by Michael Lang
In true Woodstock style, the communal spirit lived, it rained like hell, Mud People abounded, and Woodstock ’94 made money for everyone but us.
Five years later, on July 23–25, Woodstock ’99 took place at Griffiss Air Force Base in upstate New York’s Mohawk Valley, near Rome. John Scher (now at Ogden), Ossie Killkenny, and I produced the festival, with Woodstock Ventures serving as the licensor. We wanted to return to the bucolic Winston Farm, but the political balance of the Saugerties town board had changed and they could not reach a decision on moving forward with us. Griffiss was well suited should it rain, and the logistics there were fantastic: hundreds of buildings to house our crews and staff; hundreds of acres for parking, camping, and performances; and easy access to the site.
I again wanted a mix of classic acts, jam bands, and the less extreme side of the hard-edged music happening at the time. Going against my instincts, I went along with the consensus and so the lineup, an amazing amalgam of the biggest acts of the day, was darker and more aggressive than I would have liked. At one point during planning, I was talking to Prince about a Hendrix tribute, and he asked me, “Why are you having all those nasty bands?” I did not have a good answer. During the performances of acts like Limp Bizkit, Korn, and Rage Against the Machine, the mosh pit was a scary sight. The audience surfing got pretty aggressive, and we were horrified to later find out that incidents of women being molested had been reported.
The weather was brutally hot, with no rain for relief, and while there was plenty of free water on tap, concessions were selling it at $4 a bottle, as though it were Yankee Stadium. When I found out about the prices, I tried to get the concessionaires to reduce them to something sane, but I was told it was too late to change them. To balance this, I ordered several trailerloads of water to be distributed for the taking around the site. While the vast majority of the kids had a good time, the festival became more like a massive MTV spring-break party than a Woodstock.
At 7 P.M. on the final evening, the mayor of Rome and various county and state officials held a press conference to congratulate us on a terrific weekend and to invite us back. A few hours later, as the festival was ending with the Chili Peppers covering Hendrix’s “Fire” ( which had been so powerful in ’69), some of the kids in the back of the audience began lighting bonfires. Soon a group of about fifty goons, bent on provoking the crowd, decided to torch a line of supply trucks; then they went through the concession stands, “liberating” whatever they could. When the melee grew to involve several hundred people, the police came in en masse. Kids were running everywhere, mostly to get out of the way. I waded out into the middle of it to make sure the cops were not overreacting. And to their credit, they showed great restraint in the mayhem.
In retrospect, I realized I had failed to heed the lesson I had so clearly learned in 1969 and many times since: trust my instincts.
In the years since Woodstock, I have put on many events in America and abroad and have pursued interests in music, film, and the arts. Along the way, I produced a short film by Wes Anderson called Bottle Rocket, which introduced Wes and the actors Luke and Owen Wilson to the world. While on a trip to Moscow and working with the Kremlin Museum, I acquired the film rights to the Russian classic The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov. It is now in development and projected to shoot in 2010.
In the past forty years, Woodstock has been the elephant in the room in my life. To keep it in perspective, I have made the room much bigger. It is full of family and friends and adventures lived and yet to come.
Many of Woodstock’s artists look back to the festival in ’69 as a turning point for all of us. As Carlos Santana recently said, “At Woodstock I saw a collective adventure representing something that still holds true today. When the Berlin Wall came down, Woodstock was there. When Mandela was liberated, Woodstock was there. When we celebrated the year 2000, Woodstock was there. Woodstock is still every day.”
John Lennon once said, “Not many people are noticing all the good that came out of the last ten years—Woodstock is the biggest mass of people ever gathered together for anything other than war. Nobody had that big an army and didn’t kill someone or have some kind of violent scene like the Romans or whatever, and even a Beatle concert was more violent than that.”
And the late Abbie Hoffman never gave up on the newfound community he was part of that weekend in White Lake, which inspired him to write the book Woodstock Nation. Shortly before he died in 1989, he said, “Out of that sense of community, out of that vision, that Utopian vision, comes the energy to go out there and actually participate in the process so that social change occurs.”
Fifteen years ago, the cultural critic Greil Marcus wrote of Jimi’s performance of our national anthem as “his great NO to the war, to racism, to whatever you or he might think of and want gone. But then that discord shattered, and for more than four and a half long, complex minutes Hendrix pursued each invisible crack in a vessel that had once been whole, feeling out and exploring and testing himself and his music against anguish, rage, fear, hate, love offered, and love refused. When he finished, he had created an anthem that could never be summed up and that would never come to rest. In the end it was a great YES, both a threat and a beckoning, an invitation to America to match its danger, glamour, and freedom.”
During a time of great challenges in America, a community grew out of Woodstock. Stemming from similar values and aspirations, a sense of possibility and hope was born and spread around the globe. It’s taken forty years to see some of the changes that were first glimpsed during those three days in August. The spirit embraced at Woodstock continues to grow. You see it in the many green movements, in grass-roots organizations like MoveOn, and in what some pundits have called a Woodstock moment, the election of our first African-American president. As Jimi Hendrix recast the national anthem that day in the mud, he gave voice to a future where a Barack Obama could bring change to America and hope to the world.
