by James Wyllie
WEATHER REPORT
Your walk to the festival site will be in very pleasant late summer sunshine with just a hint of cloud. But don’t kid yourself: this is Woodstock. It’s going to rain and you’ve got to love it. Richie Havens, who opens the show on Friday, will later say, ‘The rain made the people interact with each other … to share whatever we had … so I balance it out as a cosmic accident.’ Many of your fellow festival-goers will be in JEANS AND T-SHIRTS or less. While this is perfectly permissible, the agency does recommend some kind of period-appropriate RAINWEAR (or make use of the raincoats and micro-tent stashed in the camper van, next to the cooker).
On FRIDAY the delightful mix of sun and scurrying clouds will turn blustery later in the evening. At around 10pm, during Ravi Shankar’s set, it will start raining heavily. Lighter showers will persist through the night, turning to steady drizzle early on SATURDAY morning. Things will dry for out for the first few acts but another rain storm after lunch will continue until after 4pm. When the music resumes, temperatures will be a warm but damp 70ºF. Rain returns for an hour or so later in the evening, peaking during the Grateful Dead’s set. This will be cut short for various reasons, including the risk of the band getting electrocuted as they play in puddles of water.
SUNDAY will begin sunny, warm and breezy, but storm clouds will start to gather at around 2pm. Joe Cocker will have just completed his set at around 4.30pm when the final thunderstorm will break, drenching the festival for an hour. The rest of the day will be dry and, for those that have the stamina to stay, MONDAY MORNING, post-Hendrix, will be sunny and golden.
‘WHAT WE HAVE IN MIND IS BREAKFAST IN BED FOR 400,000. KEEP FEEDING EACH OTHER … AND IF YOU’RE TOO TIRED TO CHEW, PASS IT ON.’
EATING AND DRINKING
The food concession arrangements at Woodstock are unsatisfactory, to say the least. Unable to secure the services of established caterers, the organisers have gone with an outfit called FOOD FOR LOVE, long on promises but short on capital. Despite having been loaned $65,000 and had their stands built for them at the top of the hill overlooking the the main stage, Food for Love will run out of supplies – a basic range of burgers, hot dogs and sodas – within a few hours.
If you do want get a burger, get there on Friday late afternoon, after Woodstock has been declared a free festival, when a group of leftist activists from Greenwich Village will put in an appearance, chanting ‘Free food for the people’ and looking threatening. A squad from the Hog Farm/Please Force will appear (note their motley red armbands), giving out large burning incense sticks to calm everybody down. You will then see that most of the people at the concession stands are exchanging joints for burgers and the entire kitchen crew are smoking them at a lick. For the next hour or so they will just hand out food for free. But get in line pronto, for soon it will all be gone.
Your most reliable food source for the weekend is the FREE KITCHEN, located just to the west of the Information and Communication area. They will serve up three meals a day all through the festival. Breakfast is a muesli mix of rolled oats, sesame seeds, honey, raisins and wheat-germ. Lunch and dinner consist of great vats of bulgur wheat and brown rice served up with whatever locally sourced vegetables can be found. There are some mighty soy sauce dispensers, too. The queues are long but brisk.
Woodstock’s greatest eating pleasures, however, are the RANDOM OFFERINGS that will come your way. From Saturday onwards the helicopters of the National Guard and medical services will be introducing a strange array of canned goods into the mix, including thousands of one-ounce cans of olives and tins of tuna. Good luck with the can opener. Saturday afternoon will see packages of baloney sandwiches, Hershey bars, Melba toast and plastic bottles of cola thrown down to the crowd. Locals in Bethel and Monticello will also take it upon themselves to bus in loads of homemade sandwiches and trays of hard-boiled eggs.
THE ARTS FESTIVAL
Everyone will remember Woodstock for the music, but it was always intended to be a wider arts festival. Not much of it has survived the late changes of plan, but the best of what remains can be found to the east of the main campsite in and beyond the woods.
Nestled in the trees near the West Shore Road is the FREE STAGE, built and vaguely curated by the MERRY PRANKSTERS, a troupe of California acid-head situationists given to impromptu happenings and drug-fuelled partying. The Pranksters’ fabulous painted school buses can be seen parked up behind the Free Stage. Performances include yoga sessions, a late-night appearance on Friday by Joan Baez, and spiritual and meditative performances with a massed array of Tibetan gongs. This is the best part of the festival for joining improvised groups of drummers – still very much a novelty. You also stand a good chance of being offered hallucinogens.
