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Last June, Vans Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman stood in front of Mountain View’s Shoreline Amphitheatre and greeted fans, as a capacity crowd turned out to see the final cross-country run of this annual celebration of punk, alt-rock and other high-voltage sounds.
Now Lyman will be back at the same venue for a two-day happening — July 20 and 21 — to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Warped Tour. It’s one of three special events planned in honor of Warped hitting the quarter-century mark. The other two are in Cleveland and Atlantic City.
Recently, I got the chance to chat by phone with Lyman, who lives in the Pasadena area. He was eagerly anticipating the lineup announcement on March 1, which is also the day tickets go on sale to the general public at www.livenation.com. (For information about pre-sale tickets, visit vanswarpedtour.com.)
JH: It doesn’t seem that long ago that we were standing together in front of Shoreline and talking about the final Warped Tour. And now you are coming back again.
LYMAN: That’s why we always advertised (the 2018 tour) as the last cross-country tour. We always had these plans to do a couple of celebration, 25th anniversary shows. And these will be the last shows. It was kind of my commitment to make it to 25.
JH: Lucky us, you decided to do one of the events in the Bay Area.
LYMAN: We started narrowing down the cities and it was like, you know, the Bay Area has always been so good to us and so much fun. And the fans are always so good up there.
Everyone anticipated (we’d do) Southern California, of course, being that I am from here. But people always ask, “What is your favorite show (location)?” I look for the good in all of them, but then I started narrowing it down and — you know what? — San Francisco has always been (the site of) some of my favorite shows, whether they have been up at (Pier 30-32) or the ballpark or at Shoreline.
JH: And, thus, the return to Shoreline.
LYMAN: To be honest, when we looked at San Francisco in the beginning, we did look at AT&T Park (now Oracle Park). But talk about a difference in expenses in five years! The expenses at AT&T Park were about five times more than they were even five years ago. And I’d much rather have the money to spend on the talent than paying for a parking lot – for asphalt.
JH: Speaking of talent, I can’t wait to see the bill.
LYMAN: The lineup is going to crush. I think people are going to look at it and say, “Whoa, (expletive), they pulled out some pretty good stuff.”
JH: I know you can’t name names at this point, but, in general terms, what can you tell me about the lineup?
LYMAN: It’s cross-generational from the 25 years of Warped, probably focusing on the first two-thirds of the tour.
JH: After some years of sliding attendance figures, 2018 was a big year for Warped, right?
LYMAN: It was our second biggest year.
JH: And what was the biggest?
LYMAN: 2005
JH: Why was that such a big year?
LYMAN: That’s when you had Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance and everybody else blowing up all at once. You couldn’t turn on TRL or MTV without seeing them — which almost made the tour too successful because we started drawing more of a pop crowd.
JH: It must have been tempting to just do another full cross-country tour in 2019, given last year’s success.
LYMAN: People were like, “Kevin, you can’t (stop now). You’ve rekindled the spark.” And I go, “No, we were very lucky last summer.” We were lucky across the board, in all senses. The lineup was solid. We had great weather across the country. Whereas the year before, we couldn’t do anything right — we had bad weather, the lineup was a little off mark. Last year, everything went well. So, I felt really good. We had no drama last summer.
I love coming up there. You guys are always so great to us, you really are. And that’s no (expletive). It was hard all these years not to just say, “Yeah, San Francisco is my favorite city.” Because, you know, it was.