Forty years later, the Wall Street Journal would refer to Obama’s inauguration as “Washington’s Woodstock.” Experiencing the joy in coming together with a million celebrants on the Mall in Washington, a blogger named Brian Hassett put it this way: “As it was happening, every single one of the people I met was beaming with joy. In terms of a crowd euphoric, the only thing I ever heard of that was like this was Woodstock in ’69. That changed our country a lot, but this time Woodstock was in the seat of power. Jimi’s ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ was the prelude, and a scant forty years later, here’s that scorching soul of new thinking actually overtaking the reins of government.”
The day after the inauguration, Gail Collins’s column “Woodstock Without the Mud” appeared in the New York Times. “Having been lucky enough to attend two of the most memorable events in modern American history,” she wrote, “I am able to report that Inauguration Day in Washington was very much like a cold-weather Woodstock. At both, there was a wonderful feeling of community.”
In late 1969, Jimi Hendrix wrote a poem celebrating Woodstock, saying with words what his music had in August: “500,000 halos outshined the mud and history. We washed and drank in God’s tears of joy. And for once, and for everyone, the truth was not still a mystery.”
Jimi’s words—and the spirit of Woodstock—reverberate even now.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When I was asked to write this book, I thought about the many other stories that have been written about that weekend in August 1969. Some were funny, some cynical, but all were told by people who at best knew only part of the story and at worst made it up as they went along. There is an old saying that if you remember the sixties, you weren’t really there. Working with Holly and doing the early interviews for this book convinced me that I was. Other than the stories I had been telling over the years, my memory of those times remained vague. I began searching for a way to reenter that part of my life. My friend Steven finally suggested that if this was to be my voice, I start by actually writing. A daunting pro
position, but I jumped in. With the physical act of writing, the door swung wide open, and in flooded faces and places, sights and smells, and I was immersed in the adventure all over again. The relief was great, but I realized that much of what happened at Woodstock and the months leading up to it was the result of my own inner journey. That’s something that is usually hard for me to reveal, but I now understand it is necessary if people reading this are going to understand why things happened the way they did. Holly and I found our groove, and I hope we succeeded.
Thanks to everyone who helped in this effort. To all the people who gave interviews and contributed their memories and insights: Ticia Bernuth Agri, Paula Batson, Dale Bell, Lee Mackler Blumer, Iris Brest, Stu Cook, David Crosby, Alan Douglas, Rona Elliot, Jane Friedman, Susan and Dick Goldman, Stan Goldstein, Jonathan Gould, Wavy Gravy, Don Keider, Rob Kennedy, Artie Kornfeld, Eddie Kramer, Lisa Law, Tom Law, Mel Lawrence, Gilles Malkine, Jocko Marcellino, Peter Max, Joyce Mitchell, Chip Monck, Graham Nash, Ric O’Barry, Christine Oliveira, Roz Payne, Artie Ripp, Gregg Rolie, Marsha Rubin, Carlos Santana, Michael Shrieve, Penny Stallings, Stephen Stills, Parry Teasdale, Bill Ward, Robert Warren, and Jeremy Wilber.
Thanks to Joel Makower for his generosity in sharing his interviews with those no longer with us. A special thanks to Steven Saporta, whose advice and guidance helped set me on the path when I was searching for the way to tell this story. Thanks to Dan Halpern at Ecco, whose enthusiasm convinced me this was a story worth telling, and to Abigail Holstein, who kept the book on track, to Suet Yee Chong for the book’s design, and to Katharine Baker for her expertise. To Sarah Lazin for her calm assessments and great knowledge of the business: “Just put one foot in front of the other and you’ll get there.” Thanks to Lee Blumer and Penny Stallings for their stories and their encouragement. And especially to Holly George-Warren for her tenacity and humor, without which we might still be writing.
To Linda Kornfeld, whose love and support had much to do with why Artie and I carried through.
To John Roberts, who left too soon and whose character continues to give me something to aspire to.
To Tamara, Harry, and Laszlo for putting up with the late nights and early mornings of “I just need to finish this page.”
A big thanks to the photographers who captured so many special moments and understood that the real magic was in the people. To Henry Diltz, who became a member of the team, to Jim Marshall, Lee Marshall, Ken Regan, and Baron Wolman, and to Ken Davidoff and Eddie Kramer for Miami Pop. Also thanks to others who helped: our transcriber Judy Whitfield, Damien Tavis Toman, Nicole Goldstein, KellyAnn Kwiatek, Bob Merlis, Bill Rush, Andy Zax, Charles Cross, and the Middletown Times Herald-Record.
And finally to all the people who worked, performed, attended, and endured—and changed our lives forever.
ML
Woodstock, New York
March 2009
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
TICIA BERNUTH AGRI (production aide and assistant to Michael Lang) has worked for the past thirty years in the healing arts as a massage therapist, a Rolfer (structural integrationist), an Integrative Manual Therapist, and a plant spirit medicine therapist. She is currently studying and teaching shamanic healing for the School of Applied Spiritual Healing and the School of Empowerment.
