Coachella celebrates 25 years: Take a look back at the music and memories

The day before the first-ever Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival debuted in 1999, founder Paul Tollett told the Orange County Register that music fans were about to experience something quite special.

“This is the nicest site that people who go to these shows will ever see,” he boasted of the Empire Polo Club in Indio in a story buried on Page 8 of the Friday entertainment section. “The kids will be just blown away.”

The kids were definitely blown away.

Unlike the disaster of Woodstock ’99 a few months earlier, which led to questions about the future of all music festivals, Coachella was a dream. Wide grassy fields, plenty of space for more than the 45,000 or so fans that arrived over two days, and most importantly, good vibes all around.

Tickets were $50 a day for a lineup that included Beck and Rage Against the Machine as headliners, and a lineup that included a mix of established and rising acts on a bill that included Morrissey, Tool, the Chemical Brothers, Modest Mouse, DJ Shadow and more.

Add in clean, functional porta-potties and the free bottle of water staff handed you at the entrance, and you’d think Tollett would have had more confidence about the festival’s future than he expressed before its debut.

“Let’s get through the first one,” he told Ben Wener, the Register’s pop music critic at the time. “We have to see how this one works out before we can imagine anything else.”

Flash-forward to the present as Coachella is set to celebrate its 25th anniversary in the field of dreams created by Tollett and the Goldenvoice team. Coachella remains the premier U.S. music festival, a name recognized by music fans anywhere in the world.

It survived a troubled birth – the festival wasn’t held in 2000 because the first one nearly bankrupted Goldenvoice. It survived a pair of dark years during the pandemic.

And it has mostly stayed true to the philosophy Tollett described before the first Coachella took place.

“The best shows are the ones where the fans are there specifically for the music, not for the event itself,” he said back then. “They have fun with the community, too, but if the music is the first draw, then things usually go off without a hitch.”

To mark the 25th anniversary of Coachella, we looked to the past to recall how it changed and grew over the years. So set the time machine to Oct. 8, 1999, and let’s see how it all came to be.

Coachella 1: 1999: Goldenvoice had history with the Empire Polo Club before Coachella was born, having booked Pearl Jam there in November 1993. It did not go well.

The parking lots were nightmares as cars were backed up for miles because of the time required to process payments. It was a rowdy crowd, too, which at some points threw so many shoes at the stage that the band took refuge behind their amps.

Tollett, Goldenvoice and their partners in Indio’s city government and law enforcement, learned from the mistakes of 1993. Parking would be free – and remains so today – to ease entry to the festival grounds. [Parking and traffic still isn’t great, but it’s easy to imagine how much worse paid parking might have made it.]

And initially, there would be no on-site camping, which Woodstock ’99 had featured; it was thought to have contributed to some of the problems that fest experienced.

Musically, the first year was terrific. Beck gave a preview of his soon-to-be-released “Midnite Vultures” album, as did Rage Against the Machine for its forthcoming “The Battle of Los Angeles.” Ben Harper, Cibo Matto, Jurassic 5 and the Art of Noise were among the highlights.

A few months later, the concert trade magazine Pollstar named it the 1999 festival of the year.

Coachella 2: 2001: After skipping 2000 due to the red ink of the first Coachella, Goldenvoice almost didn’t get the festival out of its cradle for a second year. Artist bookings were challenging, and not until Perry Farrell agreed to reunite Jane’s Addiction to headline did it get the green light.

Even so, it was scaled back to a single day for the first and only time in its history, and moved to April, where it has remained to this day, in search of cooler weather.

Coachella 3: 2002: Back to a two-day event, Coachella booked Björk and Oasis as the festival headliners. A Siouxsie & the Banshees reunion signaled that more beloved bands might put aside differences to get back together for Coachella. Palm Desert’s Queens of the Stone Age became the first local band booked.

Coachella 4: 2003: Camping entered the picture this year with the Indio City Council voting to permit some 2,200 camping spots on the festival grounds. It was basic camping – you had to carry your gear from your car some distance to your spot – and alcohol and other mind-altering substances weren’t allowed in, officially, at least.

Beastie Boys and Red Hot Chili Peppers headlined in 2003, with a reunion of Iggy Pop with the Stooges, Blur, and the White Stripes also on the bill.

Coachella 5: 2004: Radiohead and the Cure headlined Coachella in its fifth year. The Pixies became the latest band to reunite for the festival. Future headliners LCD Soundsystem played the Gobi tent, the smallest of the fest’s stages. The strongest lineup yet included Kraftwerk, Flaming Lips, Air, Basement Jaxx, Bright Eyes, and Muse.

