Last week’s column documented John Bauer and Ken Kinnear’s attempts to build an outdoor music venue, called Diamondclaw on a site halfway between Black Diamond and Enumclaw that overlooked the Green River near the Kummer Bridge. Their May 1992 plans failed and a contributing factor was, no doubt the Lollapalooza music festival held in Enumclaw nine months earlier, on August 28, 1991.
Today, Lollapalooza is a four-day series of concerts featuring alternative rock, heavy metal, punk, hip hop, and electronic dance music. What started as a farewell tour conceived by Perry Farrell, the lead singer in Jane’s Addiction is now an annual early August event staged at Chicago’s Grant Park. During its inaugural year in 1991, the last stop on the tour was the Enumclaw Fairgrounds. The venue and the town were unprepared for what happened after a crowd of 21,000 rock fans descended upon the Plateau.
The tour poster featured above promised a potpourri of the leading alternative rock acts of the late 1980s including Jane’s Addiction, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Ice-T, Violent Femmes, Butthole Surfers, Fishbone, the Jim Rose Circus, and the Henry Rollins band – all included in the $25 ticket price. Festivities began at 1:00 pm on Wednesday, Aug. 28th at the King County Fairgrounds, then managed by Shirley Heen. Following the concert, Heen the Fairgrounds Manager exclaimed, “It wasn’t at all what I expected. It was a nightmare. I didn’t realize people could be so appalling.” Jennifer Savage, who lived about the Fairgrounds added, “It was like hell opened up and spit on Enumclaw.”
The word lollapalooza dates from the late 19th century. It’s an American idiom that means, “an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or event.” The term also referred to a giant lollipop. The first Lollapalooza tour of one-day music events was billed as the “Woodstock of the ‘90s.” All this and more were on display in Enumclaw as huge crowds clogged roads and traffic stood still miles away from the fairgrounds.
Yet, King County Police Sgt. J.K. Pewitt, who headed security considered the concert a success – there were no stabbings or shootings. Security included 77 officers and 150 event staff, all paid for by the promoter. Pewitt added, “For an event like this I thought it went fairly smooth. We expected worse.”
Enumclaw’s facilities and business were impacted though. Dennis Popp, administrator of Community Memorial Hospital reported 18 patients in an emergency room that reeked of alcohol. Two patients were admitted and immediately transferred to Harborview – one by ambulance and the other by airlift. Popp expected that few patients would pay their bills with the hospital estimated to lose more than $6,000.
Safeway Assistant Manager, Rick Thorndock spoke of strong sales, but also described shoplifting and people eating right from the shelves, stating it was one of “the wildest days on record.” Kevin Hathaway, Manager of Charlie’s Café near the fairgrounds said his restaurant was full from the moment it opened at 5 a.m. But King’s Motel manager, E.J. Russell told of rented rooms, some crammed with 50 to 60 rude and loud people, up all night drinking and drugging. She added, “It was total hell around here. They destroyed everything in sight.”
Unfortunately for concertgoers, weather conditions were cold and wet. Temperatures stayed below 60° as rain began to fall an hour before the first band took the stage at 1 p.m. Concert fan, Shannon Duffy claimed no one seemed to mind, adding the all-day music festival was ‘rad.’ “It was the first real cool thing Enumclaw has done.” Tom Cerne, an Enumclaw native attended and parked his motorhome across the street from the fairgrounds. He described downpours and a rain-drenched day. Cerne split before the headliner, Jane’s Addiction appeared, noting in his journal, “Too many people and too much rain.”
Whether Lollapalooza poisoned the concert well for Diamondclaw can never be fully answered. The proposal eventually failed due to local resident opposition and the promoters’ financial troubles. Yet in 2003, some twelve years after the debacle or promise of Lollapalooza, a proper outdoor music venue did open on the Enumclaw Plateau – it’s called the White River Amphitheater. This column is indebted to Brenda Berube whose reporting in a front-page story for the Sept. 4, 1991 Enumclaw Courier-Herald is chronicled here.