DALE BELL (associate producer of the film Woodstock) continues to work in film and television, primarily for PBS, “trying to focus on aspirational and inspirational multimedia projects that reach global audiences.”
LEE MACKLER BLUMER (assistant to Wes Pomeroy) rejoined Michael Lang and several Woodstock alumni to work on the twenty-fifth and thirtieth anniversary concerts. She is director of events for M2 Ultra Lounge and is aiding and abetting plans for the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock: “Woodstock is still my life.”
JOE COCKER (performer) continues to record and perform around the world. His most recent album is Hymn for My Soul (2008).
DAVID CROSBY (performer) continues to perform and record with Stills, Nash, and sometimes Young.
RICK DANKO (performer) died of heart failure in 1999.
HENRY DILTZ (photographer) is based in Los Angeles and is cofounder of the Morrison Hotel Gallery (located in New York, Los Angeles, and La Jolla), which exhibits fine-art music photography.
ALAN DOUGLAS (music executive) lives in Paris and continues to work in film and music production.
RONA ELLIOT, a music journalist for television, print, radio, and the Web, was seen for a decade on NBC’s Today Show. Today she serves on the Grammy Museum education committee.
JANE FRIEDMAN (publicity), who later managed such artists as Patti Smith, continues to work in public relations.
DON GANOUNG (community relations) died of a heart attack in 1973.
STAN GOLDSTEIN (campsite coordinator and headhunter) lives in Los Angeles, where he has recently begun mixing music again. He has two films in postproduction: a concert film with an R & B band called Reno Jones and a documentary on a settlement of squatters in Slab City, California. “The result of my most successful project are Tucker and Evelyn, the two wondrous grandchildren my son, Jess, and terrific daughter-in-law, Nicole, are raising and investing with all the positive attributes that went into making Woodstock a mythic success.”
JONATHAN GOULD (festivalgoer) went on to study with the eminent jazz drummer Alan Dawson and spent many years working in bands and recording studios. He turned to writing in the nineties and is the author of Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America.
BILL GRAHAM (concert impresario) died in a helicopter accident in 1991.
ALBERT GROSSMAN (music manager and executive) died of a heart attack in 1987.
TIM HARDIN (performer) died of a heroin overdose in 1980.
RICHIE HAVENS (performer) continues to record and perform. His most recent album is Nobody Left to Crown (2008).
ABBIE HOFFMAN (activist and writer) committed suicide in 1989.
ROB KENNEDY (festivalgoer) cultivates medical marijuana and records and tours as front man extraordinaire with his Brazilian partner Uncle Butcher.
ARTIE KORNFELD (Woodstock Ventures) lives in Miami, where he runs his own entertainment company.
CHRIS LANGHART (technical director and contributing designer) lives in rural Pennsylvania.
LISA LAW (Hog Farm) is the author of Flashing on the Sixties and lives in Santa Fe.
TOM LAW (Hog Farm) divides his time between New York City and New Mexico. He and his wife, Caroline Faure-Gilly Law, operate a home design business.
MEL LAWRENCE (chief of operations) lives by the ocean in Venice, California, and works as a producer of action/reality shows for cable networks and documentaries “whenever I can get them financed.”
GILLES MALKINE (Tim Hardin’s rhythm guitarist) is a musician who lives outside Woodstock, New York, and performs and records in a duo with Mikhail Horowitz.
COUNTRY JOE McDONALD (performer) lives in Berkeley, California, and continues to record and perform.
JOYCE MITCHELL (production administrator) has retired to “exurb America, to the only county of the Hudson Valley that voted red in the ’08 election.” The last party she put together had one band and an audience of less than fifty people. “I wake up most mornings lightheaded with joy, surrounded by majestic trees, family, and friends; a world citizen, grandmother, spouse, grateful for all the moments of my life.”
MITCH MITCHELL (Jimi Hendrix Experience drummer) died in Portland, Oregon, in November 2008 after completing a multicity tour celebrating the music of Jimi Hendrix.
E. H. BERESFORD “CHIP” MONCK (production supervisor and stage lighting design) lives in Australia, where he has continued his career as a lighting designer for the past twenty-two years, lighting retail with a theatrical flair. “There is never a day I’m not on a ladder. Why? I ask.”
JOHN MORRIS (director of production area) lives in Santa Fe and works with Native American fine artists.
RIC O’BARRY (Joint Productions partner) founded the
Original Dolphin Project and continues to advocate for the protection of dolphins and other marine mammals.
CHRISTINE OLIVEIRA ( festivalgoer) founded and continues to oversee the School of the New Moon for children ages two to seven, outside Woodstock, New York.
ROZ PAYNE (activist and festivalgoer) teaches History of the Radical Sixties and Mycology at Burlington College in Vermont. She owns the Newsreel Films archive of sixties films, photographs, and paper documentation (www.newsreel.us).
WES POMEROY (chief of security) died in 1994.
NOEL REDDING (Jimi Hendrix Experience bassist) died in 2003.
ARTIE RIPP (record executive) is based in Los Angeles, where he runs Artie Ripp Productions.
JOHN ROBERTS (Woodstock Ventures partner) died of cancer in 2001.