Welcome to this week’s Tales from the Turntable! Throughout the year, I’ve covered almost every facet possible about music, including bands, songs, albums and rumors alike; however, I’ve never covered live music. This came to my surprise, as I often find myself waiting with bated breath for my favorite musicians to announce a show near me. Now that we’re getting closer and closer to summer break, I’d like to close out this year with a trilogy of articles covering the most famous — and sometimes infamous — series of concerts in modern music.
For the next two weeks, I’ll be going over each Woodstock festival, hopefully giving an insight into the state of musical culture at the time and the minds of American youth. This week we’ll be looking at the very beginning.
Before getting into the music, it’s important to look at America as a whole during this time. The late 1960s was a time of intense tension. The civil rights movement had only just ended segregation in most places in the country, but bigotry was still around. Coupled with the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, many across the nation feared for the future.
Across the Pacific Ocean, the U.S. was still waging war against North Vietnam, much to the displeasure of many Americans. Richard Nixon had just taken office as president, promising to pull out of Vietnam as soon as possible. It wouldn’t be until 1973 that he fulfilled that promise.
The unstable state of the political sphere had caused many young Americans to seek escapism through both visual and aural art. Through this expression of intense emotion, the hippie movement was born.
The festival idea came from the mind of 25-year-old Michael Lang, who had just dropped out of New York University to pursue a career in the music business, primarily focusing on concert promotion. In late 1968, Lang and his friend Artie Kornfeld began to plan a new festival designed to celebrate the music and social change of the era. Hoping to secure a spot in the small town of Woodstock, New York, the duo was quickly shot down. In an effort to keep their idea afloat, they eventually landed a deal with a farmer in Bethel, about 60 miles south of Woodstock.
With a venue locked in, the two began searching for artists to book. Initially, almost no one wanted to sign on, but the duo was eventually able to land big-name acts like Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jimi Hendrix and The Who.
While Lang and Kornfeld told Bethel city council that estimated attendance was to be no more than 50,000, the actual attendance was almost 500,000. Many concertgoers had also brought in copious amounts of drugs, with 752 confirmed drug overdoses over the course of three days, two of which ended up being fatal. There were also reports of up to eight women having miscarriages over the weekend, though the actual number is often disputed.
Common amenities quickly became scarce across the farm; parking filled up almost immediately and lines of cars stretched for miles across the countryside waiting for a chance to enter. Bathrooms were too few and broke down, and rain from the previous week had left the ground muddy. Most didn’t care though, despite few having tents or any kind of sleeping equipment.
The music ran throughout the night and into the morning, concluding with a performance from Jimi Hendrix at 9 a.m. on Sunday, becoming the most iconic performance throughout the festival. Though nearly half a million people attended, the concert was very peaceful. Most incidents were strictly drug-related, and very little violence was reported. For an event set out to bring peace and happiness to its guests, most viewed the festival as a complete success, despite its shortcomings with the law. Authorities threatened to shut everything down numerous times, though no real action was taken.
For the festival’s 25th and 30th anniversaries, Woodstock ‘94 and ‘99 were held to honor the original festival and celebrate popular musicians at the time. These two festivals were unlike the first, however, as music became angrier and teenage concertgoers became more angsty. What was supposed to be a weekend of fun quickly morphed into a weekend of nightmares.