On 40th anniversary, Woodstock legacy felt across vibrant (but less groovy) festival circuit
By Jake Coyle, APFriday, August 14, 2009
Across festival circuit, Woodstock’s legacy felt
NEW YORK — Today’s robust festival culture owes much to Woodstock — lessons from both its incredible success and its logistical nightmares.
“It stands out in everybody’s mind as the originator,” said Michele Scoleri, artistic director of Bumbershoot, the annual Seattle festival that will draw tens of thousands Labor Day weekend for its 39th annual fest.
Giant rock festivals fan out every summer with ambitions for just a fraction of Woodstock’s impact. They are more efficiently run, more organized and don’t need warnings to avoid the brown acid.
The promoters of Woodstock — Michael Lang, Joel Rosenman, John Roberts and Artie Kornfeld — hoped their frantic, last-minute efforts would be enough to pull off what today would take a year to prepare. The concert — which drew more than 400,000 to Bethel, N.Y., Aug. 15-18, 1969 — did come off, though its many problems (the miles-long traffic, the rain, the lack of food and water) only enhanced its mythology.
In his recent memoir, “The Road to Woodstock,” Lang writes: “From the beginning, I believed that if we did our job right and from the heart, prepared the ground and set the right tone, people would reveal their higher selves and create something amazing.”
Woodstock was many things — a brief, innocent moment of peace and music — but it was also a trailblazer to a festival circuit that has exploded in recent years.
“A lot of them are modeled after Woodstock — Bonnaroo and Coachella, in particular,” Lang said in an interview. “There was a ritual that was created that keeps getting replicated.”
Woodstock was not the first big American rock festival: Monterey Pop was. The 1967 California festival was the forerunner to rock festivals. About 200,000 attended the event, which is remembered largely for its fashionable crowds and incredible performances by Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding and others — all captured in D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary “Monterey Pop.”
In 1968, the Miami Pop Festival followed, which Lang also organized.
And just weeks before Woodstock was the Atlanta International Pop Festival, held at the Atlanta International Raceway. Led Zeppelin, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Janis Joplin were among those who performed.
The New York Times nearly didn’t cover Woodstock, partly expecting it to be merely a sequel to the previous gatherings.
The follow-up to Woodstock was Altamont, held at the Altamont Speedway in Northern California in December 1969. It was expected to be the West Coast version of Woodstock, but violence marred the festival, including a homicide that occurred while the Rolling Stones played. Altamont was an early hint at just how rare a feat Woodstock was.
In the years after Woodstock, much of the hippie culture was commercialized. So, too, was the festival experience. Festivals like 1974’s California Jam sprung up to capitalize on the trend.
Though the European festival circuit continued to grow, rock festivals in the U.S. generally declined in the late ’70s and ’80s as the music and culture shifted. There were exceptions, of course, including 1985’s international Live Aid concerts to benefit those starving in Africa.
Things rebounded in the early ’90s with Lollapalooza and the Warped Tour. The 30th anniversary of Woodstock in 1999 was another low point, when outraged patrons rebelled against the festival’s overt capitalism and $4 water bottles.
But in the last decade, the spirit of Woodstock (and California Jam) has been taken up by a number of well-attended, well-organized mega-festivals such as Tennessee’s Bonnaroo, Southern California’s Coachella and the reincarnated, Chicago-based Lollapalooza. There are many more, too, including Austin City Limits, the Pitchfork Music Festival and the upstart All Points West, which recently held its second festival in New York.
Now just might be the heyday of American festival-going. Lineups are well-curated, portable toilet lines are short, security is mostly handled professionally, the sound is generally good and amenities are easily purchased. Promoters are more responsible than Woodstock’s were, too, taking green measures to blunt the environmental impact and clean up after themselves.
The festival experience might be less organic, but it’s also far more comfy — especially for those who can afford VIP. At many events, backstage access and air-conditioned tents can be purchased for a few thousand dollars. Acts are paid well (headliners in the millions) and concert promoters pull in ticket sales that typically go for more than $200 for three days of music. (Tickets for Woodstock were sold for $18 in advance — about $105 today, accounting for inflation — but as much as half the crowd was allowed to crash for free.)
