Outside Lands Founders on Building SF's Crown Jewel Festival & Booking Radiohead as First Act
Andy Frasco's World Saving Podcast
Andy Frasco
4.8 • 575 Ratings
🗓️ 22 July 2025
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Andy Frasco and Nick Gerlach welcome Outside Lands founders Rick Farman (Superfly) and Allen Scott (Another Planet Entertainment) for an inside look at creating one of America's most successful music festivals. The founders reveal the three-year process of convincing San Francisco to allow amplified music after dark in Golden Gate Park and share the story of booking Radiohead as the first band to break the 7pm curfew.
Topics Discussed:
- The current state of music festivals and why multi-genre festivals are surviving
- How Bonnaroo's success inspired the creation of Outside Lands
- The $5 million annual park fee and tens of millions in production costs
- Leaving fence gaps for feral cats and other unique SF requirements
- Why they believe festivals need to spare no expense and do things right
- Their philosophy on booking emerging artists before they blow up
- White whale artists they've chased (Prince, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Why did it take so long for a festival like this to come into a city like that that is so enriched with music? |
| 0:07.2 | Is it because the city is a piece of shit? |
| 0:09.1 | San Francisco is a city of process. |
| 0:11.2 | Yeah. |
| 0:11.8 | Historically, it's been kind of a nimbie city, which is not in my backyard. |
| 0:15.6 | Right. |
| 0:15.9 | The park is right next to two dense neighborhoods. |
| 0:20.0 | Prior to outside lands, no artists had played past 7 p.m. |
| 0:24.0 | in the park. Oh, whoa, really? Hurl Jam played there with Neil Young, although they got, |
| 0:28.7 | Pearl Jam got sick, and Neil Young played with Pearl Jam, but nothing in the dark. So that was the |
| 0:33.0 | big hurdle that we had with the city, is convincing the neighborhoods and the city that we could do it. |
| 0:37.7 | We did not take no for an answer. I think we were maybe a little idealist, but I think that's why |
| 0:42.0 | no one had tried it before. And ultimately, after three years and a lot of conversations with the |
| 0:47.3 | city and the community and the neighborhoods, you know, we were able to do it. I've never felt so |
| 0:52.6 | appreciated for what we bring to this city. |
| 0:55.5 | And the city's been very amenable to doing things out of the box that, you know, five, six years |
| 1:01.7 | ago, they would have said no. |
| 1:06.7 | And we're live, Andy Frasco's World Savant Podcast. |
| 1:29.6 | Another day, another beautiful day in Denver, Colorado. Mm-hmm. Where I just have people just sleep in my house and just shit on me. Yeah. Well, she's right about most of it. We have a, I think I've, I think we met our maker. I think we finally met. Our match, you mean? A match. We met, we have a lady friend in the family now. |
| 1:30.0 | Uh-huh. |
| 1:30.0 | Who might be able to match my best friendness energy that i have with nick yeah and we should |
| 1:35.5 | call her in first off hi nick welcome the show hi we have the founders of outside lands on the festival |
... |
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