Woodstock Anniversary
by Has it really been 40 years since Woodstock?
Has it really been 40 years since all the music makers gathered on the 600 acres dairy farm of Max Yasgur in Woodstock?. That feat garnered more publicity than anything else I can remember including the Vietnam and the Iraq wars. I watched it all on TV with everyone else in the US and elsewhere. Bands playing on the stage in the rain, Crowds sliding on the wet muddy ground. Girls taking off their shirts and bras letting the rain wash off the mud. Smoking maryjane and nobody giving a damn. It was the most peaceful and spectacular musical festival held in the US and maybe anywhere else, rain, mud, weed, flower children, and all.
Image via Wikipedia
The promoter’s plan was for a crowd of 150,000 but it soon became clear that was under estimation in a big way. Within hours the ticket stands were overrun and the festival became a free show. Road jams extended 20 miles and 450,000 people were estimated to be there. Nobody could be sure of the count. The hosting community of Bethel were petrified that it would be pure unadulterated chaos, but the amazing thing was, it wasn’t.
Image via Wikipedia
The bands played and gave some of their best performances ever, despite the rain and short circuits that could have been fatal. Three concert goers died, some suffered drug overdoses and minor injuries, but nobody was injured from fights. There was no violence whatever. Among the bands and singers were Janice Joplin, The Grateful Dead, Jim Hendrix, Richie Havens, Arlo Guthrie, and Crosby Sills and Nash. Joplin and Hendrix died just a year later.
Image via Wikipedia
The culture during the early 60’s were the flower children who smoked pot and lived together in communes. I remember when we drove through Atlanta the hippies would be standing around on the sidewalk in their long hair, ragged jeans or dresses sweeping the ground. They looked too stoned to be a danger to anybody. We would drive down the streets waving to them and they waved back. We didn’t think of them doing any harm except to themselves until Charles Manson’s band of screwballs came along. The hippies of the 60’s had their hopes and dreams. They were for the most part good kids who had had their fill of war. I think we all admired their philosophy. Too bad it wasn’t to be.
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Post CommentHazel Crowther
On August 14, 2009 at 6:21 am
Nice writing, I was just a bit too young and living in the Uk but heard about it and since then loved watching coverage and listening to the music of this momentous event.
James DeVere
On August 14, 2009 at 6:33 am
You beat me to it girl! j xxoo
ken bultman
On August 14, 2009 at 6:41 am
Those who lived the ’60s can’t remember them. Woodstock was the birth of widespread modern drug use in the U.S. made to look beautiful in the mud and the rain by mainstream media.
ken bultman
On August 14, 2009 at 6:43 am
Those who lived the ’60s can’t remember them. Woodstock was the birth of modern widespread drug use and is not something I celebrate.
ceegirl
On August 14, 2009 at 7:19 am
things are different now.
Vaibhav Diwaker
On August 14, 2009 at 7:37 am
Never heard about this in India. I will look for more detail on internet. Thanks for sharing.
Christine Ramsay
On August 14, 2009 at 8:12 am
I remember it well. I remember flower power was very much in here in the UK too. It was a peaceful time. I enjoyed the article.
Christine
raman13
On August 14, 2009 at 8:33 am
Good stuff
I like it
Thanks
Best Regards
Jenny Heart
On August 14, 2009 at 8:35 am
Well spoken with a ending to fit this writing piece quite nicely. Well done!
Ramalingam
On August 14, 2009 at 9:27 am
A graphic account of the 60’s.Thanks for sharing.
Joe Dorish
On August 14, 2009 at 10:48 am
Too young for Woodstock but one of the reasons it was such a success was where they had it in NY. Such a beautiful place with not much around besides farms. If they had it in or near a city forget it, nothing but trouble.
lindalulu
On August 14, 2009 at 11:14 am
I wish I could have gone to this concert…My brother did but I was just too young! Too bad things didn’t work out the way of the 60s wanted them too!
CA Johnson
On August 14, 2009 at 11:36 am
I wasn’t alive in the 60s, but I am familiar with Woodstock so I enjoyed reading your article.
Brenda Nelson
On August 14, 2009 at 12:13 pm
I was there!!!
Okay.. not really, but doesnt everyone say they were there?
I guess the proof of being there is not remembering being there.
Jeremy James Noye
On August 14, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Peace, love, and happiness.
Thanks for a great article to commemorate this great event!
bjr
On August 14, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Woodstock.The best.Good article
CHAN LEE PENG
On August 14, 2009 at 12:50 pm
This is such an enjoyable article to share. Have my liked it definitely.
