How Metallica Headlining Lollapalooza in 1996 Killed ‘Alternative’

When Lollapalooza revealed this week that Metallica will headline the pageant this summer season, the announcement reminded some followers of the drama that resulted when the Bay Space bangers first headlined there in 1996. On the time, Lolla was nonetheless the premiere showcase for so-called “different” bands; top-billed acts in its first 5 years had included Jane’s Habit, the Pink Scorching Chili Peppers, Alice in Chains, and the Smashing Pumpkins.

Metallica, then again, represented the mainstream — their mega-selling Black Album nonetheless dominated rock radio with singles like “Enter Sandman” and “Unhappy however True” — despite the fact that the band’s members had been outspoken followers of alt-rock firebrands the Misfits, Killing Joke, and Fang, and by that time had moved away from the bang-your-head-until-it-bleeds thrashathons of yore. By 1996, Metallica had even reduce their hair, worn eyeliner, and transitioned into extra of a boogieing hard-rock sound for singles like “Till It Sleeps” and “Hero of the Day” (a music the band members likened to the music of ex–Hüsker Dü chief Bob Mould) on tthat yr’s Load album.

“I believe that we do slot in [with Lollapalooza],” drummer Lars Ulrich stated on the time. “As a result of I believe now we have at all times been going towards mainstream stuff. When the mainstream got here to us, you understand, it was very clear that they got here to us.”

Regardless of all this, followers — and even some Lollapalooza organizers — weren’t having it.

The concept for Lollapalooza was born when Jane’s Habit drummer Stephen Perkins and reserving agent Marc Geiger noticed “40,000 youngsters screaming ‘Debaser’ collectively” throughout a Pixies set at England’s Studying pageant. Jane’s frontman Perry Farrell assumed a job as adviser and christened the fest after a Three Stooges film, fashioning the fest as one thing of a touring sideshow — a real different to the mainstream fests of the time, like county festivals. After 5 genre-defining years, Farrell stepped down from his function as an advisor on lineups in 1996.

After the fest’s organizers requested Metallica to headline, Spin journal carried reviews that detractors had been derisively calling Lolla “Metal Fest ’96.” That yr additionally marked the primary time there have been no recurrently touring hip-hop artists on the trek, and fewer feminine artists and folks of coloration than previous lineups.

When Farrell heard Metallica could be headlining that yr, he felt “very offended.” “I helped create the style different, and different was towards hair metallic, teased-out hair, spandex, bullshit rock music,” he instructed Rolling Stone in 2015. “Metallica, in my estimation at the moment, wasn’t my factor. I used to be into different and punk and underground. My buddies had been Henry Rollins and Gibby Haynes and Ice-T. … So I used to be unsure about Metallica again in these days. It’s my fucking celebration and I’ll have who I would like.” (By the point of that interview, with practically 20 years of hindsight, he’d come round. “I like their music,” he stated.)

“[In 1995], we took a danger and pushed bands just like the Jesus Lizard and the crowds didn’t reply,” Geiger instructed Spin within the Metallica announcement. “Quite a lot of music is so imitative nowadays. We needed to attain again to search out what is phenomenal and credible.” Geiger additionally denied reserving Metallica simply to make more cash, although tickets rose from $27.50 to $35 that yr. (Tickets for the four-day occasion this yr vary from $350 to $4,200.)

The reserving agent got here off even harsher in regards to the state of other rock in a 1996 Rolling Stone interview. “We predict the vast majority of what’s known as different music is shit,” Geiger stated. “Hearken to any major-city radio station within the nation — you’ll hear the identical 10 to 12 bands. We don’t wish to flip right into a radio-station pageant.” He went on to say, “[People] marvel what sort of alerts we’re sending out by having a few heavy bands — ‘What’s taking place to different music?’ I may give you a quite simple reply: Various is useless. It’s been useless for years. It’s been useless since ’93, if not ’92. It’s useless. It’s over. It’s filled with imitative bands, and we’re gonna search for nice ones, interval.”

In 1996, Ben Shepherd, bassist for Soundgarden, jokingly known as the tour “Larsapalooza” in a Spin profile. “I had my criticisms about Lollapalooza the primary time we did it — all of the pretenses, the notion of alternaculture,” that band’s Kim Thayil stated in the identical function. “However this isn’t that journey.”

The guitarist expounded on his philosophy extra in a Rolling Stone function on the fest. “Lollapalooza was an enormous different lie to start with,” Thayil stated. “They’d a particular goal demographic, and so they hit that very properly — white suburban folks aged 18 to 24 — which doesn’t appear very different to me. When you go to a Metallica or Weapons n’ Roses present, you’ll see that the viewers is definitely extra numerous socially and economically.”

When Spin reviewed the Kansas City stop of Lollapalooza in 1996, they gave Metallica the good thing about the doubt, stating that bands like Pearl Jam, Rage In opposition to the Machine, and Alice in Chains additionally wore their hair lengthy and performed loud, heavy riffs. “Metallica’s call-and-response ‘Hey! Hey! Hey!’ fist-clench gang-shouts weren’t all that removed from Rancid’s ‘Oi! Oi! Oi!”s both and James Hetfield got here off extra cordially than I ever would’ve predicted,” the journal wrote. “The opening bass sections of ‘One’ … and ‘Fade to Black’ had been extra attractive than something managed by unfortunate Kansas Metropolis Lollapalooza ‘particular company’ the Cocteau Twins.”

Rolling Stone was extra crucial. “‘Die! Die! Die! Die!’ chanted Metallica and their followers [during ‘Creeping Death’], as in the event that they had been saying goodbye to the unique concept of Lollapalooza,” the journal reported that yr. “The primary-stage acts had a pronounced debt to not Nineties leading edge however to Seventies punk, metallic, and psychedelia. It was consistent with the turn-back-the-clock vibe of summer season touring season on the whole, wherein dinosaur acts together with Styx, Foreigner, and R.E.O. Speedwagon have dusted off their devices and are doing the shed circuit but once more.”

The following yr, maybe scarred by confused press clippings, Lolla’s organizers tried to course right and booked electro duo Orbital as headliners alongside Devo, the Prodigy, and the Orb. Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dr. Octagon introduced hip-hop again to the fest, whose largest heavy choices that yr had been alternative-friendly acts Instrument and Korn.

By that time, many heavy acts had gravitated to Ozzfest, which Sharon Osbourne began after Lollapalooza rejected the concept of placing Ozzy Osbourne on the lineup in 1995; Osbourne later headlined Lollapalooza as a part of Black Sabbath in 2012. Metallica, who had nothing but good things to say about Lollapalooza after the tour, returned to the fest in 2015 and headlined three of the fest’s South American occasions in 2017. Additionally they launched their very own Orion Fest in 2012, which supplied eclectic lineups for 2 years.

After the electro-focused 1997 outing, Lollapalooza took a hiatus till 2003, throughout which era Coachella cropped up because the hip new pageant. Since returning as a vacation spot occasion, Lollapalooza has opened its doorways even wider to incorporate mainstream pop acts alongside cult heroes, and its lineups now embrace extra of a various, Kim Thayil-approved definition of “different” than the unique Lolla lineups — even when the main festivals all appear to be competing for a similar mainstream acts nowadays. Now it appears it’s essential to bookers for fests to be eclectic than different.

“The concept that we weren’t speculated to be right here is why I agreed to do Lollapalooza within the first place,” Hetfield instructed Rolling Stone in 1996. “There was completely no approach I noticed us taking part in Lollapalooza earlier than this yr. Now I don’t assume it fucking issues.”