This Is Pop (2021) s01e06 Episode Script
The Brill Building in 4 Songs
[birds chirping]
[crowd chatter builds]
[whooping]
[woman 1] To be in a field
with a load of people,
united because they love this music,
to have that moment
with the music and everyone else,
I genuinely think it's one of the closest
to kind of god-like moments you can have.
- ["Mr. Brightside" playing]
- Coming out of my cage ♪
And I've been doing just fine ♪
Gotta, gotta be down
Because I want it all ♪
[man 1] I think the function
of the music festival in today's age,
it's a space for people to step outside
of their work and life routines.
I think that as life
becomes increasingly pressurized,
it's important to have these spaces
where you can just go
and freak out for a few days.
He takes off her dress now ♪
Let me go ♪
[woman 2] The need for human beings
to have these big gatherings,
that we all do,
there's something
so deep-rooted in our kind of DNA
that we have to share these experiences.
[crowd yelling]
[man 2] People gather together
to find a harmonious focus,
whether it's two people or 200,000 people,
all focused on the exact same thing,
at the exact same time.
There's a sensation
that we derive from it.
You can get lost in that energy.
[all singing] Destiny is calling me ♪
[man 2] It really is
heaven on Earth for a few days,
it really is heaven on Earth
for a few days.
'Cause I'm Mr. Brightside ♪
[fireworks popping]
[song ends]
[crowd cheering loudly]
[psychedelic rock music playing]
[narrator]
It's now just sort of taken for granted
that music festivals are the most
influential happenings in pop culture.
A Coachella selfie
or a Bonnaroo wristband is a souvenir,
proof you survived a major modern ritual.
Memories are made, friendships are formed,
and sometimes pop stars are born.
It's a musical rite of passage
that gives us a glimpse
into the world that produced it.
["White Rabbit"
by Jefferson Airplane playing]
All this can be traced back
to the counterculture,
to the heyday of hippies and bikers
and radicals and freaks.
To the 1960s, the Summer of Love,
San Francisco.
[Dick Clark] There's a whole new
scene now in San Francisco.
A little controversial.
Very interesting sounds.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the most talked about group
in the whole world at the moment.
The Jefferson Airplane!
[audience cheering]
One pill makes you larger ♪
And one pill makes you small ♪
And the ones that mother gives you ♪
Don't do anything at all ♪
Go ask Alice ♪
When she's ten feet tall ♪
And if you go chasing rabbits ♪
[narrator] At the center of this hazy mix
of culture and politics was Jack Casady
of psychedelic superstars,
Jefferson Airplane.
♪smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call ♪
So, when I arrived out in California,
I found a music scene
unlike anything I had seen before.
This was October 1965.
I think it represented a group of people
that was searching out some other way,
trying to craft
their own way in the world.
The turmoil in society
was an aggressive, frightening thing
going on at the same time.
The Vietnam War,
you had the domestic situation,
you had
the civil rights movement going on.
Go ask Alice ♪
I think she'll know ♪
[Casady] And it was a time
where people were trying to figure out
what they wanted.
When I joined the Jefferson Airplane,
everyone had either been to college
or was in the middle of college,
so they had a certain awareness
of of what was going on in the world.
We found ourselves setting up shop
and playing on flatbed trucks
with, you know,
our Fender equipment and just bare bones.
Feed your head ♪
When we started playing Golden Gate Park
and started, uh, having concerts
where you could have
a much huger audience,
we looked around and said,
"Oh, boy, there's a lot of us,"
and we started to identify as "us."
I think the Human Be-In
represented some of that.
[narrator] The Human Be-In
built on the popularity
of the Jefferson Airplane truck jams.
With even more bands, poetry and politics,
it wasn't just a concert but an event,
a convergence point
for the rising counterculture,
and it was big.
First of all, we're in San Francisco,
but you know that already,
and this is Golden Gate Park.
This is the Polo Fields.
And on January 14, 1967,
this is the site
of the original Human Be-In.
- [motorbike rumbling]
- [rock music playing]
[Albronda] Well, it was organized
by a fellow named
I think his name was Allen Cohen.
In order to get
the license to do it from the city,
they said,
"We're going to have a protest."
[rock music continues]
[Albronda] So he got the permit.
[narrator] Revolutionary ideas
mixed with ground-breaking music
from Jefferson Airplane,
the Grateful Dead, and Blue Cheer.
At that time, different people had tribes.
The Grateful Dead had a tribe,
Blue Cheer had a tribe,
the Airplane had a tribe,
and this sort of
brought them all together.
And you mix in the music,
which was very basically peaceful,
and people's idea
of what this subculture was all about.
People were young
and they had a sense of being
without their parents involved
or without, uh, the restrictions
that were imposed by society.
They had their own culture,
their own way of being
which is infectious.
Uh, it always has been, I think,
and when you're operating
in a population bubble that size,
I think it's naturally
going to take hold and spread
and that's exactly what happened.
[narrator] The Human Be-In was proof
that an outdoor concert could work
and that people were into it.
But the crowds had
outgrown flatbed trucks.
They needed a bigger stage.
One that could introduce these gatherings
to the rest of the world.
And so,
the Monterey Pop Festival was born.
["California Dreamin'" playing]
- All the leaves are brown ♪
- All the leaves are brown ♪
- And the sky is gray ♪
- And the sky is gray ♪
I've been for a walk ♪
[narrator] Dreamt up by superstars
The Mamas and the Papas,
the Monterey Pop Festival
introduced the world
to a brand-new kind of party.
I'd be safe and warm ♪
- If I was in LA ♪
- If I was in LA ♪
- California dreamin' ♪
- California dreamin' ♪
On such a winter's day ♪
The idea for the Monterey Pop Festival
came from our, uh, pot dealer.
[chuckles]
- Well, I got down on my knees ♪
- Got down on my knees ♪
- And I pretend to pray ♪
- I pretend to pray ♪
- You know the preacher likes the cold ♪
- Preacher likes the cold ♪
- He knows I'm gonna stay ♪
- Knows I'm gonna stay ♪
- California dreamin' ♪
- California dreamin' ♪
On such a winter's day ♪
John?
[Michelle] Lou Adler and John Phillips
really produced it.
I did too, but I didn't get any credit.
Uh [laughs]
Hello?
Well, this is John Phillips
of The Mamas and Papas.
It was really hard
to convince politicians in Monterey
that it was going to be
a peaceful concert
and there would be absolutely no drugs.
[laughs]
[reporter 1] A hundred miles from
the bustle of San Francisco is Monterey,
a typical, sleepy,
California fishing village.
So when local residents
learned that their town was chosen
to hold a large festival for pop music,
they were not very happy.
A major, major obstacle that we had
was the fact that the police were afraid
that it was going to turn into a melee.
Uh, there's a lot of talk
of the hippies coming
Not the hippies
but the Hell's Angels coming down,
some talk about
the Black Panthers coming down.
If we do get 50, 55,000 people,
we're going to have a lot of problems.
I don't think they made one arrest
in the entire weekend.
And, yeah, people were smoking pot,
you could smell it.
You know?
But the policemen were all like
"Hmm I don't smell anything."
[60's pop music playing]
[Michelle] Lou had 150,000 orchids
flown in from Hawaii,
we had an orchid on every single seat.
The policemen all had orchids
up and down the antennas
of their motorcycles,
and had orchids in their helmets.
It was like a love-in with the cops.
It was all love and peace and
and people sleeping on the fairgrounds,
spending the entire weekend there,
their kids in little tents,
and people selling their wares
and their tie-dyes.
I think it's gonna be like Easter
and Christmas and New Year's
and your birthday all together, you know.
Hearing all the different bands, you know.
Just like, I've heard a lot of them
but all at the same time
is just gonna be too much.
I mean, the vibrations
are just going to be flowing everywhere.
- [sitar music playing]
- [Michelle] It really was fun.
I mean, when Ravi Shankar
took the stage on Sunday afternoon,
he held his audience rapt for three hours.
