Charles Attal of C3 Presents, the chief talent buyer for Lollapalooza, as well as the Austin City Limits Music Festival and hundreds of other concerts and events talked with Billboard about booking this year’s Lollapalooza, not blowing the budget and the frustration of leaky lineups.
An interesting comment in response to booking the big anchor headliners first, Attal comments:
No, we start booking ground up. I never book headliners first, unless they just happen to come in, because you can’t rely on what’s gonna happen at the top. You have to go from the bottom all the way up and then you start in on the middle tier. It kind of guarantees you that you’re not going to go crazy — you’re not going to get caught up in the headliners and then all of a sudden you won’t be able to put in the mid-tier acts because you’ve over-paid.
I always assumed they booked the headliners first to assure tickets sales. Guess not.
Incidently, if you live in a cave and haven’t heard, the intial Lollapalooza lineup was released yesterday. Amongst the headliners? Oh, just the two bands who gave away their music online (if you didn’t want to pay for it) in the past few months: Radiohead & NIN. Other major acts include: Rage Against The Machine, Wilco, Kanye West, The Raconteurs, Gnarls Barkley, Bloc Party, The Black Keys, Broken Social Scene, Cat Power, and The National. So much good stuff!
The Billboard Q&A: Charles Attal — Billboard.biz
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