Nostalgic rock, ’80s punk and local stars will once again head to the ocean and rock on the sand with the return of the BeachLife Festival to Seaside Lagoon in Redondo Beach from Friday, May 1 through Sunday, May 3 with a lineup that’s designed to attract fans of all ages to the South Bay’s biggest festival.
“That’s always the home run with us when multi-generations like the same thing and that just ends up working perfectly for us,” said festival founder Allen Sanford.
The weekend festival is expected to attract more than 30,000 people with a lineup that includes British legends Duran Duran on May 1, as well as local punk stars The Offspring on May 2 while Rock and Roll Hall of Famer James Taylor and his All-Star Band close it on May 3.
Other notable bands include The Chainsmokers, Fitz and The Tantrums and Grouplove, plus Ben Harper, My Morning Jacket, Sheryl Crow and, for a bit of tropical flair, Buena Vista Orchestra.
“One of the ones I’m most excited to see is Buena Vista. Grammy winning, just so cool,” Sanford said.
For Sanford, this lineup perfectly reflects intergenerational music and celebrates the beach culture of Southern California, and a pair of performances he’s excited about are the back-to-back headlining acts on night one.
“We’ve juxtaposed old and new and this year will be the climax of doing that with putting Duran Duran and The Chainsmokers back to back co-headlining on the night. So that’s going to be exciting because it brings a whole new feel to BeachLife that we haven’t seen before,” he said.
Celebrating beach culture and local music are the reasons The Offspring wanted to headline the festival, said Kevin John Wasserman, who is better known as Noodles, the lead guitarist and backing vocalist for The Offspring.
“We’re just so excited about it. It’s going to be bitchin’,” he said. “I grew up surfing and I’m watching a guy catch a wave right now. I live by the beach so for me it’s not something I think about, it’s just what I do,” Noodles said.
The band, which formed in Orange County in 1984, has released about a dozen albums, selling millions of records with hit songs like “Come Out and Play,” “Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)”, “Why Don’t You Get a Job?” and “Self Esteem.”
“We want to bring it. We want to have a good time and we want to play a lot of great songs, some aggressive, some of the more popular hits we do, just a little bit of all of it,” he said.