2023 Impact 50: Paul Tollett

PRESIDENT & CEO
Goldenvoice

It’s inevitable that any profile of Paul Tollett will include “Coachella visionary” in its first sentence. So it is again.

Tollett is, indeed, the mastermind of the annual two-weekend desert music bash that never fails to make headlines. And 2023’s edition was no exception. Frank Ocean pulled out of his headlining slot on the second weekend, but, as ever, Coachella pivoted into success with sets from blink-182 and an electro-supergroup of Skrillex, Four Tet and Fred again.. that filled the void to great acclaim. This year’s edition also featured its first Asian headliners in Blackpink and first Spanish-speaking headliner in Bad Bunny, plus lauded sets from boygenius and Rosalía. And after two weekends that drew more than a quarter-million people to Indio, Goldenvoice followed the event, as it has since 2007, with the country-focused Stagecoach festival.

In addition to its reliable moneymakers, Goldenvoice debuts a new concept in the summer of 2023: Re:SET, a 12-city traveling festival roadshow rotating through three cities every weekend for four weeks. Essentially, each weekend, three cities will host a three-day mini-festival. One day will be headlined by LCD Soundsystem, another by boygenius and the third by Steve Lacy. Those artists curate the bill for their particular day and rotate through the weekend’s triptych of venues. For example, the first weekend is in California. On Friday, LCD Soundsystem headlines in the Bay Area, boygenius in San Diego and Lacy in Pasadena. On Saturday, boygenius goes to Pasadena, LCD Soundsystem to San Diego and Lacy heads up to the Bay and so on. It combines the multi-day feel of a festival with the close-to-home convenience of a standard tour. It’s an untested approach, but one that’s intriguing to artists, agents and fans.

As if that wasn’t enough, Goldenvoice will bring Power Trip to Indio in October, a potentially record-breaking rock festival headlined by Guns N’ Roses, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica and Tool. If Coachella and its country cousin prove anything, Tollett is just the guy who can pull off something we never expected.