I was a rising high school senior in the summer of 1969. Far
away from Bethel, NY, on the coast of California, I never even knew Woodstock
was on the horizon. We all read newspapers and magazines and watched the nightly
news. So we knew that something momentous happened on a muddy farm 3,000 miles
to the east. Something terrifyingly huge, slightly obscene, and wickedly
defiant had ignited while I lived my mini-skirted, innocent,
bleach-blonded summer among the dry grasses of Northern California.
Woodstock, like most unexpected events, might not have
occurred, had the stars not aligned. Two young guys, 24-year old Michael Lang,
and 26-year old Artie Kornfeld had an idea for a Studio-in-the Woods north of New
York City. Kornfeld was already a vice-president at Capitol Records, but he and
Lang needed financial backing. Enter two other young guys in their
mid-twenties, entrepreneurs Joel Rosenman and John Roberts. Roberts was an heir
to the Polident/Poli-grip fortune, and Rosenman was Roberts' good friend with a
musical background. They had met on a golf course and were apartment mates in
New York City. The two described themselves as "young men with unlimited
capital."
Within months, Woodstock morphed from a plan to build a
studio that would attract big-named bands and musicians to an idea for an
outdoor concert initially planned for just a few thousand. That audience of a
few thousand grew, well-known bands, signed on, and larger and larger sites
were sought. Simply, what followed at Yasgur's farm would not have happened
without these four young men, hundreds of performers, the generosity of Max and
Mimi Yasgur and neighboring townsfolk, free-flowing dollars of John Roberts and
his family, the 400,000 to 500,000 concert-goers, the rolling hills of Bethel,
New York, and the adequate preparation. And helicopters. Dozens of them.
"The New York Thruway is closed, man," Arlo
Guthrie exclaimed.
The NY Thruway wasn't actually closed. But it very nearly
was, and the smaller routes leading into the countryside were indeed jammed.
Concert-goers abandoned their cars miles from the event. Musicians had to be
fetched and returned by privately-contracted helicopters paid for by the
producers. So many people got to Yasgur's farm, sometimes days earlier than the
event was to begin, that no tickets were actually sold on site. Everyone, with
or without the advance tickets, was let in. (The tickets for the three-day
event were $18 in advance and would have been $24 at the gate.)
1969 was, to use a cliché, a watershed year. The Beatles
had happened and were happening still, and the music was changing monthly. The
Vietnam War was raging on. Drugs, love, and freedom were marching across the
country from every direction, particularly from the west coast. Revolution on
campuses, in fashion, on television, and in music stormed like a tidal wave
across the country, reaching every city and small town in America. Woodstock
was both a catalyst and a result of an era that amazed everyone.
In Rockin' the
Free World! How the Rock & Roll Revolution Changed America and the World,
Sean Kay writes that rock and roll was "an idea, an attitude, and a way of
thinking about the world." The rock and roll that exploded in New York
state at Woodstock, with hundreds of thousands of participants, and then
millions more who witnessed the film and soundtrack, changed history for all of
us.
Woodstock was released
six months later in March 1970 (the documentary film authorized by the
producers, now in debt after the costs the event far exceeded any profit).
Fifty years ago was certainly a different era. No smartphone cameras or audio
recorders; no YouTube Instagram, Twitter, or the Internet. Yet, the three-hour
film allowed everyone to experience Woodstock. Performances were included by
some already-famous artists and bands (Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Janis Joplin) …
and some were made famous by their appearance (Crosby, Stills & Nash,
Richie Havens, Santana). The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary
Feature in 1970, although it hardly needed the award to be successful. The
non-simultaneously-released soundtrack hit the record stores on May 11, 1970,
in time for my 18th birthday, graduation from high school and a summer of musical
bliss. Demonstrations against the Vietnam War ramped up when a generation who
witnessed Woodstock vicariously sang along to Country Joe's Vietnam song. It
was unfortunate, but soldiers fighting in that war came home to a generation
made even angrier by Jimi Hendrix's Star-Spangled Banner and its striking and
haunting guitar chords mimicking the sounds of battle. Yet, it is arguably
those songs that helped the Vietnam War end in 1974.
A half-century after
Woodstock, the songs and scenes are part of at least one or two generations'
psyches. A majority of parents, World War II vets, and Republicans were
repulsed. Yet, Max Yasgur, the Republican dairy farmer who allowed the event on
his land, supported the war. However, he believed in freedom of speech and was
repulsed by the discrimination others in the geographic area felt towards the
younger people attracted to Woodstock.
The fiftieth
anniversary of Woodstock was never pulled off this past summer. It was canceled
by the event coordinators. Only three of those four young men are alive today.
Yasgur moved to Florida and died four years after the event.
In Never a Dull
Moment: 1971 The Year That Rock Exploded (2016), David Hepworth wrote that Woodstock the
film "was a greater watershed than Woodstock the event. For the people who
actually endured three days in the mud and chaos … the festival was a standard
mixed bag. The people whose heads were really turned were the millions who had
the experience mediated through" the film. The Woodstock Generation grew dramatically
with the film and soundtrack.
You can relive
Woodstock, or experience it for the first time, by watching the documentaries
available on DVD at the library – the original three-hour Woodstock: 3 Days of
Peace and Music or PBS American Experience documentary, Woodstock: Three Days
that Defined a Generation. Two pictorial works, Woodstock 1969: The Lasting
Impact of the Counterculture (2018) and Woodstock: Three Days that Rocked the
World (2019) are full of wonderfully nostalgic photos, quotes, and memories.
If you were a teen or
young adult in 1969 or the years following, if you were at Woodstock or you
experienced it vicariously through the albums and documentary in 1970, the
words of Joni Mitchell (who never was at Woodstock but was the girlfriend of
Graham Nash) will resonate with you. I know they do with me.
"By the time we
got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong. And everywhere there was song
and celebration. And I dreamed I saw the bombers riding shotgun in the sky. And
they were turning into butterflies above our nation. We are stardust
billion-year-old carbon. We are golden, caught in the devil's bargain. And
we've got to get ourselves back to the garden."
