Lollapalooza today is a sleek, reliably well-oiled pop music festival. But it was born of chaos.
On the festival’s first date — July 18, 1991, at Chandler, Arizona’s Compton Terrace — nearly everything that could go wrong did. The sweltering weather fried Nine Inch Nails‘ gear, Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro got into a fight during their performance, and Rollins Band’s guitarist, Chris Haskett, was yelled at for showing a little punk-rock spirit and having the audacity to want to help load out his tourmates’ gear.
A new oral history of the festival — Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock’s Wildest Festival, by Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour — chronicles the growing pains of adjusting alternative culture for mainstream consumption (along with a surprising connection to Stevie Nicks). For the book, the authors, who are both Rolling Stone contributors and previously penned the bestselling Nothin’ But A Good Time, interviewed members of Jane’s Addiction, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails, Sonic Youth, Tool, Smashing Pumpkins, Rage Against the Machine, and Metallica, among others.
In an exclusive excerpt from the book, which comes out Tuesday, members of the Butthole Surfers, Body Count, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nine Inch Nails, Living Colour, and Rollins Band, as well as the crew that got the festival going, recall the uphill battle that was Lollapalooza, Day One.
KING COFFEY (drummer, Butthole Surfers): The first show was brutal. It was 120 degrees, I think, maybe only 110. Either way, you’re in Arizona in the full sun in the daytime playing a show. And it’s the first show, too, so you’re still getting your bearings.
PAUL LEARY (guitarist, Butthole Surfers): It’s weird what a guitar feels like in your hands when it’s that hot. It feels like you’re playing a sponge or something.
KEVIN LYMAN (stage manager, Lollapalooza 1991–92): We started at a place called Compton Terrace. The hottest place.
SEAN E SEAN (onstage performer, security, Body Count): Hot as fish grease.
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ICE-T (MC; singer, Body Count): Too fucking hot for humans on the face of the fucking Earth that day.
KEVIN LYMAN: Our promoter there was Danny Zelisko, and he was still kind of young, he was alternative. I don’t think he’d ever promoted anything that big at that point. I don’t think anyone expected Lollapalooza to be that big.
STUART ROSS (tour director, Lollapalooza): Compton Terrace was Danny’s venue, and it was an unusual venue. Because there was no real amphitheater in Phoenix at the time.
DANNY ZELISKO (promoter, Evening Star Productions): Compton Terrace was originally opened by Jess and Gene Nicks. Jess is Stevie Nicks’s dad, and Gene is Jess’s brother. And Stevie was the third owner. So Stevie Nicks was involved in the very first Lollapalooza. I think they started the tour there in part because I had a hand with Perry in moving the idea forward, and also because they didn’t want to start in Los Angeles — they wanted to break it in and do it somewhere away from all the prying eyes of the press and the media.
STUART ROSS: We certainly weren’t going to start in Los Angeles. Or New York, you know? You want to be really good at what you’re doing by the time you get to New York. But mostly, it probably had to do with routing, in trying to find venues that were available in the order we needed them to be available. Because one of the things, make no mistake about this, is that we opened doors at noon every day. And the show ended at 11:00 p.m. Between 11:00 p.m. and noon, we had to move this enormous amount of equipment and people from place to place, unload it, set it up, and get ready to open the doors. And that was a Herculean task. So the routing had to be precise, because this was not normal touring.
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DANNY ZELISKO: Compton Terrace was a nice venue, but it was in the middle of a desert. The place is southeast of the city and nobody was living there yet. And it did have a reputation for being difficult to get in and out of because the infrastructure just wasn’t there. You walked in and there was a couple of pretty archaic refreshment stands and some bathrooms, and that was basically it as far as amenities. Although they did serve beer. But it was perfect for Lollapalooza because the show, it was a circus. They had all these vendors and crazy people selling everything from pipes and hookahs to clothing, tattoo artists, body painting…
PHIL BURKE (head rigger, Lollapalooza): We did our main production rehearsals there, so we were there almost a week before opening day. And yeah, it was pretty bad.
