Doc Watch: Lolla - The Story of Lollapalooza (2024)

Watched:  05/24/2024

Format:  Paramount+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Michael John Warren

I just recently wound up writing about Lollapalooza and music festivals over on my more "personal journal" blog, League of Melbotis.  Originally the post was about ACL Fest and fading interest in festivals, but I was half-way through with the post when I saw an ad for Lolla (2024), a documentary tracking Lollapalooza from it's late-80's origins to today and into tomorrow.  I'd started the post talking about that festival as well as ACL Fest, so it's all of a piece.

This evening we went ahead and blasted through the three sections of the doc, each about 50 minutes, for our Friday night viewing.  

For a fuller picture, do check out that post at LoM.  But the key points include the fact I was a fresh-faced 16 year old when I attended the first Lollapalooza tour in 1991, and attended the first four years. 

To begin with: The doc has a lot of constraints.  It needs the involvement of the people who were there in the past, it needs the partnership of the people who currently work with and own Lollapalooza (Austin's own C3 Entertainment), and it's distributed by MTV parent company, Paramount, who lent a lot of material to the film.  For all those shackles, I think they *mostly* do a solid job of painting at least an interesting and accurate historical portrait.  It's just when you get to the modern era that I kind of side-eye the doc as propaganda.  

The doc gets a fair number of people involved.  Vernon Reid - one of the greatest guitarists ever produced (this is not up for debate) - is there.  Ice-T.  Lars Ulrich.  Flea.  Trent Reznor.  Lori f'ing Lightfoot.

But it doesn't land some of the voices I was hoping for.  There's no Henry Rollins or Gibby Haynes to talk 1991.  Certainly no Siouxsie Sioux.  Or people from subsequent years.  It would have been neat to see Kim Gordon interviewed (I know she played the small stage with Free Kitten, because NathanC and I watched her). 

They have terrific access to MTV's footage from the 1980's and 90's, including stuff I doubt made it to air (see: Dave Kendall!  Alison Stewart! Kurt Loder! Tabitha Soren!  John Norris!), and it helps.  I mean, it's from an era where everyone was pretty bad on camera and isn't ready with snappy answers to banal questions, but it gives you a taste of what was going on.   And it is a reminder how desperate MTV was to make Alt-Rock a thing while also blasting November Rain on repeat for a year.  

I do think the doc does NOT take for granted the splintered nature of music in the late 1980's and into 1991.  But it never explains it.  Instead, they keep mentioning "weird kids" and whatnot, without looking at charts, sales, etc... and showing what was popular and therefore what the music was reacting to (what MTV was playing, mostly, which was mostly Vanilla Ice type shit).  Maybe it's not necessary for an audience who was there, but given the arc of the doc, one would think "maybe we should start with what this was an alternative to".  Because in an era where kids are all going to school with blue hair, I don't think they're going to have much of an idea what it meant to have blue hair in 1991 and to go out in public.  Or what it meant to try to find music when your options are the radio, MTV and Sam Goody.

Because, man, the first chapter of the doc really wants to celebrate where the festival came from, and how it was a smashing success to bring all these people together, when most of those bands drew much smaller crowds, it feels like half a picture.

Also, telling kids "yeah, your elders started side-eyeing you when you got Hot Topic and Napster" is a bit unkind, no matter how true.

It does cover the integration of Black performers in the original line-ups, with Fishbone, Living Colour and Ice-T & Body Count (who I could not believe was doing any of what they were doing).  It discusses the PMRC, and the side-lining of female-centered acts for a lot of Lollapalooza's early existence - maybe refusing to weigh in honestly on how much of a problem this was in American music in general at the time.  But, time is limited and you need to pick your battles.

In my own post, I talk a bit about the diminishing feeling of Lollapalooza year-over-year from 91'-94', the final year I went.  And that was while seeing acts I quite liked.  But the doc does talk about the rapid decline of the festival - without ever quite figuring out why it happened.  (My least favorite theory was that the internet happened and connected people where that was what Lollapalooza had done.  My dude...  no.)  What the doc dances and ducks around saying is "normies found it, and they didn't have any reason to appreciate it".  Or that the bands that were ushered in by the post Jane's Addiction alt-rock era/ Nirvana explosion onto MTV maybe were appealing as much or more to normies than that first year or two had done.  

