Santana Black Magic Woman US Festival

The US Generation is an in-depth look at one of the most influential music festivals of all time. The film is directed by award-winning filmmaker Glenn Aveni. Us Generation blends rare concert footage and insightful interviews with both organizers and performers.

A lot of big numbers get tossed around in any conversation about the inaugural US Festival held Labor Day weekend in 1982 at Glen Helen Regional Park in San Bernardino, CA. Fans numbered 425,000 or so, many of whom camped on the grounds in the dusty, summer heat of early September.

There were 19 top-flight acts – everyone from Talking Heads, the Police, and Tom Petty to Fleetwood Mac, Santana, and the Grateful Dead – nearly half of which are now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The budget, which started at $10 million ended up in the neighborhood of $13 million, the equivalent of $33 million today.

And then there’s a singular man, with a large and generous dream, who didn’t care so much about the millions of dollars he was spending to create the US Festival as he did about how much everyone who was there, fans and musicians and staff alike, enjoyed the experience.

“None of us would be here if it wasn’t for one man,” said Glenn Aveni, director and executive producer of “US Festival 1982: The US Generation,” a new documentary on the iconic yet often under-appreciated music festival. As he spoke Aveni nodded at the man in question, Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computers, who with maybe 100 or so invited guests was in the Charlie Chaplin Theater at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood for the world premiere of the documentary.

“Woz puts up $10 million of his own money, with no expectation of seeing any return, and says, ‘I paid to see 10 million smiles,'” Aveni said.

“US Festival 1982: The US Generation” is a chance to relive those smiles, or discover them for the first time, in the strangely beautiful story of a man and his festival and the legacy it left.

The film, which mixes current-day interviews with Wozniak, musicians who performed there, and others who were part of the fest with performance segments and archival footage from the days before and during the festival, is the most comprehensive look yet at the US Festival, which after a sequel over Memorial Day weekend in 1983 was never held again.

The film takes viewers through the planning of the festival from Woz’ initial inspiration – “I’ve got way more money than I need for life,” he says in one soundbite early on – to his recruiting of a team to help him realize that dream.

Unlike today, when you conceivably could find a music festival practically every weekend of the year, in 1982 there really weren’t many, if any, being held in the United States. Woodstock had been huge but also had huge problems cramming half a million people into a farm in upstate New York. A few months later, Altamont with its bad trip vibes and the murder of a fan by Hell’s Angels just feet from where the Rolling Stones were playing, effectively ended the first wave of American festivals.

There are great clips of the search for a venue for the US Festival, including one in which organizers are meeting with residents to persuade them to get on board behind the US Festival. “You’ve got nothing but punk rockers, who are probably the most dangerous people in this country!” one angry man shouts in the clip.

After finding Glen Helen and getting the county to sign off on a festival there, the US Festival organizers brought on famed concert promoter Bill Graham, whose team included Gregg Perloff, who is filmed recalling how he came to the park a few months before the festival and saw a vast open space that was completely unprepared to host a massive concert. Review Source: The Sun

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