Published: August 12, 2008 09:28 pm            

Bruce's History Lessons: Woodstock: ‘Three Days of Peace and Music’

“By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half-a-million strong, and everywhere was a song and celebration.” –Joni Mitchell

One of the seminal events in the cultural history of America began this week (Aug. 15) in 1969 when young music lovers from around the country began arriving at Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, N.Y. “Three Days of Peace and Music,” as the Woodstock Music and Art Fair billed itself, was all of that and then some. The concert promoters had told the good citizens of Bethel that the festival would attract 50,000 people. It attracted 450,000 people, causing traffic jams so long that parts of the New York State Thruway were closed. With no way to control such crowds, the concert promoters gave up trying to sell tickets and Woodstock became a “free concert.” Food quickly ran out and sanitation facilities were hopelessly inadequate. Bethel’s residents awoke to the smell of marijuana and went to bed with it. Hard drugs such as LSD were everywhere, resulting in bad drug trips that kept medical personnel working nonstop. And then it began to rain — hard.

But, as advertised, there was no violence or crime (other than trespassing and a few drug busts), and Woodstock promoted a sense of communal harmony, respectful co-existence and unselfishness that astonished the nation and the world.

It even earned these young adults a nickname — “The Woodstock Generation” — which in later years came to symbolize a curious duality of peace, social equality and environmentalism on the one hand, and cultural narcissism, youthful hedonism and mindless excess on the other.

But at Woodstock, music was the draw, and there was an orgy of it by the greatest rock and folk bands of the time — The Who, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Richie Havens, Joe Cocker, Joan Baez, Santana, Jimi Hendrix and more. For three days, the music played, rain or shine, while the gatherers sang, danced, romped in the mud, took drugs, slept and slept together. “Sex, drugs and rock-and-roll,” which became the slogan of the ‘70s, got its test drive at Woodstock.

And when it was over, everyone went home with a memory that, as hard as it must be for many of these “flower children” to come to grips with, they are now sharing with their own children and (gasp!) grandchildren.

Which leaves one question: Why was a festival in Bethel, N.Y, called Woodstock? Because the nearby town of Woodstock was home to one of the decade’s music icons, Bob Dylan, and the promoters sought to take advantage of that. They assumed, given Woodstock’s proximity to Bethel and the concert’s all-star lineup, that Dylan would join the party, but — ever the inscrutable contrarian — he never did.

Bruce Kauffmann’s e-mail address is bruce@historylessons.net.

        

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