Additional entertainment is available about 200 yards up the slope, where the PUPPET THEATER is putting on shows all day. Push on through the trees from the Free Stage and you will come to what was intended to be the car park. You will also find it functioning as an overspill campsite and general hangout, especially the HAY FIELD up the hill and the shady areas around CRYSTAL POND. However, the most interesting part of the site is THE WOODS. Covering about four acres, this delightful strip of woodland is criss-crossed by two main paths, signed as THE HIGH WAY and THE GROOVY WAY, and lit by long strings of fairy lights. Along the paths you will find an eclectic assortment of tarot readers, troubadours, meditators, frolicking couples, bead sellers and dope dealers.
Most of the crowd will be heading east towards the main stage. As you follow through the main gate or over the now-trodden-down fencing, take note of the cluster of tents and the large white trailer parked at the bottom of the hill. The HOSPITAL TENT is the main place to seek medical care. You may have noticed that many of your fellow festival-goers are barefoot and quite a few of them are pitching up here with glass and metal cuts. There will also be thousands of bad-trip casualties to be attended to over the course of the weekend. A similar ‘talking down’ service is also available at Hog Farm from late on Friday evening (see TURNING ON, TUNING IN AND FREAKING OUT, overpage).
Two special attractions in this area are the INDIAN PAVILION and the PLAYGROUND. The former is a collection of tents and tepees exhibiting the best in contemporary Native American art, with many artists from New Mexico and California in residence. The Playground consists of a selection of wood and rope structures dotted around the field and designed to be played on. Look out for the large stone-on-a-rope swing and the maze. Best of all, ascend the tree trunk climbing frame and throw yourself onto the fabulous mountains of hay bales below.
TURNING ON, TUNING IN AND FREAKING OUT
Given the sharing ethos of the festival, you should have no problem getting yourself just as stoned as you want to be. Expect joints and pipes to be passed your way and feel free to make polite inquiries. Possession of a cigarette lighter, useful during key moments of the music, is invaluable as your way to the REEFER: most will have forgotten or lost theirs. For those of you who would like to secure your own supply, we believe the going rate is around $5 for a bag of something nice from Colombia.
There is no shortage of LSD at Woodstock, either, most of it in pill form. The Pranksters, who are running the Free Stage in the main campsite, will be doling it out for free through most of the weekend. The famous announcement from the main stage warning about the brown acid being ‘not specifically too good’ has some truth, but as the man says, ‘It’s your trip.’ Reports of green, blues and red acid abound. Casual inquiries of those not too far gone will get you to them. Usual rules apply: just take half a tab and see how it goes; you can always go back for seconds.
A range of strong prescription drugs, amphetamines, Valium and other benzodiazepines, magic mushrooms and psychoactive cacti will be in circulation. The MESCALINE going round appears to be particularly rough – if swirling Aztec imagery and icons is not your thing, it is perhaps best avoided. ALCOHOL is available, and wine bottles will be coming your way pretty often, but if this is your dr
ug of choice we suggest you make sure you visit the liquor stores in Bethel early on during your stay.
On Friday afternoon you will find MEDICAL FACILITIES at Woodstock rather thin on the ground. At the north end of the main festival area there are a cluster of first aid tents, and the small medical trailer parked alongside them houses trained medical staff. As the number of psychedelic freakouts rises sharply over the weekend, CHILL-OUT TENTS will be established alongside the original hospital tents and then around the festival. Many of these will have characteristic pink and yellow stripes, which may or may not be soothing to the target market. Others will be obvious from their clientele. The regular medical staff on site will be reinforced by new arrivals from New York helicoptered in on Saturday morning. If you go to them on an acid bummer, they will give you a big shot of Thorazine. This will stop the trip, but send you into something close to a vegetative state.
For those who prefer talking cures, there is an alternative. Most of the chilling out and calming down work will be done by members of the Hog Farm, supplemented by people they have brought down from their own bad trips who have become impromptu psychedelic paramedics. Here the advice is to ride the thing out and enjoy the beauty. Saturday evening is a particularly good time to have your freakout as John Sebastian (who will have played a set on the main stage by this point) will come with the members of The Lovin’ Spoonful to play a soothing acoustic set to the assembled acid casualties.
