Forty five years ago this week saw The Woodstock Music Festival in New York. With acts such as The Who, Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Joan Baez, Sly & The Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, Arlo Guthrie, Richie Havens, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Santana, Ravi Shankar, John Sebastian of The Lovin’ Spoonful, Country Joe McDonald & The Fish, and so many others. Can you imagine that if the other acts that were invited and refused had played what a wild story that would have been? Invited and declining were The Doors because they thought it would be “…a second class repeat of Monterey” Pop Festival; The Beatles who were on the verge of breaking up and had not performed live in over three years, Led Zepplin said they didn’t want to be just another band on the bill, The Byrds thought it would be like every other music festival, Chicago (Transit Authority) had originally agreed to perform and had a scheduling change that conflicted with the dates, and others including Joni Mitchell, Iron Butterfly, Jethro Tull, Spirit, Free, The Moody Blues, Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention (Frank said there’d be too much mud!), The Jeff Beck Group and more. My favorite story of declining an invitation to Woodstock came from Tommy James of the Shondells. He said, “We could have kicked ourselves. We were in Hawaii and my secretary called and said, “There’s this pig farmer in upstate New York that wants you to play in his field.” That’s exactly how it was put to me. So we passed and we realized what we missed a couple days later!” The Woodstock Music & Art Fair as it was officially billed, was touted as An Aquarian Exposition: Three Days Of Peace & Music. The promoters planned on approximately fifty thousand people, maybe a few more if the weather was great. What they got were crowds of near 400,000 people in rain, mud, heat and humidity. Ticket prices were originally $18.00 for all three days but when the crowds swelled the fences were taken down and the festival was made free. People began arriving days before the festival and by the time the concert started, the traffic jams were being reported around the world. Arlo Guthrie announced from the stage that the New York Thruway was closed because of traffic. New York Governor Rockefeller wanted to send ten thousand National Guard troops in to help with food shortage, poor sanitary conditions and to help restore order. The concert promoters were successful in discouraging him from taking such action, stating that the military presence could result in huge problems including riots. During the three days of concerts there were two deaths and two births. Over all it was viewed at the time and still is today as a victory for peace, music, racial and social harmony. Max Yazgur, the owner of the property in Bethel NY where the event was held, pointed out that with nearly half a million people filled with potential for disaster, riots, looting, and catastrophe spent three days with music and peace on their minds. He said, “If we join them we can turn those adversities that are the problems of America today into a hope for a brighter and more peaceful future.” Some of the little known and very strange facts about Woodstock are as good as the famous lore that surrounds the event to this day. Joni Mitchell’s song “Woodstock” is one of the songs most closely aligned with the festival. She wasn’t there. She had been invited but followed her manager’s advice instead chose to appear on The Dick Cavett Show where, with tears streaming down her face, she watched on a television as it all unfolded. Most of the hippies and flower children that attended went with the expressed goal of protesting the Vietnam War abroad and racial tension in the United States. Abbie Hoffman’s Youth International Party (Yippies) demanded $10,000.00 from concert organizers to avoid any unpleasant disruptions of the proceedings. The festival promoters downplayed the numbers to local officials as the concert dates drew near. They had told local leaders they expected about fifty thousand people. Days prior to the show they had sold more than one hundred eighty thousand tickets. In the end, nearly half a million showed up and it is estimated that well over one million had to turn around because of traffic jams, closed roads and difficulties reaching the concert venue because of crowds. Hearing there was a shortage of food, a Jewish community center made sandwiches with 200 loaves of bread, forty pounds of meat and two gallons of pickles. The sandwiches were distributed to concert goers by nuns. Though the festival mood was clearly anti-war, ironically the festival would most likely have turned tragic if not for the United States Army who airlifted in food, medical teams and even performers who would have been stuck in traffic on the ground. The hippy crowd was told that the Army is with us, they are not against us. There were more than forty five doctors there without pay because the supported the festival’s message celebration of peace and music. Organizers and promoters of Woodstock Ventures were over $1.3 million in debt by the end of the shows. It took them well over ten years to pay off the backers. They did this through the sale of audio and video recording rights from the production and sale of albums and the Woodstock documentaries. At the beginning of the festival there were very few reporters on the scene. When traffic tie ups and large crowds became apparent, national media coverage began and it was emphasizing the problems. Front page headlines in New York papers included “Traffic Uptight At Hippiefest” and the NY Daily News printed “Hippies Mired In A Sea Of Mud.” Coverage became more positive by the end of the festival in part because the parents of concertgoers called the media and told them that based on the phone calls from their children the reporting on TV and newspaper was misleading. Although I enjoy so much of the music from this era and have even had the pleasure of meeting and talking with a handful of artists who performed during the Woodstock Festival, I was not in attendance. I wanted to go but my parents said that since I had just turned eight, I should not be allowed to go alone. And they didn’t want to go so I sat at home with the rest of the country and watched as the events unfolded and details began to emerge from the home of Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate in Los Angeles as followers of Charles Manson murdered Tate and her friends Folgers coffee heiress Abigail Folger, Polish actor and script writer Wojciech Frykowski, Hollywood hairstylist Jay Sebring and friend of the property caretaker Steven Parent, who was the only one shot. The rest of the dead died from over one hundred stab wounds. The next day the Manson clan killed wealthy LA businessman Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary. Within hours of the Manson killings and just a few miles away, the haunted mansion attraction held its grand opening inside Disneyland Also during the same weekend as the Woodstock festival, category five hurricane Camille ravaged the Mississippi coast bringing the most powerful hurricane to ever make landfall in the united states. When the storm ended it left 248 people dead, countless injured and billions of dollars in damage. This week is also the forty fifth anniversary of photographer Ian MacMillan taking the iconic picture of the Beatles in the London crosswalk for the cover of the Abbey Road album.
Posted on: Sat, 09 Aug 2014 19:21:07 +0000