There wasn't a sound,
no one got out of their seats,
no one moved, everyone just dug it.
People still say to me,
"You know, I was at Monterey Pop."
"I was there for the whole weekend!"
It just captivated people's imagination.
Ravi Shankar, I mean, come on.
I think that was the brilliance of that
festival being put together like that,
from Ravi Shankar
to Otis Redding to Jefferson Airplane.
Over a three-day period,
everybody listened to everybody else.
They really put together
something unique at that time.
Where would the average audience
go to hear something like that?
Thus was born
an outdoor format festival concept
where you have a
a number of different acts,
can really represent
more than just tunnel vision
of a certain genre going on at the time.
[song builds]
[crowd yells]
- [song ends]
- [loud cheering]
[psychedelic rock music playing]
[narrator] After Monterey, well,
things were never really the same.
It sparked an explosion
of music festivals across the US,
drawing music lovers
to every corner of the country.
The crowds got bigger
and bigger and bigger,
all culminating in the big one.
Woodstock saw
some 400,000 people in a farmer's field
in an event
that would define a generation.
But even though they were a big deal,
music festivals
weren't exactly profitable.
Even Woodstock lost money.
One-off events weren't working.
Festivals would need a new path forward
and they found it on a farm
in a field across the ocean.
It was here in England,
among pastures of unassuming milk cows,
that the seeds were sown
for what would be the biggest
music festival in the world,
Glastonbury.
[hard rock music playing]
[narrator] With crowds
swelling to 300,000,
Glastonbury is
the biggest music festival in the world.
[thunder rumbling]
[sheep baaing]
[narrator] Its origins can be
traced back to a humble farmer.
[laughs]
This humble farmer.
Yeah, let's get it right, shall we?
[indistinct chatter]
Yeah, good show.
Fi Fire away, then.
I'm waiting for my lunch.
[interviewer] All right.
So tell me where we are right now.
Uh, we're at Worthy Farm,
which is the home
of the Glastonbury Festival
that I started 50 years ago.
I started it here
and and look where it's got to now.
Extraordinary, really.
My family moved
into this land 200 years ago,
and they were Methodist preacher types,
you know, proper Methodists,
kind of God-fearing.
When my dad took on the farm
when his father died, he was 19.
He was always wanting to do more,
he had that kind of itch,
that that kind of need to just,
like, do something beyond farming.
The idea of a festival happened
'cause him and my mom
went to a show up the road
where there was quite a few bands playing.
Led Zeppelin was one of them.
They were watching this band playing.
My dad has this moment of,
"I want to do it here."
"I want to do it on my farm,
I want to put a stage up."
"I want to build a stage on the farm."
My mom was like,
"Oh, God, really?" [laughs]
[Michael] That year,
I sold 70 tickets at a pound each,
included free milk.
[laughs]
It was brilliant, wasn't it, really?
I had The Kinks booked,
but they were totally unimpressed
with what I was up to.
I was just a dairy farmer
and all that. You know?
So they pull out at the last minute
and so I was like,
"How can I let these people down?"
So I phoned around
and I found out that Marc Bolan
was going down
to a holiday camp the same weekend,
which was incredibly lucky
because I probably
would've had to cancel the thing.
["Get It On (Bang A Gong)"
by T. Rex playing]
And he did an absolute blinder of a set.
It was so good, it was such a good set
and it set me up for life, it really did.
Get it on, bang a gong, get it on ♪
Glastonbury is definitely
the most important festival in the UK.
And that is because it's been
going the longest, I think, really.
Consistently the longest, you know?
And it's the biggest.
I remember going to Glastonbury
as my first festival
then going to all the other ones,
Reading and and V and all that,
and they were tiny.
I was like
I was like,
"Where What, it's stopped now?"
"Like, it's two fields and that's it?"
Whereas Glastonbury,
you kept going and you kept going.
It's bigger
and bigger and bigger now, it's massive.
I think that if you walk around,
you can feel, like,
it's just got a really good energy,
the whole farm, the fact that
200,000 people come in and out every year
and kind of pound the ground.
Like, it's got a feeling to it
which is, um, which is really positive.
[narrator] In 1985, something happened
that would radically transform Glastonbury
and music festival history.
["White Riot" by The Clash playing]
[narrator] It began
with an invasion of new age travelers.
A group of wanderers making their way
across the rugged roadways of England.
[Emily]In the '80s, it was
a little bit more like the Wild West,
there was a lot of battles
and a lot of controversy.
People just shouting at us
in the supermarket.
The hippie people, no, no, the dirty ones.
I mean, it's not fair on our customers
to have all these dirty people in here
with our nice, normal customers,
that's how I feel about it.
But they don't mind
throwing a brick ♪
[Sawyer] In the '80s there was
a very strong traveling community.
They were kind of people who opted out
and they lived in caravans.
They would turn up at protests, but they
were definitely alternative to society.
There was a free festival at Stonehenge,
that's quite an important part
of the history of this event, really.
[reporter 2]
The caravans were stopped at Wiltshire,
unable to get to Stonehenge.
Why can't we drive through?
Your vehicle's causing an obstruction.
Now would you please
get into it and move it.
[Michael] Michael Heseltine,
who we called Tarzan,
he was minister of defense.
He decided to stop that festival
because it was getting too big.
The army and the police
went into the campsite
in order to get rid
of their buses, you see.
And they smashed windows and stuff,
made a real mess of the whole thing.
Uh, there was no need to do that, really.
[officer] I've told them
I am prepared to arrest them all.
Having said that,
I'm asking for police officers
to act with restraint at all times.
White riot, I wanna riot
White riot, a riot of my own ♪
White riot, I wanna riot
White riot, a riot of my own ♪
[clamoring]
What we've witnessed
in the last half an hour here
has been surely
some of the most brutal action
by police forces in Britain
for a long time.
[indistinct yelling]
[reporter 2] With nowhere else to go,
the convoy found their way
to a place offering safe haven.
Many of the caravanners decided
to relocate to the farm of Michael Eavis,
making the trek either by car or by foot.
But what can they expect
when they finally arrive?
We'll talk to them
and see what they're like
and tidy them up a bit
and give them a good hot shower.
And so, they came to me, you see
from the Battle of the Beanfield,
they came here and I looked after them
and, uh, we made it all work together.
So, that changed the character
of what I was doing
with putting on nice,
sort of tidy pop bands
into what into what they were doing
with the campaigning against
the state of the world and everything,
and it fitted in really well
with what we were doing.
So, I found a crossover
between the hippie culture
with my Methodism upbringing.
It was all about looking after people
and and a social equality
and all that kind of thing.
So that's attached
to the Glastonbury ethos, really,
and it's why it's so successful.
[loud cheering]
[rock music playing]
Last year I was driving my dad
down onto the site
and we, like, stopped
just in the middle of the pyramid arena
and it was during this massive band
and there was a huge crowd there,
and he just had this moment of like,
"Oh, my God,"
like, "What
what's this become?" kind of thing.
And it's moved and changed
with the times, so each decade,
it's kind of like a mirror
to, like, popular culture,
it's representing what's happening
in the outside world
It's never stood still.
[crowd cheering]
[narrator] While some see music festivals
as mirrors reflecting society,
others see them as hammers
that can shape it.
Back in the US,
the idea of using a music festival
to change the world
was being dreamt up
not by a musician or a promoter,
but by Steve Wozniak,
the brainiac behind Apple Computers.
His idea? The US Festival,
a uniquely '80s happening
that combined music and technology
in an era of heightened Cold War tensions.
[announcer] Introducing the US Festival.
An all-star lineup
of the world's greatest musical groups.
A multimillion-dollar spectacle,
funded from the deep pockets
of Steve Wozniak.
He spent this money, he claimed,
not to make a profit
but to make a statement.
Technology could transform the '80s
into the "us" generation,
replacing the "me" decade of the '70s.
