When you have a two-day festival featuring Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, the Who, Neil Young and Roger Waters, it’s hard to find equal talent to hire for an encore.
The organizers of last year’s Desert Trip Festival have told Billboard that they are not planning a follow-up festival this year adding that “maybe someday in the future we’ll do something similar.”
Desert Trip was the top grossing concert(s) of 2016 bringing in a total of $160 million dollars over the two three-day weekends.
The city of Indio, CA is disappointed at the turn of events. While they have the two-weekend Coachella Festival and the Stagecoach Festival in the spring, they have always been interested in a fall festival and Desert Trip fit the bill.
Mayor Pro Tem Mike Wilson told The Desert Sun “I was told probably three weeks ago there was a 60 percent chance of it happening. Then, about a week ago I was having a conversation with somebody and they said it’s probably better than that. So, that’s the last information I had, that it was better than 50-50 that it was going to happen.”
Speculation had been high over the last couple of weeks that Led Zeppelin had been convinced of a reunion for the festival, one that was further fueled by a cryptic posting on Robert Plant’s site. The band had supposedly been offered an exorbitant amount of money for last year’s show and turned it down and many figured that that figure had been upped for a possible 2017 reunion.
Those that are disappointed by the news will, of course, still have the chance at some classic rock greatness with the Classic East and Classic West festival which will feature The Eagles, Steely Dan, the Doobie Brothers, Fleetwood Mac, Earth, Wind & Fire and Journey. The west coast show is July 15 and 16 while the east coast is July 29 and 30.
