Coachella a Success Despite Rough Economy

NY Times:

Final attendance figures will not be available until Monday for [Coachella], which ran from Friday through Sunday and featured Paul McCartney, the Cure, Morrissey, Leonard Cohen, the Killers and Franz Ferdinand. But organizers said this year would probably be its third largest.

[The festival], in the scorching but majestically beautiful desert east of Los Angeles, is the year’s first major festival and a bellwether for the all-important summer touring season. Paul Tollett, the president of Goldenvoice, the promoter behind the festival, now in its 10th year, said that despite the economy it was a success.“Anyone that has a business in 2009 is just trying to make sure that you dodge a bullet,” he said. “But this went beyond that. We’re super happy.”

Many fans said they were feeling the economic pinch but had made sacrifices elsewhere in their budgets specifically to attend the festival.