The least enjoyable part of “Lollapalooza: The Unscripted Story of Alternative Rock’s Wildest Festival” for readers might be seeing the $27.50 ticket price for the inaugural festival in 1991. The cheapest tickets for the reconfigured version of Lollapalooza this year start at about $189. (The 2025 festival runs July 31-Aug. 3 at Grant Park in Chicago.)
With hundreds of interviews from the musicians, promoters and others, Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour compiled a comprehensive and entertaining oral history of the festival that was crucial in the rise of alternative rock in the 1990s.
When Lollapalooza was introduced in 1991 as a traveling music festival, “it was if a switch had been flipped,” the pair write. Conceived of as a farewell tour for Jane’s Addiction, the festival introduced audiences to acts such as Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, Smashing Pumpkins and Soundgarden.
The book provides plenty of behind-the-scenes stories, including its fair share of fights, and tidbits including how close Nirvana came to headlining the tour in 1994 before Kurt Cobain’s death.
It also details the work that went into what was then an unusual concept of a traveling festival and its use of a second stage for additional acts to play, and the village that was set up to introduce festival goers to political and cultural advocacy.
The criticism Lollapalooza faced for its decision to ask thrash superstars Metallica to headline a tour that was originally intended to focus on alternative rock is explored. It also chronicles how it faded away, as it faced competition from other festivals such as Lilith Fair and Ozzfest.
The festival has been revived in a different form, but Bienstock and Beaujour’s work show just how much Lollapalooza and the music industry has changed.