THE UNDRESS CODE. THIS IS PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE, BUT THE COMPANY DOES RECOMMEND SOME KIND OF FOOTWEAR.
DAY BY DAY: THE MUSIC
The main stage is situated in a naturally shaped amphitheater, surrounded by a huge crowd. To see this at its best, approach over the brow of the hill by the service road. At the foot of the hill you will see the MAIN STAGE, 30 yards wide but tiny from this distance. Around it is a high wooden garden fence, and behind it is the performers’ backstage zone. It’s worth dwelling for a moment on this city of tents and tepees and the fantastic curving wooden bridge that carries the musicians and crew to and from the stage. Note also the sixteen loudspeaker arrays on 70-foot-high towers that snake up the hill. You will see that many people have climbed them for a better view of the stage. There will be no reports of casualties, but we do not recommend joining them.
This is the moment to take in the sheer scale of the crowd. There will be anything up to 300,000 people in front of you. Of course, the demographic is mainly white and middle class, with a heavy bias towards New York, but watch the passing throng and you will see all manner of young folk: African, Native and Asian Americans, college students and dropouts, hippies, Yippies and folkies, politicos and preppies and Hari Krishna monks.
This is also the time to think about where you want to sit to watch the music: close up to the fence, mid-distance or way at the back? Wherever you choose, the sound quality will be remarkably good given the conditions. And, to hear the bands, you will need to stick with your choice for the day. While the music is on and the sun is out, there won’t be room to swing a cat. If you need to, now is the time to head for the concession stands at the top of the hill and the nearby Port-O-Sans. This area is also where you will also find some of the best MUDSLIDES and puddles once the rain arrives.
FRIDAY, 15 AUGUST
On Friday, the crowd will have been gathering in front of the main stage since morning, waiting for the concert to begin just after lunch. You may well feel a certain restiveness as the hours slip by without any musicians appearing, but rest assured the show will go on.
At just gone five o’clock, CHIP MONCK, your MC for most of the next three days, will make the announcement everyone has been waiting for: ‘Sit down! Stand up! Do whatever you wish to do but we’re ready to start now and I bet you’re pleased with that. Ladies and gentlemen, please, Mister Richie Havens.’ RICHIE HAVENS and those members of his band who have been able to get to the gig are being literally pushed onto the stage as the only outfit even close to being ready. Note the bass player arriving just after Havens; he has just finished an epic twenty-mile walk through the traffic jams carrying his guitar. Havens will hold himself and the crowd together with a two-hour performance of improvised hard-edged folk and protest tunes, including an incomparable rendition of “Freedom”.
Behind the scenes, the producers are desperately searching for acts that are both physically and mentally present. Serendipitously, they have found the Indian yogi and guru SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA hanging out backstage. He is up next, sent on to play for time. Around seven o’clock you should hear his steady high-pitched voice even if you can’t see this tiny figure in saffron robes with exuberant long ringlets and a magnificent white beard and moustache. Sitting cross-legged on a small podium and surrounded by his monkish devotees, Satchidananda will declare, ‘Through music we can work wonders. Music is the celestial sound, and it is sound that controls the whole universe, not atomic vibrations. Sound energy, sound power is much, much greater than any other power in this world.’ Right on, brother! His set will conclude with a collective chant of ‘Hari-Om’.
LEVITATION IS ALL YOU NEED. SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA OPENS PROCEEDINGS ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON.
Just after half past seven the show proper will finally be ready to roll. SWEETWATER, originally booked to open the day, are first up, mixing folk rock with cello and flute. At 8.20pm the frizzy haired BERT SOMMER is the first of a pair of solo folk-guitar boys, his current hit “Jennifer” and a brilliant version of Simon and Garfunkel’s’ “America” evoking the biggest responses. He is followed an hour later by the willowy TIM HARDIN, a rising star of the folk circuit. According to witnesses backstage, Hardin has been ‘completely blitzed’ for the last twenty-four hours and is in profound dread of the enormous crowd. But, despite his shakiness, he will manage to take things up a notch with his version of “Simple Song of Freedom” and his current hit “If I Were a Carpenter”.
