How Coachella upended the festival business
LOS ANGELES - Concert promoter Paul Tollett's once stated hope for his bold new music gamble in the California desert couldn't sound more prophetic.
"For Southern California," he told The Times shortly before the first edition of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival got under way Oct. 9, 1999, "this could be the start of something really special."
In fact, in the succeeding two decades, the event, for which two-day attendance first topped out around 50,000, has turned into the gold standard of pop music gatherings in the United States.
That success was hardly assured. Tollett's company, Goldenvoice, took a loss on Year One.
"I was there the night, on Sunday, when we all looked up, teary-eyed, and thought, 'We're never going to experience this again,' " says publicist Marcee Rondan of that first event. "We all knew what a financial hit it was."
The 2019 edition will serve up closer to 160 acts over each of two three-day successive