PR Mace
On August 14, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Woodstock! I wish I had been old enough to go. What a ride that would have been.
J.L. Eck
On August 14, 2009 at 1:59 pm
I don’t think that the hippie movement wasn’t to be. I am too young to have been a part of all of that, but I do know that the idealism of that way of life still exists. It hasn’t been lost, just redesigned. People to this day carry that spirit with them and believe that life should be a matter of free will, etc. I think they just figured out how to keep the spectacle of it all away from the media and government which tried to destroy it. Great job Ruby!
Realitysurfer
On August 14, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Please take a moment to check out my new LSD Documentary film.
POWER AND CONTROL :LSD IN THE 60’s
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
Tanya Wallace
On August 14, 2009 at 5:18 pm
You always write provocative and interesting works! I loved the ending note.Excellent work Ruby!
cebuanaeyez
On August 14, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Great story Ruby…wish I could have experienced Woodstock.
Moses Ingram
On August 14, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Thanks Ruby for some great memories.
Ruby Hawk
On August 14, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Thank you everyone for your comments. Wouldn’t it have been fun to be there? Ken, my man, we might not have had as many drugs before but I’m not so sure of that, remember the ” Dope Fiends” of the day and I’m sure we had more drunks on the streets. anyway the time passed quickly and it’s just a memory for those who participated. I wasn’t even in the equation.
Chambo
On August 15, 2009 at 12:38 am
Ruby,
Bit to young to actually remember the Woodstock 69 but have the dvd of the infamous Woodstock 99 and love it.
Nice work,
RJ
WriteEditSeek
On August 15, 2009 at 1:38 am
Cool article, Ruby. I loved how you incorporated personal observations into it. I often wish I would have grown up in the 60s. What an amazing time, which must have seemed ripe with possibility. I am especially drawn to the Beat Poets, though I think they hit their peak a little earlier than the 60s, didn’t they?
giftarist
On August 15, 2009 at 3:57 am
Interesting piece!
deep blue
On August 15, 2009 at 9:36 am
Another great write. Thanks Ruby.
Brad Wellen
On August 15, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Woodstock; 3 days of peace and music, 40 years of impact. The freak flag still flies high… precioustimeny.com/blog/?p=3600
chris73
On August 15, 2009 at 2:25 pm
“They looked too stoned to be a danger to anybody” that is the key! Stoned by drugs, relegion, alcohol internet or what ever makes us realy great sheeps
Lostash
On August 15, 2009 at 3:37 pm
An iconic event for sure. Not so sure I would have wanted to go personally…….I bet it was all a bit too smelly!
Ruby Hawk
On August 15, 2009 at 7:01 pm
LOL, Lostash, You are probably right. It might have been a little much in person.
chris 73, we have to watch out for that. We mustn’t be led like sheep by any movement. Always think for yourself.
You have to admit the idea was beautiful.Peace and love. Isn’t it what we all preach?
Collette Edwards
On August 16, 2009 at 12:43 am
I was still a bit to young to go but I do remember. But then they say if you remember the sixties then you weren’t really there LOL..
Rudy another great peace of the past from you be carefull your gonna tell your age hee hee!!
Tom Degan
On August 16, 2009 at 1:05 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
Goshen, NY
spoiledhoops11
On August 16, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Interesting article. I didnt grow up during this time obviously but i read about it in school. It was interesting hearing your perspective of the whole event. Those were some very interesting times.
AngelaDavid
On August 17, 2009 at 9:32 pm
Great timing with your article Ruby. Woodstock was definitely a sign of the times. Civil Rights was the superior issue of the day. That was during the same time my Dad lost his eye as he got off the airplane coming home from the DMZ zone in Vietnam. Demonstrators attacked the soldiers as viciously as free-birds attacked an innocence that was destroyed at Woodstock. Many reasons to remember.
mystery61
On August 17, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Great story, wish I could have been there but I was much too young! lol
kate smedley
On August 18, 2009 at 5:17 am
Woodstock is legendary for many reasons, thanks for this great article Ruby,what a memory to have. Your closing comments said it all.
Duff D Moss
On August 18, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Before my time but it must have been something because the legend refuses to die. Regardless of what people think of it, it left an imprint in human consciousness.
revivor
On August 20, 2009 at 2:54 am
I still go to a festival every year in the Isle of Wight – a magical weekend with all ages mixing, chatting and sharing stories about blues and rock about guitarists and songwriters from Bobby Dylan to Lily Allen and from Amy Winehouse to Neil Young. Keep going while you can is my advice!!