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• July 9, 1994

Lollapalooza '94 Opens in Las Vegas

By Jon Pareles

LAS VEGAS, July 8 — The Smashing Pumpkins had a perfect arena-rock moment in the finale of their set on Thursday night at Lollapalooza 1994, the alternative-rock extravaganza, which began its summer tour here at the Sam Boyd Silver Bowl. As D'Arcy Westrey's bass tolled octaves, Billy Corgan sang "I gave my life away/And I feel no pain," followed by sustained wordless notes. The video screen behind the band showed a ballroom full of waltzing couples; a rippling guitar motif seemed to suspend time, holding the audience rapt. The effect was inseparable from the magnitude of the sound and image. It was rock for a big audience in a huge space.

Alternative rock and its forebear, punk, were once hostile to arena-rock, which was seen as an impersonal, commodified version of the real thing. But that was before Nirvana and before Lollapalooza itself, which made alternative-rockers realize that their audience was far larger than they expected. Lollapalooza, packaged as a daylong excursion into the underground, has been a consistent concert draw every summer since 1991. Since then, it has scrambled to retain some element of abrasive surprise, even as it booked Top 10 groups to fill arenas.

Lollapalooza 1994 includes the Beastie Boys, George Clinton, the Breeders, a Tribe Called Quest, Nick Cave, L7 and the Boredoms (to be replaced halfway through the tour by Green Day). The 10-hour, 12-band show will be attended by more than a million people during its national tour. Although the Las Vegas stop drew about 11,000 people to a stadium that holds 30,000, it was an exception; 37 of the tour's 41 stops are sold out, including its New York City shows on Aug. 5 and 6 at Downing Stadium on Randalls Island.

The Lollapalooza formula includes a second stage where lesser-known bands perform. Here, those four bands were the Flaming Lips, the Verve, Rollerskate Skinny and the Frogs; the lineup changes through the tour. Next to the second stage is Lollapalooza's version of a state fair: a midway of food and crafts vendors and political groups, and a hands-on exhibition of computer and video gadgets.

This year's "Electric Carnival" is a tent full of video monitors and keyboards, suggesting that the future will be entirely televised, limited by the options of computer programs. By midafternoon, many of the exhibits had overheated in the 101-degree desert sun. Lollapalooza 1994 also includes a third stage for spoken-word performances. A wandering camera crew collected faces and data for a "video dating" service; among other things, the computerized questionnaire asked if people had piercings or tattoos.

But music is still Lollapalooza's main attraction, and this year's lineup is uneven. There are more women leading bands (L7 and the Breeders), more hip-hop (a Tribe Called Quest and the Beastie Boys), more psychedelia (Smashing Pumpkins, the Verve and, in some ways, the Flaming Lips and George Clinton), more punk-rock (L7, the Boredoms, part of the Beastie Boys' set) and no Seattle grunge or machine-driven industrial rock. Newness is no longer a decisive factor; Mr. Clinton has been recording since the 1960's, the Beastie Boys and Nick Cave since the early 1980's, the Flaming Lips since 1985.

Still, some of the music should carry Lollapalooza 1994 through any potential identity crisis. Smashing Pumpkins fuse primal whining -- "I'm all by myself, as I've always been" -- with the drive and majesty of psychedelia: barreling drums, Hendrix-style low guitar riffs and spiraling hard-rock solos. Onstage, standing in front of a pulsating psychedelic light show, the band traded the meticulously detailed production of its second album, "Siamese Dream" (Virgin), for scrabbling guitars. Billy Corgan, the group's songwriter and guitarist, has a raw, nasal voice to top the band's perfect contradiction: as he sang about being a helpless child, all alone, the music exulted in its communal power.

The Breeders played a virtually perfect set of intelligently warped pop-rock. Kim Deal sings with airy nonchalance about simple pleasures and complicated relationships, over her sister Kelly Deal's lean guitar hooks and Josephine Wiggins's swaggering bass lines. The songs allude to surf-rock, punk, girl groups and country, and they often break off early rather than overstay. The music was blithe and knowing, backed by muscle.

George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars filled the stage with almost two dozen people: singers, guitarists, percussionists, a horn section and stray extras, all wandering around in costumes from a wedding gown to a diaper (both worn by men). The 45-minute set tried to compress the All-Stars' usual four-hour jams, and mostly succeeded despite a middling rap. It mixed old, deep-bottomed funk and chants from 1970's Parliament and Funkadelic hits with newer material, sometimes simultaneously; Mr. Clinton likes his songs multi-leveled. His creed is that funk binds body and mind together; his funk does.

The Beastie Boys tried their own eclecticism. Backed by a disk jockey, they jumped around and shouted the bratty, nattering raps that made them million-sellers. Playing their own guitar, bass and sometimes drums, they shouted hard-core punk-rock songs from their pre-rap days. Those were fun, but the Beastie Boys also played some funk instrumentals that sounded even more mediocre after P-Funk.

A Tribe Called Quest brought bare-bones rap, with easy-rolling, jazz-tinged bass lines and a mixture of unhurried boasting and plugs for self-esteem. To end the set, the group asked the audience to raise a fist in the air and shout "I love myself!"

