Every year, I’m relieved not to be attending Coachella. I went for the festival’s first 10 years, then limited myself to the surrounding parties. My last trip was in 2013, when the lineup looked like I had personally curated it, and I had such a miserable time that I swore off the desert for good. Still, while I’m happy to skip the parking chaos and trudge across the polo fields, I look forward to the social media dispatches, especially from two friends who are also colleagues, one of them being Billboard’s senior music correspondent, Katie Bain.
A 17-time attendee who has covered the festival for Billboard, LA Weekly—where she wrote my personal favorite piece on Spicy Pie—and The Huffington Post, Bain may not be an “influencer,” but her words are influential. She brings deep knowledge and insight to Desert Dreams: The Music, Style, and Allure of Coachella, a coffee-table book that pairs striking images with 30,000 of Bain’s words, placing the festival in musical and cultural context.
Her affection for Coachella is palpable, yet her sharp analysis and wide-ranging connections between the festival and pop culture at large reveal both its sweeping impact and its small, defining details. Reading Desert Dreams, I’m reminded why Coachella became the blueprint for North American music festivals. As Bain notes, the livestream has become “a key component to why Coachella is a global fascination.”
A few weeks ahead of Desert Dreams’ release, Bain sits at an outdoor café in her Los Angeles neighborhood, reflecting on her years of coverage. It’s been a long time since she went to Coachella in a non-professional capacity—her first time was in 2008, on a last-minute ticket after Prince was announced as a headliner—but she’s well aware, “It’s a privileged luxury to get to go to Coachella.”
What was your very first festival? How was that experience different from other music events you’d been to up to that point?
My first real festival was Bonnaroo, but the town I grew up in, De Pere, had Celebrate De Pere every Memorial Day weekend. Cheap Trick and Rick Springfield would come to town and then we would graduate to Summerfest. But the first festival, in the way we think about festivals, was Bonnaroo 2005. We drove down to Tennessee. It was very rootsy. It was still jam band adjacent. It was loose and on the farm and hot and gross, but it was orderly. Bonnaroo is what hooked me. I wouldn’t have pinpointed it as such at the time, but I was like, “Oh, this is a culture.” I liked the atmosphere. I liked that you’re basically at a party and a hang session for three days. I liked that you get to live outside. Camping was big in my family growing up, so I was used to that format, being outside in a tent. It was wall-to-wall music. Bonnaroo was where I was like, “Okay, I want to do this as much as I can, forever, for as long as I can.”
What are some of your musical discoveries at Coachella?
Most of the years I’ve gone, I’ve been covering, so I’ve been there with missions and artists that I need to see. With Billboard especially, I’m tasked with writing about artists that I don’t know as much so I’ve discovered acts that are already fucking huge, like Lisa [Blackpink] this past year. One of the biggest artists in the world, but I didn’t really know her music and I had never seen her. It was incredible.
But I saw Disclosure, I think it was 2013, before Settle came out, but “Latch” had come out, and it was a fucking party. Sam Smith came out, but he wasn’t famous yet either. The tent was packed so I didn’t “discover” anything, but I discovered Disclosure for myself.
Which celebrity sighting at Coachella got you the most excited?
2023, Sunday night, and Succession was on that night. It was the last season, and I loved that show. I saw Jeremy Strong, Kendall Roy from Succession, in VIP with his wife, and had a little moment where you try to follow somebody around where you’re really lame and fanning out. Then I went to Despacio, and there were not that many people in there. I was walking to the bar to get a Diet Coke, and I literally bodychecked somebody, and it was fucking Jeremy Strong. They were doing this “Here Comes the Sun” thing with this yellow light on the disco ball and it’s a moment and he is just fully in it. I was like, “This is how the show should end. I want to see Kendall this happy.”
What has been your favorite year(s) so far?
Generally, I have a great time at Coachella. 2012 and 2013 were both really special for me. I really liked the people I was with in those years. It was the heart of my time at LA Weekly. We had a really good crew, and it was just very, very exciting to be there as a journalist with a team, doing it properly. Musically, a lot of great things happened in these years. But I would say it was just vibes.
What was your least favorite year?
I’ve had a couple of fallow years. My presence at the festival itself was spotty in 2015. I didn’t go Weekend One, and then I didn’t go until Day Two, Weekend Two. Jack White was amazing. That was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen at Coachella, so I can’t call it a fallow year.
