An unlikely 20th birthday for Lollapalooza

CHICAGO -- Lollapalooza wasn't built to last two years, let alone intended to be around long enough to celebrate a 20th anniversary this weekend in Grant Park.

"I haven't said this before, but after the first year, I went on my merry way, thinking it was done," Lollapalooza founder Perry Farrell says. "It surprised me anybody wanted to do it again. I didn't see it going on with me (as part of the headlining band). But it took on a life of its own."

Farrell initially conceived Lollapalooza in 1991 as an elaborate one-off farewell tour to his band, Jane's Addiction. Jane's was breaking up at the peak of its considerable powers, and Farrell took along a few friends and peers -- Living Colour, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Rollins Band, and Ice-T among them -- on a six-week tour through the United States.

The idea of packaging those seemingly mismatched bands sounded preposterous from the vantage point of a homogenized music industry. None of them was receiving much airplay on commercial radio or MTV, but the festival proved to be a huge hit anyway, consistently playing to capacity audiences in cities across the United States.

In its inaugural year, Lollapalooza attracted an audience that became a movement and eventually a commercial radio format: "alternative rock." It became a gathering place for a community of outsiders, a daily hangout for 20,000 misfits and their favorite cult bands.

Just as the Monterrey Pop Festival in 1967 had alerted the record companies to the moneymaking potential of rock, Lollapalooza proved just how lucrative underground music could be.

A few weeks after the first Lollapalooza tour ended, Nirvana's "Nevermind" would be released and eventually hit No. 1 on the Billboard album chart.

Rock with a certain edge and a skeptical attitude broke through on commercial radio. It didn't last, as a parade of clones and second-tier bands were marketed as "alternative" alongside genuinely inspired oddities such as the Melvins, the Jesus Lizard and the Flaming Lips, all of whom scored improbable major-label deals. But for a few heady years, the freaks felt like they were in charge.

Last year the festival expanded to Santiago, Chile, but this weekend the focus will be on Chicago, where Lollapalooza will draw the largest crowd in its history, with 270,000 people expected to watch 130 bands perform on eight stages over three days.