Before the flower crowns, the brand activations, and the celebrity sightings, Coachella was something harder to define. The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival launched in October 1999 in Indio, California, conceived by promoters Paul Tollett and Rick Van Santen as an alternative to the corporate festival circuit. The first edition was headlined by Beck, Rage Against the Machine, and Tool, and it was later dubbed the “Anti-Woodstock” by the Los Angeles Times. Coachella was also a near-financial collapse. The festival skipped 2000 entirely, returned as a single day in 2001, and spent the early part of the decade finding its footing. In the 2000s, Coachella was known as a music festival with a genuinely eclectic curatorial vision. It was a place where post-punk legends shared a bill with electronic acts and emerging indie bands no one had heard of yet. The 2004 edition marked the first sellout, headlined by Radiohead and The Cure alongside a reunited Pixies. By 2006, Daft Punk’s deb...