Rarely Seen Photos From Lollapalooza in the '90s Show Its Wilder Side

Tens of thousands of people poured into Chicago's Grant Park for the 2021 Lollapalooza music festival, another milestone in the ongoing return of large live events. This year marked something of an anniversary for the festival, which started 30 years ago this summer as a traveling show with entirely alternative acts. The tour stretched from mid-July to late August and is considered one of the most groundbreaking and influential musical festivals in history. (The current Lollapalooza takes place over one weekend in the Windy City.) The original version of the festival lasted from '91 until 1997, with the bands and singers on the lineup growing ever-more mainstream, until, in 1996, Metallica was added to the bill and everyone pretty much agreed Lollapalooza had officially sold out. After the '97 tour, the festival was mothballed until its revival in 2003. As these photos from that early era of Lollapalooza show, the festival was both quintessentially '90s and a truly wild time.