Lollapalooza Celebrates 20th Anniversary With Foo Fighters and Coldplay

The Lollapalooza festival will celebrate its 20th anniversary this summer with a three-day event at Chicago’s Grant Park on August 5-7th with headliners Eminem, Foo Fighters, Coldplay, Muse and My Morning Jacket. The bill will also include artists such as Cee Lo Green, deadmau5, A Perfect Circle, the Cars, Ween, Bright Eyes, Lykke Li, Cold War Kids, Big Audio Dynamite, Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley and Nas, Best Coast, Smith Westerns and Explosions in the Sky.

In addition to the main stage events, Lollapalooza 2011 will feature the debut of a 15,000-capacity dance tent that will host performances by Girl Talk, Kid Cudi, Pretty Lights and Skrillex. Festival founder Perry Farrell will also play on that stage as part of a PerryEtty Vs. Chris Cox set.

Farrell is excited about Lollapalooza’s 20th anniversary, but says the milestone snuck up on him while he’s been busy. “Since last year, I’ve known that it was coming, but so much is going on right now,” he tells Rolling Stone. “We’re bringing [the festival] around the world now, I’ve got Jane’s [Addiction] going. I haven’t had a real chance to sit down and trip on it. I wish I was 20, but unfortunately it’s my festival that’s 20.”

“I just feel so fortunate that I was able to make something so wonderful for the musicians and the audience,” Farrell says, reflecting on the festival’s legacy. “It’s just astounding where it has evolved to. In 1991, we had seven groups and we were performing on dirt fields.”

Since Lollapalooza morphed from a traveling festival in the Nineties to a massive destination event in the past decade, Farrell says it has become a more effective way of introducing concert-goers to new artists. “It’s not like going to a rock show,” he says. “You have 150 groups you can go and check out. It’s closer to a pilgrimage to filling up your iPod.”