Coachella 2009: Second biggest turnout ever

Summer music festival organizers, you can sigh a breath of relief.

Defying expectations at a time of global depression, when a number of high profile music fests have either gone on hiatus or out of business, the 10th edition of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival celebrated a banner year.

According to founder Paul Tollett, attendance for the weekend was 160,000, making '09 the second biggest Coachella to date. (The 2007 lineup, which included Rage Against the Machine, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Bjork holds that title, attracting 186,000 festivalgoers.)

If such a turnout is any kind of bellwether for similar "large footprint" destination festivals across the continent, summer music offerings such as Summer Camp in Chillicothe, Ill., and Chicago's Lollapalooza have reason to be optimistic.

Tollett admitted he had his trepidations about festival attendance in a sour economy.

"We loved the bill," he said Monday. "But I'll be honest with you, we had no idea what to expect."

"Then, in the last couple of weeks, the tickets skyrocketed. We really feel fortunate. And we had so many amazing sets."

-- Chris Lee

Photo: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Jeff]

i just wanted to let you know that i really enjoyed all your posts on the coachella festival this weekend. It really made you feel like you were in attendance minus the triple digit heat!

[Denise MOurges]

The concert was great. The parking sucked grapefruit. Staff misdirected to the wrong lot and I spent literally two hours looking for my car. Help was almost non-existent and many people were in the same boat.

[carlsbadcrawl]

Second largest crowd ever... sweet. We stayed in the back and watched the giant screens. Super mellow while the crowds fought for the front. Check the full story, photos and video:

http://carlsbadcrawl.com/?p=1384

[albert rivera]

second highest turnout?..... hmm... let's not forget that this is only the third year that coachella has been a 3 day festival. prior to that it was only 2 days. those turnout numbers are unreliable indicators of the show's success or failure. this is my 7th time going. all but one of my coachella companions had attended at least two other coachella's, and we were all in agreement that this year's coachella line-up was amazing, but the crowd was the weakest i've ever seen... there was little to no audience participation during the bands that i saw. i saw a lot of sing-a-long request either go unanswered or were pathetically done. after watching throbbing gristle, i was able to walk to less than a hundred feet from the front of the stage where the cure was playing without any crowd fighting effort whatsoever. that was most definitely not the case when they played last in 2005.

[Linda Barrett]

Good flippin' GRIEF people! Can we just stop moaning about Coachella already??? If you had fun, great. If you didn't, all apologies. But can we please--Just. Move. ON!!!

[k]

sounds like Linda Barrett didnt get to go this year

[Linda Barrett]

Actually, Linda Barrett was there for all three days, and probably saw more bands than "k." Believe that. Linda is just ready to move on already.