“The enthusiasm of some of the people who go to festivals today might match those who attended Woodstock, but what’s lacking is the spontaneity,” said Marley Brant, author of “Join Together! Forty Years of the Rock Festival.” ”With so much corporate sponsorship involved now, it’s a little harder to get down and share with your brother.”
Festivals thrive on selling not only a smorgasbord of acts (more than 100 played at this year’s Bonnaroo), but on promising a communal, generational experience: Miss it and you’ll regret it, is the message.
In an Internet age where human contact is increasingly unecessary, rock festivals are still bringing as many as 80,000 together — even if the events aren’t as groovy as Woodstock.
“The feeling of people coming together in a community atmosphere around music and art will never be irrelevant,” said Scoleri. “I still believe people do want to come together and celebrate with other people something that’s larger than life.”
Tags: Atlanta, California, Fairs And Festivals, Labor day, More, New York, North America, Recreation And Leisure, United States, Woodstock
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August 16, 2009: 7:18 pm
The Woodstock Festival did not take place in Woodstock, New York but in the town of Bethel which is sixty-seven miles due west. The second day of that mythic, three-day concert coincided with my eleventh birthday (I am going to be fifty-one on Sunday. Yikes! Where did the time go?). I remember quite clearly my friend Tom Finkle and I riding our bikes up to the bridge on South Street that overlooks Route 17 - a four lane highway which snakes its way into Sullivan County where the great event took place. It looked like a long and narrow parking lot. The New York State Thruway had been shut down. To the best of my knowledge, that had never happened before and has not happened since. To say that it was an exciting time to be alive almost sounds redundant. Less than four weeks earlier, two human beings had walked on the surface of the moon, a technological feat that will probably out shine every other event of the twentieth century in the history books that will be written a thousand years from now. As future decades unwind, it is a certainty that the photographic image of half a million kids, partying and dancing in the mud, will not continue to sustain the cultural significance that it does for us today. The years will pass by, the people who were lucky enough to be there will one day be no more, and the Woodstock Festival will be erased from living memory; a mere footnote to a very crowded century. But what a freaking party, baby! “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” Emma Goldman 1869-1940 Dance with me, Emma! The last time I looked at my videocassette of Woodstock (which was well over a decade ago) I wondered about the fates of the half-a-million gathered on the fields of Max Yasgur’s farm in Sullivan County on that distant weekend. The passage of four decades decrees that a third or more of them have passed on. The average age of the attendees was about twenty-two. Today would find them approaching their mid-sixties; the age many of their grandparents were in 1969! Where I come from, Woodstock has a special meaning to people because it happened here - or close enough to count. From where I now sit, Bethel is a mere forty-two miles northwest. According to this morning’s local paper, seventy-five media outlets from all over the world will be covering the events commemorating the anniversary this weekend. That’s enough of a reason for me to stay the hell away. I’m not as crowd-friendly as I once was. Besides, I would have preferred to attend the real thing forty years ago. That would have been too cool for words! Nostalgia is a permanent human condition. Each generation is nostalgic for the last. It absolutely boggles the mind to think that the year 2049 will find those of us who survive looking back on these hideous times with tender longing. Given our silly human quirks, that will probably be the case. Still, it’s hard not to reflect on the hope that was prevalent in the summer of Woodstock. We want to believe that there is a magical future where, as John Lennon once imagined, there are no countries; nothing to kill or die for. Maybe we will one day arrive at that wondrous place. Maybe…. http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com Tom Degan |
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August 15, 2009: 4:35 pm