[beeps]
[woman 3]
What's the purpose of the US Festival?
Well, Priscilla, basically, it's to put on
a really good high-level musical event
that hasn't happened in this country
in maybe ten years or so.
We came up with the theme of the '80s,
a good theme is the idea
of people working together.
And I listen to the news,
I read the newspaper, I attend rallies,
over and over I hear this idea of unity,
people working together.
It's like it's like I hear it
in almost everything I look at.
And I think that that is maybe
a moving theme of the '80s.
And, of course, we're in tune with that,
at unison, with our US Festival.
[bird chittering]
[Gerwe] Woz always had a clear vision.
It was about getting people together,
it was about getting people together
in an environment
where they can really interact.
If you take a day and you get a series
of the best bands in the world together,
and an open spot for 100,000 or 200,000
or whatever the amount of people is,
it's going to be pretty cool.
You know? And so,
that's kind of what Woz was looking for.
["Down Under" by Men At Work playing]
Traveling in a fried-out Kombi ♪
On a hippie trail
Head full of zombie ♪
I was very happy that we were
going to play at the US Festival
'cause it was a huge deal, you know.
We were playing
with Stray Cats and The Clash
and a bunch of other bands.
David Bowie was headlining
and all that kind of stuff.
That was incredibly exciting
and really, really potent
because we were an Australian band,
playing to Australian audiences,
and they were going, "Okay, off you go,
nothing's going to be the same anymore."
And indeed it wasn't.
I love playing at festivals
because people are there for
they're there to see music.
And so, they're generally great audiences
because that's why they're there.
If it's a destination
that people are going to
because they want to see you perform,
it's a very gratifying situation.
[crowd cheering]
[narrator] Woz's vision went beyond music.
He wanted to use the US Festival
to bridge a connection
to the other side of the world.
Originally, the idea was just do a major
rock-country oriented concert
somewhere in the western states.
Uh, from that, the idea of,
"Hey, we can show people
how computers and technology
are bringing people closer together."
[futuristic synth music playing]
[reporter 3] The highlight of the show
was a live, interactive satellite link up
between American and Russian rock fans.
[Gerwe] Spacebridge,
so the idea came up with Woz
to do a satellite exchange
with the Soviet Union,
and this was 1982, '83, right?
So it was Ronald Reagan,
"Evil Empire" days,
where the Soviet Union
was the Evil Empire,
and there was almost no contact
between the two countries.
There is sin and evil in the world,
and we're enjoined by Scripture
and the Lord Jesus
to oppose it with all our might.
The Soviet leaders
have openly and publicly declared
that the only morality they recognize,
is that which will further their cause,
which is world revolution.
They are the focus of evil
in the modern world.
And so, we actually
did a satellite exchange with the Soviets
and it was really cool.
Hi, we're coming to you
from the US Festival 1983
in Southern California.
We're very near the site
of the 1984 Olympic Games
where the world cultures
will meet in, uh, 1984.
Okay, on the screen behind me
you'll see some friends
over in the Soviet Union
and US Festival representative
Jim Hickman.
[applause, cheers]
In the tent was basically,
you got 100 people
sitting on a set of stages,
with a moderator in the front,
and the same thing in the Soviet Union.
So they would just ask questions,
uncensored,
uncontrolled in a lot of sense,
so, you know, they were talking about
sex and life and everything.
And then cosmonauts talking about
what it's like to be out in space
looking at the world as one place.
It's one place, it's not a country
set aside over here or over there,
it's one globe. Um
it was pretty heady stuff, actually,
at the time.
[reporter 4]
Australian pop superstars Men at Work
played to a crowd
of tens of thousands in California,
a performance transmitted live
across the world to Russia.
["Who Can It Be Now"
by Men At Work playing]
I'm not sure if I knew or not,
I think somebody probably told me
they were going to do that
and so I was aware of it.
When I saw it happening,
it was it was great.
Who can it be knocking at my door? ♪
Go away
Don't come 'round here no more ♪
Can't you see
That it's late at night? ♪
I'm very tired ♪
It was very heartwarming, really,
and they looked so innocent and kind of
like this was the first time
they'd done something like this, you know?
It was exciting.
You know, as an old hippie,
it's kind of like,
"Oh. We're touching people
who live in a much more repressive system
than what I've grown up with."
"So we're getting somewhere, hopefully."
Who can it be now? ♪
[narrator] The US Festival
didn't quite end the Cold War
and, just like Woodstock,
it lost a lot of money.
The legacy of the 1960s music festivals
remained a formula for financial ruin,
especially in the US,
where one-off festivals
struggled to take root.
[rock music playing]
[narrator] It wasn't until the 1990s
that a new formula for festival success
made its way across the US
[women] L-O-L-L-A-P-A-L-O-O-Z-A
[narrator] Lollapalooza
was a brilliant innovation,
taking the wild musical lineups
of European festivals
and putting them
back on the flatbed truck.
Lollapalooza took
the whole festival on tour
from town to town, across the country.
The US has kind of had
such a sour history on festivals,
whereas Europe had been
developing and refining
and creating these amazing
long-term festivals.
I've heard people say it,
"Nobody will be able to create,"
back then,
"a European style festival in the US."
Until Lollapalooza.
Lollapalooza was a touring festival,
it really was a game changer.
[crowd cheering]
"Say, what if we just have
a whole bunch of really cool bands
and travel around the country?"
You could feel it on tour too,
you could feel it,
the people were just so excited.
[grunge rock music playing]
[reporter 5]
How political is Lollapalooza?
[Ice Cube] It's very political
but it's on a unity tip.
It's getting people exposed to,
you know, what I'm like.
And it's exposing me
to what other people are like.
And we've got some fans
from overseas there
- This must be a trip for you.
- Yeah, it's fun. It's fun.
You see that pit going?
Everybody going crazy, loving it.
[Rat] No one expected
this buzz and excitement.
And afterwards the industry changed,
all of a sudden, man, the record companies
started dumping tons of money
into these multi-stage
rock shows or festivals,
and there was this big bloom.
[narrator] The return of festival culture
led to the return of the big one:
Woodstock.
Thirty years after the original
and relocated from a farmer's field
to a military base 100 miles away.
This festival was Woodstock in name only.
[reporter 6]
Almost a quarter million music fans
are gathering at
a former military base in Rome, New York,
to celebrate the 30th anniversary
of Woodstock.
They came to relive the magic
of the original festival
in what is shaping up
to be the party of the century.
[all yelling aggressively]
[Rat] Woodstock '99
was the antithesis of Lollapalooza.
It seemed to be very financially motivated
and that permeated the entire event.
[Fred Durst] Our new record
comes out next week, motherfucker.
- [crowd yelling]
- Okay, are you ready?
Get up like this, come on.
It's one of those days
When you don't want to wake up ♪
Everything is fucked
Everybody sucks ♪
You don't really know why ♪
But you want to justify
Rippin' someone's head off ♪
No human contact ♪
And if you interact
Your life is on contract ♪
Your best bet
Is to stay away, motherfucker ♪
It's just one of those days ♪
[Rat] You could feel the tension.
People were just frustrated
and I remember kind of intentionally
not interacting with the audience.
I stayed backstage, stayed in the bus.
It just wasn't inviting.
You put a bunch of people in a cage
and start charging them a bunch of money
ATMs broke
and people couldn't afford water.
[Durst] Are you motherfuckers ready
to get the tension out of your body?
Well, we could tell
something was going wrong,
but the show's going on
and I'm focused on the band.
[Durst] Are you motherfuckers ready
to get the tension out of your body?
[crowd roaring]
I pack a chainsaw ♪
I remember one of the techs
tapping me and looking back
and there's
You could see billowing smoke,
like, far away though,
like out in the middle of the field there.
The delay cluster had been pushed over
and they lit the PA on fire.
