Illustration by Cindy Cuellar
A few San Jose State Coachella Music & Arts Festival attendees lived vicariously on their couch on Friday, as Goldenvoice released its documentary: “Coachella: 20 Years in the Desert” for free on YouTube.
“I think the documentary gave a lot of people some homage on Friday. Like, everyone is sitting on their couch when they’re supposed to be dancing at the best music festival in America,” public relations senior Caleb Hodgson said in a phone interview.
Hodgson said that seeing clips from sets by like Tame Impala and Post Malone brought him a lot of nostalgia.
“I think it’s important to recognize that Coachella still gave us something when COVID-19 took everything,” he said.
The documentary aired at noon, the same time that festival doors were supposed to open, if the COVID-19 pandemic had not forced Goldenvoice to postpone the event until October.
Goldenvoice is the music events company, backed by parent company AEG Presents, that has put on Coachella since 1999, according to the documentary.
“Watching the documentary . . . It made me really sad because this was my third year going,” engineering senior Robert Haus said in a phone interview.
Haus said the documentary is very important because it shows the public why festival fiends spend up to thousands of dollars a year going to events like Coachella.
Coachella founder Paul Tollett said in the documentary, “We didn’t have money [in the beginning] . . . but we had a good reputation.”
Tollett said artists such as Rage Against The Machine gave loans to the festival in 2001 and that by 2004, he didn’t think the festival could get any better.
“It was culturally and sonically and musically a hub where all these people came together,” DJ Z-Trip said in the documentary. “You can’t help but walk by a tent and hear something and it draws you in and you just get exposed to new music.”
Hodgson said that 2018 was the first year he went to Coachella and at that time, he wasn’t really into music yet until he saw the American rock band Greta Van Fleet perform.
“For SJSU, everyone here is into EDM. That wasn’t really my thing,” Hodgson said. “When I went to Coachella, the first set that I saw gave me a love for music that I’ve never had before.”
The documentary unraveled chronologically, exemplifying some of the festival’s top performers and technological developments it underwent across a 20-year period.
Coachella video footage from over the years filtered in and out of the film, showing monumental performances, stage flips, guitar slides, holograms, LED exhibitions and art installations.
Tollet said the top performers throughout the festival’s history include Beyoncé, Prince, Daft Punk, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg and Kanye West.
Prince denied the invitation to play at Coachella many times, but according to Tollet, Prince called him three weeks before the 2008 festival and said he would be performing.
“You can’t get [Prince] out of his house for money. He didn’t come for money,” American rapper and leader of the Wu-Tang Clan RZA said in the documentary.
Above all, Beyoncé’s performance in 2018 was the biggest performance in Coachella history, Tollet said.
“Beyoncé was kind of funny because I was tripping pretty hard. I was on acid, shrooms and coke,” an anonymous business senior said in a phone interview.
The student wished to remain anonymous because he disclosed his past drug use.
“It’s crazy . . . It was obviously so cool to be there, but at the same time, I was barely functioning given the circumstances of my headspace,” they said.
This would’ve been their fourth year attending the festival, they said the one thing that separates Coachella from any other festival is that it equally showcases the best of many genres, including pop, indie, rock, hip-hop/rap and electronic music.
Now that Coachella is almost 20 years old, Tollet said he never realized there would be a whole new set of people who were in love with the show, nor that there would be new styles of music and sounds.
“That’s the coolest thing about [Coachella]. You can’t call it mainstream because it’s never going to be overrated,” engineering senior Haus said.
Haus said he could probably attend the festival for the next 10 years and he will still always peak when an artist like Travis Scott steps onto the stage and screams, “I want to see you fucking
rage, Coachella!”
“[Coachella] is a big fucking deal,” Hodgson said. “You can never deny that.”