Mark Hosenball: I Was At Woodstock. And I Hated It.
[Hosenball is an investigative correspondent for NEWSWEEK who covers national affairs.]
Stop being nostalgic for the 40-year-old concert. It was wet, crowded, and overhyped.
Woodstock wasn't the only thing that happened in the world in August 1969
If it's toxic to overdose on saccharine, then over the next few days, you should try to avoid the gathering deluge of reminiscence about Woodstock. It's the 40th anniversary of the upstate New York rock-and-roll extravaganza, and we in the media are already gorging ourselves on hazy recollections of the event—memories borne not so much from what actually happened, but from what hippie folklore says happened and from how popular imagination and wishful thinking transformed a chaotic mudfest into an epic pageant of peace and love. This wallow in artificially sweetened nostalgia is being supplemented by entertainment-industry efforts to exploit the occasion: according to The Associated Press, we'll soon be blessed with a remastered music CD of the festival, a new director's-cut DVD of the original film epic Woodstock, and a Woodstock comedy called Taking Woodstock, directed by Ang Lee. Several anniversary concerts have also been scheduled at the site of Max Yasgur's farm, which now features a concert stage and a museum dedicated to the 1960s.
As an authentic Woodstock attendee (or should I say victim?), I hate to rain on the procession of warm memories and good vibrations, but I will say this: wake up, folks. For some—maybe quite a few of us—who made the journey, Woodstock was, if not a nightmare, then a massive, teeming, squalid mess. If you like colossal traffic jams, torrential rain, reeking portable johns, barely edible food, and sprawling, disorganized crowds, then you would have found Woodstock a treat. For those of us who saw those things as a hassle, good music did not necessarily offset the discomfort. OK, for a lot of us who figured on buying tickets at the gate—and then arrived at the site to find that no box offices had been built—the fact that we got to hear top acts gratis was some compensation for the unpleasantness. And the spirit of the massive crowd, even if chemically mellowed by THC and other mood enhancers, was congenial, tolerant, and at times stoic. But in hindsight, what was Woodstock's bottom line? That 500,000 people jammed into in a mudhole didn't fight, riot, or annihilate each other? Is the fact that such a large crowd didn't become violent and start killing each other (albeit serenaded by sometimes brilliant musical performances) Woodstock's principal legacy? What's the big deal?
To be fair, maybe I was a bit too young for Woodstock, or what Woodstock turned out to be, though I probably shouldn't have been. A newly minted 17-year-old high-school graduate by August 1969, I nonetheless was a fairly accomplished patron of big-time pop or rock music events, having attended, inter alia, the American debut of Led Zeppelin at New York's Fillmore (they were the opening act for Iron Butterfly—In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida, Baby), a Newport Folk Festival (more of a rock event), and a Janis Joplin solo concert (the most memorable of the lot). The night before my high-school graduation party, I celebrated by watching Hair on Broadway. As the summer of '69 sweltered on, I scouted out additional entertainments, canceling one at the last minute due to fear of rain, only to find myself sitting at home watching the first men land on the moon.
For weeks, the organizers of Woodstock had been promoting their event with large ads (featuring the soon-to-be-immortal guitar logo) listing all the famous bands who were scheduled to play. Two of my closest high-school friends, with whom I had attended earlier events, suggested that we meet in New Jersey and drive up to Woodstock. We decided to travel the night before the festival was to begin because we hadn't bought tickets and figured that by arriving early, we not only might be able to get a choice parking spot, but also could avoid the massive ticket queues likely on the day the concert actually started. We did arrive in time to get a good parking spot in a forest clearing a few hundred yards from the stage. But the event was not quite the well-ordered megaconcert that had been advertised. No ticket gates, little food or other amenities, no fencing to separate the people who had paid from freeloaders like us—it was puzzling from the outset how the promoters were going to make back their investment, never mind deliver the scheduled performances...
Read entire article at Newsweek
Stop being nostalgic for the 40-year-old concert. It was wet, crowded, and overhyped.
Woodstock wasn't the only thing that happened in the world in August 1969
If it's toxic to overdose on saccharine, then over the next few days, you should try to avoid the gathering deluge of reminiscence about Woodstock. It's the 40th anniversary of the upstate New York rock-and-roll extravaganza, and we in the media are already gorging ourselves on hazy recollections of the event—memories borne not so much from what actually happened, but from what hippie folklore says happened and from how popular imagination and wishful thinking transformed a chaotic mudfest into an epic pageant of peace and love. This wallow in artificially sweetened nostalgia is being supplemented by entertainment-industry efforts to exploit the occasion: according to The Associated Press, we'll soon be blessed with a remastered music CD of the festival, a new director's-cut DVD of the original film epic Woodstock, and a Woodstock comedy called Taking Woodstock, directed by Ang Lee. Several anniversary concerts have also been scheduled at the site of Max Yasgur's farm, which now features a concert stage and a museum dedicated to the 1960s.
As an authentic Woodstock attendee (or should I say victim?), I hate to rain on the procession of warm memories and good vibrations, but I will say this: wake up, folks. For some—maybe quite a few of us—who made the journey, Woodstock was, if not a nightmare, then a massive, teeming, squalid mess. If you like colossal traffic jams, torrential rain, reeking portable johns, barely edible food, and sprawling, disorganized crowds, then you would have found Woodstock a treat. For those of us who saw those things as a hassle, good music did not necessarily offset the discomfort. OK, for a lot of us who figured on buying tickets at the gate—and then arrived at the site to find that no box offices had been built—the fact that we got to hear top acts gratis was some compensation for the unpleasantness. And the spirit of the massive crowd, even if chemically mellowed by THC and other mood enhancers, was congenial, tolerant, and at times stoic. But in hindsight, what was Woodstock's bottom line? That 500,000 people jammed into in a mudhole didn't fight, riot, or annihilate each other? Is the fact that such a large crowd didn't become violent and start killing each other (albeit serenaded by sometimes brilliant musical performances) Woodstock's principal legacy? What's the big deal?
To be fair, maybe I was a bit too young for Woodstock, or what Woodstock turned out to be, though I probably shouldn't have been. A newly minted 17-year-old high-school graduate by August 1969, I nonetheless was a fairly accomplished patron of big-time pop or rock music events, having attended, inter alia, the American debut of Led Zeppelin at New York's Fillmore (they were the opening act for Iron Butterfly—In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida, Baby), a Newport Folk Festival (more of a rock event), and a Janis Joplin solo concert (the most memorable of the lot). The night before my high-school graduation party, I celebrated by watching Hair on Broadway. As the summer of '69 sweltered on, I scouted out additional entertainments, canceling one at the last minute due to fear of rain, only to find myself sitting at home watching the first men land on the moon.
For weeks, the organizers of Woodstock had been promoting their event with large ads (featuring the soon-to-be-immortal guitar logo) listing all the famous bands who were scheduled to play. Two of my closest high-school friends, with whom I had attended earlier events, suggested that we meet in New Jersey and drive up to Woodstock. We decided to travel the night before the festival was to begin because we hadn't bought tickets and figured that by arriving early, we not only might be able to get a choice parking spot, but also could avoid the massive ticket queues likely on the day the concert actually started. We did arrive in time to get a good parking spot in a forest clearing a few hundred yards from the stage. But the event was not quite the well-ordered megaconcert that had been advertised. No ticket gates, little food or other amenities, no fencing to separate the people who had paid from freeloaders like us—it was puzzling from the outset how the promoters were going to make back their investment, never mind deliver the scheduled performances...