and Smashing Pumpkins, and Nirvana would also have been part of it if it had not been for the fact that its leader, Kurt Cobain, refused to do so out of fear. to be accused of selling out. He committed suicide a few days after the festival.
That year the voices of those who accused Lollapalooza of putting itself at the service of the major record companies began to be heard; In 1996, when it was announced that the repertoire of artists of the sixth edition would be led by Metallica – converted thanks to their album ‘Black Album’ into a radio formula group – they became deafening.
“Too much money destroys art“, you hear Farrell say at one point in ‘Lolla’, who in 1997 reunited Jane’s Addiction and who since then has continued releasing albums and giving concerts leading the band, not so much because he had something interesting to tell as to continue taking advantage of the brand. Today, Lollapalooza is a multinational event, which is organized annually in Chicago and has also held various editions in cities such as Santiago de Chile, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Stockholm and Mumbai. In its 2023 edition, among other artists, Billie Eilish, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lana Del Rey, 30 Seconds to Mars and Shaquille O’Neal participated.
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