I pack a chainsaw ♪
I'll skin your ass raw ♪
And if my day keeps going this way
I just might ♪
Break your fucking face tonight ♪
Give me something to break ♪
I was, uh,
in charge of that west wall part,
so that was, uh, that was the first wall
that actually collapsed
during all the riots.
And I remember
people ripping the walls down,
pulling panels off and
just absolute chaos.
How 'bout your fucking face? ♪
[Blake] I'm over there and I see
these kids had brought in a Mercedes,
it's like an older,
kind of, like, '80s-style Mercedes,
and they're jumping on it
and one of them's got a door
and he's trying to pry it open.
And they're just destroying this thing,
they're trying to set it on fire.
I'm trying to, like,
move people back away from it
and that was the kind of
the culmination of everything.
Uh, I got I remember trying to
move people back and I'm getting punched,
I remember getting hit by a bottle.
I got hit with a bunch of objects
that I'm going to imagine are stones,
and they just swallowed me up.
Talking that shit, punk
So come and get it ♪
And I remember thinking,
"I'm going to die in this place."
[yelling, screaming]
[reporter 7] Three days of peace and music
ended in riots and arson.
Woodstock '99 saw hordes of young people
rampaging through the festival grounds,
tearing down barricades,
setting fires and looting vendors.
Five people were injured in the chaos
before the state police moved in
and made seven arrests.
Woodstock ‘99 was a marketing event.
It was like,
"We're gonna make a wad of cash."
"We're gonna throw
a bunch of bands in there,
we're gonna tag a name on it
from an historical event,"
and I think that was the fundamental
of the backlash
and violence that happened.
[narrator] The disaster
that was Woodstock ‘99
left a bad taste
in pretty much everyone's mouths.
The music festival had warped
from a celebration
of peace and love and free milk,
to a staging ground for violence
and shameless profiteering.
It was pretty much the end
for large scale music festivals
in the United States.
But there were a few true believers,
promoters and entrepreneurs who had faith
that they could revive
the original spirit of festivals.
They did so,
not by playing into the culture of Y2K,
but by looking back
to the ethos of the '60s
and returning
to the music festival's roots.
They believed that
it wasn't where you built the home,
but how you built it.
["7/4 (Shoreline)"
by Broken Social Scene playing]
We actually all went to
the first Coachella
and that was right after, um,
Woodstock ‘99 had happened.
I remember them, uh,
they gave out
bottles of water as you walked in.
And it was a clear sign
of trying to be the antithesis
of, um, the Woodstock ‘99 stuff
that had happened.
I think it pushed people
to really produce on a higher level.
When we built Bonnaroo, it was like,
"What do we want to experience?"
We were kind of building it for ourselves.
We'd been to Glastonbury,
we'd seen just some
of the great European festivals,
and were like, "What would our modern day
music festival look and feel like?"
[fireworks exploding]
[crowd cheering, whooping]
And we were able to kind of create that.
We were very fortunate
to, um, build something out
that was a reflection of ourselves,
and, I think, ultimately
was one of the reasons it was successful,
is that we weren't building it for some
far-off audience we didn't understand.
We just knew these were
the things we wanted to experience,
these were the acts we wanted to see,
and these were the type of environments
that we wanted to be in,
and then we created it from there.
[crowd cheering]
[Black] We've been doing these big murals,
where we have local artists
doing live painting throughout the event
and we keep the murals every year.
And then we just started
noticing that year
that people were starting to take pictures
of themselves with the murals.
And it became this huge thing
where now we always keep them,
we put them up all throughout the site
and people are just
taking selfies all day long.
[Goodstone] Selfies are a way
for people to express themselves
and like most things,
it's everything in moderation.
If it starts to take away
from your experience,
you probably shouldn't be doing it.
[Black] I think when you get
that many people together
for these short bursts,
it's almost like going to a rally,
whether it's the Women's March
or something like that.
Having all these people together
for a singular purpose,
uh, it's just extremely powerful.
Music is a really easy way
for people to connect
with the present moment.
You're just absorbing and listening,
that is the best way
to connect with people.
[crowd cheering]
[song continues]
I remember the last time
we played Bonnaroo,
I got to know the tour manager,
got myself into The Killers.
I thought,
"I should watch, I want to see it."
And then we got to go side stage.
"Mr. Brightside,"
not a favorite song of mine,
they came out and opened with it,
might have been
the greatest song I saw live.
I think discovering music
is the best part about being a band
or being an audience member at a festival.
And the festivals
that go out of their way to present
And that's what Social Scene,
we got a lot of.
We got a lot of festivals saying,
"We want your music at our festival
and we're going to
present you to our crowd."
It's pretty phenomenal.
And you're walking away
Oh, where to go to? ♪
And you're walking alone
Oh, how to get through? ♪
If you want to get it all
You can own what you choose ♪
[crowd cheering]
[Drew]There is something about
just being outdoors
and just being able
to just have no ceiling over you.
On a metaphorical level
it's pretty prominent,
but just in terms of a level
of experiencing that moment
Sometimes you gotta get out
from underneath the ceiling
and just have open sky.
If you want to get it all
You can own what you choose ♪
But you want to live a lie
And love what you lose ♪
When you get together with a group
in a mass,
you feel a sense of belief,
you feel a sense of purpose,
and you feel there's a drive
towards something greater.
And a lot of times
you need to be in mass crowds
to feel that feeling.
And it's time ♪
While you're walking away ♪
If you're feeling it, that's yours,
and then you're owning that with a crowd
and that's the experience of live music.
[crowd cheering]
If you try to steal the beat
The beat will steal you ♪
[narrator] For organizers, the rewards
of the music festival are clear,
they're now a huge business
and the front line
of live music promoting.
But why have they stood the test of time
with music fans and concert-goers?
How have festivals become
not just popular,
but more popular than ever?
What is it about these gatherings
that sparks something deep in our souls?
[song ends]
[loud cheering]
It's amazing what a little bit of song
and 50,000 happy people can do, yeah!
[cheering]
[playing "Helicopter"]
The beauty of the music festival is that,
you know, rather than just
2,000 people singing along,
it's like 50,000 singing along.
And that is very powerful
and very seductive.
There's quite a powerful
kind of mob or collective feeling,
which is great.
As if to say, as if to say ♪
As if to say
He doesn't like chocolate ♪
He's born a liar, he'll die a liar ♪
Some things will never be different ♪
I think the function of the music festival
in today's age is important
because it's a space for people
to to step outside of their work
and life routines
and just drink and partake in drugs,
dance and listen to music,
and take yourself
off the grid for a weekend.
[yelling, cheering]
Am I
am I allowed to talk about drug taking?
- [man3] Yeah.
- All right. Of course? [laughs]
Are you hoping for a miracle? ♪
You know, we interact with people
via computer screen,
there's not much in real time
kind of communication,
whereas the thing about a festival is
it's everyone together in this moment.
I think that as life
becomes increasingly atomized,
I think it's important
to have these spaces
where you can just go and just freak out.
[whooping, yelling]
[Rat] People gather together
to find a harmonious focus,
whether it's two people or 200,000 people
all focused on the exact same thing,
at the exact same time,
there's a sensation
that we derive from it.
You can get lost in that energy.
[Emily] The need for human beings
to have these big gatherings,
there's something so deep rooted
in our DNA
that we have to share these experiences.
And there's something about
that kind of shared experience.
You can't write it or code it,
it's just something about
being in that moment.
[crowd singing along]
Are you hoping for a miracle? ♪
[Hay] I think in its best form,
it helps us to raise our consciousness
and to be better people,
to be more who you are.
There's a current which gets formed,
it's electric and it goes out
and it comes back
and it's unbroken.
That's the high of connection with people.
That's what it is.
There's nothing more to it than that
because we all end up the same way.
It's kind of, "How do you make sense
of where we are?"
The fact that we're just this rock
flying around the fucking sun,
going, "What the fuck is going on?"
[chuckles]
"Oh, we're alive. Oh, good."
