Ask Sheryl Crow and Sarah McLachlan, separately, to offer up a particularly wild and crazy antic from back in the Lilith Fair day and each recounts the same story: “I flashed Chrissie Hynde onstage,” McLachlan says. “She fell onto her knees. I brought Chrissie Hynde to her knees.”
It was Hynde’s last show with the tour and McLachlan was wearing a red sequined tube top. McLachlan’s back was turned to the audience, but Hynde’s drummer was quite stunned by the move. “His jaw dropped and everything stopped.”
Crow remembers the moment well and says the tour was filled with such pranks. “Stuff like that, where you’d just go: Okay, this is the funnest tour I’ve ever been on.”
Eleven years after shutting down the all-female festival that helped launch her to superstardom, McLachlan is remounting the mammoth estrogen fest, this time simply as Lilith. But there is a real danger she could lose her shirt once again, and it won’t be any fun at all this time around.
It was the first time that you saw women selling tickets on their own. — Sheryl Crow
Ticket sales for Lilith have fallen far short of expectations. Dates have been cancelled and some shows have been moved to smaller venues.
It’s a shocking, frustrating turn of events for the co-founders of what had been a groundbreaking festival. Tube tops and ta-tas aside, Lilith Fair marked a seminal moment for women in pop music: female stars and emerging artists, crossing genres and entertaining (and perhaps even empowering) the masses, female and male.
Famously born out of a gender imbalance on the concert scene, Lilith Fair was proof that women could be headliners and supporters on the same bill, and then some. From 1997 through 1999, it was one of the highest-grossing touring festivals in the world, with more than 1.5 million people attending.
“At the time that Lilith [Fair] happened … it was hugely impactful,” says Crow. “because many promoters didn’t want to stack a bill with women, because they felt that it ruled out the largest portion of the record-buying public which were men, and it really defied that. It was the first time that you saw women selling tickets on their own.
“But [Lilith 2010] is sort of more of a celebration, because since then, we’ve really come so far. … Some of the biggest artists in the world are women.”
That may be so. But in a summer during which concert promoters are struggling, even Lilith, with its nostalgic, almost mythical allure, is in trouble: Two shows have been officially cancelled, and there are more on the chopping block: Norah Jones’s management says that all of her dates – West Palm Beach and Tampa, Fla.; Birmingham, Ala.; and Houston and Dallas – have been scrapped. Meanwhile the venue for another August date, in Austin, Tex., is still reading “TBA” on Lilith’s website and it’s not possible to buy tickets for it.
It was empowering for me and just really, really inspiring to go to this and to see all these females really doing their thing and making music. — Hannah Georgas
It appears the entire back end of the tour is being axed. While Terry McBride, Lilith's co-founder and CEO of Nettwerk Music Group, would not confirm any of the unannounced cancellations, he did indicate earlier this week, after only the Phoenix cancellation had been announced, that more shows could be cut.
McBride says he is surprised by the tour's struggles. “I think we have phenomenal talent. You don't get this sort of talent all on the same bill [unless it's] a Bonnaroo or something of that nature, but those are destination events. Unless you're lucky enough to live in that city, it's probably going to cost you $1,000 just to get there.”
