It has only been three years since Fuji Rock Festival posted its highest-ever attendance figures, with a little help from Radiohead and The Stone Roses, but you wouldn't have known it from the steady drumbeat of glumness that heralded this year's edition. Following a lackluster showing in 2014, when Kanye West canceled, Jack Johnson fizzled and only 102,000 people bothered to show up (down from 140,000 in 2012), the festival badly needed a hit. Yet the signs weren't promising.