“The festival lost so much money they asked us for our fee back!” How Rage Against The Machine's generosity helped Coachella recover from a potentially ruinous start to become the world's coolest music festival

(Image credit: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)

On October 9 and 10, 1999, the first ever Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival was held at Empire Polo Field in Indio, California.

The festival's eclectic bill found Beck, The Chemical Brothers, Morrissey and Lollapalooza founder and former Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell gracing the main stage on the first day, with Underworld and Spiritualized headlining side stages: day two was headlined by Rage Against The Machine, with Tool, Pavement, and Cibo Matta, with Moby, DJ Shadow and LTJ Bukem booked to top dance artists-heavy side stages.

For promoters Goldenvoice, launching their own bespoke festival was an ambitious undertaking. company founder Gary Tovar had started putting on punk rock shows in Santa Barbara, California in late 1981, and within nine months, he was booking Black Flag gigs in LA's 10,000 capacity Olympic Auditorium. But the inaugural staging of Coachella needed to sell around 70,000 of its $50 tickets to break even, and it ended up selling just over half of that target, incurring debts of $850,000 as a result. Fortunately, the promoters' deep roots in the punk and 'alternative' rock community meant that they had banked a lot of goodwill and good karma over the years, and their friends in bands weren't going to stand back and watch two decades championing the scene go up in smoke.

“The festival lost so much money they asked us for our fee back,” Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello recalled in a recent interview with AL.com, “which we gave them because they were friends.”

Tool and Beck also agreed to a deferred payment plan in order to help the company out.

“They let us pay some talent three, four, five months later,” Paul Tollett, Goldenvoice’s president, said during a panel discussion at the 2012 Billboard Touring Conference, as reported by Bloomsberg. “Employees were willing to take a paycheck guaranteed to bounce.”

From this shaky start, Coachella rallied. In 2003, 60,000 fans showed up to see Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Beastie Boys headline, and by 2013, 10 years on, Coachella was the most profitable festival in the United States, selling 158,000 tickets for the weekender in 20 minutes, according to Bloomsberg.

You may like

Tom Morello and co. presumably have free VIP passes for life.

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.