This week marks the 20 year anniversary of Australia’s biggest music festival flop, Alternative Nation.
The brainchild of promoters Michael Coppell, Michael Chugg and Michael Gudinksi, this mid-decade massive musical extravaganza was touted to be the next big thing to knock-off the widely successful Big Day Out (RIP) which had swept the nation each year since 1992, however, due to a lethal cocktail of bad luck, wild weather and poor decision-making, Alternative Nation fell flat, and after one year of failure – it never returned.
Alternative Nation was to held over four days in April at three locations, namely Brisbane (13 – 14), Sydney (15) and Melbourne (16), the timing for a festival of this nature perfect, the aforementioned Big Day Out was growing exponentially in popularity locally not to mention the hugely successful Lollapalooza in the US driving “alternative music” into popularity.
Boasting of an initial lineup like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stone Temple Pilots, Tool, Faith No More, L7 and so many more – the stars, on an artist front, were aligning for the fresh-faced festival, however, crisis was just around the corner.
One of the major issues that plagued Alternative Nation was that ticket weren’t selling – despite such an incredible lineup. This issue was of course exacerbated by the fact that the two main headlining acts, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Stone Temple Pilots both withdrew from the lineup, the Chilis actually dropping from the lineup within the first 24 hours of tickets going on sale.
With ticket sales at a worrying low level and the departure of two titanic acts, promoters still surged ahead, determined that Alternative Nation would be a success by adding the late and great Lou Reed and Nine Inch Nails to lineup at a huge cost, however no artist addition could prepare the event for the extremely wild weather that wreaked havoc in each city over the four days which resulted in almost washouts in Brisbane and Sydney, Melbourne luckily somewhat clearing up.
Although there are positive recounts of some performances including the rowdy Faith No More, torrential rain got the better of frustrated punters, who horrifically turned against the bands and began throwing mud at the performers, the festival descending into a messy mayhem – for a first-hand recount of the festival click here.
As The Music point out, Gudinski has spoken of the festival’s sad failure, speaking with Billboard’s Lars Brandle in 2010 he admitted he wished they’d tried Alternative Nation for longer, “I frantically wanted to continue. That’s probably one of my biggest regrets. Still, to this day, one of the biggest things missing in our organisation is a festival. Had we continued with Alternative Nation we would have become a huge resounding success.”
However, Chugg doesn’t appear to share the same sentiment as Gudinski, writing in his autobiography, “everything about Alternative Nation was a disaster, not least having to lick our wounds and admit defeat to our BDO rivals without them having to lift a finger, although they might have done that. ‘Mudstock’, as it became known, lost us $3 million”.
With Big Day Out still sadly out for the count, Future Music Festival officially over and Soundwave shrinking to the east coast only, we don’t think we’ll be seeing any sort of Alternative Nation resurfacing any time soon. Still, it’s fun to think of what could have been.
Alternative Nation 1995 Lineup
Nine Inch Nails
Faith No More
Lou Reed
Tool
Pop Will Eat Itself
Body Count
Ice T
Pennywise
L7
Live
The Flaming Lips
Ween
Therapy?
Primus
The Tea Party
Powderfinger
Regurgitator
Violent Femmes (Syd, Melb)
Suiciety (Syd, Melb)
Cosmic Psychos (Bris, Melb)
Supergroove (Bris, Melb)
Dreamkillers (Bris, Melb)
Insurge (Bris, Melb)
Def FX (Bris, Melb)
Nitocris (Bris, Melb)
Custard (Bris, Melb)
Chalk (Bris)
Budd (Bris)
Fur (Bris)
Downtime (Bris)
Horsehead (Bris)
Don Walker’s Catfish (Bris)
Andy Prieboy (Bris)
Skunkhour (Bris)