The Woodstock Festival did not take place in Woodstock, New York but in the town of Bethel which is sixty-seven miles due west. The second day of that mythic, three-day concert coincided with my eleventh birthday (I am going to be fifty-one on Sunday. Yikes! Where did the time go?). I remember quite clearly my friend Tom Finkle and I riding our bikes up to the bridge on South Street that overlooks Route 17 - a four lane highway which snakes its way into Sullivan County where the great event took place. It looked like a long and narrow parking lot. The New York State Thruway had been shut down. To the best of my knowledge, that had never happened before and has not happened since. To say that it was an exciting time to be alive almost sounds redundant. Less than four weeks earlier, two human beings had walked on the surface of the moon, a technological feat that will probably out shine every other event of the twentieth century in the history books that will be written a thousand years from now. As future decades unwind, it is a certainty that the photographic image of half a million kids, partying and dancing in the mud, will not continue to sustain the cultural significance that it does for us today. The years will pass by, the people who were lucky enough to be there will one day be no more, and the Woodstock Festival will be erased from living memory; a mere footnote to a very crowded century. But what a freaking party, baby! This weekend I’ll be listening to my copy of the Woodstock Soundtrack LP - on vinyl, of course. The very thought of listening to it on a compact disc seems somehow sacrilegious. Although I could have done without Sha-Na-Na’s version of At The Hop, all in all it’s a pretty good collection of tunes. I have always envied my cousin, the noted falconer Tom Cullen, who was a witness to Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. Can you imagine? Canned Heat’s performance of Going Up The Country is one of the great moments in rock history; and for the last forty years, whenever I heard Joan Baez singing Joe Hill, I have had to pause whatever I was doing at the moment and concentrate on it - It is one of the most moving pieces ever recorded on tape. “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” Emma Goldman 1869-1940 Dance with me, Emma! The last time I looked at my videocassette of Woodstock (which was well over a decade ago) I wondered about the fates of the half-a-million gathered on the fields of Max Yasgur’s farm in Sullivan County on that distant weekend. The passage of four decades decrees that a third or more of them have passed on. The average age of the attendees was about twenty-two. Today would find them approaching their mid-sixties; the age many of their grandparents were in 1969! There are many good people of that generation who have kept the spirit of the sixties alive - or have tried to anyway. America is not the same country it was forty years ago. 2009 finds us even more polarized than we were during the age of Richard Nixon. It is no longer merely a “generation gap” that is tearing America apart. The gaps today are almost too numerous to catalog: the political gap; the health insurance gap; the employment gap; the racial gap; the education gap; the class and income gaps. The world is a lot more troubled and sadder than it was in that long ago, magical summer of 1969. Sometimes I feel like a hostage to time. The truth is, for all the technological wonders of the twenty-first century, I just don’t like being here. NOTE TO MY FRIENDS: Where I come from, Woodstock has a special meaning to people because it happened here - or close enough to count. From where I now sit, Bethel is a mere forty-two miles northwest. According to this morning’s local paper, seventy-five media outlets from all over the world will be covering the events commemorating the anniversary this weekend. That’s enough of a reason for me to stay the hell away. I’m not as crowd-friendly as I once was. Besides, I would have preferred to attend the real thing forty years ago. That would have been too cool for words! Nostalgia is a permanent human condition. Each generation is nostalgic for the last. It absolutely boggles the mind to think that the year 2049 will find those of us who survive looking back on these hideous times with tender longing. Given our silly human quirks, that will probably be the case. Still, it’s hard not to reflect on the hope that was prevalent in the summer of Woodstock. We want to believe that there is a magical future where, as John Lennon once imagined, there are no countries; nothing to kill or die for. Maybe we will one day arrive at that wondrous place. Maybe…. http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com Tom Degan |
 Realitysurfer |
August 14, 2009: 8:20 pm
Please take a moment to check out my new LSD Documentary film. Features the CIA LSD Brothel in San Francisco (MK ULTRA), Groucho Marx’s LSD Trip….Doc Ellis pitches his no-hitter while high. Tim Leary’s Miricle of Good friday Experiment is explored with one of the original PREACHERS who took part. LSD and the Protest Movement, JFK & LSD plus more. All posted for free at this youtube link..please share this knowledge. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZdz0G4lG6k&feature=channel_page |
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August 14, 2009: 4:42 pm
Jake, my man. Sam Cooke didn’t play the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, mainly because he died in December of 1964. You may have meant to say Otis Redding. Erik Greene |
Tom Degan