Coachella: 20 Years in the Desert, One Remarkable Journey
It started back in 1999 as a crazy idea from Paul Tollett and Rick Van Santen, at a time when music festivals and electronic music were seen as a bad influence on youth culture. A festival called the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival was born in the middle of the remote desert in Indio, California.
The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival recently released the documentary Coachella: 20 Years in the Desert, which tells how the festival has grown since 2001, its influence on culture and ideas, and how it changed the way the US government and the American public see electronic music. The film features a long list of big stars from across music, including Billie Eilish, Kanye West, Daft Punk, Travis Scott, BLACKPINK, LCD Soundsystem, Rage Against The Machine, Pixies, Swedish House Mafia, Jane's Addiction, Björk, The White Stripes, Madonna, Moby, Beck, Radiohead and many more.
Coachella: 20 Years in the Desert opens with the rock culture that was all the rage in America in the late 1990s. Then Paul Tollett and Rick Van Santen came up with the crazy idea of holding a festival in the middle of the desert.
The idea became reality under the name Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, and from there the festival grew into a storm, bringing a string of the most spectacular, world-class performances from music stars across every genre.
Finally, the film shows how artists see Coachella: a cradle of music, a place that always makes the impossible possible.
Coachella 2020 was planned for two weekends in April, 12–14 and 17–19, but because of the Covid-19 pandemic the festival was to be moved to 9–11 and 16–18 October.
