The following is a fact-based, fictionalized tale of one day’s experience at Lollapalooza ‘92.
To ensure a fully accurate portrait, all actions and appearances of bands, fans and sideshows described herein are true, taken from verified videos, articles and firsthand accounts of shows across the ‘92 tour.
Only the protagonists don’t exist (actually, they probably did…).
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That time Van Halen sold their soul for Crystal Pepsi.
JUNE 17, 1992
9:59 PM
I’m Trevor, I work the window at Al’s Beef & Buns, the only dairy-free burger joint in Stock-town Cali. My dude Laird works grill, and his girl Darcy’s step-dad drives a red Camaro with a purple hood that he calls The Hawk.
He’ll be sleeping with Darcy’s mom at the casino tonight, and that La Palooza part two is tomorrow, so we swiped the spare keys from his fake rock, and come morning time…KA-CHING!
Darcy’ll pinch the bird while I grip us tickets, she’ll pick me and Laird up at Al’s, we’ll cruise to the show and get it festive, and once I change this here keg of Crystal Pepsi, this hamburg joint is officially closed.
JUNE 18, 1992
12:02 PM
Entering the grunge valhalla, the parking lot of ‘Palooza, a sweaty traffic cop’s radio says 30,000 tickets were sold. As we exit The Hawk, hula-hoopers in patchwork vests flash dried-out beer hops, pill jars of Pez and Ziplocs of Pop Rocks. “Got that good, got that good” they mumble. Darcy says don’t look in their eyes, they’re DEA and already know our names.
Past the narcos, crunchy body piercers yoga-sit on dusty Tunisian rugs doing three for $25’s. I get a silver ear stud, Darcy gets a nose. Laird calls us sallys and heads to the body art tent, where a Mexican tattooist grinds his teeth and blasts Body Count so loud that his “Darcy” tat comes out “Marcy.”
He doesn’t notice, gets gauzed up, and we’re off into an ocean of vendors slanging bootleg band tees, handmade hacky sacks, friendship bracelets, old flannels, shell necklaces, healing mineral geodes, hemp everything, tie-dye anything and new flannels.
12:27 PM
Casey Kasem’s Top 40 is on a boombox at the Guatemala Treasures booth and Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” has the #1 spot. Darcy tells the female owner L7 would flip her stand over for perpetuating such misogyny. The confused South American woman directs her attention to a reversible jade-pendant Quetzal Eclipse necklace.
In the Alternative Universe thrift stand, I find a Stryken tee, the Jesus-metal band that stormed an ‘87 Mötley Crüe show wearing full body armor with a large wooden cross and parted the crowd to the front row. I’m none too religious, but my Al’s shirt reeks like the devil’s deep fryer. Fair trade, I’m putting this thing on.
At the Donna’s Wild Herbs and Essential Oils stand Laird gets some sage, to smoke. I tell him maybe don’t. He does, hacks his face off and can’t talk for 10 minutes.
12:35 PM
Now it’s booths, booths and more booths full of fired-up people—activists and advocates Darcy calls them. ACLU, NRA, PETA, NARAL, EPA. There’s legal weed dudes, ocean lovers, farmers’ rights, voters’ rights, homeless helpers, rotary clubs, tinnitus safety. Laird speaks once again. “Did we pay for this baloney?”
Near the Greenpeace booth, a makeup’d white guy dressed like Henry the VIII with an African kufi hat and a staff made of glass is hitting on Darcy. “Get lost, creeper!” An old man with acid-eyes and a “Know the Ozone” sign approaches and tells me Al Gore is a shaman. I thank him and move on.
12:44 PM
And here’s the “The Wheel of Safe Sex”, a Pat and Vanna-style thing, benefitting AIDS research. Prizes include Wayne’s World hats, The Bodyguard soundtrack CDs, neon-camo slap bracelets, plastic guitar keychains, special-edition condoms, and one autographed and framed Soundgarden poster. Laird is bugging out. “Kim Thayil’s skin cells are on that!”
Ten dollars less and ten prophylactics later…
It’s a classic ring-the-bell sledgehammer-slammer, featuring a 20-foot plywood sleeping George Bush with a vulture on its shoulder. The sign reads: “Wake Up, Mr. President! What About the Homeless?”
I pay $1 to smash a metal ball that dings George’s chin and his eyes shoot open. What’d I win? A carnie with three chins and a coin belt snatches their hammer back. “No winners but the homeless, Son”.
12:56 PM
On a stage marked “Concourse of Oddities and Curiosities” is something called the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow.
First up, the amazing “Mr. Lifto” lifts weights on strings strung through his eyebrow rings. He lifts a clothes iron with a bent coat hanger going through a double piercing in his tongue. He lifts cinder blocks attached to his six nipple piercings, and rummaging in his pants, he’ll now lift what with what? No thanks, my dude.