And it could have been even more epic. Tollett told the Los Angeles Times later that he could have booked David Bowie, who was available and interested, if he expanded the festival to three days. He didn’t think Coachella was ready for a third day, so Bowie never played Coachella.

Coachella 6: 2005: The choice of Coldplay as headliner was criticized by some of the hipper-than-thou contingent, but in hindsight, it was an early opening of the festival to more pop-oriented rock. Nine Inch Nails, which headlined Sunday in a perfect pairing with a Bauhaus reunion, pleased everyone. Alas, an intended Cocteau Twins reunion fell through.

Arcade Fire, performing at dusk on the Outdoor stage on Sunday, established a new expectation for Coachella. A “Coachella moment” became the term for a breakout in real time by a rising act; this might have been the first.

Coachella 7: 2006: The headliners were Depeche Mode and Tool, but the biggest sets of the weekend went down in the Sahara tent, where Daft Punk delivered a jaw-droppingly impressive set on a stage transformed into a pyramid. Madonna’s set on the same stage drew a massive crowd that overflowed the space.

Coachella 8: 2007: Coachella expanded to three days for the first time – come back, David Bowie, come back! All three headliners had headlined before: Björk, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Rage Against the Machine.

Goldenvoice also announced the country festival Stagecoach for the Empire Polo Club, part of a deal to keep control over the property after its owner showed interest in redeveloping. Country icon Willie Nelson didn’t wait for Stagecoach, though, showing up on the main stage at Coachella on Sunday in an early sign of the crossover potential of the two festivals.

Coachella 9: 2008: Goldenvoice booked legends Prince and Roger Waters for two nights – Jack Johnson had the third – yet lost money this year due to a dip in ticket sales and the cost, well, of booking legends.

Prince covered Radiohead’s “Creep,” a nod to the festival’s indie rock origins, and generally thrilled the fans on the field, some of whom were seen doing things that Prince’s music can make you wanna do.

And Waters brought the kind of spectacle for which Pink Floyd’s concerts were often known, including a giant inflatable pig emblazoned with anti-capitalist, anti-right-wing slogans that flew over the crowd, and then broke off to fly into the night. A $10,000 reward was offered, and claimed, when the remnants of Roger’s pig turned up in a La Quinta country club neighborhood.

Coachella 10: 2009: This was the year of too much music. Not for fans, for the festival organizers who face fines if performers play past the mandatory curfews. Paul McCartney played nearly an hour past curfew on Friday, and who could blame him? He’s got SO many hits.

Then on Sunday, the Cure zoomed past curfew, too. During the third encore, as Robert Smith sang “Boys Don’t Cry,” the main sound was cut, though the amps and monitors on stage remained on until midway through the next song, “Jumping Someone Else’s Train,” when all the plugs got pulled. “Grinding Halt” began with no power at all until, well, the show ground to a halt.

Coachella 11: 2010: The big change this year was the elimination of single-day tickets in favor of three-day passes only. Not everyone was happy with what effectively tripled the price of past tickets, but the festival set an attendance record with a reported 225,000 there to see headliners Jay-Z, Muse and Gorillaz.

The eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland scrambled trans-Atlantic travel for fans and some bands, with a handful, including Gary Numan, unable to get to the festival at all.

Coachella 12: 2011: Kings of Leon, Arcade Fire and co-headliners the Strokes and Kanye West topped the festival this year. Indie rock stayed strong with acts including Cold War Kids, Interpol, and the Pains of Being Pure at Heart in the lineup, with older bands including Big Audio Dynamite and Wire reminding attendees where this modern stuff came from.

The campgrounds had grown big enough in size and importance by now that actor Jeff Goldblum showed up to play an afternoon set of jazz for campers this year. This was also the first year that Coachella started livestreaming sets on YouTube, a practice that has grown in years since.

Coachella 13: 2012: Ah, yes, the year that Tupac Shakur rose from the grave to perform during Sunday’s headlining set from Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. The idea to present a holographic Tupac was an idea. Whether it was a good or bad one, you can decide for yourself. But it added even more buzz to a set that also included guest spots from Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, 50 Cent and more hip-hop stars.

And then it happened all over again, as this was also the year Coachella switched to back-to-back weekends with the same lineup returning a week later to do their sets. Seemed risky at the time, but it worked and remains the standard today.

Coachella 14: 2013: The festival organizers put down deeper roots this year, first with an agreement with the city of Indio to keep Coachella and Stagecoach there through 2030, and then also purchasing nearly 300 acres of land around the Empire Polo Club to allow the festival to expand and improve its footprint.