[cheering loudly]
[feedback droning]
[cheering continues]
[cheering fades]
[indistinct crowd chatter]
[crowd chatter builds]
[whooping]
[woman 1] To be in a field
with a load of people,
united because they love this music,
to have that moment
with the music and everyone else,
I genuinely think it's one of the closest
to kind of god-like moments you can have.
- ["Mr. Brightside" playing]
- Coming out of my cage ♪
And I've been doing just fine ♪
Gotta, gotta be down
Because I want it all ♪
[man 1] I think the function
of the music festival in today's age,
it's a space for people to step outside
of their work and life routines.
I think that as life
becomes increasingly pressurized,
it's important to have these spaces
where you can just go
and freak out for a few days.
He takes off her dress now ♪
Let me go ♪
[woman 2] The need for human beings
to have these big gatherings,
that we all do,
there's something
so deep-rooted in our kind of DNA
that we have to share these experiences.
[crowd yelling]
[man 2] People gather together
to find a harmonious focus,
whether it's two people or 200,000 people,
all focused on the exact same thing,
at the exact same time.
There's a sensation
that we derive from it.
You can get lost in that energy.
[all singing] Destiny is calling me ♪
[man 2] It really is
heaven on Earth for a few days,
it really is heaven on Earth
for a few days.
'Cause I'm Mr. Brightside ♪
[fireworks popping]
[song ends]
[crowd cheering loudly]
[psychedelic rock music playing]
[narrator]
It's now just sort of taken for granted
that music festivals are the most
influential happenings in pop culture.
A Coachella selfie
or a Bonnaroo wristband is a souvenir,
proof you survived a major modern ritual.
Memories are made, friendships are formed,
and sometimes pop stars are born.
It's a musical rite of passage
that gives us a glimpse
into the world that produced it.
["White Rabbit"
by Jefferson Airplane playing]
All this can be traced back
to the counterculture,
to the heyday of hippies and bikers
and radicals and freaks.
To the 1960s, the Summer of Love,
San Francisco.
[Dick Clark] There's a whole new
scene now in San Francisco.
A little controversial.
Very interesting sounds.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the most talked about group
in the whole world at the moment.
The Jefferson Airplane!
[audience cheering]
One pill makes you larger ♪
And one pill makes you small ♪
And the ones that mother gives you ♪
Don't do anything at all ♪
Go ask Alice ♪
When she's ten feet tall ♪
And if you go chasing rabbits ♪
[narrator] At the center of this hazy mix
of culture and politics was Jack Casady
of psychedelic superstars,
Jefferson Airplane.
♪smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call ♪
So, when I arrived out in California,
I found a music scene
unlike anything I had seen before.
This was October 1965.
I think it represented a group of people
that was searching out some other way,
trying to craft
their own way in the world.
The turmoil in society
was an aggressive, frightening thing
going on at the same time.
The Vietnam War,
you had the domestic situation,
you had
the civil rights movement going on.
Go ask Alice ♪
I think she'll know ♪
[Casady] And it was a time
where people were trying to figure out
what they wanted.
When I joined the Jefferson Airplane,
everyone had either been to college
or was in the middle of college,
so they had a certain awareness
of of what was going on in the world.
We found ourselves setting up shop
and playing on flatbed trucks
with, you know,
our Fender equipment and just bare bones.
Feed your head ♪
When we started playing Golden Gate Park
and started, uh, having concerts
where you could have
a much huger audience,
we looked around and said,
"Oh, boy, there's a lot of us,"
and we started to identify as "us."
I think the Human Be-In
represented some of that.
[narrator] The Human Be-In
built on the popularity
of the Jefferson Airplane truck jams.
With even more bands, poetry and politics,
it wasn't just a concert but an event,
a convergence point
for the rising counterculture,
and it was big.
First of all, we're in San Francisco,
but you know that already,
and this is Golden Gate Park.
This is the Polo Fields.
And on January 14, 1967,
this is the site
of the original Human Be-In.
- [motorbike rumbling]
- [rock music playing]
[Albronda] Well, it was organized
by a fellow named
I think his name was Allen Cohen.
In order to get
the license to do it from the city,
they said,
"We're going to have a protest."
[rock music continues]
[Albronda] So he got the permit.
[narrator] Revolutionary ideas
mixed with ground-breaking music
from Jefferson Airplane,
the Grateful Dead, and Blue Cheer.
At that time, different people had tribes.
The Grateful Dead had a tribe,
Blue Cheer had a tribe,
the Airplane had a tribe,
and this sort of
brought them all together.
And you mix in the music,
which was very basically peaceful,
and people's idea
of what this subculture was all about.
People were young
and they had a sense of being
without their parents involved
or without, uh, the restrictions
that were imposed by society.
They had their own culture,
their own way of being
which is infectious.
Uh, it always has been, I think,
and when you're operating
in a population bubble that size,
I think it's naturally
going to take hold and spread
and that's exactly what happened.
[narrator] The Human Be-In was proof
that an outdoor concert could work
and that people were into it.
But the crowds had
outgrown flatbed trucks.
They needed a bigger stage.
One that could introduce these gatherings
to the rest of the world.
And so,
the Monterey Pop Festival was born.
["California Dreamin'" playing]
- All the leaves are brown ♪
- All the leaves are brown ♪
- And the sky is gray ♪
- And the sky is gray ♪
I've been for a walk ♪
[narrator] Dreamt up by superstars
The Mamas and the Papas,
the Monterey Pop Festival
introduced the world
to a brand-new kind of party.
I'd be safe and warm ♪
- If I was in LA ♪
- If I was in LA ♪
- California dreamin' ♪
- California dreamin' ♪
On such a winter's day ♪
The idea for the Monterey Pop Festival
came from our, uh, pot dealer.
[chuckles]
- Well, I got down on my knees ♪
- Got down on my knees ♪
- And I pretend to pray ♪
- I pretend to pray ♪
- You know the preacher likes the cold ♪
- Preacher likes the cold ♪
- He knows I'm gonna stay ♪
- Knows I'm gonna stay ♪
- California dreamin' ♪
- California dreamin' ♪
On such a winter's day ♪
John?
[Michelle] Lou Adler and John Phillips
really produced it.
I did too, but I didn't get any credit.
Uh [laughs]
Hello?
Well, this is John Phillips
of The Mamas and Papas.
It was really hard
to convince politicians in Monterey
that it was going to be
a peaceful concert
and there would be absolutely no drugs.
[laughs]
[reporter 1] A hundred miles from
the bustle of San Francisco is Monterey,
a typical, sleepy,
California fishing village.
So when local residents
learned that their town was chosen
to hold a large festival for pop music,
they were not very happy.
A major, major obstacle that we had
was the fact that the police were afraid
that it was going to turn into a melee.
Uh, there's a lot of talk
of the hippies coming
Not the hippies
but the Hell's Angels coming down,
some talk about
the Black Panthers coming down.
If we do get 50, 55,000 people,
we're going to have a lot of problems.
I don't think they made one arrest
in the entire weekend.
And, yeah, people were smoking pot,
you could smell it.
You know?
But the policemen were all like
"Hmm I don't smell anything."
[60's pop music playing]
[Michelle] Lou had 150,000 orchids
flown in from Hawaii,
we had an orchid on every single seat.
The policemen all had orchids
up and down the antennas
of their motorcycles,
and had orchids in their helmets.
It was like a love-in with the cops.
It was all love and peace and
and people sleeping on the fairgrounds,
spending the entire weekend there,
their kids in little tents,
and people selling their wares
and their tie-dyes.
I think it's gonna be like Easter
and Christmas and New Year's
and your birthday all together, you know.
Hearing all the different bands, you know.
Just like, I've heard a lot of them
but all at the same time
is just gonna be too much.
I mean, the vibrations
are just going to be flowing everywhere.
- [sitar music playing]
- [Michelle] It really was fun.
I mean, when Ravi Shankar
took the stage on Sunday afternoon,
he held his audience rapt for three hours.