1:05 PM
A being named “The Slug” walks on, silent and slow, gobbling worms and maggots from a fruit bowl. Someone called “The Torture King” follows, puts on Slayer, chews up a light bulb, electrocutes himself with the empty lamp fixture, puts a meat skewer through his face and climbs up a ladder made of swords.
For a coup de grisly, “The Torture King” lays in crushed glass and asks “The Slug” to step on his head. Starting to think this ain’t my jam.
1:17 PM
“The Duke of Puke” has no gag reflex, and just ran seven feet of plastic tubing through his nose, down his throat and into his stomach, then poured a fifth of whiskey in. Now Ringmaster Jim himself is two-hand-squeezing bottles of ketchup and Nestle syrup in, while The Slug pours Coors Light.
With the Duke’s innards filled to the brim, Jim draws it all out into a bucket with a hand-pump, suggests the crowd drink some, and may have just eyed me up. Enough! I think I hear something…
1:28 PM
In the distance, a storm of clanging and banging leads to a painted wood sign: “This is the Rhythm Beast, a giant music gizmo that can accommodate up to 30 concertgoers. Pluck its guitar strings, pound its hubcaps, or pump its bellows.”
There, in a massive open-barn structure, crowds of fascinated strangers with drumsticks and mallets are all-out bashing a collection of old car hoods, flattened trash cans and metal scraps hanging like tin piñatas. The vibe is intense and tribal.
A lady in a plaid skirt with a half-shaved head plucks long, tuned tire tubes. Darcy stomps on big rubber bladders of PVC-tube bagpipes. Laird…is apparently somewhere else.
“It’s a junkyard percussion installation” says a proud man counting up sticks.
1:34 PM
Uh-oh. Laird is strapped into one of those metal circles like the kids at Space Camp. The owner Bandana Sam says it’s the Multi-Axis Trainer (don’t ask me) and that it gives you the G-force.
The safety lock is released, Laird whirls three ways at once, passes out while a camera crew interviews Sam, then wakes and laugh-pukes on his flannel. (Turkish goat kebabs—Darcy warned him.) He dismounts, takes it off and throws it, opting for the flannel he’s wearing underneath.
Some shirtless frat bro named Troy walks up, laughs, and does a standing backflip.
A nearby joint called the Cyberbar sells “Super-Vitamin Smart Drinks,” blended and served by a remote-controlled robot. Darcy buys Laird a pink one called Orbit Juice. “Drink this or we’re breaking up.” He holds his nose and chugs it. His pager goes off. It’s his mom again. “She knows I party.”
1:45 PM
Atop a grandstand labeled “Stage 2000,” a DJ in long leather shorts and shin-high Doc Martens blasts techno faster than David Bowie’s nostrils. Thousands dance. Gorgeous tan women with cascading, curly hair slather themselves with body paint and crowd-surf.
Straddling a riser above the DJ, a thin-dreaded, ripped black man in an umpire mask dry-humps a metal beam, waving a chopped and re-arranged American flag.
On a blanket beneath a neighboring oak tree, mellow skaters pass joints and laugh at the clouds. A lonely-looking guy in a Hypercolor shirt plods by juggling fire batons. Without warning, the main stage gates open and masses sprint like terrified horses.
2:00 PM
Lush
Alright, let’s go Lush! Wait, this sounds blurry. Is there a ghost in this band? Are there bumblebees in their amps? Laird says it’s cause they’re British. The fuzz-nado builds and by the end of their set my face feels like I’m sleeping against a speeding car window. Inside an industrial vacuum. Sucking up a melting rainbow.
They finish and now everything feels quiet, except for those bells they left in my head. Darcy removes her earplugs (earplugs?) and says to be careful, music that loud can give you Ross Perot ears. “What’s pasta soap tears?” Laird must hear the bells too.
2:36
Cypress Hill
We’re front and center waiting for Cypress Hill on the side stage, and there’s weed in my lungs that I did not smoke. Ice Cube is ducking around backstage making the angry face. Now here comes the Hill, lit joints in hand, and dang, where’d B-Real get that Pantera shirt? Ten minutes in, I’m contact-high and he looks like Barney dancing.
“Who you tryin’ to get crazy with Ese…” Uh-oh, life’s about to get bumpy in 3, 2…”Insane in the Brain” jumps off, the pit erupts and Laird is down. “Bro…they ripped my new flannel!” He throws it and puts on the one tied around his waist.