Things will be taking a sharp turn, musically and climatically, around ten o’clock. RAVI SHANKAR, the great Indian sitar player, will take the stage and rip through three standards from the Indian classical repertoire before the heavens open and the first of many short, sharp downpours begins. Once the shower stops at around 11 o’clock it will be time for the recently launched New York folkie MELANIE to play. Just prior to her set, the stage announcer will say, ‘This is the largest crowd of people ever assembled for a concert in history, but it’s so dark out there we can’t see and you can’t see each other. So when I say three I want every one of you to light a match.’ Everybody who can get it together will do so, though you stand less chance of getting your fingers burned if you’ve taken our advice and brought along a lighter. Melanie will be sufficiently inspired by the illuminations to write the hit song “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)”.
At five minutes to midnight a very young and very stoned ARLO GUTHRIE will take to the stage. The son of American folk hero and protest-song pioneer Woody Guthrie, Arlo has spent the last five hours hanging out in the crowd, having a smoke and expecting to play tomorrow. The fact that he is on now has thrown him somewhat. There will be some sticky moments and lapses of memory during his set but the stoner paranoia of “Coming into Los Angeles” and the optimistic resilience of “Amazing Grace” should make a lot of sense. Finally, at just after one o’clock in the morning, the last act of the night will be tuning up: the queen of the American folk scene, JOAN BAEZ, six months pregnant at the time. With the weather alternating between drizzle and showers, Baez’s rendition of “We Shall Overcome” may feel particularly pertinent.
SATURDAY, 16 AUGUST
First up on the main stage is Tom Law from the Hog Farm, enjoining you and everyone else to take part in a vast meditation and yoga session. Muesli, served from huge plastic vats, will be available at the left-hand side of the stage from about 11am. Saturday’s music will begin quietly with the little-known QUILL playing a short set from about 12.30pm, enhanced by the many maracas and other percussive instruments that they will be handing out to the crowd. F
eel free to grab yourself one, but do remember not to bring it home lest it should interfere with the time–space continuum.
The failure of a number of artists to have shown up even by this advanced stage will ensure a special treat for early risers. At 1pm COUNTRY JOE MCDONALD will be performing solo. The high point will come at the end of the set when McDonald will orchestrate the Fish Cheer: ‘Give me an F! Give me a U! Give me a C! Give me a K! What have you got?’ Feel free to join in. This will segue into the fabulously upbeat “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin-to Die-Rag”; a song that combines the sardonic black humour of Tom Lehrer with the politics of the anti-war movement. This will be the first major collective act of singing.
You may wish, like many in the audience, to time your recreational activities so you peak at around 2pm today, when SANTANA will be playing. One of the musical highlights of the weekend, the band’s blend of raging rock guitar, keyboards and percussive Latino rhythms make for an ecstatic performance, with a matching response from the crowd. “Soul Sacrifice” is perhaps the first amongst equals. Of special interest, dancing close to the stage, is the naked man with the sheep in his arms. He has been walking around the festival with the said animal in his arms for most of the last thirty-six hours.
‘HOW DO YOU EXPECT TO STOP THE WAR IF YOU CAN’T SING LOUDER THAN THAT?’ COUNTRY JOE HAS A POINT. FEEL FREE TO JOIN IN.
The light rain will cool you down after Santana, but the sun will return as JOHN B. SEBASTIAN takes to the stage in his wire-rim glasses and paisley shirt at around half-past three. Previously the lead singer of The Lovin’ Spoonful and currently beginning an ill-fated solo career, John B’s set will capture the moment perfectly. As Woodstock producer John Morris will later recall, ‘Something magical transformed the stage when John Sebastian ambled out.’ His short, gentle acoustic set will lift you and the crowd, your clothes will be drying out and Sebastian, as stoned as his audience, will forget the lyrics to a number of his tunes but find the words that are needed. When he looks out, in real awe, at the scale of the crowd and says, ‘Wow, We really are a whole city,’ the crowd will rise as one. Then it will be onto the blues rock of the KEEF HARTLEY BAND, followed by the Indian-folk-jazz fusion of THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND. Most of the crowd seem confused by the cult British hippies’ modal improvisation and unusual tunings.