KEVIN LYMAN: Some of it was still coming together. The production company was a big Australian contingent, Delicate Productions. Because Ted Gardner, being Australian, went with a company he knew and had worked with. They were also the sound company for Supertramp, so the Delicate guys talked about Supertramp a lot. But otherwise, a lot of these artists, their production teams, their crews, we weren’t all, let’s say, seasoned at that level of touring. It was, like, 117 degrees and we’re trying to figure it out, readjust things.
MICHAEL “CURLY” JOBSON (stage manager, Lollapalooza 1991–92): We were dying. We went back to some golf resort; I didn’t even make it into my room. I fell asleep in the grass ’cause it was cooler outside. You couldn’t touch the steel of the stage; people’s equipment was melting.
KEVIN LYMAN: We were using technology that had never really been used too much. Moving lights, things like that.
PHIL BURKE: We had something that we called the Reader Board that flew right over the stage. It was basically a really, really early-generation LED screen. Two-color. To put it in the context of its time, it would be like something you’d see driving down the freeway: “Accident Ahead,” that kind of thing. It ran all day long and would carry social and political messaging as well as regular show messaging. It was definitely the first of its kind and it was purpose-built. I think everybody enjoyed goofing with it.
KEVIN LYMAN: I’ll never forget when Ice-T’s tour bus pulled up during rehearsals and twenty-four people came off. It was like a mass of humanity coming off that bus.
SEAN E SEAN: Ice had his rap squad out there, meaning Evil E., a DJ, two hype men. Then the rap crew, which could consist of up to, let’s say, seven to eight people. Then you have Body Count, which was like seven people by themselves. Then we had a road manager. So Ice was out there with at least twenty, twenty-one guys, all on that one bus. Which was interesting. Chaotic at times.
KEVIN LYMAN: Later that same evening, we were working so hard trying to get everything to work onstage. And I look over and there’s this guy sitting on a road case watching us work, and that was Ice-T. I walked over and I introduced myself and I said, “What are you doing here? You’re not sound-checking now.” And he says, “I’m here to learn everything you guys do. I want to understand what you do.” That really stuck with me forever. Everyone was at the hotel or doing whatever they were doing, and there’s Ice-T in the middle of the evening, watching us put together a show.
MICHAEL “CURLY” JOBSON: When it came to the show itself, the stage was badly designed, we were using forklifts to do changeovers with risers. Everything was super perilous. But we made it work. As you do.
KEVIN LYMAN: It was very physical. We used big rolling riser systems; it was like a big dance of equipment onstage. If you flinched, you got run over.
JON KLEIN (guitarist, Siouxsie and the Banshees): I remember seeing almost a forklift accident, where the forklift was across a big ditch between a couple of little hills. I guess that was part of the adventure, wasn’t it?
PHIL BURKE: I had some experience with trucking a festival around, because I had done a little bit of that with the first Reggae Sunsplash tour here in the States. But that production was significantly smaller, not at the same level and certainly not at the same magnitude as Lollapalooza.
DANNY ZELISKO: They were flying by the seat of their pants. And I’ll tell you what, for this being in the middle of Phoenix, 110 degrees, the first time this show ever saw the light of day, it was fantastic. Nothing short of a miracle.
DANNY FLAIM (roadie, projectionist, Butthole Surfers): No one really knew each other yet. I remember Siouxsie and the Banshees’ dressing room had an adjoining sliding glass door in Phoenix, but me and King were too scared to talk to them because it was like, “That’s Siouxsie and the Banshees!” But they turned out to be the nicest people in the world.
COREY GLOVER (singer, Living Colour): I was in awe of Siouxsie Sioux, because her music was something I grew up with. She felt, like, untouchable to me.
