TRIP for the AGES
For rock fans, the trek down south is more than a once-in-a-lifetime chance — it’s a musical pilgrimage
When the lineup was announced, music fans could hardly believe their eyes.
The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan? Paul McCartney and Neil Young? Pink Floyd mastermind Roger Waters and The Who? All at one festival? Were they serious?
But even though the event is booked for a Southern California desert, the lineup is no mirage.
As Jerry Anderson, a 48-year-old San Jose native who now lives in Oakland, put it, “I don’t think they could put together a more epic lineup. Everyone on the bill is legendary.”
That’s why Anderson and scores of other Bay Area fans are traveling hundreds of miles and, in many cases, spending thousands of dollars to take in the Desert Trip music festival in Southern California’s Coachella Valley.
For them, it’s not just a music festival, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime rock ’n’ roll pilgrimage.
“The whole thing is historic,” says 56-year-old Los Gatos resident Vikki Pachera, who is heading to
the festival with her husband, Allan. “Clearly, it’s something that we are going to remember forever.”
Desert Trip runs Oct. 7-9 and 14-16, with Dylan and the Stones playing the first night each weekend, followed by McCartney and Young on Saturday and Waters and The Who on Sunday. The event has been billed “Oldchella” because it’s at the same site — Indio’s Empire Polo Club — that hosts the popular Coachella music festival, which appeals to a much younger crowd.
Top-grossing fest?
The acts are reportedly being paid some $7 million per set, according to Rolling Stone. But with 70,000 fans showing up each day, promoters Goldenvoice/ AEG stand to take in $100 million, which would make Desert Trip the top-grossing festival of all time, according to Billboard. The second weekend was added due to ticket demand.
Ticket prices started at $199 a night, and some packages that include hotels and other amenities ran in the $5,000-$8,000 range, all of which are high prices compared with traditional festivals. Most fans are going for three nights, and their lodging will range from family campgrounds to fourstar hotels. A-List chefs, restaurateurs, vintners and beer brewers have joined the fun, too, and a wide variety of gourmet food and drink packages are available at Desert Trip. Woodstock 2.0, this is not. Yet, festival-bound fans hardly seem fazed by the prices.
“Like everything else in life, it’s what your personal take on the value is,” says Pachera, adding that she and her husband spent roughly $2,000 on their festival tickets. “If you took the six acts and divide them into $2,000, it’s still a lot of money (per act). But we’ve paid more for the Giants in the World Series and other mega-events like that.”
Look at it this way: Pachera and her husband are spending roughly $333 for each of the six acts on the bill, or about $166 per person per act. But when the Rolling Stones play Las Vegas later this month, they’re charging as much as $750 a pop for tickets.
“I haven’t done the math, but I bet if you add up the average ticket price to see each act individually (it) is going to make Desert Trip look like quite a deal,” says Gary Bongiovanni, editor of concert industry publication Pollstar. “The appeal is to an older audience that obviously likes the idea of going to a weekend of shows with nothing but legendary headliners and no opening acts to sit through.”
A family affair
Despite the Oldchella nickname, there will be plenty of young people in attendance, often arriving with their parents.
Pat Ireland, 49, says he’s “so pumped” to be bringing his two sons — Johnny, 17, and Maddox, 13. He sees it as a chance to bond over music that bridges the generation gap.
“I’ll pass by their rooms (at home) and my son is listening to Neil Young and I’m like, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool,’” says the Brentwood resident. “They are smart kids.”
Johnny Ireland adds that grooving on The Stones or Pink Floyd is not a case of accommodating Dad’s geezer music tastes.
“I feel like there is more passion (in classic rock),” he says. “I feel like there is more dedication that they put into their music. Most of the music now is just the same thing over and over again. Some of it is OK. But some of the older music just took a lot more work.”
One of the main selling points of Desert Trip is that — to put it bluntly — this could be the last time that music acts of this historic magnitude will gather in one place. The recent deaths of David Bowie, Prince, Merle Haggard and others underscore the notion that rock history is vanishing steadily. The core legends that make up the Desert Trip lineup range in age from 69 to 75.
“I don’t think there will ever be bands in the future that reach the stature of, like, the Rolling Stones and The Who,” Anderson says.
Yet, Lisa Walker, a 59year-old San Jose resident who is going to Desert Trip with her husband Rob and their son Jeff, sees Desert Trip not as a rock music historical footnote, but as the start of a new tradition.
“We’ve been to all the Bridge (School Benefit) concerts as a family,” she says. “I hope this is No. 1 of many of these concerts to come.”