Coachella promoter Paul Tollett discussed reuniting bands like Rage Against The Machine for the festival in a new Los Angeles Times interview. Rage Against The Machine reunited for the 2007 Coachella festival, and they intermittently played shows together for the next four years until splitting again in 2011.
“We want that first announcement. There are only so many artists. I have a list that I want, and there is another 3,000 or 4,000 that get submitted by the industry. I’m looking for 140 or 150 artists that are fresh. If you want to play a whole bunch of shows in town, I’m not mad at you. I just don’t have to put you on the [festival]. I want something unique and fresh for a 100-day window…
“Sometimes I’ll get a band back together and pay them a big number. And I’ll get another festival upset that I have the first announcement and they have to wait. I feel like: Wow, I went and talked to the four guys at their house. I got them back together. If I was a jerk, I’d also grab that other city. I’m more focused on Coachella and a couple of other things. But I’ll get another promoter calling, going ‘We want to announce.’ And I’m like ‘You’re two months after me. You don’t even know the band.’”
He also discussed Kanye West dropping out of Coachella’s 2019 festival, “When we were going through the stage ideas, he had some other ideas. He’s played Coachella, and he knows it very well. Both times were great, and so different. The last one was pure art. He has some great [production] ideas, but we just weren’t able to pull them off right now. I’d like to circle back with him and figure out a future plan of what to do with what’s in his head. He’s very capable of coming up with ideas that work that are pretty great. Up until Jan. 1, we were making a poster with Kanye on it. We started realizing we’re probably going to have an impasse production-wise.”
