ROCK OF AGES
How "Oldchella" attracted an audience that spanned four generations,
INDIO, CALIF.— When Rihanna joined Paul McCartney in a surprise appearance to sing “FourFiveSeconds” at Desert Trip on Saturday night, half the audience cheered in immediate recognition. Others had to be told by their kids or grandkids seated next to them who the mystery lady was.
Earlier in the evening, when Neil Young performed, younger crowd members held up cellphones to take videos. “I’m sending this to my aunt,” said Sarah Delaney, 26.
“I only know some of his songs and she really loves him, but I think he’s really good.”
Desert Trip is perhaps the first rock festival to successfully appeal to four generations of music fans: Boomers, gen Xers, millennials and whatever we’re going to call the next generation who’s just entering middle school.
Anew concept as music festivals go, it featured a never-before-seen lineup of classic rock titans on one stage. In addition to McCartney and Young, sets by the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Roger Waters and the Who took place on the same grounds in the desert city of Indio, Calif. as the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and was curated by the same promoter, Goldenvoice.
Like Coachella, it spanned two consecutive weekends. Unlike Coachella, it featured only one stage, two bands per night, clean bathrooms and no dance tents. This was a rock ’n’ roll fest to be sure, but one that indulged as much in nostalgia as the rouge-ish, outsider spirit its six artists all trafficked in.
Unofficially dubbed Oldchella when it was first unveiled in May, the festival’s roster seemed to cater to the Woodstock generation, a demographic not yet tapped for a show in the massive Southern California desert venue, and one largely ignored by other festival planners across the U.S.
The Desert Trip website even played into that notion: Promotional videos for the event looked more like Cialis commercials. A silver-haired man riding shotgun in a convertible, playfully banging out a drumbeat on the dashboard with his hands. A mature woman trying on a sassy sun hat in front of a mirror before spinning around like Stevie Nicks. A jovial couple raising their wine glasses in a toast to something that must be great (could it be Desert Trip?) given their gleaming smiles. But the reality on the ground over the weekend was far more intriguing than the demographic-pandering videos predicted.
On the Empire Polo Club field where the festival took place, elderly couples in visors and with fanny packs shared the same bleacher benches with Millennials dressed like Boomers in their youth — fringe, tie dye and flowered-hair garlands. Couples with babies and toddlers pushed strollers across the grounds.
An audience member in his early teens played a video game on his phone as he and his father, a middleaged man in a Stones T-shirt, waited for McCartney to appear.
The diversity of the audience — at least in age, not in race — spoke to the wide appeal of the artists on Desert Trip’s roster, all of whom have superseded the era they’ve come from to mean different things to different generations.
Even though Desert Trip was initially announced as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity by its promoter, the show’s success — it’s estimated to have pulled in $160 million, the most of any music festival ever — and the extensive new setup would suggest otherwise. The challenge would be procuring another lineup as farreaching as this one.