JON KLEIN: My old roadie, a South London geezer, had turned up, and he was in a dressing room that was right alongside the main stage. And he said, “Oh, come in here.” I didn’t know at the time it was the Butthole Surfers’ dressing room, and he’d been chopping out lines of amphetamines. I don’t know what kind of crystal or what kind of speed, but you [snorts] and you get that kind of stabbing-in-the-eye sensation and everything kind of goes fast for a while. And then this huge, six-foot-plus man walks in and he goes, “Hey there! How many people you’ve never seen before in your fucking life in your own dressing room!” And I’m just like, “Oh, hello.” I go over and shake his hand, and he grabs my hand and he goes, “Hey, meet my wart! I’m seeding at the moment!” That was the first time I met Gibby Haynes.
CHRIS HASKETT (guitarist, Rollins Band): That first show is where I met Vernon Reid. I came offstage and he’s sitting on the couch, wanting to say hello. I was like … [gasps].
PERRY FARRELL: I remember running into Ice-T for the first time on the backstage grounds. He looked at me and he said, “Perry, you a playa!” I was all dressed up. I had just come from Miami and I had on a Che Guevara shirt and this, like, cheap gold-plated watch. But it was gigantic. So he thought I had a lot of money or something, I don’t know. I mean, he probably knew I didn’t, but he just called me a playa. I never forgot that. That was a great compliment to me.
DANNY ZELISKO: We did the show pretty much without incident.
STEVEN SEVERIN (bassist, Siouxsie and the Banshees): Well, it kicked off at midday with the spectacularly untalented Henry Rollins and his knuckle-draggers, followed by some lovely hillbilly psych rock from the Surfers, then some shameless faux chaos from Nine Inch Nails, all bar the vocals on tape, fifty-dollar guitars especially bought to be trashed on cue. The Who, they weren’t.
HENRY ROLLINS (singer, Rollins Band): By the time Nine Inch Nails were out there, it could get really hot.
JON KLEIN: They were running their tape machine on a TEAC four-track cassette-like thing. A rack-mounted Portastudio, effectively. And I guess the rubber bands in that just melted.
SEAN E SEAN: Trent Reznor, he was pissed. It was like, “Uh-oh, this is how we starting off?”
ICE-T: It was a lot of equipment to make that show sound the way it sounded. And shit went bad.
FRITZ MICHAUD (monitor engineer, Nine Inch Nails): I don’t think any of us really knew what we were doing. None of us had done any shows that size.
TRENT REZNOR (singer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, Nine Inch Nails): Our equipment was … duct tape and homemade cases. It wasn’t pro-level gear we were touring with. And I look, and there’s Living Colour, and they’ve got … shit that looks like Guitar Center racks, put together properly, professional job, stenciled logos on the side of their … they had cases! I thought, Man, we don’t have our shit together. We didn’t have any money, but we didn’t know any better.
RICHARD PATRICK (guitarist, Nine Inch Nails): Nine Inch Nails, there’s stuff that you just can’t reproduce live. You could bring fifteen guys out and it would sound, you know, kinda sorta like the record. So we had to bring sequencers out that play a good chunk of the music. So Trent would sing and play guitar. I would play guitar and sing backups. We had a keyboard player playing the main keyboard line, we had a drummer, and we had a sequencer. And the sequencer was on the stage, on the drum riser, and it was plugged into a faulty quad box. Every time the riser moved it would short out. And we can’t play without it. Period. There’s just no way.
MARKY RAY (guitar tech, Nine Inch Nails): What happened was, the drum rack is plugged into some quad box at the back of the stage, AC power 110. And we’re two thirds of the way through “Terrible Lie,” basically our first song, and then, all of a sudden, everything just goes woo. Drum rack dies, drums are dead except for the acoustic drums, and the guitars go dead. It happened instantly. And we’re like, “What the fuck?” Trent’s looking at us, so we run back to the back of the stage, we see the quad box, it’s shorting out. We plug the thing back in, comes back up. We finish “Terrible Lie,” go into “Sin.” We’re like a bar or two into “Sin” and it goes out again. And Trent just goes berserk. He fucking trashes the stage, storms off, and he says, “Fire everyone.” We’re all standing there with our dicks in our hands.
