Billy Corgan rubbed a lot of people the wrong way when The Smashing Pumpkins headlined Lollapalooza in 1994, at least according to several musicians and crew members in the new book LOLLAPALOOZA: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock’s Wildest Festival (available here).
The Pumpkins headlined the traveling festival that summer, leading a lineup that also included Beastie Boys, The Breeders, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, L7, Green Day, and others on the main stage, with The Flaming Lips, Guided By Voices, and The Verve among the acts on the second stage.
As the book notes, Nirvana were being eyed to headline the ’94 edition of Lollapalooza, but the band apparently dropped out shortly before Kurt Cobain tragically took his own life that spring. As a result, the Pumpkins moved up to the headlining slot.
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“Lollapalooza was supposed to be Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Beastie Boys, and then Nirvana dropped out and we slotted down and became the headliner,” recalled Corgan in the book. “I would have welcomed the challenge every night to try to blow them off the stage, and I know that [Kurt] would have tried to blow me off the stage every night.”
In retrospect, Corgan admitted it was a daunting task taking over as headliner: “You talk about going into Middle America at the height of MTV, in 1994, and I was twenty-six or twenty-seven. I was not prepared for that at all.”
The Pumpkins frontman admitted he was combative with the audiences on Lollapalooza, saying, “So we’re headlining what became historically the biggest Lollapalooza ever. And there they are. There are the same football players who used to bully us in the hallways. I looked at it as, like, ‘No. You’re the enemy and we are here to take you on.’”
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