And today, I was all the way there.” Lollapalooza ’91 was not without crisis or tension. “The way I relate to people and music now,” Rollins said after he got offstage, “is, ‘Let’s do it let’s let it happen.’ If you put your soul into it all the way, like James Brown, people will see and feel it. That same day at Irvine, for a handful of sunbaked punks, Rollins Band blitzed through a free-gravity jam, including brutalized snatches of Canned Heat’s “On the Road Again” and Suicide’s “Ghost Rider.” A highlight of the tour’s second night, at Irvine Meadows near Los Angeles, was Farrell and Ice-T’s electrifying duet on Sly and the Family Stone’s race-baiting playlet, “Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey.” At the bottom of the bill, ex-Black Flag road warrior Henry Rollins tore it up for anybody who happened to show up when the doors first opened. Ironically, Jane’s Addiction were in deliberate retreat from the mainstream, playing their final shows (barring a brief 1997 reunion tour).

Think about this: It starts with Lollapalooza and ends up with Scary Spice with a pierced tongue.” “Piercing started to go mainstream with that tour. “I really believe Lollapalooza was the beginning of extreme body art,” Reid contends. I remember walking through and feeling the excitement of people who were seeing it for the first time, sitting on these chairs with spikes.” “I’d go into the art tent,” Farrell says, “and think, ‘Wow, kids are getting turned on to artists so radical that you don’t see them in the Guggenheim.’ One guy built these killer ‘spike’ chairs. and Body Manipulations, a colorful troupe whose demonstrations of “piercing, brandification and scarification” drew packed, gawking crowds. Traveling with the bands was a fairground spread of extreme arts and issues: a painting and sculpture exhibition activist groups including the National Abortion Rights Action League and Handgun Control Inc. AND TODAY, I WAS ALL THE WAY THERE.” -HENRY ROLLINS “IF YOU PUT YOUR SOUL INTO IT ALL THE WAY, LIKE JAMES BROWN, PEOPLE WILL SEE AND FEEL IT.

“And were doing shows out in the California desert in the Eighties, which was also part of my schooling.” Crucial to the whole Lollapalooza joy ride, Farrell insists, was that “we were moving. “The inspiration for me was Graham and the US Festivals - these massive gatherings with groups going all day and night,” says Jane’s Addiction singer and Lollapalooza co-founder Perry Farrell. Lollapalooza, in that first year, was a rare thing in nearly every respect, an all-day outdoor sucker celebrating the emerging motley strains of Nineties alt-rock culture with the inclusive vibe of Bill Graham’s old rock-blues-etc. “It’s very rare to have a tour party culminate in public floggings.” You’d never think such things went on in God’s country.” He laughs. “He had a twinkle in his eye.”Īnd, Reid says, the S&M scenes at the tour party in Dallas “will stand for all time. “One day I said, ‘Yo, man, are you shooting blanks?’ ” Reid recalls. Guitarist Vernon Reid has very fond, vivid memories of the inaugural Lollapalooza: the early-afternoon displays of raw hard-rock rage by the Rollins Band the opening-day set in Phoenix by Reid’s own band, Living Colour the daily readings of the soon-to-be-infamous “Cop Killer” by rapper Ice-T’s thrash-metal combo, Body Count the way vocalist Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers greeted the audiences each day - dressed in a hausfrau smock and firing a twelve-gauge shotgun in the air.

90s metal mosh pit