There wasn't a sound,
no one got out of their seats,
no one moved, everyone just dug it.
People still say to me,
"You know, I was at Monterey Pop."
"I was there for the whole weekend!"
It just captivated people's imagination.
Ravi Shankar, I mean, come on.
I think that was the brilliance of that
festival being put together like that,
from Ravi Shankar
to Otis Redding to Jefferson Airplane.
Over a three-day period,
everybody listened to everybody else.
They really put together
something unique at that time.
Where would the average audience
go to hear something like that?
Thus was born
an outdoor format festival concept
where you have a
a number of different acts,
can really represent
more than just tunnel vision
of a certain genre going on at the time.
[song builds]
[crowd yells]
- [song ends]
- [loud cheering]
[psychedelic rock music playing]
[narrator] After Monterey, well,
things were never really the same.
It sparked an explosion
of music festivals across the US,
drawing music lovers
to every corner of the country.
The crowds got bigger
and bigger and bigger,
all culminating in the big one.
Woodstock saw
some 400,000 people in a farmer's field
in an event
that would define a generation.
But even though they were a big deal,
music festivals
weren't exactly profitable.
Even Woodstock lost money.
One-off events weren't working.
Festivals would need a new path forward
and they found it on a farm
in a field across the ocean.
It was here in England,
among pastures of unassuming milk cows,
that the seeds were sown
for what would be the biggest
music festival in the world,
Glastonbury.
[hard rock music playing]
[narrator] With crowds
swelling to 300,000,
Glastonbury is
the biggest music festival in the world.
[thunder rumbling]
[sheep baaing]
[narrator] Its origins can be
traced back to a humble farmer.
[laughs]
This humble farmer.
Yeah, let's get it right, shall we?
[indistinct chatter]
Yeah, good show.
Fi Fire away, then.
I'm waiting for my lunch.
[interviewer] All right.
So tell me where we are right now.
Uh, we're at Worthy Farm,
which is the home
of the Glastonbury Festival
that I started 50 years ago.
I started it here
and and look where it's got to now.
Extraordinary, really.
My family moved
into this land 200 years ago,
and they were Methodist preacher types,
you know, proper Methodists,
kind of God-fearing.
When my dad took on the farm
when his father died, he was 19.
He was always wanting to do more,
he had that kind of itch,
that that kind of need to just,
like, do something beyond farming.
The idea of a festival happened
'cause him and my mom
went to a show up the road
where there was quite a few bands playing.
Led Zeppelin was one of them.
They were watching this band playing.
My dad has this moment of,
"I want to do it here."
"I want to do it on my farm,
I want to put a stage up."
"I want to build a stage on the farm."
My mom was like,
"Oh, God, really?" [laughs]
[Michael] That year,
I sold 70 tickets at a pound each,
included free milk.
[laughs]
It was brilliant, wasn't it, really?
I had The Kinks booked,
but they were totally unimpressed
with what I was up to.
I was just a dairy farmer
and all that. You know?
So they pull out at the last minute
and so I was like,
"How can I let these people down?"
So I phoned around
and I found out that Marc Bolan
was going down
to a holiday camp the same weekend,
which was incredibly lucky
because I probably
would've had to cancel the thing.
["Get It On (Bang A Gong)"
by T. Rex playing]
And he did an absolute blinder of a set.
It was so good, it was such a good set
and it set me up for life, it really did.
Get it on, bang a gong, get it on ♪
Glastonbury is definitely
the most important festival in the UK.
And that is because it's been
going the longest, I think, really.
Consistently the longest, you know?
And it's the biggest.
I remember going to Glastonbury
as my first festival
then going to all the other ones,
Reading and and V and all that,
and they were tiny.
I was like
I was like,
"Where What, it's stopped now?"
"Like, it's two fields and that's it?"
Whereas Glastonbury,
you kept going and you kept going.
It's bigger
and bigger and bigger now, it's massive.
I think that if you walk around,
you can feel, like,
it's just got a really good energy,
the whole farm, the fact that
200,000 people come in and out every year
and kind of pound the ground.
Like, it's got a feeling to it
which is, um, which is really positive.
[narrator] In 1985, something happened
that would radically transform Glastonbury
and music festival history.
["White Riot" by The Clash playing]
[narrator] It began
with an invasion of new age travelers.
A group of wanderers making their way
across the rugged roadways of England.
[Emily]In the '80s, it was
a little bit more like the Wild West,
there was a lot of battles
and a lot of controversy.
People just shouting at us
in the supermarket.
The hippie people, no, no, the dirty ones.
I mean, it's not fair on our customers
to have all these dirty people in here
with our nice, normal customers,
that's how I feel about it.
But they don't mind
throwing a brick ♪
[Sawyer] In the '80s there was
a very strong traveling community.
They were kind of people who opted out
and they lived in caravans.
They would turn up at protests, but they
were definitely alternative to society.
There was a free festival at Stonehenge,
that's quite an important part
of the history of this event, really.
[reporter 2]
The caravans were stopped at Wiltshire,
unable to get to Stonehenge.
Why can't we drive through?
Your vehicle's causing an obstruction.
Now would you please
get into it and move it.
[Michael] Michael Heseltine,
who we called Tarzan,
he was minister of defense.
He decided to stop that festival
because it was getting too big.
The army and the police
went into the campsite
in order to get rid
of their buses, you see.
And they smashed windows and stuff,
made a real mess of the whole thing.
Uh, there was no need to do that, really.
[officer] I've told them
I am prepared to arrest them all.
Having said that,
I'm asking for police officers
to act with restraint at all times.
White riot, I wanna riot
White riot, a riot of my own ♪
White riot, I wanna riot
White riot, a riot of my own ♪
[clamoring]
What we've witnessed
in the last half an hour here
has been surely
some of the most brutal action
by police forces in Britain
for a long time.
[indistinct yelling]
[reporter 2] With nowhere else to go,
the convoy found their way
to a place offering safe haven.
Many of the caravanners decided
to relocate to the farm of Michael Eavis,
making the trek either by car or by foot.
But what can they expect
when they finally arrive?
We'll talk to them
and see what they're like
and tidy them up a bit
and give them a good hot shower.
And so, they came to me, you see
from the Battle of the Beanfield,
they came here and I looked after them
and, uh, we made it all work together.
So, that changed the character
of what I was doing
with putting on nice,
sort of tidy pop bands
into what into what they were doing
with the campaigning against
the state of the world and everything,
and it fitted in really well
with what we were doing.
So, I found a crossover
between the hippie culture
with my Methodism upbringing.
It was all about looking after people
and and a social equality
and all that kind of thing.
So that's attached
to the Glastonbury ethos, really,
and it's why it's so successful.
[loud cheering]
[rock music playing]
Last year I was driving my dad
down onto the site
and we, like, stopped
just in the middle of the pyramid arena
and it was during this massive band
and there was a huge crowd there,
and he just had this moment of like,
"Oh, my God,"
like, "What
what's this become?" kind of thing.
And it's moved and changed
with the times, so each decade,
it's kind of like a mirror
to, like, popular culture,
it's representing what's happening
in the outside world
It's never stood still.
[crowd cheering]
[narrator] While some see music festivals
as mirrors reflecting society,
others see them as hammers
that can shape it.
Back in the US,
the idea of using a music festival
to change the world
was being dreamt up
not by a musician or a promoter,
but by Steve Wozniak,
the brainiac behind Apple Computers.
His idea? The US Festival,
a uniquely '80s happening
that combined music and technology
in an era of heightened Cold War tensions.
[announcer] Introducing the US Festival.
An all-star lineup
of the world's greatest musical groups.
A multimillion-dollar spectacle,
funded from the deep pockets
of Steve Wozniak.
He spent this money, he claimed,
not to make a profit
but to make a statement.
Technology could transform the '80s
into the "us" generation,
replacing the "me" decade of the '70s.
[beeps]
[woman 3]
What's the purpose of the US Festival?