3:08 PM
Pearl Jam
Say what now? Some nervous roadie just announced Eddie missed the bus after the show last night, so Chris Cornell will take his place. Three songs in, Eddie runs out filthy and exhausted, says he hitchhiked 300 miles from Denver, sees Chris, and oh damn, it’s “Hunger Strike”!
Eddie’s in full effect for “Even Flow” and after “Jeremy” (with Mr. Lifto on backups), he climbs 30 feet up the stage scaffolding with all the motions and facial expressions of a caveman. There he swings like an oblivious child, nothing between his feet and the crowd but three stories of air.
Laird asks if all grunged singers do this. “Does the guy from Nirvarner climb buildings?”
3:50 PM
Post-Pearl Jam, I spot a charity vendor with Crystal Pepsi. I purchase one and pound it while watching a hip, pale fellow in a black turtleneck and Lennon glasses crawl up a parking lot fence, leap from fifteen feet, land on his side, stand up, stumble in a circle and fall again. That’s an alternative way to get in.
A digital billboard above the main stage scrolls headlines: “Domino’s Pizza supports censorship…Records don’t kill, bullets do…The average weight of a Chinese man’s testicles is 19.01 grams…75% of American women wear the wrong bra size” (Don’t look at me, I didn’t write it).
Possessed suddenly by the smell of fryer oil, I buy a foot-long corndog and another Crystal Pepsi. Laird, still secondhand stoned from Cypress, orders three. Darcy scolds him. “Watch the wallet Trump, you’re taking me to see Buffy the Vampire Slayer when it comes out next week.”
4:10 PM
The Jesus and Mary Chain
Jaded fuzz-pop, haze and drone-core, it’s all great in the dark, but not quite the same in the day. Plus I’m not sure these lads should be out in the sun. And they all look pretty bored. Laird asks if the singer knows we are here.
Darcy says: “C’mon boys, they’re Scotsmen, they kilt it.” And then, “Did you guys get it?” I don’t get it. Laird’s getting jealous. “Get what? Seriously, did someone give you something?”
4:50 PM
Tool
Tool is on the side stage and I don’t think this Maynard person likes people. Laird says he might be special and needs to eat. “If we met I’d buy him goat kabobs, or Al’s, whichever.” D’Arcy says this music makes her feel like she can’t count. I’d agree, but I suck at math anyway.
For “Cold and Ugly,” Maynard takes a sumo stance, stares at the floor and wobbles for minutes on end. What’s going on—is he hypnotized by life? Did he ride the Multi-Axis Trainer? He straightens up and walks off. Show’s over, roadies speed-collect the gear.
The next band’s singer brings a sign on stage with Mastercard and American Express logos, reading “You are under constant surveillance.” A white math nerd in a black “Kill Bono” shirt looks it over, looks at me weird, and walks off.
5:20 PM
Soundgarden
After opener “Jesus Christ Pose,” Laird suggests Chris Cornell could be the resurrected Son of God, disappointed because no one recognizes him. He’s got a point, but I’ve really gotta whiz something terrible (that second Crystal Pepsi!). Before I can blink, “Face Pollution” explodes and I’m drawn into a whirlpool of shove-dancing.
Well…I mean, people piss in the pit, right? It’s cool, these Chucks are thrashed, they’re red, which covers yellow, everyone’s wearing black, if they’re not, it’ll be dark soon. While being thrown about, I center my mind, and here goes noth—
From deep within, a mystic whisper: “Trevor, this is the real Jesus. I like your shirt. Listen. You’re wearing knee-less, stonewashed 501s, Trevor. They’re brand new, they’re from Kmart, don’t urinate in them. Stonewash stains easily, think twice! Don’t do it, friend!”
Oh. My. God…I’m still so high from Cypress Hill that I forgot I had jeans on. It’s a no-go.
5:23 PM
I turn and push through desert punks, pagan tribal mystic girls, ’80s-haired quiet chicks, goth-curious jocks and boring people…then surf drunks, art lunks, and alt-hunks named Garrett and Dillon and Hudson—start and stop—for 15 minutes.
I can hear the Chili and Ministry drummers jamming with Soundgarden’s drummer, all on the same kit. Bursting through the crowd, I knock a food cart of hot dog water on a major label A&R dude staying clean at the edge of the audience. He waves his lanyard in my face. “I’m with Universal bud, I can have you thrown out!” I offer to buy him a dog. What else can you do?
5:38 PM
Soundgarden is covering Body Count’s “Cop Killer”, you can hear it from the porta-john line.
A stubby guy with lizard-scale face tats is going off about Ice Cube’s band with Helmet. “You mean Ice-T and Body Count?” I suggest. He goes cockeyed, asks if I’m a poser, blocks the open porta-john and mans up. “Pose for me, poser! Go ahead and pose!”
