10 biggest Arizona State Fair concerts ever

For decades, the Arizona State Fair offered something wilder than heart-stopping carnival rides and artery-clogging fried foods: concert lineups that frequently had no right being as good as they were.

Concerts inside the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum, which was built on the fairgrounds in 1965, have been around almost as long as the venue itself. From the late ’60s onward, musicians performed during the fair.

Country and pop dominated the early lineups (Lawrence Welk! Henry Mancini!). Eventually rock, R&B and other genres took center stage.

By the mid-’70s, increasingly bigger stars like Willie Nelson, Crystal Gale, Dr. Hook and The Knack were playing the fair, making concerts a top attraction.

Veteran Arizona concert promoter Danny Zelisko, who has booked bands for the fair for more than 35 years, says the fair has become one of the Valley’s best places to see a show.

“I wonder if people can understand how cool it is to go into the Coliseum, this historic building where so much has taken place, and see a show,” he says. “There have been so many great shows that have taken place.”

By the early ‘80s, Coliseum concerts were free with fair admission. Former club owner Bill Bachand, who booked country acts at the state fair for more than two decades, says that led to bigger crowds.

“When I was booking ’em, all the shows were included free with your paid fair admission,” Bachand says. “When it was free, you saw them packing the place.”

The fair’s Coliseum concerts drew huge crowds in the ‘80s, ‘90s and 2000s, when hip-hop, metal and throwback acts filled the bills.

The list of who has played the fair is essentially a roll call of the music world for the past several decades: Green Day, Nirvana, Korn, Morrissey, KISS, Snoop Dog, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Alice Cooper, Foo Fighters. And hundreds more.

After COVID-19 forced a four-year concert hiatus, Arizona State Fair organizers scaled back the number of Coliseum concerts and began requiring a separate ticket to attend. Still, the concert series has remained popular. Last year’s performance by The Format became the fair’s first-ever sold-out show at the Coliseum.

That was far from the only epic show in the fair’s history. In honor of this year’s Arizona State Fair, which runs from Oct. 1 to Nov. 1, here’s a look back at the 10 biggest Coliseum concerts ever.

Flaming Lips
Oct. 6, 2016
The Flaming Lips didn’t fill the Coliseum with their 2016 debut there. What their show lacked in crowd density, the psych-rockers made up for in pure musicianship and exquisite vibes. Transcendence at the fair doesn’t come easily (or without some sort of substances involved), but the Lips offered a blissful experience and their signature vibrant spectacle. Clouds of confetti rained. Tentacles of light glittered. Over-the-top theatrics ran wild. Emotions ran deep. Frontman Wayne Coyne rolled over the crowd in his giant inflatable hamster ball and spelled out “Fuck yeah Phoenix” in letter-shaped Mylar balloons. Another standout moment came with an extended, heart-tugging cover of “Space Oddity,” which hit concertgoers right in the feels only months after David Bowie’s death. As New Times stated in its review, the show felt “like musical therapy composed of colored sound.”

Willie Nelson
Oct. 26 and 27, 1976
The Arizona State Fair has hosted country and western artists for as long as it has had concerts in the Coliseum. (True story: One of its first-ever shows in the venue was a Nashville revue starring Wanda Jackson and Glen Campbell.) In 1976, the fair booked Willie Nelson on back-to-back nights only months after he rocketed to superstardom.

His 1975 album “Red Headed Stranger” had led to breakthrough success. It was followed by his contributions to “Wanted! The Outlaws,” a collaboration with Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter and Tompall Glaser that became country music’s first platinum album.

Arizona music historian John Dixon told Phoenix New Times in 2016 that anyone at those shows experienced peak Willie. “Two nights of Willie Nelson in his prime?” Dixon says. “That would’ve been great.”

Snoop Dogg
Oct. 29, 2010
Snoop Dogg didn’t disappoint during his first-ever visit to the Arizona State Fair. The Doggfather played to a near-capacity turnout, rolling through his signature hits (“Gin and Juice,” “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” “Who Am I?”) and crowd-pleasing covers like House of Pain’s “Jump Around.” It led to huge singalongs in the mass of fans, who also exhaled a huge cloud of marijuana smoke that fogged the arena and even large swaths of the fairground. It made for a show that Snoop fans probably haven’t forgotten. The rap icon’s later performances at the fair haven’t topped it.

Foo Fighters
Oct. 20, 2000
Dave Grohl went beyond his usual amped-up performance style during Foo Fighters’ first-ever fair gig. Zelisko says the guitarist and frontman “had more energy” than normal during the 17-song set, adding to the force of their 2000 concert. “Everybody gets in a good mood when they play here,” Zelisko says. “There’s like a giant club feel to the place. That translates to a fun show for everyone.” The show is even more notable for its opening set by Queens of the Stone Age, who were on the cusp of breakthrough success and played with ferocity, offering a one-two punch of hard-charging rock.

