'Surrey Now & Then' series focuses on Surrey-area sites, events and people of the past.
Thirty years ago this week, a landmark Lollapalooza concert was held in Surrey.
Close to 28,000 people paid $35 each to see (and hear) some popular alt-rock bands of the day, including Smashing Pumpkins, Beastie Boys and Green Day, perform at the Fraser Downs horse racetrack of Cloverdale Fairgrounds on Aug. 30, 1994.
That Tuesday, the Lollapalooza concert was a one-off date in Cloverdale as the travelling rock show returned to UBC Thunderbird Stadium the following year, 1995.
So, why Cloverdale in 1994 and not the site in Vancouver?
"I think the Cloverdale site had a larger capacity than UBC, but I can't remember, it's a long time ago now," recalled Paul Mercs, who planned and presented the concert for MCA Concerts Canada. "And the stadium (Thunderbird) might not have been available, it could have been because they needed it for football at UBC."
The Lollapalooza date still represents one of the largest single-day ticketed concerts in Surrey history, eclipsing the 25,000-strong crowd that saw Mumford & Sons at Holland Park 19 years later, in 2013, and the FVDED music festival dates of recent years.
Green Day’s breakthrough album, Dookie, had been released only a few months before, and Lollapalooza was a coming-out party for the pop-punk band from California.
Chicago’s Smashing Pumpkins headlined the festival, and that day in Cloverdale is universally remembered as a horrible one for singer/guitarist Billy Corgan and band.
The guitar-heavy music festival prompted calls to police and civic authorities from people who lived near the fairgrounds.
"I remember we got some calls from the residents there about noise and language, which there always was during the show and after the fact, but I recall it going pretty well," said Mercs, who continues to promote concerts while living in Lund, on the B.C. coast.
The multi-band Lollapalooza dates of the early-1990s broke ground for "alternative" rock music in an era when such festivals, touring or not, weren't yet popular in North America.
A headline in the Leader newspaper declared a "Rockin' End to Summer" a day after the festival, which "brought city traffic to a standstill" with "baggy-panted hordes." Reporter Roberta Staley wrote that it was "a kinder, gentler rock concert than that feared by Cloverdale residents and Surrey Mounties."
Other bands on the bill included George Clinton & the P-Funk Allstars, The Breeders, A Tribe Called Quest, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, L7, Stereolab, The Boo Radleys, Shudder to Think, The Pharcyde, Shonen Knife and more.
As a young journalist I covered the festival for a Vancouver-based magazine, and was even invited backstage to interview Green Day singer/guitarist Billie Joe Armstong. Meantime, my current partner, Jill, was a 14-year-old Surrey kid who was thrilled to see one of her favourite bands, Beastie Boys, and other alt-rockers so close to home, a bus ride away.
Kevin Statham spent the day photographing the show as an accredited member of the music press.
“I thought Lollapalooza 94 was a bit of a letdown,” he says. “The previous two years at Thunderbird Stadium (at UBC in Vancouver) had been stellar. Both shows were packed with relevant, amazing bands. The lineup for the Cloverdale show was OK, but not amazing.
“The only thing I remember really clearly was Nick Cave leaving the stage early” due to having “crap thrown at him, Statham recalled.
“It just wasn’t the most memorable Lollapalooza for me,” he continued. “Part of the problem may have been the Cloverdale Racetrack. It was just a weird place to see a show. I was glad that in 1995 Lollapalooza was back with a really cool lineup and was again at Thunderbird Stadium.”
