Woodstock
[The following is my review of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, which I attended in upstate New York, August 15-17, 1969. The article appeared in the September 1969 issue of Bragg Briefs, the "underground" newspaper published by G.I.'s United Against the War in Fayetteville, NC. G.I.'s United was a group of active duty soldiers stationed at Fort Bragg, NC. The article was copied by me in July 2009 from a Xerox copy sent to me by Dave Wachter, a fellow member of G.I.'s United, who got it from the FBI after he filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking his file back in the late 1970s or early '80s. An effort has been made to copy the article as exactly as it appeared as possible. I was listed as one of the editors of Bragg Briefs at the time, but there was no "byline" under the headline "Woodstock." I have my three tickets ($7 each) framed on my wall because the concert was free by the time I arrived at Max Yasgur's farm.]
You saw us on TV and read about us in the newspapers and magazines and you probably wish you had been there with us. Yes, I was there and I can't help but be proud of it. For something happened at the Woodstock Festival, An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Music and Peace to give it most of its names, that was so beautiful and so hopeful that everyone who was there wants very much to be identified with it.
You know that it was miserable up there in the Catskill Mountains at White Lake, N.Y. It rained hard Saturday morning and again Sunday afternoon. Traffic jams kept a lot us from even reaching the festival until the first day was all over. It was a hassle just to get supplied with food and water and most of us just decided it was more fun to be dirty than to risk hepatitis by swimming in the lake. And sometimes when you needed to relieve yourself or burst a bladder it required more skill than you need on an infiltration course to get out of the crowd to the stinking johns. But despite all the hardships only 3 people died which was balanced by two births in a crowd that made us temporarily the third largest city in New York.
What made all this not only worthwhile but a transcendental experience was "the spirit of Woodstock." For three days half a million souls lived together in the spirit of Christ, Buddha and Gandhi. We did not need police or government or any of the other apparatus of artificial control that society deems necessary. That is not to say there was no organization -- there was lots of organization. Everyone organized to help everyone else. The festival people kept the water, food, emergency vehicles (including an Army medivac helicopter) and music coming. The concession people kept the prices relatively reasonable, the Hog Farm people kept their sanctuary marvelously clean and fed thousands of people free meals, ran a dispensary and bad trip tent, Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters did their thing and competed successfully with the main festival with their own free stage, and even some of the local folks helped out with water and 30,000 free sandwiches.
The woods between the festival and Hog Park was reminiscent of the elves kingdom in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Head shops were doing business amongst the leaves and lichens and dope dealers were peddling their wares quite openly. At any time you might wander on to a group of wandering musicians surrounded by dancers writhing frantically to the infectious beat of the congas and the fantastic flights of the flutes.
But it wasn't the organizers, formal or informal, that made Woodstock. It was the people called from all over creation by who knows what magic (they were expecting maybe 50,000 a month before, maybe 120,000 a week before). If you had water you passed the thermos, if someone had dope he passed the pipe. Neither Newsweek nor I saw a single fight the whole festival. At first it was scary - all those people - there's got to be a water riot sometime. And a rumor circulated that Rockefeller was going to bring in the National Guard and call it a disaster area because of water and food shortages. Nobody could really believe that it was really going to be 3 Days of Music and Peace. But it was. By Sunday we believed. Every one was open and friendly, everyone was stoned on music, dope, & people. We danced slipping and sliding in the mud and trash. The skies were flashed a hundred thousand peace signs when they yielded up flowers (from a helicopter).
And the music. The music brought us there and we lived it. The sound system was superb despite the hangers-on who had to be constantly booed out of the light towers. The music started at 1 or 2 in the afternoon and continued until after dawn the next morning. You couldn't absorb it all. The highlights for me were Canned Heat, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish, The Band, Johnny Winter, Butterfield Blues Band - but those are just the groups I happened to be especially up for.
Woodstock was a happening, a total sensory experience, a successful experiment in communal living, a pig-free society, a gathering of the turned-on generation, a rock festival to begin all rock festivals. But most of all, Woodstock was Love & Peace and a way for this soldier to forget for an instant formations and haircuts and wars and to be reminded that there can be a better way of life for all of us.
No comments:
Post a Comment