RICHARD PATRICK: We were so emotionally pissed off about it that we just trashed everything. Threw our guitars around, destroyed the stage, walked off.
MARC GEIGER (agent; cofounder, Lollapalooza): I ran back and watched the band going onto the bus. I get on the bus with them to go, “Blah, blah, blah,” and MTV comes in behind me with cameras. Then they’re filming Trent. At that point, I just keep to the background. It’s sort of a famous interview. It’s online. Trent’s fairly calm, cool, and collected, saying what happened.
RICHARD PATRICK: Trent handled it perfectly. Actually, he didn’t. He said something about an incompetent crew. And so the crews of Lollapalooza were fucking furious with us. We had really pissed everybody off, day one.
TRENT REZNOR (MTV interview, July 18, 1991): “I guess what happened is a lot of our equipment in the back was sitting in the sun for quite a long time, baking in the desert heat. And since we are an electronic-based kind of band, when the main part of your sound becomes ruined and melted, which I think is what happened, it was cutting out and just becoming a nightmare. And that, complemented with incompetence on the crew part, led to a disastrous embarrassing situation.”
MARKY RAY: The Lollapalooza crews took that very harshly. Curly Jobson, Kevin Lyman, they all took that personally.
MICHAEL “CURLY” JOBSON: I didn’t enjoy reading something like that in the paper when it was something they brought upon themselves. Especially about people who were working in very difficult circumstances. It didn’t go down too well, blaming a bunch of guys that were busting their asses to get it done. I don’t think anybody in the crew turned their backs on them, but I think there was a little bit of an acrid taste in the mouth for a few days.
DANNY ZELISKO: Nine Inch Nails were getting ten grand for the show, and somebody came to get paid. I said, “You didn’t play! Why am I paying you?” And remember — Nine Inch Nails was not NINE INCH NAILS at that time. They were nobodies. But it wasn’t me being rude to them. It was like, “Why would you ask to get paid when you didn’t play?” I went through this whole litany of things: “You knew it was gonna be hot …”
Finally, Ted Gardner comes to me and he goes, “Look, Danny, you’re paying them.” He goes, “Don’t look at it like you’re paying them money and they didn’t play. Their name was on the bill, right? We used them to promote the show, right? They came here to play, right?” I go, “Yeah … but they didn’t!” Ted says, “Doesn’t matter. Pay them.”
There comes a point where you stop being stubborn, and I was hoping Ted Gardner would reach that point before me. He didn’t. I paid.
RICHARD PATRICK: This is also just the kind of chaos that could erupt onstage. I mean, there was a lot of turmoil between the members of Jane’s Addiction. This was supposed to be their last tour. Dave and Perry actually got into a fight onstage that first night.
CHRIS CUFFARO (photographer): I was shooting Jane’s Addiction at that first show, and I sat backstage in the dressing room with the guys before their set. During that time, Dave was struggling with his problems. Perry was doing his shit, and Stephen was as happy as he is today. Eric was never anywhere to be found. But backstage there was just this bad mood. I don’t know what anybody else told you, but it was just there. It was very stressful. And then, you know, the heat didn’t help.
NIKKI GARDNER (assistant to Ted Gardner; special groups coordinator, Lollapalooza): The band themselves were on two buses. Eric was clean at that point in time, and Stuart was actually on Eric’s bus. Ted and I were on the other bus, and David used to switch between the two. When he was managing to get clean, he would go over with Eric because Eric wanted to be clean.
DAVE NAVARRO (guitarist, Jane’s Addiction): I was really wanting to get clean, but it was really hard on that tour. So I went back and forth quite a bit.
TED GARDNER (manager, Jane’s Addiction; cofounder, Lollapalooza): Dave was really like the child within a divorce. Do I go with Eric and get sober? Do I stay with Perry and, you know, continue doing what we’re doing? Dave was desperate to get clean. Perry was not desperate to get clean. So that caused a great deal of friction within the band.
