Barefoot in Babylon

by Bob Spitz

  “Surface shield!” Jay Drevers screamed, barely able to hear his own voice above the din of excitement. “Will somebody please run over to the equipment trailer and get the surface shield!” A stagehand in the midst of slipcovering the revolving platform (which had ceased to function after the first amplifier was thrust upon it) gave Drevers the high sign and bounded over to the supply area. Surface shield was a canned liquid that displaced water and did not conduct electricity. Ideally, it was used to spray every sparkling appliance to prevent an electrical fire—that was, if it was handy during a storm. Much good it did them to have the case of surface shield locked away when they needed it most.

  The storm continued to rage for fifteen minutes before slowing to a steady drizzle. Like the scene of a gypsy convention, the amphitheatre was dotted with bonfires, and sections of the audience huddled around them, determined to ride out the inconvenience. Most of them were soaking wet; their blankets and sleeping bags were drenched with mud and thoroughly useless to them for shelter. But nobody seemed to mind. Those who were fortunate enough to have tents made room for their neighbors. Some of the hippies strung their parkas together for a rainshield or built primitive huts out of hay and garbage. The rest, however, sat unprotected in the open field, just happy to be there, thrilled to be part of the spiritually thriving Woodstock Nation.

  • • •

  Most of the performers who waited to go on that night—Ravi Shankar, Melanie (who dropped by unexpectedly and consented to perform), and Arlo Guthrie—were crowded into one of the production trailers, drinking coffee and bucking the moisture to keep their instruments from sliding out of tune.

  “It’s outta sight, man,” Guthrie drawled to a sidekick who turned out to be a writer from the Rat. “This here festival, y’know—it reminds me of J.C. on the Mount, but more receptive.” Guthrie said he was “wired,” and looking forward to facing the “children of the earth.”

  Ravi Shankar reacted exactly the opposite, having faced a much smaller, yet equally mindboggling, following at Monterey. “I am frightened in case something goes wrong with so many people,” he confided to Al Aronowitz moments before he was called to resume his portion of the show. The Indian sitarist chose to pass the rest of the unscheduled intermission in deep thought and retired to a corner of the trailer.

  Joan Baez, who was to close Friday’s extravaganza, excused herself from the stuffy room. Tucking her guitar under her arm, she walked unnoticed through the woods, out beyond the fences, and waited her turn in the rain so that she could perform for the handful of kids who were gathered in front of the free stage.

  Three amateur bands preceded Baez, playing vigorously to hearty encouragement from the audience. To the trained ear, they were strictly unendowed artistically; as a matter of fact, they could hardly carry a tune. But creative genius was not a prerequisite as far as the small audience was concerned. All that mattered to them was the performer’s desire to get up and entertain, to share some time with the People. That, they claimed, was cause enough for celebration.

  Baez gave lovingly of herself, playing a selection of songs about America’s changing social structure, poverty, union leaders, and about her husband, journalist David Harris, who was serving time in a Federal prison for refusing to answer his draft call. “This is what we live for,” she said between numbers, pointing to the wide-open countryside and the covey of tents on the other side of the road. “It’s why we’re fighting together right now—for our right to be heard, and the right to remain free.”

  Baez played for forty minutes until her road manager found her and respectfully informed the folksinger that she had to fulfill her obligation on stage for the festival’s promoters.

  For those who sat on the wet grass and applauded her thoughtfulness and professional kindness, the show was reason enough for their optimism. If Joan Baez had taken the time out to play for those unable to get close to the main stage, they reasoned others would obviously follow. The Jefferson Airplane or the Dead or Crosby, Stills and Nash—they were all champions of the People’s Revolution and would eventually get around to putting in an appearance. It was only a matter of time before Joan related her experience and they came.

