July 31, 1995, was another wild day in one of the most memorable summers in 90s alternative music.
Lollapalooza rolled into the Pittsburgh area that Monday, bringing some of the decade’s biggest alternative, rock and hip-hop acts to the Coca-Cola Star Lake Amphitheatre. The 1995 tour featured an incredible snapshot of where music was at the time, with Sonic Youth, Hole, Cypress Hill, Pavement, Beck and Elastica among the artists taking the stage.
But it was Courtney Love and Hole who would provide one of the day’s most talked-about moments.
Content Warning
This post discusses suicide and references the circumstances surrounding Kurt Cobain’s death. Please read with care.
Lollapalooza in the Summer of 1995
By 1995, Lollapalooza had become much more than another summer concert tour. Created by Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell just a few years earlier, the traveling festival had become a gathering place for the alternative culture that exploded into the mainstream during the first half of the decade.
The 1995 edition was particularly eclectic.
Sonic Youth served as the tour’s headliner, while the lineup brought together Hole’s raw alternative rock, Cypress Hill’s hip-hop, Pavement’s indie sound, Beck’s genre-bending music and British newcomers Elastica.
For a music fan walking into Star Lake on July 31, it was essentially a crash course in the alternative side of 1995.
And Hole arrived with considerably more attention surrounding the band than it had just a couple of years earlier.
All Eyes Were on Courtney Love
Courtney Love was already one of the most recognizable—and controversial—figures in 90s rock.
Hole’s album Live Through This had been released in April 1994 and had transformed the band into a major alternative-rock act. But the album arrived only days after the death of Love’s husband, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain.
That meant Love spent much of 1994 and 1995 dealing simultaneously with grief, intense media scrutiny and a rapidly growing music career.
By the time Hole joined Lollapalooza in the summer of 1995, a Courtney Love performance could be unpredictable, emotional and impossible to ignore.
The Pittsburgh audience was about to see just how quickly things could change.
Shotgun Shells Are Thrown Onto the Stage
During Hole’s performance at Star Lake, someone in the audience reportedly threw shotgun shells onto the stage.
Considering that Cobain had died from a self-inflicted shotgun wound only the previous year, the gesture carried an especially disturbing significance.
Love became visibly upset.
The incident brought Hole’s performance to an abrupt end, with reports indicating the band had been onstage for only about 20 minutes.
What had started as another stop on the biggest alternative-rock tour of the summer suddenly became another dramatic chapter in an already turbulent period of Love’s life.
A Lineup That Screams 1995
Even without the Courtney Love incident, looking back at the Pittsburgh Lollapalooza lineup is like opening a musical time capsule.
Sonic Youth represented the underground alternative scene that helped pave the way for the decade’s explosion of alternative rock.
Cypress Hill brought hip-hop into a festival still heavily associated with rock.
Pavement represented the increasingly influential indie-rock scene.
Beck was rapidly establishing himself as one of the decade’s most unusual and creative artists following the success of “Loser.”
And Elastica was enjoying its breakthrough year in America as Britpop and British alternative music gained a much larger U.S. audience.
Elastica’s presence also came after another bit of Lollapalooza drama. Sinéad O’Connor had originally been part of the 1995 tour but withdrew after announcing she was pregnant, opening the door for Elastica to join the main-stage lineup.
It was exactly the kind of strange mixture that made Lollapalooza such an important part of 90s music culture.
Remember When a Festival Could Define a Summer?
Before music festivals became an endless stream of social-media posts, livestreams and viral clips, Lollapalooza was something different.
For many fans, you experienced it by actually being there—or you heard about what happened afterward through MTV, radio, newspapers and music magazines.
And sometimes what happened onstage became as memorable as the music itself.
July 31, 1995, in Pittsburgh was certainly one of those days.
A lineup featuring Sonic Youth, Hole, Cypress Hill, Pavement, Beck and Elastica would be enough to make the show memorable more than 30 years later.
Courtney Love walking off after someone threw shotgun shells onto the stage made it unforgettable.
It’s another snapshot of just how unpredictable—and sometimes downright bizarre—the 90s music scene could be.
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Suicide Prevention Resources
If you or someone you know is struggling, information and suicide-prevention resources are available through the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.