Shoreline Amphitheatre Information
Experience Shoreline Amphitheatre: Where the Coolest and Hottest Collide
About the amphitheatre
The Shoreline Amphitheatre is located at 1 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043-1326. LiveNation operates it and hosts a varying schedule of events each year.
The Shoreline Amphitheatre was built in the mid-1980s by the city of Mountain View as part of a larger Shoreline Park project. The site originally served as a landfill for San Francisco throughout the 1960s and 1970s before the city set its sights on transforming it into a park. This park would eventually include many trails, a golf course, a boathouse, and, of course, an outdoor amphitheater.
Fun fact: It was built from 1985-1986 in a design that resembles that of Grateful Dead’s steal your face image.
The city of Mountain View called on legendary concert promoter Bill Graham to help bring the Shoreline Amphitheatre to life. Graham designed the amphitheater to resemble the Grateful Dead’s iconic “Steal Your Face” logo from up in the air.
Shoreline’s capacity depends on the event. There are 6,500 permanent reserved seats in place. Another 16,000 fans can purchase general admission lawn tickets. The amphitheater is a sizable outdoor venue that has a capacity of 22,000 seats, including lawn seats. If the show is a festival — such as the Outlaw music festival or Vans Warped tour — then parking lots can bump the total capacity to around 30,000!
The amphitheater has all the facilities you’d expect from an award-winning outdoor music venue. It’s known for its large lawn area capacity, accessibility, and excellent sound system. While some areas are pretty far from the stage, guests can expect to hear crisp, clear sound from any location.
The amphitheater officially opened for business during the summer of 1986. Appropriately enough, the Grateful Dead was slated to christen the venue by putting on its first concert. However, those plans were called off after the band’s lead vocalist and guitarist, Jerry Garcia, fell into a coma.
Thankfully, the Grateful Dead wasn’t kept away from the amphitheater for long. The band put on a show at the venue for the first time in October 1987. It would go on to perform there more than three dozen times before Garcia died in 1995.
Since opening, the Shoreline Amphitheatre has hosted concert performances from a who’s who of other famed musical acts, including Madonna, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Spice Girls, Lil Wayne, Phish, and more. It has also hosted many noteworthy musical festivals, such as Lollapalooza, Ozzfest, Lilith Fair, and the Vans Warped Tour.
Additionally, the amphitheater is often used for more than concerts and festivals. In 2001, for example, the Dalai Lama appeared at the amphitheater to speak to about 17,000 spectators. Google routinely uses the venue for corporate events, too, like its annual Google I/O developer conference.
As Northern California’s largest outdoor amphitheater, Shoreline attracts world-class domestic and international performers. Each year sees acts from across genres — pop, rock, country, dance, and almost anything else you could imagine.
The venue of any given event holds more responsibility in imprinting a lasting favorable memory of an experience compared to all the other elements comprising that experience. Its location, layout, amenities and service define what can become a profitable enterprise. In particular to Mountain View, California in San Francisco Bay, Shoreline Amphitheatre is a venue that might just make the cut.
Live Music
The place has become an ideal venue for festivals, concerts, comedy shows and other kinds of gatherings. To name a few, there’s the 4th of July celebration, Mayhem Festival, Lollapalooza, Ozzfest, and almost all of the hottest concerts in town. The seats are fixed. Each of it gives enough legroom and ample space for moving around. The seats are specifically laid out to extend up to the stage. This gives a more personal and up-close feel to the viewers.
The hottest popular artists have become regular visitors of the amphitheater and there are also symphonies and orchestras. In terms of music, the venue is suitable for both classical and contemporary artists’ live music needs. The next time you hear that your favorite music artist will be visiting California Bay for a major concert, expect it to be in Shoreline Amphitheatre; where the hottest live action happens. Best shows are normally during Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.
Facilities
The sound system is great considering that the place is an open space. Expect very loud modulation. Viewers seated in the lawn get an almost the same level of experience as that on the reserved seats. Lawn seats are cheaper. Some viewers prefer it since its where most of the action is taking place. Because of the place’s strategic layout, it is not hard to let the energy flow from the lawn to the stage and vice versa. To compensate for the distance, wide screens are available at the lawn.
Bathrooms are clean and functioning. Considering that Shoreline Amphitheatre is a remarkably huge venue, parking can become congested. Some regular viewers suggested utilizing parking areas outside the theater. A little trek is more bearable compared to waiting for 30 minutes to your parking slot. A minimum fee is required from parking lot users. As an option, Shoreline has a carpool shuttle. This is a convenient and reliable way of entering and exiting the theater. In this way, vehicular traffic flow is lessened.