  The free stage became a forum for the voice of the underground throughout the remainder of the weekend. Anyone who wished to have the spotlight was given a slot on the bill. Jugglers, poets, movement leaders, and orators took turns at the mike, some of the young men destroyed their draft cards in protest of the Vietnam war, two marriages were performed, even a striptease was enacted by one very stoned girl from Philadelphia. A good time, as the old show business slogan goes, was had by all. In fact, the small group of diehards who shunned the amphitheatre for the free stage enjoyed themselves so much that, by Monday morning, when it was time to leave for home, hardly any of them realized that the superstars had failed to come by.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Saturday, August 16, 1969

  Here were the Israelites, nearly half a million struggling to survive in a sea of mud, and Moses had lost the map.

  —Liberation News Service

  1

  The Woodstock Generation’s first night as a full-fledged nation passed without incident. When Chip had hesitantly pulled the plug on the music a few minutes after two o’clock, the majority of the audience reacted in the one way the producers hadn’t anticipated: they went to sleep.

  In the past, at most of the other summer rock festivals, the show’s finale had been a signal for all hell to break loose. And, indeed, Wes Pomeroy had entertained some discussion as to whether it might not be better to keep the performers on stage all night rather than to run the risk of a violent outbreak. There had also been talk of sending Hugh Romney on stage to recite fairy tales to those who needed some form of recreation to keep them out of trouble.

  In the final analysis, however, it had been so pure an action, a mere formality, which succeeded as a nightcap to the musical jamboree. No apologies were made to the audience for cutting off the entertainment. Chip simply took center stage after Joan Baez finished her encore, and said, “Well, that’s it for tonight, gang. All of you get a good night’s sleep, and we’ll see you tomorrow around ten o’clock. Peace and good night.”

  In the morning, the field was motionless, like a piece of sculpture commemorating a historical event. Mel Lawrence awoke around six o’clock, just before sunrise, and tumbled out of his trailer, not at all prepared for the spectacle that stretched before him.

  “At first, I was overcome by the eerie silence, and then I panicked,” he recalled some years later. “I saw all of those young, beautiful bodies, twisted in the grass and mud and garbage—there was junk scattered all over the place—and I wasn’t sure whether they were asleep or dead. For all I knew, they could have been hit by lightning during the night. My trailer was grounded, so a disaster like that would have bypassed me completely. Who the hell knew what might have happened out there while I was in bed. The whole scene just sort of stuck in my throat.”

  After his eyes adjusted to the low light, Lawrence could make out faint activity stirring in remote areas around the site. Near the left field fence (what remained of it), two boys stepped over bodies in an attempt to revive the smoldering campfires every fifteen or so feet, careful not to wake anyone in the process. Groups of hippies sat in circles, talking and passing joints to newly acquired friends, scraps of food were shared, canteens passed so that everyone could take a sip of water. Lines had already begun forming in front of the Johns, and Lawrence decided to have a look at their condition before performing an overall inspection of the site.

  The portable toilets located near the concession stands at the top of the hill were, in Lawrence’s words, “in real bad shape . . . they were filthy and disgusting. I really had to control myself to keep from throwing up when I went in one of them.” From what he could determine, the problem there was twofold: excessive use, and lack of servicin
g. He hadn’t calculated such a heavy demand, nor had he counted on the breakdown of their servicing operation. Two sanitation trucks, their tanks filled with human waste, were barricaded behind the facilities, unable to move through the surrounding people. Even had they been able to maneuver the trucks out to Hurd Road, it would have been impossible to drive them off the site to a dumping station because of the abandoned cars. But something had to be done soon, because the toilets were starting to overflow. A muddy discharge had begun to seep through the floorboards and collect in puddles around the already soggy area. As soon as the sun hit the field, they’d have a monumental problem on their hands. Lawrence grimaced. He’d have to find Bill Reynolds, who was in charge of sewage disposal, to see what could be done about averting such a problem.

  The toilets in the campgrounds were in much better condition. The service road leading from the rows of Port-O-Sans out to West Shore Road had miraculously remained free of vehicles, and a truck had been able to tend to that compound during the night. Lawrence hadn’t the foggiest idea where the truck had gone to dump the waste, but he decided against asking any questions that might prevent it from happening again.

  On his way back to the command trailer, Lawrence noticed that twenty cots had been set up in the employees’ mess hall. The large tent had been summarily converted into a provisional field hospital for the increasing number of incapacitated. Friday night, after the rain had let up, a contingent of volunteer doctors from the Medical Committee For Human Rights cornered Stanley Goldstein in the campgrounds and threatened to call the governor’s office for the purpose of having him declare White Lake a disaster area unless certain demands were met to elevate the festival’s health standards. Don Goldmacher, a young bearded psychiatrist from New York City and the group’s fiery spokesman, informed Goldstein they were on the verge of an unmanageable medical tragedy that could explode at any time.

  “There’s close to a half million people here, but you don’t have running water or good sanitation facilities,” Goldmacher argued. “We don’t know what’s sterile and what’s not. That stinks! And on top of that, there aren’t sufficient medical supplies to care for these kids. I don’t care what Abruzzi told you he had—he doesn’t have what we need or anywhere near what these kids need.” Goldmacher, although thoroughly disgusted with the setup, said he was restraining several members from the MCHR staff from taking official action against the promoters. “We’re going to provide you with a list of things we want—no, we need to have—and if you don’t see we get these things immediately, then we’ll just have to call Rockefeller’s office and ask for military assistance.

  “Here’s what we want: We want you to charter a plane out of LaGuardia Airport tomorrow morning and have it fly to Sullivan County Airport. We’ll call our people in New York, get a lot of them out of bed, and tell them they’ve got to fly up here tomorrow. We’ll also give you this list of supplies we want, and you’d better make sure they’re on the plane.” He handed Goldstein an enumerated list of intravenous supplies, minor surgical equipment, and medication, which the festival co-ordinator studied with divided interest.

  Looking up from the piece of paper, Stanley asked, “And where, might I ask, do you expect us to come up with this equipment in the middle of the night?”

  Goldmacher harrumphed his scorn. “I don’t give a shit how you find it or how you get it here, as long as you do it right away. Be reasonable. We’re talking about the safety of these kids, not extra guitar strings or champagne. Don’t try to cut any corners on this, or we’ll all lose in the end.”

  Goldstein knew that the picture the doctor presented to him was a fairly accurate assessment of the situation. If he resisted the demands, he’d only be arguing against his own case, and that was self-defeating. Without debating it any longer, he had security order the plane. Then, he called one of the production trailers and told a purchasing agent to transform the mess hall into a medical tent so the new recruits would have a place to operate.

  Penny Stallings, who was seated at a desk across from the purchasing agent when he took the call, watched his reaction with a sinking malaise. “It was harrowing,” she reminisced much later. “He just went out, he went to sleep, he didn’t want to be there any longer. I knew the urgency of the order, and had to go see if I could get it started on my own.”

  Along with an assistant, a woman named Ingrid Von Wilsheim, Stallings communicated the verdict to Peter Goodrich, under whose authority the tent functioned as a mess hall. “Peter went crazy,” she said in retrospect. “He accused me of conspiring against him, of ruining his food operation. He wouldn’t hit me, but he certainly came close at that moment, and he said that he forbade us from taking over the tent because that was where people had to eat.”

  Penny took a look around the tent, saw that it was virtually empty, and decided to stand up to Goodrich, a man twenty years her senior. “If you think the kids on the staff are going to be able to take breaks and come have a nice little box lunch here, you’re out of your mind!” she screamed. “Don’t you see what’s going on? We’ve got a crisis on our hands and it’s a helluva lot more important than feeding a few stagehands.”

  Goodrich, a man who no longer had a rational perspective, instructed her not to touch a thing in the mess hall until he could come back with Lang or Lawrence.

  As soon as Goodrich was out of sight, Penny and Ingrid began preparing the tent for the hospital it was inevitably going to become. Stallings enlisted two of Chris Langhart’s assistants and had them “borrow” sheets of plywood from a stack in back of the stage so they could lay a floor. Langhart diverted water and electricity from a nearby facility into the tent, hung lamps on surgical hooks, and reinforced the building’s frame while Ingrid located bunks and laundry supplies. In less than two hours, the employees’ mess hall had gone from cafeteria to casualty ward and was ready for occupancy before Joan Baez got off the stage.

  • • •

  Mel inspected the women’s skillful results with admiration. From what he had seen of Abruzzi’s and the Hog Farm’s overtaxed facilities, they had prepared the new hospital none too soon. The doctors’ flight was expected from LaGuardia about 10:30 A.M. There wasn’t a moment or an empty cot to spare.

  Before returning to the top of the hill, Lawrence thought he might take a couple of minutes to appoint someone to provide the awakening masses with a few encouraging words. He realized that, for many of the kids, this was their first morning away from home. There was every chance that some of them had suffered through an emotionally restless night and perhaps he could reduce the edge of insecurity many of them would feel when they got up in unfamiliar surroundings. However, when he approached the front of the stage, there wasn’t a staff member in sight to handle the assignment, so he decided to make the announcement himself.

  It took Lawrence practically fifteen minutes to find someone from the sound crew who was both awake and authorized by Bill Hanley to turn on the power for the microphones. Feeling ill at ease, Mel walked slowly toward the live mike, his head bowed, rehearsing the “casual” remarks he intended to pass on to his guests like “Good morning, everybody, rise and shine. We’re going at it again today. Let’s clean up our areas.” He flashed on his earlier days in the Catskills when the director of the summer camp he went to started each morning with almost those identical words. Now here he was twenty-five years later—Uncle Mel—counselor at the most spaced-out kiddie show the Catskills had ever experienced. And probably the most expensive.

  It would have been a piece of cake for him had he looked up and seen fifty eager faces hedged with crew cuts wearing Camp Mohawk T-shirts. He could have been cool about it then, perhaps he would have tossed in a stale joke or two to liven up his address. But when he looked out on 300,000 people his heart jumped about two city blocks and his salutation burst forth with an ear-splitting swell. “GGOOO-OOD MOOOR-NINGGG!” he blurted, stumbling backwards as 300,000 heads vaulted up in
unison. Those troubled souls who had succeeded in sleeping off their insecurity felt the old alarm come rushing back with a new, improved vitality. “Sorry about that,” he laughed, embarrassed by his faux pas. “Let’s try that one again. Good morning,” he said, softly. If it was scientifically inconceivable for 300,000 to applaud in a state of drowsiness, the kids in Max Yasgur’s pasture provided the exception to the rule. “Thank you,” Mel beamed. “Listen, last night was incredible, and we just wanted to let you know that everything’s okay. No hassles. We’re going to have another groovy day today and into the night and tomorrow.” He paused, waiting for the roar to die down. “I just need your help with this one small favor. We’re going to pass out these bags now so that we can keep our home clean. We’ll hand ’em out to those of you on this side of the bowl,” he said, pointing to the group closest to the woods, “and I’d appreciate it if all of you over there will toss your junk in and pass the bag on until it gets over to the other side of the field. Some of the guys from the Peace Service Corps will pick them up over there and get rid of that stuff for you. We’ve gotta keep this place livable so we can prove to the rest of the world that we can make it together in peace and in comfort. And we’re gonna do it, too.” Again, he received a unanimous vote of applause from the crowd, and this time he knew enough to quit while he was ahead. One of the technicians threw on a tape of Love’s Da Capo, and Lawrence shuffled down the steps to supervise the cleanup, confident that the world was on his shoulders.

  Day Two had gotten off to an auspicious start.

  • • •

  Joel Rosenman woke up in a chair in the telephone office with an inflamed case of hives. Instead of waking his partner, who was snoring away on a cot across the room, Joel took a twelve-hour antihistamine cold capsule, hopped on his Honda, and rode over to a police roadblock, where he directed traffic before heading over to the Diamond Horseshoe to have breakfast with the staff.