Well, Priscilla, basically, it's to put on
a really good high-level musical event
that hasn't happened in this country
in maybe ten years or so.
We came up with the theme of the '80s,
a good theme is the idea
of people working together.
And I listen to the news,
I read the newspaper, I attend rallies,
over and over I hear this idea of unity,
people working together.
It's like it's like I hear it
in almost everything I look at.
And I think that that is maybe
a moving theme of the '80s.
And, of course, we're in tune with that,
at unison, with our US Festival.
[bird chittering]
[Gerwe] Woz always had a clear vision.
It was about getting people together,
it was about getting people together
in an environment
where they can really interact.
If you take a day and you get a series
of the best bands in the world together,
and an open spot for 100,000 or 200,000
or whatever the amount of people is,
it's going to be pretty cool.
You know? And so,
that's kind of what Woz was looking for.
["Down Under" by Men At Work playing]
Traveling in a fried-out Kombi ♪
On a hippie trail
Head full of zombie ♪
I was very happy that we were
going to play at the US Festival
'cause it was a huge deal, you know.
We were playing
with Stray Cats and The Clash
and a bunch of other bands.
David Bowie was headlining
and all that kind of stuff.
That was incredibly exciting
and really, really potent
because we were an Australian band,
playing to Australian audiences,
and they were going, "Okay, off you go,
nothing's going to be the same anymore."
And indeed it wasn't.
I love playing at festivals
because people are there for
they're there to see music.
And so, they're generally great audiences
because that's why they're there.
If it's a destination
that people are going to
because they want to see you perform,
it's a very gratifying situation.
[crowd cheering]
[narrator] Woz's vision went beyond music.
He wanted to use the US Festival
to bridge a connection
to the other side of the world.
Originally, the idea was just do a major
rock-country oriented concert
somewhere in the western states.
Uh, from that, the idea of,
"Hey, we can show people
how computers and technology
are bringing people closer together."
[futuristic synth music playing]
[reporter 3] The highlight of the show
was a live, interactive satellite link up
between American and Russian rock fans.
[Gerwe] Spacebridge,
so the idea came up with Woz
to do a satellite exchange
with the Soviet Union,
and this was 1982, '83, right?
So it was Ronald Reagan,
"Evil Empire" days,
where the Soviet Union
was the Evil Empire,
and there was almost no contact
between the two countries.
There is sin and evil in the world,
and we're enjoined by Scripture
and the Lord Jesus
to oppose it with all our might.
The Soviet leaders
have openly and publicly declared
that the only morality they recognize,
is that which will further their cause,
which is world revolution.
They are the focus of evil
in the modern world.
And so, we actually
did a satellite exchange with the Soviets
and it was really cool.
Hi, we're coming to you
from the US Festival 1983
in Southern California.
We're very near the site
of the 1984 Olympic Games
where the world cultures
will meet in, uh, 1984.
Okay, on the screen behind me
you'll see some friends
over in the Soviet Union
and US Festival representative
Jim Hickman.
[applause, cheers]
In the tent was basically,
you got 100 people
sitting on a set of stages,
with a moderator in the front,
and the same thing in the Soviet Union.
So they would just ask questions,
uncensored,
uncontrolled in a lot of sense,
so, you know, they were talking about
sex and life and everything.
And then cosmonauts talking about
what it's like to be out in space
looking at the world as one place.
It's one place, it's not a country
set aside over here or over there,
it's one globe. Um
it was pretty heady stuff, actually,
at the time.
[reporter 4]
Australian pop superstars Men at Work
played to a crowd
of tens of thousands in California,
a performance transmitted live
across the world to Russia.
["Who Can It Be Now"
by Men At Work playing]
I'm not sure if I knew or not,
I think somebody probably told me
they were going to do that
and so I was aware of it.
When I saw it happening,
it was it was great.
Who can it be knocking at my door? ♪
Go away
Don't come 'round here no more ♪
Can't you see
That it's late at night? ♪
I'm very tired ♪
It was very heartwarming, really,
and they looked so innocent and kind of
like this was the first time
they'd done something like this, you know?
It was exciting.
You know, as an old hippie,
it's kind of like,
"Oh. We're touching people
who live in a much more repressive system
than what I've grown up with."
"So we're getting somewhere, hopefully."
Who can it be now? ♪
[narrator] The US Festival
didn't quite end the Cold War
and, just like Woodstock,
it lost a lot of money.
The legacy of the 1960s music festivals
remained a formula for financial ruin,
especially in the US,
where one-off festivals
struggled to take root.
[rock music playing]
[narrator] It wasn't until the 1990s
that a new formula for festival success
made its way across the US
[women] L-O-L-L-A-P-A-L-O-O-Z-A
[narrator] Lollapalooza
was a brilliant innovation,
taking the wild musical lineups
of European festivals
and putting them
back on the flatbed truck.
Lollapalooza took
the whole festival on tour
from town to town, across the country.
The US has kind of had
such a sour history on festivals,
whereas Europe had been
developing and refining
and creating these amazing
long-term festivals.
I've heard people say it,
"Nobody will be able to create,"
back then,
"a European style festival in the US."
Until Lollapalooza.
Lollapalooza was a touring festival,
it really was a game changer.
[crowd cheering]
"Say, what if we just have
a whole bunch of really cool bands
and travel around the country?"
You could feel it on tour too,
you could feel it,
the people were just so excited.
[grunge rock music playing]
[reporter 5]
How political is Lollapalooza?
[Ice Cube] It's very political
but it's on a unity tip.
It's getting people exposed to,
you know, what I'm like.
And it's exposing me
to what other people are like.
And we've got some fans
from overseas there
- This must be a trip for you.
- Yeah, it's fun. It's fun.
You see that pit going?
Everybody going crazy, loving it.
[Rat] No one expected
this buzz and excitement.
And afterwards the industry changed,
all of a sudden, man, the record companies
started dumping tons of money
into these multi-stage
rock shows or festivals,
and there was this big bloom.
[narrator] The return of festival culture
led to the return of the big one:
Woodstock.
Thirty years after the original
and relocated from a farmer's field
to a military base 100 miles away.
This festival was Woodstock in name only.
[reporter 6]
Almost a quarter million music fans
are gathering at
a former military base in Rome, New York,
to celebrate the 30th anniversary
of Woodstock.
They came to relive the magic
of the original festival
in what is shaping up
to be the party of the century.
[all yelling aggressively]
[Rat] Woodstock '99
was the antithesis of Lollapalooza.
It seemed to be very financially motivated
and that permeated the entire event.
[Fred Durst] Our new record
comes out next week, motherfucker.
- [crowd yelling]
- Okay, are you ready?
Get up like this, come on.
It's one of those days
When you don't want to wake up ♪
Everything is fucked
Everybody sucks ♪
You don't really know why ♪
But you want to justify
Rippin' someone's head off ♪
No human contact ♪
And if you interact
Your life is on contract ♪
Your best bet
Is to stay away, motherfucker ♪
It's just one of those days ♪
[Rat] You could feel the tension.
People were just frustrated
and I remember kind of intentionally
not interacting with the audience.
I stayed backstage, stayed in the bus.
It just wasn't inviting.
You put a bunch of people in a cage
and start charging them a bunch of money
ATMs broke
and people couldn't afford water.
[Durst] Are you motherfuckers ready
to get the tension out of your body?
Well, we could tell
something was going wrong,
but the show's going on
and I'm focused on the band.
[Durst] Are you motherfuckers ready
to get the tension out of your body?
[crowd roaring]
I pack a chainsaw ♪
I remember one of the techs
tapping me and looking back
and there's
You could see billowing smoke,
like, far away though,
like out in the middle of the field there.
The delay cluster had been pushed over
and they lit the PA on fire.
I pack a chainsaw ♪
I'll skin your ass raw ♪
And if my day keeps going this way
I just might ♪
Break your fucking face tonight ♪
Give me something to break ♪
I was, uh,
in charge of that west wall part,
so that was, uh, that was the first wall
that actually collapsed
during all the riots.
And I remember
people ripping the walls down,
pulling panels off and
just absolute chaos.
How 'bout your fucking face? ♪
[Blake] I'm over there and I see
these kids had brought in a Mercedes,
it's like an older,
kind of, like, '80s-style Mercedes,
and they're jumping on it
and one of them's got a door
and he's trying to pry it open.
And they're just destroying this thing,
they're trying to set it on fire.
I'm trying to, like,
move people back away from it
and that was the kind of
the culmination of everything.
Uh, I got I remember trying to
move people back and I'm getting punched,
I remember getting hit by a bottle.
I got hit with a bunch of objects
that I'm going to imagine are stones,
and they just swallowed me up.
Talking that shit, punk
So come and get it ♪
And I remember thinking,
"I'm going to die in this place."
[yelling, screaming]
[reporter 7] Three days of peace and music
ended in riots and arson.
Woodstock '99 saw hordes of young people
rampaging through the festival grounds,
tearing down barricades,
setting fires and looting vendors.
Five people were injured in the chaos
before the state police moved in
and made seven arrests.
Woodstock ‘99 was a marketing event.
It was like,
"We're gonna make a wad of cash."
"We're gonna throw
a bunch of bands in there,
we're gonna tag a name on it
from an historical event,"
and I think that was the fundamental
of the backlash
and violence that happened.
[narrator] The disaster
that was Woodstock ‘99
left a bad taste
in pretty much everyone's mouths.
The music festival had warped
from a celebration
of peace and love and free milk,
to a staging ground for violence
and shameless profiteering.
It was pretty much the end
for large scale music festivals
in the United States.
But there were a few true believers,
promoters and entrepreneurs who had faith
that they could revive
the original spirit of festivals.
They did so,
not by playing into the culture of Y2K,
but by looking back
to the ethos of the '60s
and returning
to the music festival's roots.
They believed that
it wasn't where you built the home,
but how you built it.
["7/4 (Shoreline)"
by Broken Social Scene playing]
We actually all went to
the first Coachella
and that was right after, um,
Woodstock ‘99 had happened.
I remember them, uh,
they gave out
bottles of water as you walked in.
And it was a clear sign
of trying to be the antithesis
of, um, the Woodstock ‘99 stuff
that had happened.
I think it pushed people
to really produce on a higher level.
When we built Bonnaroo, it was like,
"What do we want to experience?"
We were kind of building it for ourselves.
We'd been to Glastonbury,
we'd seen just some
of the great European festivals,
and were like, "What would our modern day
music festival look and feel like?"
[fireworks exploding]
[crowd cheering, whooping]
And we were able to kind of create that.
We were very fortunate
to, um, build something out
that was a reflection of ourselves,
and, I think, ultimately
was one of the reasons it was successful,
is that we weren't building it for some
far-off audience we didn't understand.
We just knew these were
the things we wanted to experience,
these were the acts we wanted to see,
and these were the type of environments
that we wanted to be in,
and then we created it from there.
[crowd cheering]
[Black] We've been doing these big murals,
where we have local artists
doing live painting throughout the event
and we keep the murals every year.
And then we just started
noticing that year
that people were starting to take pictures
of themselves with the murals.
And it became this huge thing
where now we always keep them,
we put them up all throughout the site
and people are just
taking selfies all day long.
[Goodstone] Selfies are a way
for people to express themselves
and like most things,
it's everything in moderation.
If it starts to take away
from your experience,
you probably shouldn't be doing it.
[Black] I think when you get
that many people together
for these short bursts,
it's almost like going to a rally,
whether it's the Women's March
or something like that.
Having all these people together
for a singular purpose,
uh, it's just extremely powerful.
Music is a really easy way
for people to connect
with the present moment.
You're just absorbing and listening,
that is the best way
to connect with people.
[crowd cheering]
[song continues]
I remember the last time
we played Bonnaroo,
I got to know the tour manager,
got myself into The Killers.
I thought,
"I should watch, I want to see it."
And then we got to go side stage.
"Mr. Brightside,"
not a favorite song of mine,
they came out and opened with it,
might have been
the greatest song I saw live.
I think discovering music
is the best part about being a band
or being an audience member at a festival.
And the festivals
that go out of their way to present
And that's what Social Scene,
we got a lot of.
We got a lot of festivals saying,
"We want your music at our festival
and we're going to
present you to our crowd."
It's pretty phenomenal.
And you're walking away
Oh, where to go to? ♪
And you're walking alone
Oh, how to get through? ♪
If you want to get it all
You can own what you choose ♪
[crowd cheering]
[Drew]There is something about
just being outdoors
and just being able
to just have no ceiling over you.
On a metaphorical level
it's pretty prominent,
but just in terms of a level
of experiencing that moment
Sometimes you gotta get out
from underneath the ceiling
and just have open sky.
If you want to get it all
You can own what you choose ♪
But you want to live a lie
And love what you lose ♪
When you get together with a group
in a mass,
you feel a sense of belief,
you feel a sense of purpose,
and you feel there's a drive
towards something greater.
And a lot of times
you need to be in mass crowds
to feel that feeling.
And it's time ♪
While you're walking away ♪
If you're feeling it, that's yours,
and then you're owning that with a crowd
and that's the experience of live music.
[crowd cheering]
If you try to steal the beat
The beat will steal you ♪
[narrator] For organizers, the rewards
of the music festival are clear,
they're now a huge business
and the front line
of live music promoting.
But why have they stood the test of time
with music fans and concert-goers?
How have festivals become
not just popular,
but more popular than ever?
What is it about these gatherings
that sparks something deep in our souls?
[song ends]
[loud cheering]
It's amazing what a little bit of song
and 50,000 happy people can do, yeah!
[cheering]
[playing "Helicopter"]
The beauty of the music festival is that,
you know, rather than just
2,000 people singing along,
it's like 50,000 singing along.
And that is very powerful
and very seductive.
There's quite a powerful
kind of mob or collective feeling,
which is great.
As if to say, as if to say ♪
As if to say
He doesn't like chocolate ♪
He's born a liar, he'll die a liar ♪
Some things will never be different ♪
I think the function of the music festival
in today's age is important
because it's a space for people
to to step outside of their work
and life routines
and just drink and partake in drugs,
dance and listen to music,
and take yourself
off the grid for a weekend.
[yelling, cheering]
Am I
am I allowed to talk about drug taking?
- [man3] Yeah.
- All right. Of course? [laughs]
Are you hoping for a miracle? ♪
You know, we interact with people
via computer screen,
there's not much in real time
kind of communication,
whereas the thing about a festival is
it's everyone together in this moment.
I think that as life
becomes increasingly atomized,
I think it's important
to have these spaces
where you can just go and just freak out.
[whooping, yelling]
[Rat] People gather together
to find a harmonious focus,
whether it's two people or 200,000 people
all focused on the exact same thing,
at the exact same time,
there's a sensation
that we derive from it.
You can get lost in that energy.
[Emily] The need for human beings
to have these big gatherings,
there's something so deep rooted
in our DNA
that we have to share these experiences.
And there's something about
that kind of shared experience.
You can't write it or code it,
it's just something about
being in that moment.
[crowd singing along]
Are you hoping for a miracle? ♪
[Hay] I think in its best form,
it helps us to raise our consciousness
and to be better people,
to be more who you are.
There's a current which gets formed,
it's electric and it goes out
and it comes back
and it's unbroken.
That's the high of connection with people.
That's what it is.
There's nothing more to it than that
because we all end up the same way.
It's kind of, "How do you make sense
of where we are?"
The fact that we're just this rock
flying around the fucking sun,
going, "What the fuck is going on?"
[chuckles]
"Oh, we're alive. Oh, good."
[cheering loudly]
[feedback droning]
[cheering continues]
[cheering fades]
[indistinct crowd chatter]