September 3, 1982: The US Festival, an extravagant music and technology event staged by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, kicks off in California. The festival costs $8 million to stage, and boasts appearances from some of the biggest musical acts of the day.
It’s a wild venture for Woz, who is on hiatus from Apple after surviving a serious plane crash in 1981.
US Festival: A change of direction for Woz
The US Festival stands out as one of the strangest — and most revealing — side quests in Apple history. Wozniak poured cash into the enormous outdoor music festival, bringing together some of the era’s biggest bands while weaving technology into the experience.
The event lost a staggering amount of money, but the spectacle says something important about Woz. Even after helping invent the personal-computing revolution, he wasn’t interested in simply becoming a wealthy Silicon Valley executive.
The US Festival was one of several oddball adventures Woz pursued rather than returning to Apple as soon as he could after crashing his six-seater plane. He pursued a variety of other interests, and even attended engineering classes at the University of California, Berkeley, under the name “Rocky Raccoon Clarke,” apparently to avoid drawing attention to himself.
Tapping his personal fortune of $116 million, Apple’s lovable geek put together a far bolder venture with the US Festival. It was an attempt to stage his own version of the legendary Woodstock Music and Art Fair.
The name “US Festival” was not short for “United States,” but rather the collective term for everyone. It was short for “Unite Us in Song.” It was supposed to celebrate the passing of the “Me” Decade that had been the 1970s. Whether purposely or not, it also referred to Wozniak as a new family man. His wife went into labor the night before the festival opened.
A showcase for top bands
To bring his festival to life, Woz enlisted legendary San Francisco rock promoter Bill Graham (whose name is used for the city’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, where Apple occasionally held events over the years). Graham filled the US Festival card with rock luminaries ranging from The Grateful Dead and The Ramones to The Kinks and Fleetwood Mac.
Because of the festival’s scale, many artists charged obscene amounts of money to perform.
“I would see the money going out — my God, so much more money than these bands have ever been paid!” recalled US Festival controller Carlos Harvey years later.
Woz throws a massive party
Graham kept Wozniak on a tight leash, but allowed him to choose one progressive country singer for the event. Woz went with Jerry Jeff Walker, the singer who scored a 1960s hit with the song “Mr. Bojangles.”
Wozniak insisted that the event not take place in a stadium, preferring an outdoor venue like Woodstock’s. The site, the 500-acre Glen Helen Regional Park in Devore, California, was chosen for this reason.
It was a vast arena — with 1,800 porta-potties, a couple of helipads and one of the biggest staging areas ever assembled at the time. It also allowed attendees to camp for the duration of the event.
US Festival 1982 lineup
The first US Festival lineup proved impressive, with The Police, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Fleetwood Mac headlining the three days of the event.
Screenshot: Wikipedia CC
Even brings technology and music together
Woz being Woz, technology also played a big part in the US Festival. The event was described as a three-day “celebration of contemporary music and technology.”
Robert Moog gave a demonstration of his famous synthesizer. A “Sensadome” offered a 360-degree multimedia light show. And jazz legend Herbie Hancock led a discussion about the Apple II/AlphaSyntauri music system.
Woz’s status as Apple co-founder was signified by a large hot-air balloon, emblazoned with the Apple logo, which floated by the main staging area. Several members of the original Macintosh team attended the weekend festival, although Steve Jobs did not.
Wozniak considered the US Festival a success, even though the event lost a massive amount of money. Although the audience for all three days proved impressive, a large percentage of people who turned up never paid. They either used counterfeit tickets or simply climbed over the perimeter fences.
That didn’t stop Woz from staging a follow-up US Festival the next year.
US Festival 1983 lineup
The follow-up US Festival lasted four days, each with a musical theme: new wave (headlined by The Clash), rock (headlined by David Bowie), heavy metal (headlined by Van Halen) and country (headlined by Willie Nelson).
The musical lineups for the four-day event in 1983 proved even more impressive than the first year’s US Festival:
Screenshot: Wikipedia CC
This time, Woz’s losses came to $13 million. At that point, he called a stop to his concert-promoting days.
“If I do this for another 55 years, I’m in trouble,” Wozniak said at the time.
Did you attend the US Festival? Leave your comments below.