T. C. CONROY (front-of-house coordinator, Lollapalooza 1991): So here we are in Arizona, and Dave Navarro shows up, and as far as I can tell, he doesn’t want to go onstage because he doesn’t have the right guitar. I mean, this is the vibe, right? And, you know, this is Perry’s day. So Perry’s pissed, everyone’s pissed. It’s tense and it’s 120 degrees and people are acting like assholes. Now, my boyfriend at the time was Dave Gahan from Depeche Mode, and we lived together, and it was my birthday. So I was in Arizona, and he was coming from L.A. to join me at the show.
And Dave’s guitar that he wanted was at a pawnshop in Hollywood. It was still early in the day, so I said, “Hey, can you go pick up Dave Navarro’s guitar on your way?” So he goes and gets the guitar, gets on a plane, and a few hours later he and Depeche Mode’s manager, Jonathan Kessler, pull into the backstage area in Arizona in a long black stretch limo. Dave Gahan saves the day.
DAVE NAVARRO: God, that’s very nice. I don’t remember that. But Dave Gahan had always been very supportive and kind to us, and obviously we love him, so if that happened, I will take the opportunity right now to say, “Thanks.”
T. C. CONROY: The guitar gets there, but, I mean, the tone was set. It didn’t fix anything. It just took away one excuse.
CHRIS CUFFARO: So first night in Arizona, Jane’s is performing, and toward the end of the set, Dave’s kind of running around, bumping into Perry and just doing his thing. I’m trying to get pictures, and I’m like, “What the fuck is this all about?” I never saw this before. And then Dave trashes his stacks and throws his guitar into the audience. Dave walks off and then Perry walks off and then they start fighting off the side of the stage.
DAVE NAVARRO: I had gotten too high on heroin and I couldn’t really get up. So then I was given cocaine by an unnamed source that got me too speedy. Then I had to come down from that, so I took a handful of pills and drank a bunch. By the time I got onstage, I didn’t know which way was up. And Perry and I got into it.
MISSY WORTH (marketing consultant, Lollapalooza 1991): I was at the soundboard, watching all of it. It’s been super hot. It is super hot. Tensions were high and they weren’t getting along. And they went at it, in front of everyone, onstage.
PERRY FARRELL: I thought we were off the stage. I didn’t know that we were on the stage. Were we? No, I don’t think so. Not on the stage. I waited until we were off the stage. The problem was, we got off the stage and Dave didn’t want to go back out. That’s what that was. And I don’t feel good about that at all. That was a stupid thing to do and I really regret it.
MICHAEL “CURLY” JOBSON: I think it was about Dave not wanting to play an encore. And look, Perry, spindly little dude. But one of the toughest men you’re ever gonna meet. You wouldn’t wanna get into it with him.
MISSY WORTH: No, no. Because he goes crazy.
MICHAEL “CURLY” JOBSON: And he just knocked Dave around, you know? I’m pretty sure that Perry would’ve knocked me around if he had chosen to. So Dave didn’t have a hope.
PAUL V. (national director of alternative radio promotion, Warner Bros. Records): I’ve heard that Ted Gardner was ready to punch Dave in the face.
NIKKI GARDNER: Okay, this is a picture — it’s from the Nineties, so it’s not very clear. But Ted is kneeling beside David on the floor backstage in Arizona … and punching the shit out of him. Perry is lying beside them, trying to calm the situation down.
PERRY FARRELL: Ted reminded me a lot of a wrestler. I’m not sure that he wasn’t an amateur wrestler in Australia. And not, like, “amateur collegiate.” I think he might’ve messed around with pro wrestling. I don’t know if I can really get too deep into detail on how he would get Dave back out on a stage, but just know that it was very aggressive and it was very hard to say no when Ted wanted you back out there.
NIKKI GARDNER: This was literally backstage while the fans were cheering for an encore. And I believe they did go back on and do one.
