The Famed Producer Who Almost Bought Out Lollapalooza: “I Was Very Embarrassed”

Long before Lollapalooza would become a behemoth festival bringing nearly half a million music lovers to Chicago’s Grant Park each summer, it was a much smaller affair buckling under logistical, organizational, and financial woes—so much so that a certain famed producer almost bought the Lollapalooza name out from under its founder, Perry Farrell.

Lollapalooza 2023 might have seen an estimated 460,000 attendees pile into Chicago’s downtown park, but only two decades prior, in 2004, Farrell canceled the event due to low ticket sales. That’s when one of the industry’s most successful producers, Rick Rubin, made his offer.

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Perry Farrell Recalls the Producer Who Almost Bought Lollapalooza

Paramount Plus’ Lolla: The Story of Lollapalooza offers an intimate look at the festival’s journey from a traveling, underground rock revue to a cultural phenomenon that’s about as mainstream as they come. Although Perry Farrell originally founded Lollapalooza as a farewell tour for his band, Jane’s Addiction, the festival grew (and shrunk, then grew again) since its inaugural show in 1991 to the massive musical mecca it is today.

One notable part of Lollapalooza’s story was in 2004 when low ticket sales forced Farrell to cancel the tour, which featured Morrissey, the Pixies, the Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth, and more. “I didn’t know what to do, and I was very embarrassed,” Farrell recalled in the documentary (via Rolling Stone). “I was hurting for money. He continued, “I don’t know why, but Rick Rubin decided to make an offer to me to buy the name for like a million dollars. I won’t tell you exactly how I put it, but I said no.”

It’s unclear what Rubin’s intentions might have been in pursuing rights to the Lollapalooza name, but it wouldn’t have been too far of a professional stretch for the industry vet. Rubin had previously worked with Lollapalooza co-founder Marc Geiger, who also served as the booking agent for Farrell’s alt-rock band Jane’s Addiction in the 1980s. Whatever Rubin’s potential reasoning for buying the festival rights, it didn’t work. One year later, Farrell pushed past the obstacles to produce Lollapalooza 2005.

How One Decision Impacted Decades’ Worth of Music

In its earliest incarnations, Lollapalooza was a traveling music event. While this certainly helped boost its popularity across the country, it also put Lollapalooza’s organizational team at the mercy of the towns they were visiting. With rampant property destruction from attendees and musical acts’ controversial politics, staying in good graces with the host locations was a tall order. But Farrell persisted, turning Lollapalooza into a stationary event at Chicago’s Grant Park in 2005.

From location to size to lineup, Lollapalooza is a vastly different beast than when it first started in the early 1990s. And Farrell thinks that’s okay. “You have to age with grace, then you’ll be okay in life,” the Jane’s Addiction frontman told IndieWire. “If you’re going to fight age and try and be what you were, what I like to try and do is, I like to know, this is what we’ve become, what can we do with it? We can widen our circle of influence to go to places and really do some healing.”

“We’ve got the internet now,” Farrell continued. “You can certainly say it’s all a big sell-out now. It’s so easy. You’ve got the internet. But also, we can reach people that we couldn’t have reached. I like to just take whatever situation we’re in and see how we can pull wonders and miracles out of that.” Luckily for Farrell—and not so luckily for Rubin—those wonders and miracles don’t come with a price tag.

Photo by Daniel DeSlover/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock