After its announcement in May, Desert Trip took the live music world by storm. The two weekend mega-concert in October at the Empire Polo Grounds (home to the Coachella Music & Arts Festival) will feature Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Roger Waters, and The Who. While most people under 30 would have a hard time naming songs from any of these performers, they were the pioneers of Classic Rock that shaped the modern music scene across the globe. This legendary lineup can easily be classified as their own “dream team.” So why does a group of past cultural icons whose cumulative age is over 700 years matter to the modern music world?
The answer is history. Desert Trip broke boxscore records within hours of ticket release. All 35,000 reserved seats and 35,000 general admission tickets sold out within 3 hours, generating a staggering $150 million. Third party sites are now flipping the tickets for a massive profit with some buyers paying as much as $8,000 for a reserved seat. The demand for tickets is also global, with many classic-rockers purchasing tickets from South America, England, and Germany.
Desert Trip will make history not only with numbers but with a musical and cultural milestone. Whether you appreciate these rebellious rockers of the 60s and 70s or not, it’s not difficult to understand their impact. The universal acknowledgement of McCartney and the Beatles as the pioneers of Rock music is well established. Roger Waters and Pink Floyd created music that led to the development of Reggae and modern R&B. All of these acts laid the foundation for many genres and artists relevent today.
Classic Rock is fast approaching the end of its era, and Desert Trip could very well be its final stand. Love it or hate it, the music you’ll hear at Desert Trip will be forever be instilled in history.
Statistics courtesy of Billboard.com