CHRIS CUFFARO: So they come out for the encore. And what I remember is that Dave is running around, body-checking Perry and trying to knock him over. Perry’s trying to sing and it was … weird. And instead of taking pictures, I’m just in shock about what is going on. I would’ve been a lousy press photographer. At the crash of the zeppelin I would’ve been standing there going, “This thing’s up in flames!” With a camera in my hand, you know?
DON MULLER (agent; cofounder, Lollapalooza): We were all kinda looking at each other going, “Shit, we probably won’t make it to the next show.” We were free-falling at that point.
DAVE NAVARRO: I take responsibility for that. I was the one that was fucked up, and I was the one who made it difficult for everybody.
KEVIN LYMAN: The tour could have collapsed right there.
DAVE NAVARRO: I didn’t have any questions as to whether it was going to go on. I knew it was. We’re not going to put together this tour and then not do it.
DANNY ZELISKO: We drew twelve thousand people at twenty-five dollars a head. Thirty bucks day-of. Compton Terrace held a lot more people than that, but twelve thousand people in any space, that’s a lot of people. And they all had a blast.
CHRIS HASKETT: I remember at the end of the gig, me and our soundman, Theo, who was a full band member, we see the crew from Delicate Productions, which was the PA company, and they’re putting these boxes in the trucks. Now, I’m a CBGB, 9:30 Club guy, right? You see something that needs to go in a truck, you pick it up, you carry it into the truck. So we grabbed some gear and starting moving it. And somebody in charge, it wasn’t Kevin Lyman, but somebody, was like, “Get out!” And the crew goes, “Why are you throwing them out? What did they do?” The guy points at me, “He’s in the opening band.” And then he points at Theo. “And he’s a soundman!” He’s like, “We can’t have musicians moving gear!” So we got thrown out of the trucks for helping.
KEVIN LYMAN: You weren’t supposed to touch the equipment, if that makes sense. A union person was supposed to carry the drum kit or move the risers. But for us the only way to make it work was to be all hands on deck.
KING COFFEY: Everybody’s equipment got shoved onto eighteen-wheelers. So everything had to be on wheels and in hard-core cases. Which was daunting for us, because up to that point everything the Butthole Surfers had just fit in a van. We didn’t have, like, big industrial rolling cases for the drums. We had to spend a couple thousand dollars to get the cases up to spec.
JON KLEIN: I should have counted the buses — it looked like fifty forty-foot buses, at least. That kind of number. I don’t know what were the increments of time management for getting the whole thing struck, shipped across the state lines, set up, and ready to start another show, how tight that was, but the logistics were impressive.
KEVIN LYMAN: I’ll just never forget that first load-out. The promotor, Danny, was well known for having tons of strippers hanging around backstage.
DANNY ZELISKO: I’m sure there were! Back in the day, strippers came to a lot of the good rock shows. That was something that was always a fun sight.
KEVIN LYMAN: I was yelling at Danny because we didn’t have enough crew for load-out. And I look at him and I look at the strippers and I go, “Maybe they could help me load the trucks.”
DANNY ZELISKO: I don’t recall having any sort of ownership rights or any ability to direct anybody to do anything, but, you know, dumber things have happened. I’m just going to trust that Kevin’s memory is better than mine. He was the one that was running the load-out after that insane day.
NIKKI GARDNER: Nobody really knew what we were doing. It was just mayhem.
MICHAEL “CURLY” JOBSON: We were still ragamuffin. We were kind of gypsy. Nowadays it’s hi-vis vests and we’re driven by health and safety. But we were driving forklifts into the middle of the audience to go fix a barricade. My way of allocating stagehands to a load-out was to write the names down on Post-its, like sticky white things, and put them on their shirts.
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KEVIN LYMAN: It took us a long time to load out. And then we headed to San Diego. I was struggling, to be honest. I think I got heatstroke or some sort of heat thing. The next show, we were down in San Diego at the school, in the stadium [Devore Stadium, at Southwestern College in Chula Vista]. We worked really hard all day long, we get through it. And I walked into the production office and collapsed into a pile of towels. I passed out.
Excerpted from Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock’s Wildest Festival by Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour © 2025 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group