Venue Rules
Shoreline Amphitheatre imposes rules such as the no can, no bottle, and no alcohol policy. Sealed plastic water bottles are an exception. You can’t expect a person not to quench his thirst amidst all the energy that enveloped the theater. Depending on the event, blankets are allowable on the lawn seats. No restrictions are imposed on smoking.
For a list of rules and further info on the venue please see the Shoreline Amphitheatre rules.
Venue History
Back in 1985, Mountain View, CA, missed out on the chance to serve as the new site for Marine World, a Sea World-esque theme park that relocated from Redwood City to neighboring Vallejo. This ended up being a blessing in disguise for the relatively small Mountain View community, which only had a population of around 60,000 back then.
The city wasn’t able to land Marine World. However, as it considered how to build an entertainment hub, Mountain View’s city council was approached by Bill Graham with an idea. Graham played a huge role in the rise of San Francisco’s groundbreaking music scene during the 1960s and was well on his way to becoming one of the most influential music promoters ever. His latest vision was to turn Mountain View into a place where people could enjoy a magical live music experience.
Mountain View’s city council liked what Graham had to say and responded by leasing him a stretch of land located along the Stevens Creek Shoreline. But there was just one problem: The land was a dump — as in an actual dump that San Francisco used to discard trash for years.
This led to some early issues with the Shoreline Amphitheatre. Building the venue seemingly went off without a hitch throughout parts of 1985 and 1986. Developers created it on top of a four-foot-thick layer of clay and dirt put down to create separation between the venue and the garbage buried beneath it.
Construction of the Shoreline Amphitheatre ran between 1985 and 1986. The design and building of the venue were managed by the city of Mountain View in collaboration with legendary music promoter Bill Graham. Bill’s contribution to the venue lives on in its design — he molded the seating and lawn layout to resemble the “steal your face” logo of local rock icons The Grateful Dead.
Interestingly, the site caused some concerns in the early years. It was built on top of an old landfill site. At some early concerts, guests reported seeing small fires caused by gasses leaking from underneath the area. Maintenance work was carried out, which quickly solved this issue.
In 1986, Shoreline hosted its first star-studded shows, including the Grateful Dead. It quickly gained popularity, with fans enjoying the stunning outdoor location, large capacity, and ample dancing space.
The amphitheater opened in June 1986 with a Julio Iglesias concert that featured Roseanne Barr as the opening act. But by August 1986, fires started randomly breaking out in the venue’s lawn seating area, and officials struggled to figure out why. They eventually discovered that methane gas created by garbage decomposing in the ground was seeping up through the soil and igniting when concertgoers threw still-lit cigarette butts on the ground.
This problem nearly derailed the Shoreline Amphitheatre. Officials, however, were able to get it under control before the start of the summer of 1987 by bringing in a team of engineers to perform tests and devise a system for safely extracting any remaining methane from the former landfill site. They were also able to eliminate the garbage smell that persisted throughout parts of the venue during its first year.
After overcoming this challenge, it was smooth sailing for the outdoor amphitheater from there. It hosted some of the most memorable San Francisco Bay Area concerts throughout the late 1980s, 1990s, and well into the 2000s.
Artists who have taken the stage at the venue over the years include:
» Madonna (July 1987)
» The Grateful Dead (October 1987)
» Bruce Springsteen (May 1988)
» Jimmy Buffett (June 1988)
» Aerosmith (September 1988)
» Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (July 1989)
» Elton John (August 1989)
» Metallica (September 1989)
» Janet Jackson (June 1990)
» Phil Collins (September 1990)
» Van Halen (August 1993)
» R.E.M. (May 1995)
» Bon Jovi (October 1995)
» Celine Dion (August 1996)
» Phish (July 1997)
» Shania Twain (June 1998)
» Lauryn Hill (July 1999)
» NSYNC (August 1999)
» Britney Spears (August 2000)
» Coldplay (August 2005)
» Pearl Jam (October 2006)
» Lil Wayne (September 2011)
» Luke Bryan (August 2013)
» Snoop Dogg (October 2014)
» KISS (September 2021)
Big-name artists continue to make stops at the Shoreline Amphitheatre while on tour. Meghan Trainor and Imagine Dragons are just a couple of the more recent acts to put on live performances at the venue.