Reba McEntire
Oct. 21 and 22, 1991
Reba McEntire was no stranger to the Arizona State Fair, having played the event no fewer than seven times across three separate decades. Her biggest shows came in 1991, when the Grammy-winning country star was at her commercial peak and ACM’s reigning Top Female Vocalist. The two concerts occurred less than a year after a tragic plane crash that killed her manager and members of her backing band.

Bachand says McEntire was in rare form for the packed performances. “Her shows were so well-rehearsed and flowed so well,” Bachand says. “The woman is probably one of the best entertainers in music. And she had it all down: the moves, the songs … everything.”

The Police
Nov. 7, 1980
When Stewart Copeland, Sting and Andy Summers rolled into the Coliseum on the Zenyatta Mondatta tour, the English rock icons were unnerved by the enormous size of the crowd. (It probably helped that tickets to the show were only three bucks.) “I remember being in the dressing room about 6 o’clock, and the place was already filled and everyone was making noise,” Zelisko says. “And Stewart came in and goes, ‘Holy shit, did you see how many people are out there?’” That didn’t stop the trio from “blowing the roof off” the venue during their high-energy set, in Zelisko’s recollection. Things reportedly got a little unruly in the crowd, resulting in the actual police being called to quell the uproar. It’s only fitting.

Green Day
Nov. 1, 1994
The fair had phenomenal timing when its concert promoter booked Green Day’s 1994 gig at the Coliseum. The future punk legends were approaching critical mass in their breakthrough stardom. Pretty much every teen in America was dropping their allowance to buy “Dookie” and the videos for “Longview” and “Basket Case” were in heavy rotation on MTV. The result? A capacity crowd for a wild and rowdy affair.

Green Day was particularly rambunctious that night, peppering the crowd with amusing quips and patter between songs from “Dookie,” “Kerplunk!” and a few odds and sods (“Going to Pasalacqua,” “All By Myself”).

Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong also trolled the state fair staff, who reportedly requested the band ditch any profanity, with a playful tirade laced with obscenities. “Hey, they say that the state fair is a family event, so I’m not allowed to swear,” Armstrong announced. “Fuck that!” And they say punk is dead.

The Format
Sept. 25, 2025
Call it a case of recency bias, but The Format’s Coliseum concert last year deserves its place on this list. It was the band’s first Arizona show in almost 18 years and also the first official sell-out in state fair history. Kicking off The Format’s current reunion run, the 100-minute-long set featured 17 songs from their catalog and a pair of then-new tracks. The truly epic encore saw Sam Means and Nate Ruess joined onstage by Jimmy Eat World frontman Jim Adkins. The trio covered Gin Blossoms’ “Hey Jealousy,” leading to three generations of Arizona rock history colliding like bumper cars.

Rihanna
Oct. 20, 2007
All eyes were on the R&B star at the Coliseum during her 2007 performance, and not just because she was dressed in a form-fitting and vaguely BDSM-style costume. Coming months after “Umbrella” began climbing the charts, the show was packed to the rafters. Her 16-song performance started with “Pon de Replay” and offered grace and style throughout. Zelisko told New Times in 2016 that her magnetic personality and relationship with the crowd helped make the concert unique. The free admission with a fair ticket was also a plus. “The Rihanna show was great,” he says. “I enjoyed the interaction between her and this audience that was in there. For her to be playing during the state fair was a great way for a lot of people who wouldn’t ordinarily be able to see her to get to see her.”

Nirvana
Oct. 18, 1993
Nirvana kicked off their “In Utero” tour at the Arizona State Fair in a 1993 show that immediately entered Phoenix lore as one of the best-remembered concerts in the event’s history. It’s invariably mentioned in every social media argument about the fair’s biggest concert ever.

Its revered status is only natural. Locals canonized the show in part because it wound up being the band’s final performance in Arizona, less than six months before frontman Kurt Cobain’s suicide.

The rabid crowd packing the Coliseum had reportedly booed opening act Mudhoney mercilessly. They wanted Nirvana, and they got an epic, generous set: 21 songs including the encore, featuring tunes off all three of the band’s major releases. “About A Girl” and “Sliver” from “Bleach.” Most of the tracks off “Nevermind.” And at least eight songs off “In Utero.”

The between-song patter was also memorable. Bassist Krist Novoselic riffed on the band’s now-famous 1990 gig at iconic Phoenix rock club The Mason Jar, making jokes at the expense of its owner Franco Gagliano. Cobain also joshed with the crowd, referring to Reba McEntire, who was due to play the venue days later, as “Arriba McEntire.”

Nirvana’s antics didn’t end after the band wrapped up its encore with “Endless, Nameless.” Zelisko says Cobain spent time on the midway and even interacted with a few fans, albeit in Kurt-like fashion. “I remember somebody came up to Kurt and asked him to sign their state fair hat,” Zelisko says. “He did and was really nice about it. After handing it back, the person walked away and I heard them go, ‘Butt sauce?’ I loved it.”