Unsung: Us and Them

Unsung is a feature in which I take a look at a pop culture phenomenon (be it music, TV, literary, whatever) that has been forgotten or underappreciated. In this installment, I take a look at 1983's US Festival, which set the tone for big music festivals to come.

I've never been a huge fan of rock festivals. I'd rather see my favorite bands headline in smaller venues than go to some gigantic field with a gazillion other people to see a few bands I like play short sets and sit through a lot of other artists I don't care about. Admittedly, part of this is written through the lens of an old man, but I pretty much reached that conclusion in my mid-20s after going to Lollapalooza '93. 

That said, certain festivals have historic impact: Woodstock, Live Aid, regular ones like Glastonbury and Reading and more recently, Lolla, Coachella and Bonnaroo. One that tends to get forgotten is the US Festival, which was launched by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who wanted to create a new Woodstock for the '80s. 

He teamed with famed promoter Bill Graham to put on the first US Festival in September 1982 at Glen Helen Regional Park in San Bernadino, California. This festival got a lot less attention than the one Wozniak held the following year, but it had some big names. Day 1 featured The Police, Talking Heads, the B-52s, Oingo Boingo, the Beat, the Ramones and Gang of Four; Day 2 was the AOR day, featuring Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Pat Benatar, the Kinks, the Cars, Santana, Eddie Money and Dave Edmunds; and Day 3 had Fleetwood Mac, Jackson Browne, Jimmy Buffett, Jerry Jeff Walker and the Grateful Dead. The fest featured temps up to 110 degrees, a total attendance of over 400,000 and lost $12 million.

Wozniak returned with a second US Festival on Memorial Day Weekend in 1983 and it got a lot more media attention. Day 1 was the New Wave lineup, headlined by the Clash (playing their last show with Mick Jones and featuring new drummer Pete Howard), along with Men at Work, Stray Cats, A Flock of Seagulls, the Beat, Oingo Boingo, Wall of Voodoo, INXS and Divinyls. 

Day 2 was Heavy Metal Day, which I was more attuned to at the time as a 15-year-old metalhead who read Circus and Hit Parader magazines voraciously. Van Halen was the headliner, along with Scorpions, Triumph, Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne, Motley Crue and Quiet Riot. It was timed well, as hard rock and metal was on the rise and all the acts who performed on that day got a huge boost from it. Triumph's performance was especially lauded as a breakthrough for the Canadian power trio, which I had been following since the late '70s. The band ended up releasing their set on VHS; now you can see it and the rest of the sets on YouTube. The bands all played impressive sets, although Van Halen's was marred by the fact that David Lee Roth had been partying all day and was completely shitfaced by the time the band went on. He spent much of set poking fun at the Clash's seriousness and rambling, but the fans still had a good time.

Day 3 was called Rock Day and figured some of the bigger names in music at the time: David Bowie, Stevie Nicks, Joe Walsh, The Pretenders, U2, Missing Persons, Berlin, Quarterflash, Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul and Los Lobos. There was also a fourth day of the festival held the following Saturday, featuring country artists: Willie Nelson, Riders in the Sky, Waylon Jennings, Alabama, Emmylou Harris, Hank Williams Jr., Ricky Skaggs and the Thrasher Brothers. 

The '83 edition of the US Festival also lost $12 million, which was enough to convince Wozniak not to hold another one. But it certainly inspired festivals that followed: Live Aid was held in Philadelphia and London in 1985 and Amnesty International held a series of benefit shows. Lollapalooza followed in the early '90s and there were Woodstock festivals in 1994 and 1999, and then came the current series of regional festivals like the aforementioned Coachella and Bonnaroo and others like Boston Calling and Riot Fest. 

The '83 US Festival had two deaths, but it was relatively uneventful, unlike the chaos that erupted at Woodstock '99. Wozniak innovated by making US the first festival to have Jumbotron-style big screens so folks way in the back could see what was going on, as well as having speakers halfway through the crowd to make the sound better. He also spent huge bucks on the talent, with Van Halen getting $1.5 million and Bowie getting $1 million alone. The festival also featured a satellite linkup to the Soviet Union to promote goodwill between the two Cold War rival nations.

Forty-two years later, festivals are very different in terms of the artists included but they're still big business. They can thank Steve Wozniak for providing the template for the modern rock festival all the way back in '83.