How Was Daft Punk Booked For Coachella 2006? Watch a New Documentary That Shares the Story
Written by djfrosty on December 18, 2024
Daft Punk‘s Coachella 2006 performance is widely considered to be one of the best shows to ever happen at the festival, turning everyone in the packed Sahara tent into dance-music believers and helping set the stage for the genre’s coming explosion in the United States.
But how did the French duo even end up at the festival?
New documentary Busy P Says Oui explores the dynamics that brought the show to life, via interviews with Busy P (real name Pedro Winter), the founder of Ed Banger records who also managed Daft Punk for 12 years, starting when he was 20 years old.
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The documentary as a whole celebrates Winter, one of dance music’s most crucial and beloved figures, while looking at the relationship he and Ed Banger have had with Coachella over the years with artists including Justice, DJ Mehdi and more.
Shot on location at and near Coachella 2024, the documentary is a project by Coachella producer Goldenvoice and one in a series of upcoming pieces (with many more to come) from the original content initiative at Coachella led by Ike Adler, Mikhail Mehra and David Prince. The doc also features an interview with Goldenvoice’s vp of festival talent Stacey Vee, who was instrumental in getting the robots to the desert for their performance on April 29, 2006.
It wasn’t easy. “Daft Punk really wanted to focus on their own career, own music,” Winter says in the doc, “so my job mostly during those 12 years was to say no to everybody, everything.”
“We really didn’t want a no; we really wanted this one to happen,” Vee says of sending Daft Punk’s agent the offer, which would provide the duo with $350,000, plus airfare, hotel and ground transportation.
The pair, of course, ultimately said “oui,” with the documentary unpacking how the show came together, with Sahara tent mastermind Wiley Dailey recalling that “people showed up and lost their minds.”
“Magic happened,” Winter concurs of the performance, which unveiled Daft Punk’s iconic pyramid stage production and more or less changed the course of electronic music forever.
“Whenever I’m given an opportunity to make a film about music, I’m always on board,” the doc’s director Garfield tells Billboard. “I was excited about this project because I am a fan of Pedro Winter’s as well as Coachella’s, but I also knew it came with a challenge. How could I cover everything about the dopeness that is Pedro and his long relationship with the festival in 10 minutes or less? The answer was not to go for all but to go for small. So I chose to focus on just a moment in their shared history and springboard out from there.
“Busy P Says Oui is as much a metaphor for taking chances as it is about the gravitational pull between two musical forces who continue to support each other to this day,” Garfield continues. Hopefully when you watch you will catch a glimpse into the ball of energy that is both Coachella and Busy P. Who knows, maybe it will inspire you to try something too.”