Woodstock from Someone Who Wasn't There

This is the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. 500,000 long-haired stoned members of my generation attended this three-day open air music festival. I was not one of them. But at least I admit it. For every person who attended there was another thousand who said they attended but really spent that weekend doing chores for mom. And while half a million rain soaked, bathroom deprived hippies grooved on three days of love and understanding, I was in LA bombarded by news updates on the Charles Manson murders.

I did see the movie Woodstock that came out the next year. Jesus, did that scene look crowded! And uncomfortable! Yeah, Hendrix and Janis were great, but good God, I'd have to go three days without a toilet! I always thought the tagline for the film should have been, "Great Music! Stereophonic Sound! Clean Rest Rooms!"

But like I said, anyone who was east of the Mississippi in the summer of '69 says they attended Woodstock. In fairness, some who didn't were probably so loaded they thought they were there. When their favorite Woodstock act was Lady Gaga that's a clue.

But one friend of mine claimed he was there and I believe him. Why? Because this is what he said, "Most of the time the music was really bad." Everyone remembers the headliners -- Crosby, Stills, & Nash, the Who, Joe Cocker -- but there were a lot of no-name bands that screeched through endless sets. Again, I wasn't there so I didn't hear for myself, but there's probably a reason the movie didn't include Quill (doing a 40 minute set consisting of four songs), the Keef Hartley Band, the Grease Band, and six or seven other headliners that died on the editing room floor. He said at times it was also hard to hear and impossible to see. There'd be hippies staggering around completely lost. Babies screaming, people talking through the music.

Another person I know was there was Grace Slick, lead singer of Jefferson Airplane. As luck would have it, I met her Friday night at the radio station. What a cool lady. She said the groups were housed at a nearby motel and airlifted by helicopter to a field behind the stage. So for most of the festival she watched bored musicians shoot pool.

She and the "plane" arrived on the scene at 9 pm, but the program was running just a tad long. They didn't get on stage until 6 am. Not the best time, I would imagine, to perform rock n' roll. But she thought it was an incredible experience and seeing 500,000 people from the air was a sight she'll never forget.

Amazingly, there were only two deaths. One from an overdose (duh!) and the other was run-over by a tractor. But considering the number of people, in such close quarters, with precious little food and shelter, the fact that there weren't riots and chaos and new Scientology chapters says a lot about my ge-ge-generation.

Woodstock was a statement of peace (I think it was made just before the Sha-na-na set). And a declaration of unity. Whether we were there or not I'm sure we'd all like to go there now -- to recapture those old feelings, to feel a sense of shared purpose, to buy a summer home we could escape to on the weekends.

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Comments

[situationcritical]

What was I doing during Woodstock?

Listening to little Michael Jackson, and laughing at the hippies and Jesus Freaks.

[stratdude]

Janis Joplin's performance was not in the original movie. She only appeared in a brief cameo.

[BirdsEatCats]

I was at Woodstock. If you look at the thousands of photos posted online, you will see that most of us had pretty short hair.
There were no screaming babies on the hill where we all saw the stage. The babies and their long-suffering hippy mothers were at the Hog Farm area - 'Movement City' on some maps - where they had their own small stage 'The Free Stage', a playground, and plenty of space, peace and love.
There was no real shortage of drinkable water. If you filled your jug when it was still cool, at 6 AM, there was no line. If you waited until 1 PM, the brightest and hottest time of day, there was a long line. The photographers were all out when the sun was at it's brightest, and the lines longest.
No real shortage of food, either. There was less food than many of us would have liked, and it was less convenient to get it, but the lines were infinitely more tolerable than the ones in my High School cafeteria. The food was better, too.
Some of the portable toilets were horribly overused and foul smelling. Many of us chose to dig holes in the forest, of which there was hundreds of acres. If 'sanitation' was so bad, why wasn't there an outbreak of dysentery? Sanitation is more of a problem on cruise ships, where thousands of people contract the Norovirus every year, than it was at Woodstock.

[edgraham]

I was not at Woodstock, I was working on the air in Baltimore playing their music at the time.

Glad to hear that Grace Slick is a cool lady. Funny how you can become infatuated with singers just be watching and hearing them. I have a long list starting with Dinah Shore - - Doris Day, Teresa Brewer, Connie Frances, Joanie Sommers, Grace Slick, Janis Joplin - - the list is long and now includes Christina Aguilera and lady Gaga.

How old is Taylor Swift? Have to be more careful.

[pizzmoe]

"long-haired stoned members of my generation " . Not exactly Emmy winning writing there.

[Tallulah Morehead - Huffpost Blogger]

Are you saying the then-young folks at Woodstock did not have long hair and were not stoned? Because, honey, they were.

[Humbert]

I think pizzmoe is simply saying that the writing is not very good, or at least not what one would expect from an emmy-winning writer. I tend to agree. You don't seem to be a close reader, Morehead. Maybe a little into your own reactions rather than what is actually being written.