Lollapalooza Marks Fifth Year with Hole
July 31, 1995
by Mark Scheerer

Lollapalooza, the traveling all-day alternative music festival, is five years old. Among the new attractions are a cinema tent, a second stage, and even a third stage for local talent — for the New York area concert, techno fans weren’t disappointed when MOBY surfaced here.

What else was everybody raving about? For one thing Kurt Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love and her band, Hole. One fan said, “She should act better because like, we’re the fans. If she doesn’t like us, she’s got like no job and stuff.” Several said they had come specifically to see her band. Others were here for: “just being here,” “The bands, it’s great,” “The people.”

Lollapalooza creator Perry Farrell says the idea behind this giant mobile lawn party is just to have fun. Dispensing the vibrations were Cypress Hill, Beck, Pavement, Sonic Youth, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, the Jesus Lizard, and replacing the pregnant Sinead O’Connor, Elastica.

Grabbing all the headlines, though, is the latest bad girl of rock. While CNN’s Mark Scheerer was here he caught reports that Love punched out a musician backstage, and trashed the other bands on the Lollapalooza tour on-stage — that she in fact has been acting like a rock star. What did other bands say about these rumors? For one, Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo verified that “it’s completely true.” However, B-Real of Cypress Hill said, “We kissed and made up since then, so you know we check out her show and she gives us props.” And Elastica’s Justine Frishmann [sic] said, “Courtney’s been great to us, she’s really really funny.”

Ranaldo was pragmatic about the friction. “That’s the other side of being on summer tour, you know, the one side is tour romances, the other side is tour hatefests,” he remarked.

No comment from Love — she ducked our cameras.

The best part of Lollapalooza ’95 for some of the musicians is when they’re done with their set and off the clock. Then they can walk around, hang out, and like Elastica, “watch Pavement and Sonic Youth and Hole.” When the sun goes down the fun’s just begun at Lollapalooza ’95.