Blur and the Stone Roses swapped headlining duties over the two Fridays of the festival, while Phoenix and the Red Hot Chili Peppers capped Saturday and Sunday nights. The Yuma tent also debuted this year, joining the Main and Outdoor stages, and the Gobi, Mojave and Sahara tents.

Coachella 15: 2014: The hip-hop duo Outkast was the fresh draw as headliner here, with Muse and Arcade Fire returning to that spot for a second time each. Legacy acts on the bill included the reunion of the Replacements, Bryan Ferry and Pet Shop Boys. Rising stars arrived with Lorde, the 1975 and Solange.

Coachella 16: 2015: Jack White, AC/DC and Drake headlined with Madonna joining the latter for a song and a kiss that was … awkward. Steely Dan played to the delight of multi-generational hipsters everywhere. Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine broke her foot jumping off stage during her Main stage performance on Sunday, though she kept up her tour, including a performance at KROQ’s Weenie Roast in Irvine, sitting on a stool on stage to sing.

Coachella 17: 2016: The death of Prince a few days before the second weekend set a somber yet also joyful tone for many of the performances. On Sunday, a clip of his cover of Radiohead’s “Creep” at Coachella eight years early played on the Main stage screens, finishing with the words, “From now on, this is Prince’s house.”

And artists dropped Prince covers into their sets, too, with LCD Soundsystem turning their stage lights purple while performing Prince’s “Controversy,” Mavis Staples calling for a moment of silence in his honor and then singing an acapella chorus of “Purple Rain,” and DJs Diplo and Skrillex using the spoken-word intro to “Let’s Go Crazy” as a lead-in to “I Wanna Be Your Lover.”

Coachella 18: 2017: Beyoncé was set to make her Coachella debut and headline on Friday, but bowed out when she became pregnant with her twins, Rumi and Sir. Lady Gaga stepped in as a late replacement and slayed in Bey’s place. Turned out she was going to be in the desert anyway, filming concert scenes at the festival grounds between weekends for “A Star Is Born” with Bradley Cooper.

The Sonora tent also debuted this year, providing an enclosed and blessedly air-conditioned space for some of the most eclectic young bands on the bill.

Coachella 19: 2018: Beyoncé returned a year later to deliver one of the most powerful headlining sets in Coachella history, becoming the first Black woman to headline the festival. She played songs from her “Lemonade” album in a production that celebrated Black history and culture (a Black college marching band joined her at one point), her musical roots and influences (her trio Destiny’s Child reunited on stage), terrific choreography, staging, the works.

Coachella 20: 2019: In hindsight, Beyoncé and Lady Gaga represented the festival’s shift toward pop from rock music. That became even more apparent this year when pop singer Ariana Grande became the youngest-ever headliner and only the fourth woman headliner in festival history.

Coachella 21: 2022: After cancelling the 2020 and 2021 festivals due to the pandemic, Coachella came back with Harry Styles, Billie Eilish and Swedish House Mafia with the Weeknd as headliners, two pop stars, a trio of DJ-producers, and a hip-hop artist. Rock is dead!

Of course, the bill also included Amyl and the Sniffers, the Marias, the Regrettes, Idles, Wallows, Måneskin, and Chicano Batman. Long live rock!

Coachella 22: 2023: Another ground-breaking year for Coachella included the first-ever Asian and Latino headliners, with the K-pop quartet Blackpink and Puerto Rican singer-rapper Bad Bunny. Blackpink had played the Sahara tent in 2019, and other artists from different countries and different languages had slowly been filling more and more slots in the lineup. But this made it official. Coachella was now a fully global festival.

Coachella 23: 2024: Lana Del Rey, Tyler, the Creator and Doja Cat topped the festival this year, though the undercard featured a pair of the most significant breakthrough performances.

Sabrina Carpenter, who headlines Coachella on Friday this year, played the Main stage in 2024 just as she was about to explode into pop stardom with that year’s album “Short N’ Sweet” and 2025’s “Man’s Best Friend.”  Chappell Roan, who played the Gobi tent, was barely known before Coachella, which turned her into a festival headliner at any festival that could get her.

Coachella 24: 2025: And now we’re almost up to date. Lady Gaga headlined a second time and equaled if not topped Beyoncé for the most stunningly creative headline set in festival history. Post Malone and Green Day made their Coachella debuts as headliners, with Travis Scott, who had been booked to headline in 2020, in a floating kind of headline spot, too.