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When the Power Trip music festival was announced in April, metal fans around the world were excited for the three-day festival featuring the heaviest and most legendary names of the genre.
To advertise Power Trip, Goldenvoice put up several billboards around the Los Angeles area — including one near the Sunset Strip’s legendary Rainbow Bar & Grill — and released a 30-second TV commercial featuring ’90s MTV cartoon characters Beavis and Butthead.
But the excitement surrounding the Oct. 6-8 event waned when festival passes went on sale. In recent weeks, it appeared the premium seating in front of the stage and in the grandstands at $799 to $3,899 was selling, but more seats were recently added. GA passes are also still available at $599.
So why didn’t this event featuring Guns N’ Roses, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica and Tool sell out instantly?
Sean Cox, the owner of Finders Keepers Records in La Quinta and a former Live Nation ticketing representative for venues in Irvine and San Diego, said it’s “too expensive.”
“I’m hearing from my sources in the ticketing industry that this show is not doing well at all. I think what Goldenvoice is going to have to do to make its money back is reduce the ticket prices or sell single-day tickets,” Cox said. “It’s priced as such that only baby boomers and Gen-Xers with money can afford to buy these tickets for themselves or their kids. The audience that will keep this music alive for the next 20 years can’t go see Ozzy Osbourne for the last time.”
“That’s what upsets me about this industry,” he added. “It’s always been greedy, but now it’s stupidly cutting off the majority of the audience because they can’t afford the ticket price.”
Dale Myers, owner of Dale’s Records in Palm Desert, said many of his customers are “stoked” about the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see a local festival featuring prominent metal bands, but added that they also feel priced-out.
“They don’t like the fact it costs $600 to stand in the back and watch it on a huge monitor when they can watch it on YouTube and pay $10 for a six-pack instead of $10 for a (single) beer. It is an older crowd, they have money, but they want to have fun too, and don’t want to be in the back.”
Myers has a point. Large international metal festivals such as Wacken Open Air in Wacken, Germany; the Graspop Metal Meeting in Dessel, Belgium; and the Download Festival held at Donington Park in Leicestershire, England don’t have seating in front of the stage.
“If I had $600, wanted to see Ozzy Osbourne and this was one of the last times to see him, I wouldn’t want to sit back and watch him. I think it’s a little unfair and greedy,” Myers said.
Festivals are on the decline
As we head into a post-pandemic era, music festivals are on the decline. This year, for example, was the first time the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival’s Weekend 2 wasn’t sold out since Goldenvoice added a second weekend in 2012. A 2022 Wall Street Journal article examined many issues facing promoters of festivals such as the rising ticket costs, an “oversaturation of events” and featuring many of the same artists on lineups.
In recent years, festivals have offered more upscale experiences for affluent demographics. Coachella offers a $15,000 package featuring on-site furnished studio accommodations, premium passes, golf cart transportation, concierge services and more.
“These experiences at Coachella where you can pay $10,000 for a private dinner with a chef and these other things, it’s going to be more unhinged because less people have more money, and those people that have money, it’s ‘f*ck you money’ and they’re willing to spend it. That’s where the industry is going now and who they’re catering to,” Cox said.
Another reason could be two of the bands also have scheduled performances in the Southern California region ahead of Power Trip. Metallica is performing on Aug. 25 and 27 at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles as part of the band’s “M72 World Tour,” and Guns N’ Roses is performing on Oct. 1 at Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego.
Power Trip is also happening during the same weekend as the Aftershock Festival in Sacramento, which also features headliners Tool and Guns N’ Roses. According to Loudwire, the four-day festival at Discovery Park set attendance records last year, attracting 160,000 metal fans and bringing $30 million to the region.
But some locals did express excitement to The Desert Sun in April upon news of Goldenvoice’s official foray into metal.
Indio Councilmember Glenn Miller said he grew up listening to some of the bands on the Power Trip lineup and called the festival a “great attraction to our valley,” adding that the local area is becoming a “music mecca” with the Coachella and Stagecoach festivals, the entertainment offerings at the local casinos and the addition of the Acrisure Arena.
More:7 Southern California music festivals to check out this summer
Local metal fanatic Xan Abyss, who was also in the defunct local band Rogue Ogre, said he’s “excited” with the idea of a Goldenvoice-produced festival featuring metal bands after the 2016 fall festival Desert Trip at the Empire Polo Club featuring Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Paul McCartney, The Who and Roger Waters.
“For a long time, I’ve ranted and raved about what a glorious opportunity it would be, not just culturally but commercially, to have something like this here,” Xan Abyss said. “Desert Trip was a big deal and a game changer when it came around. People were arguing for a couple of years about who would be on the lineup of the next Desert Trip and after two or three bands, you start to answer into the territory of metal and those legacy acts, because that’s where a lot of the legacies are.”
Eagles of Death Metal frontman Jesse Hughes, who grew up in Palm Desert, said in an April interview that the Power Trip lineup is “awesome” and hoped there would be an event such as this in the local area, but added “In terms of metal, I thought every gravestone in Indian Wells would roll over before that would happen.”
“The fact this is happening is a true testament to the reality that attitudes change between generations,” Hughes said.
Desert Sun reporter Brian Blueskye covers arts and entertainment. He can be reached at brian.blueskye@desertsun.com or on Twitter at @bblueskye.
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