I mean, there's this odd patch they try to put on the year Metallica headlined Lollapalooza, and I distinctly remember saying "why would I pay for *that*?" when I saw the line up as tickets went on sale (because I have never been a metal guy).  The suggestion is, it was the children who were wrong.  

Look, it's sophomoric now, but at the time, Metallica wasn't establishment, but it also wasn't the same scene as the bands that had drawn folks in the first years.  But in 1996 the producers did want to sell tickets, and the spirit of "let's go see bands that all fit under this umbrella called 'alternative' or 'college music'" was gone.  "Alternative" was now as much a brand as "Country", and you could fit anyone into it if you pushed hard enough, goes the argument.  It was certainly one of the categories we had at Camelot in 1996.  But it doesn't change that Metallica was not necessarily a 1:1 with the line-up from the first two years.  And Metal *already* had a large public footprint - and was selling out arenas on its own.

Anyway, I think the filmmakers are as honest as they can be.  It's hard to say "well, when this started there were dudes with spider-webs tattooed on their skulls, and in three years, the Tri-Delts were all here, drunk and talking over the music", especially when those Tri-Delts are now part of your core market, and you need them if you're going to fill a city park, sell beer and t-shirts. 

The film also tracks the purchase of Lollapalooza by C3, and the success of the festival in Grant Park.  And just as they do here in Austin, they dismiss the concern of a major city park getting claimed for a for-profit venture for a month or more every year.  That thinking is stupid, says the doc, and those of a lose or whiner.  We're here to rock.*

It's when you see Miley Cyrus triumphantly take the stage (her pedigree and who she is in the firmament goes unmentioned) and her devoted fans get teary-eyed that you realize "oh, Lollapalooza is just pop music now.  It's role as a platform and community for a certain kind of disaffected youth has been completely forgotten a generation ago."  The doc treats this as inevitable, and perhaps partially the fault of Lollapalooza, which is true.  But it didn't *need* to become a pop fest.  It chose to.  Because money is more fun to have than not to have any money.  And the music scene is so f'd up by streaming and touring costs these days...

On the whole, the doc is watchable.  It just feels like it's playing ball with a narrative that's friendly to C3 and Paramount.  And that feels...  at odds with Lollapalooza from 1991.  And so it goes.

The youth have their music - instantly accessible, with an internet to connect to in order to discuss it.  They should have their own music, and I am sure there are acts out there of all levels of popularity.  Whether they're grinding away in sweaty clubs, I don't really have any idea.  I'm sure they are.  I hope they are.  Anyway, it's unclear what the modern selection criteria is for Lollapalooza, but it's also no longer my game.  That's for the kids to figure out.  And the C3 guys trying to fund their next lakeside mansion.

There's a more interesting doc to be made about what happened to sub-culture music, how Metal was not Punk was not Industrial was not Alt-Rock, and those things all had associated ethos.  This is not that doc. 

On a side note, it's *amazing* what I'd personally forgotten.  I saw Beastie Boys!  I totally forgot that was true.  But it is.  It was pre-Sabotage-era, so I enjoyed them, but they were of less importance to me in the moment than The Breeders, I guess.  (late edit:  I am told this was post-Sabotage, which is weird.  I had thought I'd remembered seeing the video the first time in AY 1994-1995.  I dunno.  Time and memory are slippery things.  Having a real Berenstein Beavers moment.).  And it did fill in gaps because I couldn't remember where the hell I saw Ministry, and it was at Lollapalooza (although I think I saw them again in Austin).  

*Just FYI - ACL Fest is tolerated by most of Austin, and we've learned to live with it. But it does occupy a major park that's paid for by all Austinites and it's not clear what the benefits are for the citizenry.