L7 is a straightforward punk-rock band, singing about sexual harassment and troublesome men. The spirit is strong, but too many of L7's songs move predictably from sneer to snarl.

Nick Cave writes about despair and existential loneliness, setting his low baritone croon in homages to soul and blues; even with a forceful band, the Bad Seeds, most of the set sounded like a mope-rock lounge act, though things improved when the songs sped up to punk tempos. And the Boredoms, from Japan, offered scrambled, manic, semi-translated punk, with two screaming and gibbering vocalists and songs that moved in fits and starts. There were glimmers of order behind the anarchic noise.

Two of the bands on the second stage showed there's still life in the standard alternative-rock recipe: rocking tunes plus noise. The Flaming Lips, from Oklahoma, have an exuberant, post-punk sloppiness that doesn't obscure catchy guitar lines; Wayne Coyne's frazzled vocals fit the band's absurd sense of humor. Rollerskate Skinny, from Ireland, is more earnest and more eerie; distortion and echoes, floating falsetto "doot-doot's" and overlapping guitar patterns carry songs to zones of sonic pleasure and mystery. Verve, by contrast, played warmed-over psychedelia, as if repeatedly trying to rewrite Pink Floyd's "Nile Song."

In scrambling for something with a jolt, the organizers chose the Frogs, whose entertaining costumes -- silver-lame batwings and a pink feather boa for the guitarist -- didn't make up for smarmy, pointlessly repulsive lyrics. There are better ways to engage the underground, and maybe next year Lollapalooza will find them.

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The Smashing Pumpkins 1994 tour history

List of shows and songs performed by The Smashing Pumpkins in the year 1994 .

• Billy Corgan ( 105 shows )
• D'arcy Wretzky ( 105 shows )
• James Iha ( 105 shows )
• Jimmy Chamberlin ( 105 shows )
• Eric Remschneider ( 47 shows )
• Adam Wade ( 1 show )
• Brian Deck ( 1 show )
• Craig Wedren ( 1 show )
• Jimmy Flemion ( 1 show )
• Kerry Brown ( 1 show )
• Seiichi Yamamoto ( 1 show )
• Tim Rutili ( 1 show )
• Yamantaka Eye ( 1 show )

Songs performed

Songs teased.

• Live performances by year

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Smashing Pumpkins Live at Redbird Arena on 1994-03-23

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When Smashing Pumpkins' leader Billy Corgan interviewed Nick Cave for MTV at Lollapalooza 1994, it did not go well

T he bill for 1994's Lollapalooza festival was stacked with the cream of the 'alternative' music scene, from headliners Smashing Pumpkins , Beastie Boys, L7 , A Tribe Called Quest and fast-rising Berkeley, California punks Green Day on the main stage, to the likes of The Verve , The Flaming Lips, Girls Against Boys and Luscious Jackson on the event's side stages. Not everyone on the Perry Farrell-curated roadshow that summer looks back upon the experience with joy, and when we say 'not everyone' we specifically mean Australia's own duke of darkness Nick Cave , who joined the caravan with The Bad Seeds. 

Talking to MOJO in 2005, Cave recalled, “When we did the Lollapalooza tour in America — 53 dates, I remember — grunge was happening, not one person there in long trousers, and they went for lunch while we played, then came back when we stopped (L aughs ). I found it extremely difficult, but, contractually, we couldn't pull out. It was years before we went back to America.”

It may not have helped matters that Cave was regarded as something of a curiosity by his fellow performers. While the American musicians on the tour found lots to bond over, Cave wasn't really up for faking camaraderie and bonhomie with his peers, as was painfully evident when Smashing Pumpkins mainman Billy Corgan attempted to interview him for MTV on July 7, 1994 at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas.

In his initial link, Corgan cheerfully informs viewers that he will soon he interviewing “my good pal” Nick Cave, but when the interview begins, it's very clear that Cave is very much not Corgan's “pal”.

The conversation begins with the fresh-faced Pumpkins leader asking, “Nick, how did you get involved with Lollapalooza?”, which received the response, “Well, my manager rang me up and told me I was going to do this.”

Corgan then follows up with the bizarre query, “No back taxes or anthing?”

“Basically we just decided that we should approach America in a different way...,” Cave begins, before glancing down at the questions on the notepad in Corgan's hand and saying, “Are these your questions?”

“These are not my questions Nick,” Corgan admits, smiling to the camera, “I take no credit for them.”

“I've already done this with MTV,” says Cave, already bored by this amateurism.

Corgan then decides to go off-piste, with some questions of his own, a decision he regrets almost instantly when, after musing upon why “English bands” struggle to break America, Cave says, “Well, a), we're not English...“ and points out that the Bad Seeds have members from Australia, Germany, England and the US.

“To all us Americans, it all looks like one country,“ says Corgan, in a badly-thought-out attempt at 'banter'. He then attempts to laugh off his mistake by saying that his mistake is one that would be made by, “your typical American teenager.“

“How old are you?“ his “good pal“ asks.

“You're not a teenager.“

By this point, one images an MTV director frantically gesturing to Corgan to wind things up, before this car crash gets any more bloody.

Watch the interview below: