by Bob Spitz
Occasionally, Joerger observed his employees waiting in line at the Johns to relieve themselves of more than nature’s complaint. He interrupted the call of more than one of his vendors only to find that the kid had emptied the contents of his or her apron on the floor of the toilet. A friend, waiting next in line, would retrieve the tickets and sell them at half-price to eager customers in the woods.
Joerger tried to have himself or one of his associates police the area, making sure the workers ripped the tickets in half, but that soon gave way to other, more urgent matters, which necessitated their immediate attention.
Coca-Cola had sent Food For Love approximately 500 cases of soda with cans that were only half-filled, and kids were angrily returning them, claiming they had been “ripped off by capitalist pigs.”
The concessionaires had ordered an additional six refrigerated tractor-trailers of frankfurters and hamburger meat at the last minute and the caravan had miraculously made it through the traffic late Friday night. By midafternoon, they had run out of fuel for the refrigeration and had no way of getting an oil truck into the site to refill the tanks. Within two hours after the depletion, a forty-foot tractor-trailer full of frankfurters began to spoil.
The stench was unbearable, although it was not quite as repulsive as the malodor from a newly excavated septic pool behind the command trailer that wafted across the hilltop. Lawrence had found the Johnny-On-The-Spot representative earlier in the day and presented him with the problems of disposing of the wastes from the portable toilets. Most of the units, by this time, had overflowed, and the swill was polluting not only the air but the earth. Puddles of putrid sewage collected in the mud and notched furrows in the ground that headed downhill. They had to find some way of curtailing the seepage before it ran into the bowl.
“There’s only one thing we can do,” explained the sanitation engineer, “and it’s not what I’d call the most civilized answer to the problem.”
“Anything,” Lawrence pleaded, “we’ll do anything you say. Just make it go away, man.”
“Well—you dig a ditch, you pump all the shit in it, and you cover it over with dirt.”
“That’s it?” Lawrence was incredulous.
“What did you want me to say—that we’ll hire helicopters to airlift it out in paper bags?”
“Well, no . . . I just thought . . .”
“That’s your only alternative. Otherwise, it’ll just get worse. Especially in the heat. And forget about it if it rains. We’ll be swimming in crap.”
That was all Lawrence needed to hear. He ordered Bill Reynolds to gather his crew together, picked a spot behind his office, and had them dig a ditch eighty feet long by eight feet deep with a backhoe, into which they emptied the tanks from each unit. They dumped an enormous quantity of chemicals into the pit before covering it over to keep the intensity of the smell down, but the chemicals were generally overpowered by its potency.
“Now it was a city dump,” the New York Post decreed. “The flies clung to your arms. The stink attacked your stomach.” The News was equally severe in its criticism, describing the site as “a morass of mud, music, and misery.” It went on to note that “police feared a major medical crisis because of the nightlong rain which created huge pools of mud.”
Once the papers hit the newsstands, Lawrence’s trailer was inundated with calls from alarmed parents whose children had gone to White Lake “and had not been heard from since.”
“Don’t worry about them,” Lawrence told each caller. “They’re fine. Everything’s beautiful, groovy. Your kid has never been in a more secure atmosphere in his life. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.” But each parent wanted to know if it was safe for his or her child. “Safe?” Lawrence scoffed. “Where’s your kid from? . . . New York City! Lady—what would your kid know about safe? You think he’s gonna be mugged in a pasture full of hippies? Take it easy. You’ll see him on Monday morning, and you’ll probably wish he’d take another three-day vacation like this one.”
The board of health called, too, wanting to know more about the “major medical crisis” they were reading about. Their inspector, who had been assigned to spend the weekend on the grounds, had made the mistake of bringing his teen-age daughter along with him. They became separated as soon as the crowds started arriving, and the man spent most of his waking hours attempting to find her. Every so often the inspector poked his head into the command trailer to find out if his daughter had surfaced. Mel insisted the man first call his regional office and give the festival a clean bill of health before he provided the information.
“Everything’s fine here,” the inspector reported to his supervisors in Albany. “There’s no need for you to implement supplementary action at this time. There appears to be plenty of food and water in reserve, good sanitation facilities. We’ve checked the medical centers, and the staff seems to have the situation well under control.” After hanging up, the man would beseechingly ask Lawrence about his daughter’s whereabouts.
“Sorry, nobody’s seen or heard from her,” he’d reply, upon which the inspector would frantically vanish into the crowd for another two hours.
“Our only hope of staying afloat,” Lawrence told an associate, “is that the chick is banging her brains out in some motel room. As long as she stays out of sight until Monday, we’ll keep the board of health off our back.”
• • •
About three o’clock, in the middle of Santana’s set, Michael Lang made his one and only call to the security building that weekend. Someone handed the phone to John Roberts and backed off, not wishing to get caught in the certain exchange of verbal gunfire.
Michael was calling, he said, from some far-off cosmic heaven. “Hey, man, it’s beautiful here. You really oughta come down.”
“Hey, man, it’s not beautiful here,” Roberts snapped. “You really should come over. Michael, seriously—we’re going nuts over here. This thing has gotten out of hand, and we’re trying desperately to dig ourselves out from under this mess. We sure could use your help. We have no way of knowing what you promised everybody and, therefore, it’s been impossible assessing what our obligation is to them. All afternoon, people have been barging in here demanding money, threatening to sabotage the festival unless we turn over a great deal of cash to them. The governor’s office calls every fifteen minutes wanting to send in the National Guard. It’s a goddamn zoo. Really—how about coming over here and giving us a hand?”
“Aw, man, y’see that’s where you and Joel have got it all wrong,” Lang complained. “You cats are out of it. Y’know, you’re too uptight about all that money shit. We’ve done the incredible, man. We pulled off the biggest fuckin’ party anyone in our generation’s ever seen. It’s beautiful. We’ve got somethin’ like 400,000 people groovin’ on the music. We’re heroes, man. Dig it. You gotta get into the vibes. Look, close up that office and make it over here. This is for all of us to enjoy.”
“We can’t do that, Michael. We’ve got too much at stake here,” Roberts said aggravatedly.
“Suit yourself, man. I gotta split. Hey—hang on a second! Artie wants to lay a few words on you.”
Roberts suppressed the urge to tell Lang what he wanted to lay on Artie. Why waste his breath, he thought.
“Whoooah! Man! How’s it goin’, guys?” Artie was orbiting the earth on some unknown stellar energy. “Hey! Yeah—this is really great!”
Roberts cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and yelled for everyone else in the office to get on an extension. “You’ve gotta hear this. But don’t you dare laugh,” he said, already chuckling.
“How are you, Artie? We haven’t heard from you in—oh, it must be months.”
“Right on, man! This is really great. It’s incredible here. All our friends are here, man. My God—I’m freaking out!”
“Well, get ahold of yourself, Artie, and tell me what it is you
wanted to say.”
“Oh yeah—right. Look, man, I need six cases of Coke right away. Six cases—you got that?”
“I got it. What do you need six cases of Coke for?”
“What do I need it for?” Artie repeated softly. “Uh, let me see . . . oh yeah, like Creedence is here, man, and they’re real thirsty. How ’bout sendin’ a messenger over with it right away?”
“Well”—Roberts stalled for time while he motioned for the security assistants to stop their shrieking—“I’ll see what I can do, Artie. You do realize that it’s a little inconvenient right now.”
“No sweat, man. I’ll send a limo for it.”
The office was in hysterics at that, and Roberts had a difficult time hearing. “Good idea!” he spurred him on. “You do that. We’ll wait for it to get here, and then we’ll put your sodas on the back seat and speed them right back to you. Oh, and speaking of speed, Artie—take it easy, will you. You’re liable to break the sound barrier in your condition.”
“Out-ta sight!” Artie hollered, and hung up.
“We ought to consider ourselves lucky,” Joel said, helping one of the assistants who had rolled onto the floor back up to her feet. “I took the last ‘Artie Call’ and it was for imported champagne. I think he’s finally beginning to realize and appreciate the value of a dollar.”
“God! I hope they don’t hurt themselves over there,” Lee cried, wiping away the tears from her eyes. “They’re in bad shape.”
Mackler, in fact, had been given the inside track as far as Michael and Artie’s physical conditions were concerned. A half hour earlier, Penny had called her from the stage and said, “You’ll never guess what those assholes are doing. They’re tripping!”
“I don’t believe it!” Lee told her.
“I swear. They each did a tab of acid in the midst of all this delirium,” Penny said. “Listen, the reason I’m calling is that someone told me they were running all over the place trying to find Thorazine for Artie. What in the hell is Thorazine?”
Lee explained that it was a drug used in bringing kids down from a bad trip. It was used after more conventional methods—like talking someone down—failed. “I believe you now, kid,” Lee said. “Just stay away from him for the time being, okay? It’ll wear off if people leave Artie alone.”
John Morris had also called Lee with an update on the show and told her to forget about Lang and Kornfeld for the rest of the weekend. “They just dropped another tab for good luck. We should get a postcard from them from Mars sometime next month.”
Morris recounted a stunt that Artie had pulled that, according to John, set staff relations back about six months. A production supervisor had gone out of his trailer in search of wellheads for Langhart’s field crew, and, when he returned, found all of his belongings piled on the ground outside. Artie and his wife had moved into the trailer, kicking the supervisor out of a place he’d been living in and working from for the last five weeks. It was as insensitive and inconsiderate an act as anyone had experienced since coming together to work on the festival, and it served to alienate Artie from a large segment of the executive staff who were informed of the incident. “The supervisor just took off for the city,” Morris said, “and I don’t think he plans on coming back.”
Artie’s frantic calls to the security office began coming about as frequently as Bert Cohen’s (who was still marooned somewhere on the Thruway between Middletown and Monticello). He wanted them to rush the order on that soda (Creedence wanted their Coke) or to find some crystal wine glasses from which the Band could sip champagne or to enclose a packet of blank Woodstock Venture checks so he could draw on petty cash. And with each phone call, Artie’s voice grew more detached, as though he was slipping off into his own insular world. At first, whoever picked up one of Artie’s calls tried to humor him, but after a while, it became too time-consuming and Joel had them ignore his “partner” completely, placing the phone receiver on a desk for a length of time before simply hanging up. Two of the original Four Musketeers, Joel decided, had drawn their last word.
• • •
Around four o’clock, Morris made another call to the security office for the purpose of realigning the concert. He thought it might be wise to have the bands play extended sets so that each day’s show would end the following morning. That would eliminate all the kids having to be on the road at night. But it would also require their clearing it first with the artists’ managers so that contracts would not be violated. Roberts and Rosenman concurred with his reasoning and agreed to gently broach the subject with one of the groups’ representatives in order to “feel them out before throwing it open to negotiation.”
“Is there any group in particular whom you think we should talk to?” they asked him.
Morris hardly afforded the question a moment’s thought. “No doubt about it—the Grateful Dead. I’ve seen those guys go all night at the Filmore, and the crowd loves them. They’re also sympathetic to things like this. They play free shows in People’s Park all the time.”
Rosenman located the Dead’s road manager at the Holiday Inn at Liberty and asked him politely whether or not his group would mind playing for a longer period of time than was stipulated in the performance contract.
Their manager, a young man with an intimidating tone of voice, sounded a bit cautious about discussing business over the phone. His manner was presumptuous, and he acted as though Joel were setting him up for a string. “What’s the matter, man? You guys in trouble?”
“Not at all,” Joel insisted. “Everything’s going quite smoothly.”
“I mean bread trouble.”
Joel emphatically denied the implication and explained Morris’s theory aimed at keeping kids off the road. “We’re also overcrowded,” Joel added, “and we want to avoid people roaming around and getting into trouble because the stage is dark. Morris told me that the Dead are one of the few groups who can do an extra hour or two with no trouble. So, I’ll restate the question: Will your guys play another set or what?”
“We’re not gonna play at all, man.”
Joel felt all the muscles in his body tense, and he threw himself forward in his chair. “What are you talking about?”
“You heard me,” he said impertinently. “You guys are in some kind of trouble. We’re not going on stage without our money.”
“Without your money? Without your money?” Rosenman shouted into the phone. His hand swept across the desk in anger, and he knocked a half-filled cup of coffee onto the floor. “What the fuck are you talking about? You’ll get your money just like everybody else, pal.”
“Yeah? How’s that?”
“By check, when your band goes on.”
The manager’s tone remained unchanged. “That’s not good enough.”
Joel assured him that every other act had been and would continue to be paid that way. It was the only system for which they were set up.
“Fuck the other acts, man. We want cash. I’m convinced that you’re in some kind of trouble, and I’m here to make sure the Dead don’t get burned.”
“Cash! Where the hell do you expect me to get cash on a Saturday night in the middle of Sullivan County?”
The manager said that raising money was Woodstock Ventures’ problem; his was getting the group to the gig and making sure they got paid—in cash.
“Listen, forget the whole thing,” Rosenman backed off. “Forget I called you. Have the Dead just play their normal set, and . . .”
“Bullshit! You want us to go on, you’d better get that second fifty percent in cash or a certified check.” Otherwise, he said in no uncertain terms, the group would be on the next plane out of Sullivan County International Airport. Then he hung up.
Rosenman checked the Dead’s contract. The payment was $7,500—about $5,000 more than they had on hand in cash. If they gave in to the demand, it would leave them without a
cent for any one of the hundred or so other emergencies that were bound to crop up in the next two days. They also had to pay the police. No, it was out of the question. He called John Morris back and filled him in on the new developments.
“It stinks!” Morris agreed.
“Yeah, well there’s no way in hell we’re going to be able to lay our hands on that kind of cash. So tell me this: What’ll happen if I tell this guy to go fuck himself and the Dead doesn’t go on?”
“The crowd’ll tear us to pieces.”
“Thanks for your discretion, John. But that’s what I thought you’d say. Okay, look, I’m going to give it the old college try. If their manager asks you anything about our arrangements with the Dead, tell him I’ll be there with the bread. Don’t let them leave. And, for God’s sake, don’t let him mention a thing about this to any of his pals from the other acts we’ve got booked. If a thing like this gets out, it could snowball, and if it snowballs, more than our assets will be frozen.”
• • •
At practically the same time, Ticia Bernuth was engaged in a similar confrontation with John Wolff, the Who’s manager, who had been reluctant to let his group appear at Woodstock in the first place. Ticia had been on her way from the performers’ pavilion to the stage when the irate Wolff accosted her on the bridge. He demanded the rest of the Who’s money up front and in cash.
“Hey, man, like, y’know—that’s not my bag,” Ticia said. Wolff’s volatile disposition frightened her, and she wanted to get away from him as quickly as possible. As she went to move around him, he blocked her path.
“If you fuckin’ don’t get Michael Lang to pay me, I’m not going to let my group go on!” he screamed.