Lollapalooza

Lollapalooza (/ˌlɒləpəˈluːzə/) is an annual American four-day music festival held in Grant Park in Chicago. It originally started as a touring event in 1991, with Chicago becoming its permanent location beginning in 2005. Music genres include alternative rock, heavy metal, punk rock, hip hop, and electronic dance music. Lollapalooza has also featured visual arts, nonprofit organizations, and political organizations. The festival hosts an estimated 400,000 people each July and sells out annually. Lollapalooza is one of the largest music festivals in the world and one of the longest-running in the United States.

Lollapalooza was conceived and created in 1991 as a farewell tour by Perry Farrell, singer of the group Jane's Addiction. The first Lollapalooza tour had a diverse collection of bands and was a commercial success. It stopped in more than twenty cities in North America. In 2020, Spin rated the first Lollapalooza as the best concert of the preceding 35 years. Lollapalooza then ran annually until 1997, and was revived in 2003. From its inception through 1997 and its revival in 2003, the festival toured North America. In 2004, the organizers expanded the dates to two days per city but canceled the tour after poor ticket sales.

In 2005, Farrell and the William Morris Agency partnered with Austin, Texas–based company Capital Sports Entertainment (now C3 Presents) and retooled the event into its current format as an annual festival in Chicago. In 2014, Live Nation Entertainment bought a controlling interest in C3 Presents.

In 2010, it was announced that Lollapalooza would remain in Chicago, while also debuting outside the United States, with a branch of the festival staged in Santiago, Chile, on April 2–3, 2011, where it partnered with Santiago-based company Lotus. In 2011, Geo Events confirmed the Brazilian version of the event, which was held at the Jockey Club in São Paulo on April 7–8, 2012. The Argentine version started in April 2014 in Buenos Aires and in November of that year, the first European Lollapalooza was held at the former Berlin Tempelhof Airport.

The word—sometimes alternatively spelled and pronounced as lollapalootza, lalapaloosa, or lallapaloosa (P. G. Wodehouse, The Heart of a Goof)—dates from a late 19th-century/early 20th-century American idiomatic phrase meaning "an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or event; an exceptional example or instance". Its earliest known use was in 1896. In time, the term also came to refer to a large lollipop. Farrell, searching for a name for his festival, liked the euphonious quality of the by-then-antiquated term, which he claimed he had heard in a Three Stooges short film, though a search of their catalog turned up nothing related. Paying homage to the term's double meaning, a character in the festival's original logo holds a lollipop.

Inspired by events such as Britain's Reading Festival—which Lollapalooza cofounder Perry Farrell had been due to play in 1990—Farrell, Ted Gardner, Don Muller, and Marc Geiger conceived the festival in 1990 as a farewell for Farrell's band Jane's Addiction.

Unlike previous festivals such as Woodstock, A Gathering of the Tribes, and the US Festival, which were one-time events held at single venues, Lollapalooza toured across the United States and Canada from mid-July until late August 1991. The inaugural Lollapalooza lineup was diverse and made up of artists from alternative rock (such as Siouxsie and the Banshees who were the second headliners), industrial music (such as Nine Inch Nails), and rap (Ice-T rapped and used the platform to launch Body Count, his heavy metal band). The premiere in Phoenix, Arizona, on July 18, 1991, was covered by a report on MTV, which ended by journalist Dave Kendall saying "Lollapalooza could be the tour of the summer". The tour ended at King County Fairgrounds in Enumclaw, Washington, near Seattle, on August 28, 1991.

Another key concept was the inclusion of nonmusical features. Performers such as the Jim Rose Circus Side Show, an alternative freak show, and the Shaolin monks stretched the boundaries of rock culture. There was a tent for display of art pieces, virtual reality games, and information tables for political and environmental nonprofit groups, promoting counterculture and political awareness. "Basically, I'm bored", Farrell said at the time. "I just want to see things that are unexpected and slightly bizarre. The way Barnum & Bailey perceived putting on a show...well, they had a different angle."