Celebrities rock Coachella Valley Music Festival
Despite the heat, a few scrapes and VIP infestation, a polite tradition was upheld.
The perfect confluence of Coachella's new star cultures came Saturday during the Red Hot Chili Peppers set: That's when a giggling Paris Hilton climbed a stack of amps on the side of the stage, both to see and to be seen, while, a few yards away, Tom Morello, the firebrand guitarist of Rage Against the Machine — a man more interested in coups than club life — bobbed to the beat and tried to blend in beneath his ball cap.
The next night, Morello and his bandmates gave a searing finale to the biggest edition yet of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival (three days, 123 bands, 60,000 people a day), an affair that went off smoothly for its size and sometimes dizzying heat. Coming in to the show, promoters had worried about the mosh pits for the Rage reunion (security was quadrupled for the band's set), but as the dust settles, perhaps they should be more concerned about the "celebrity problem," as a key member of on the show staff called it.
The VIP area was dense with star power, with Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan, Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, Courtney Love, Nicky Hilton, Danny DeVito, Corbin Bernsen, Lars Ulrich, Jason Statham, Kelly Osbourne, Rosanna Arquette and others sweating like they were enrolled in the world's loudest celebrity summer camp. The concert grounds were also being prowled by paparazzi. This would be good if Coachella were an awards show, but promoter Paul Tollett acknowledged that the attention of the Us Weekly world is not what his festival needs to maintain credibility with rock kids.