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A lot of interesting stories are coming out thanks to a new book called LOLLAPALOOZA: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock’s Wildest Festival. Earlier this week, we wrote about how festival founder and Jane's Addiction singer Perry Farrell didn't want Green Day on the iconic 1994 tour because he thought they were a "boy band."
Green Day frontman called Farrell "a f***ing a**hole," and apparently he wasn't the only jerk on the touring festival that year. In a new story, Flaming Lips singer Wayne Coyne recalled how much of "a raging a**hole" Billy Corgan was on the 1994 tour, which was headlined by his band Smashing Pumpkins.
“Billy Corgan was such a raging a**hole, especially back then, that you didn’t want to stick around and watch them,” Coyne said. “We liked a few of their songs, but we would just despise him after a while. So we’d leave right after the Beastie Boys played to avoid the traffic, because the audience was also starting to clear out.”
Lollapalooza '94 may have been more than 30 years ago, but the band still wants nothing to do with Corgan. “We’re still avoiding him to this day," Coyne admitted. "We’ve played shows in the past couple years where he’s hanging around and you can tell he wants to come into our dressing room. And we’re like, ‘No, we’re not here!'”
Corgan gave his own account in the book, which revealed Nirvana was supposed to headline but dropped out shortly before Kurt Cobain tragically took his own life. “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. “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.”
The task of headlining such a huge touring festival was monumental, especially with a lineup that included Beastie Boys, The Breeders, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, L7, Green Day, and others on the main stage, and The Flaming Lips, Guided By Voices, The Verve and more on the second stage.
“You talk about going into Middle America at the height of MTV, in 1994, and I was twenty-six or twenty-seven," Corgan explained. "I was not prepared for that at all.”
The Smashing Pumpkins frontman's attitude was no better onstage than it was backstage. “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," he added. "I looked at it as, like, ‘No. You’re the enemy and we are here to take you on.'”
Corgan confessed that he still can't live down the way he acted onstage during Lollapalooza, with people coming up to him at airports and telling him that they “refuse to ever see the band or listen to the band” after seeing them at Lollapalooza.