Shit’s getting real and the line’s getting loud. This aggro iguana leaves me no choice but a serving of the Beef & Buns Hustle: I point and scream “Keanu!”, slap him in the junk, duck behind a first aid tent and relieve myself. Laird finds me and joins.
In the tent, nurses tend to mosh injuries: dislocations, sutures, one with visible bone. They furrow their brows, fix kids up, shake their heads and lament to one another. “Most of them just head right back to the pit.” We watch, zip up and creep away.
The main stage’s digital billboard reads: “Free Peltier now…Barbie’s measurements, if she were life-sized, would be 39-23-33…The ruling class better wise up…”
5:55 PM
Stone Temple Pilots
Feeling gallons lighter, we hit the side stage, where a fire truck-red-haired singer with a chinstrap moves like grandma waving a wet noodle. “Where you goin for tomorrow…” Laird says he heard he doesn’t have a first name. “…where you goin’ with that mask I found?” Darcy says the mask means he’s clinically depressed, and she thinks he may have escaped from Jim Rose.
“Wellll, the dogs did find her…” (See, now wait, everyone’s confused here. Are they K-9s, is she dead…or are they her dogs she lost at the park, small dogs, wetting-themselves-excited to see her? There’s a big difference.) My SPIN magazine at home says this Stone Temple guy is from San Diego, which is where my aunt Teri lives. She found a dog twice.
6:42 PM
Ice Cube
Cube’s pissed, again. And here I thought it was a good day. No sir: George Bush, Jesse Jackson, Korean grocery store owners, crackheads, cops. Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Jerry Heller. Earth, the cosmos, life.
“Wicked” jumps off. Flea, Ice-T, and Pearl Jam—whose bassist in the Rolling Stone on Laird’s toilet says “Ice Cube is what Dylan was in the ’60s”—all body-nod stage-side. Hmm. I don’t get it from “Steady Mobbin,” but “Givin’ up the Nappy Dug Out,” dammit if I don’t hear hints of Highway-era Bobby.
8:13 PM
Ministry
Well this is…aggressive? A hard-noise guitarist in a George Bush mask gripes about the New World Order, and screams into a goat skull with its spinal cord glued to the mic stand. A massive video screen behind him shows a prisoner with his eyes bleeding. An adult stranger in half-buttoned overalls asks Laird if these guys are really ministers.
“Why do you like us?” singer Al Jourgenson asks, after heavy applause. “Are we not threatening enough people?” Up goes the volume to space shuttle levels, the strobe machines switch to double-time. The stranger in overalls is now poking Laird, but he is definitely not taking calls at the moment.
9:42 PM
Red Hot Chili Peppers
After the sensory assault ends, six women called the Bobe-Links emerge, wearing strange homemade prosthetics over leather and metal catsuits.
They flaunt their pelvises, curse at security and incite the audience. They throw condoms like candy at Halloween parades, announce the Chili Peppers, then frisbee the condom dish into the crowd. What a day.
The Chilis rush out like foxes in a henhouse, straight into “Give it Away,” and after a vicious pilgrimage forward we’re feet from Flea humping the air in his tighties. During the backwards guitar solo, I’d swear his privates slip out, he hides them with his bass, then fixes them while dancing.
As the set progresses, what must be over a hundred kids climb the rear hill, kick down wooden barriers, raise a raging bonfire and sprint circles around it. Others play pie-in-the-face with doormat-sized hunks of upturned sod. Guess they’ll never know the true magic Flea is capable of.
10:22 PM
Moshing breaks out during “Under the Bridge.” The slow parts. Someone screams “This that sellout shit, we want the FUNK!!” The circle is expanding and lovey-dove hug-dancing couples are getting rolled from behind. Dreamy-eyed California girls are catching surprise elbows. I bend my knees and stay on my toes.
As the Blood Sugar sellout-pop ends and bitter tears meet trampled lawn, “Higher Ground” satisfies the mutineers. The dense wah-wah bass thwaps Laird back to attention. He asks Darcy where Bush went with his goat bones.
“Where’d Bush go with his goat bones?” Darcy hears little, mesmerized by tribal tattoos and hair sheen. “I know, right?” she says to the air. The Chilis transition into a cover of Dylan’s “Subterranean…”, and I begin to realize Ice Cube is more Woody Guthrie. I wonder what time Al’s opens tomorrow.
For “Suck My Kiss,” Anthony, now bare-chested in a metal safari helmet spewing fire, is speaking in tongues again. “Wacka-locka hamma-girl, do it ahmma-llama say!” Laird says on ecstasy you understand. Darcy answers him “I hate Crystal Pepsi.”
I remember, Al’s opens at 7:00.
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