People of the Sun

Coachella 2007

A young Irish boy’s first experience with a desert music festival

“This is the captain speaking, I’m afraid we’ve accidentally let a passenger on the plane who doesn’t have a ticket or a boarding card and for security reasons we’re going to have to remove his bag from the cargo hold. I’m sorry but it looks like we may arrive in Heathrow an hour later than expected”. The captain calmly informed us. It was seven in the morning on a late April morning in Dublin airport. I was restless and nervous at the thought of a possible delay, for London was not my final destination and I only had an hour and ten minutes before my connecting flight to Los Angeles. The flight finally got going and I spent the next 55 minutes (or two hours Air Lingus time) staring at my watch praying that I’d make it on time. Where was I going? To Coachella, the world’s most famous music festival.

When the plane landed in London I ran like I had never ran before jumping over trolleys, knocking over old ladies, sprinting to gate twenty two. After twenty minutes of running I realised I was lost. I grabbed an airline representative and attempted to ask her where to go, but all that came out of my mouth was pure gibberish. “Calm down sir or you’re going to give yourself a heart attack.” she dictated firmly. She pointed me in the right direction and I was off again. I felt like I was on an episode of ITV’s ‘Airport’ and that I was the token Irish guy holding up the plane. I reached the gate and boarded the aircraft. That was the end of the excitement for about 11 hours unless you count the fight that broke out between the 90 year old Spanish woman who was sitting beside me and the flight attendant because they didn’t have her “Banana juice” on the drinks trolley, or the rude awakenings I received every time she fell asleep on my headphone's volume control.  

The second I stepped onto the runway with my pins and needle legs, the dry hot air filled my lungs. The realisation of how far I was from home suddenly hit me. I was finally here in the famous LAX airport, my first time in America. In the next ten minutes a series of great things and really bad things unfolded before me. Firstly I noticed that the people queuing behind me in the immigration area were  The Kings of Leon. They kindly posed for a photo with me. Then the airline informed me my bag was still in London. That information did not come easy. It took an hour in a queue talking to a trainee who said my “accent was funny” and that she couldn’t understand me before I learned the fate of my luggage.   

I retreated to my Hotel on La Cienega Boulevard with no luggage. I was about to spend five days camping in the 44 degree Celsius desert  heat at the worlds most famous music festival without clothes or a tent. This was a tricky situation for a lone twenty year old Irish boy in LA to find himself in. After a night which consisted of a monstrously oversized McDonalds and American TV I awoke to a call informing me that my bag had arrived. I reclaimed the rucksack, hugged it and checked out. A shiny green cab took me to downtown LA and dropped me off at the bus station which had featured on the TV show “Cops” so many times. There I randomly became friends with two guys from Colorado and a Canadian. We spent two hours in the bus queue commenting on the week ahead of us at Coachella- the holy grail of festivals. When we finally boarded the bus with our luggage and a bag full of burritos, it became clear to me that we were on a bus full of welsh and English people. This fact was not obvious at first, for it was only when we hit the highway and started screaming along with them to the tune of Coronation Street that I understood their true origin.

Upon arrival in Palm Springs, my traveling buddies and I realised that we had no way to get from the bus station to the festival. Seconds later a woman named Sue offered us a lift in her beautiful SUV for five dollars. After a quick threat assessment we decided she wasn't a serial killer and accepted the lift.  Like nine out of ten Americans she loved Irish people so she took us to her house which overlooked the festival grounds and showed us the back stage area. Then she sold us $200 worth of booze for $20 on the condition that we promised to take it easy with any drugs we may come across as her son had been killed in a rave many years before as a result of ecstasy. She dropped us at the festival and bid us farewell not before handing me lip balm in case I “burned my Irish lips”. We checked into the campsite set up our tents, and just stood a staring in awe at the beautiful landscape of palm trees and bare dessert mountains. $10 of the ticket price had been spent on lush grass for the campsite. It was like someone had built us our own private country club in the middle of nowhere and invited some of the world’s greatest rock bands to join us.

To put it mildly an American festival campsite makes Oxegen and Electric Picnic look like a  war-torn shanty town. Fire marshals patrolled the campsite making sure no tent touched another and there was a no alcohol rule in the camping grounds, an absolute shocker for veteran Irish festival goers.  The next three days were some of the greatest in my life. I witnessed as many of the bands from the 100 act line up as possible, and partied every night like it was my last. Particularly on Sunday night after the Rage Against the Machine reunion performance, (the main reason I had travelled 5,000 miles), when an LAPD police helicopter hovered over our tents and shone a penetrating light through the campsite  “put the fire out and return to your tents”. Another big difference between European and American Festivals is the 2 AM noise curfew, but I admit that night we kind of overdid it. 

Everyday was a new adventure. During Kings of Leon’s set (who I had met three days previous), I randomly bumped into a friend from my hometown in the mosh pit. He too was finding it hard to adapt to the 44 degrees celcius heat but like me he appreciated every moment of this amazing festival. He showed me the independent artwork and sculpture area which featured a flamethrower tower with a DJ inside playing to a crowd. Across from this DJ was his opposite, another DJ spraying water cannon at the crowd. During the bright hot mornings I enjoyed as many different music and visual attractions as possible (as well as a large amount of Mexican food). I was always up very early because it was so hot by 6.30am that my Irish body automatically woke itself thinking it was on fire. The festival supplied the overpriced usual food and beverage stores  Once or twice I hitched a lift to the local store in search of supplies. On one occasion I ended up in car with a family from Phoenix who were delighted to meet me as their favourite movie was “The Commitments”. If I ever came back here I was renting a car.

I spent five days in the desert. I made some great friends from Colorado, Nebraska Scotland, Canada, Brazil, the Channel Islands and Cork. I left America with some amazing memories. The flights to LA cost €400 and the ticket was $250 (including camping), making a certain racecourse in Kildare look very overpriced for a weekend's activities. The festival announces its lineup every January with the concert taking place every April. The bus service is infrequent so I would recommend renting a car in Los Angeles and taking the  beautiful scenic drive to the desert. I'd recommend every music fan trying this at some stage to see how the Americans do it and to gain some amazing life experience.