Classic rock’s biggest living legends to gather at one festival

Fan favorites including Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, and The Who will appear at a festival in California. Will the event attract fans of all ages?

Some of classic rock’s biggest names are joining up for one festival later this year.

Acts including Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, The Who, Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, and Neil Young will perform at an event titled Desert Trip, which will take place in Indio, Calif., where the music festival Coachella takes place.

Desert Trip will be held this year from Oct. 7 to Oct. 9. 

Tickets are set to be available beginning May 9. 

While artists at festivals usually perform for shorter amounts of time, the acts at Desert Trip will reportedly be performing full-length sets, with two set to perform each evening.

Reaction from music critics to the lineup of Desert Trip has largely been positive, with Paste writer Zach Blumenfeld noting the cost of tickets (general admission for one day of the festival is $199) but writing, “Why listen to reason when you can go see six of rock’s most legendary acts at the same time?” Meanwhile, George Varga of the San Diego Union-Tribune called the acts “a remarkable collection of classic rock icons.”

Many writers are predicting the festival will be popular with an older crowd, with Guardian writer Dave Schilling calling the event “the festival for the baby boomer with a bucket list.” 

It remains to be seen what the demographics will be like at Desert Trip, but we’ve seen that many of these acts remain popular with younger viewers. Salon writer EJ Dickson contrasted them with Bruce Springsteen, who "won’t reach the level of Zeppelin or Dylan or Kurt Cobain or Neil Young, artists who are still popular among those born decades after the pinnacle of their popularity."

Meanwhile, Sarah Seltzer of Flavorwire wrote that she is an “older millennial who, along with absolutely all of my middle school friends (and many younger friends, too), discovered our parents’ Beatles albums like they were a hoard of treasured gold. We knew the Beatles first as the originators of kid-friendly songs like ‘Yellow Submarine’ and campfire classics such as ‘Here Comes the Sun’ and ‘Yesterday,’ and when we realized they were a cool band with a deep catalog, our young minds were blown … anyone who has attended a Paul McCartney concert on one of his recent tours knows that his fans range in age from 80s to eight.”