The rock music scene had been steadily building up in the early 90s in Mumbai and the Independence music festival had an instrumental fanbase. Still in its initial 
years of success, founder Farhad Wadia didn't know if the two-day festival would even take place because of the rain earlier in the day on August 14. He explains, "It was year five or six, around 4 pm in the evening and I thought, nobody is going to come because it was pouring, but the phone kept ringing. Every time I would pick up the phone, they would ask, 'Is the show on?' And, I said, 'it is on, man' and please tell your friends, it is on." 

Come 5:30 pm, things had drastically changed. "I went out on the road to see if there were people outside the gate. You won't believe it but I saw a queue from Rang Bhavan right out to Metro Cinema, that's about 300-400 metres. All the guys with black shirts, shorts and umbrellas and that was the largest audience we've had. To me, that is a memory that will never go out of my head," he reminisces. It was that day, Wadia says, that his faith in rock 'n' roll and Independence Rock was reaffirmed.