Coachella: Why I would never go back to the California music festival loved by celebrities

Aside from the eye-wateringly expensive tickets, Olivia Petter explains why she's in no hurry to return to the California festival

There’s dust in my underwear, my thighs are sticky with sweat and I have spent the last two hours walking around the desert looking for a packet of crisps and a fizzy drink to soothe my raging hangover. So far, I’ve found neither. But I have seen three different types of açaí bowls. This is Coachella and I'm not having fun.

On Friday, thousands of well-dressed, sequin-soaked millennials will gather in the sweltering heat of Indio, California for the first of two weekends of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

In 2017, I was one of them. But, unlike Kylie Jenner, Rihanna and Justin Bieber, I’m in no hurry to return to the annual selfie-fest, whose headline acts this year include Childish Gambino and Ariana Grande. In fact, I think I’d rather have lukewarm cider poured on my head by a drunk stranger at Reading.

You see, Coachella is not like other festivals. At least, not the ones I’ve been to.

While every festival has its own idiosyncrasies, most of the muddied fields I've trodden in the UK and Europe boast a similarly bacchanal atmosphere. The revellers are liberated, hedonistic and sometimes even a bit feral.

That is not the case across the pond at Coachella, where it feels like the spirit of festival-induced debauchery has gone adrift. Either that or it has been obscured by one too many Snapchat filters.

Zoe Kravitz at Coachella in 2015. (Getty Images)

There are several reasons for this. I suspect it begins with Coachella's ticketing system, which fosters a culture of elitism that to me seems wildly out of touch with the utopian spirit of music festivals.

Passes are divided into two types, general admission ($429) and VIP ($999). Ticket holders are segregated from the outset, with separate entrances, bars and food offerings.

Then there are the VVIPS – so exclusive that such passes aren’t available to the general public – but only to those with an inside connection ie they’re either with the band or they are the band. The perks for this swanky lot include a secluded area with its own gold-plated refreshments and, this is the part that really irks me, a large area at the front of the main stage that is closed off to fans.

I somehow managed to sneak into said area to watch Lady Gaga. I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere near the front if I played by the rules and stayed in my allocated section, which was already jam-packed full of screaming fans 20 minutes ahead of her set. But after my pride for successfully subverting the system had worn off (this was about three songs in), I found myself feeling disillusioned by the generous wiggle room and the too-cool industry types who didn’t so much as crack a smile during the performance. Instead, I longed to be in the adjacent mosh pit with fans singing along to "Poker Face" at the top of their lungs while squished together like sardines.

Rihanna photographed at a Puma x Fenty pool party at Coachella 2018. (Rex Features)

Of course, many festivals have VIP options, but these aren’t generally accessible to people outside of the music industry. If they are, the tickets are so limited that you don’t really notice the hierarchies they can perpetuate. At Coachella, though, there is a blatant pecking order. The year I went, there were two large VIP areas. In addition to providing the most photogenic backdrops – think plush rose gardens and twinkling fairylights – they also housed the best food and drink offerings on the site.

Sneaking into VVIP sections aside, I’ve never considered myself a lawless festival-goer, but something about Coachella really made me want to rebel against its strange rules, which came to the fore with refreshments. Unlike most festivals, Coachella doesn't allow people to simply wander around the campsite, drink in hand – what makes you a regular attendee at Glastonbury makes you a street urchin at Coachella. At most of the bars I visited, where the offerings included kombucha, coconut water and cold-pressed coffee – I don't think I saw a single cider – I was told I had to consume my drink within the vicinity in which I had bought it.

I tried to embrace the festival spirit by wearing some tie-dye.

It was odd regulations such as these that made me think Coachella is not a festival for people, but for Instagram. The glittery hairdos and sun-kissed tans looks great in a Valencia-hazed 1:1 square with an aesthetically pleasing ferris wheel in the background, but the reality is somewhat less alluring.

The site is relatively compact compared to the vast landscapes of Bestival and Leeds, you’ll struggle to find anything to eat or drink that isn't vegan or under $15, and the jovial nighttime activities are marred by sporadic dust storms. The ferris wheel is also much smaller than it looks.

And yet, Coachella is considered the bastion of chic festival fun. Of course, the musical lineup is always good and it’s nice to prance around from stage to stage in the sunshine.

But my Coachella experience was tainted with an overriding sense of inauthenticity propagated by content-hungry attendees, invite-only after parties and in-your-face commercial partnerships. Give me a rainy field and some wellies over that any day.