But I would say, I have off Fridays. As I’ve gotten older, I get there on Friday and I’m like, “I’m too fucking old for this. It’s not for me anymore.” I’m crabby, inevitably, because we got in late last night, I didn’t sleep well. But then, if not by the end of the Friday night, then the next day, I’m like, “Fucking Coachella Forever!”
What are some of the best improvements you’ve seen?
They’re always conscious of crowd flow. I remember one year by the Sahara Tent, when it was still in its old location, it was a really bad bottleneck. I put it in my story that year. The next year, it was gone. I feel they’re constantly reconfiguring to make it safer and easier for people to get around. The beer garden is a really nice space to be in. Yuma Tent was obviously a big add in 2013. That’s grown into something bigger and different than it was in the beginning, but those early years of Yuma were fucking incredible. Their new dance stage, Quasar, is really cool. It’s a wide-open space. In both of these examples, it’s them doing a good job keeping up with current trends of dance music and catering to that.
What are you nostalgic for that is no longer there?
You could say this about any festival, or life itself, but I miss when there were fewer phones, but it’s just part of the landscape now. You can engage with it or not. At least the phones work now. I did a story a few years ago on why festival cell coverage has gotten so much better, and it’s basically to cater to social media. Our devices and what we do at these festivals require so much data. Shit gets real at the end of the night when you’re like, “We need to leave,” especially when you have a deadline, and you’re like, “I need to go right fucking now.”
Have you ever “lost” your car on-site? I have, hence the question.
I don’t recall ever losing my car. But ironically, the VIP parking lot, which I have gotten access to since 2018, puts you closer to the fest, but you’re deeper in the lot, so it takes a long time to get out. The closer you are to the gate, that’s how many cars have piled up on top of you. You can wait an hour or longer to get out. There have been times when we’ve napped in the car and then woken up and left.
Where do you like to stay while attending Coachella?
Always near the site, because as a journalist, you’ve got to write immediately after the festival. Driving to Palm Springs after getting out of the parking lot could take 90 minutes. By the time you’re back, you’re too fried to write. Writing about a festival is gnarly. It sounds ridiculous, obviously, in comparison to many jobs people do in the world, but in context, you’re at the thing all day, running around, hot. You’re spending a lot of energy, and then you have to not only write, but write coherently and ideally insightfully, at 2, 2, 4 in the morning. You do that again the next day, and you do it again the next day. I want to be as close to the site as possible so I can get back and do the work. I’ve seen many ranges of houses, and they all have the same tone and feel and they’re all in a gated community. Sometimes you have a pool with a fountain, and sometimes you don’t.
Do you have a favorite place to eat in the area?
I don’t really eat out when I’m there. We do the grocery shop on day one. Get the pizzas, get the Gatorade, get the chips, get the breakfast stuff, and then eat at the festival. But have you been to Billy Reed’s in Palm Springs? Our thing for a few years was, on Monday, go to Billy Reed’s and eat a fuck-ton of food to celebrate. This place is an absolute classic. Imagine a place your Palm Springs grandparents would go for 4:00 p.m. or 5:00 p.m. dinner in 1987. It’s a big, sprawling ranch-style building. It’s a diner, essentially. It’s carpeted. It has wood-paneled walls. It is always bustling. The service is really great. And their thing is pies.
What pro tips can you share for people who’ve never been to the festival, or have been but could use some insider direction?
I don’t know that I could afford to go to Coachella if I weren’t a journalist. I realize how privileged I am, however, I will say, a VIP pass makes a world of difference in the bathrooms, in the food, in the ingress and egress. That’s not a pro tip. That’s money. It’s just capitalism. But it is better.
Stock up on easy late-night stuff to eat when you get back. Leave a fresh Gatorade and snacks in your car because it’s going to take a while to get out and you’re going to want food. It’s hot out there. It has to be something that is not going to get gross all day sitting in the car, like crackers or a dry food. Tuck your bottles in the shade.
Wear comfortable shoes. You’re out there for hours. Two years ago I went both weekends and I walked 32 miles. Take care of your body. Remember to eat. Bring a jacket. I hate seeing girls in very cute outfits having to wear an emergency foil blanket at the end of the night because they’re freezing. It gets really cold out there.
If you’re driving from L.A., leave early or leave late. Don’t leave at 2:00 p.m. on Thursday.
