What Was the Purpose of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair
Woodstock AT 50
Woodstock 1969: A Story Vastly Bigger Than Editors Realized
In one case the scope of the festival became articulate, The New York Times scrambled to cover its significance. Shakespeare was quoted.
The New York Times, which the year before had go the first mainstream newspaper to hire a full-time rock critic, initially sent merely one reporter to cover the festival in August of 1969. As Arthur Gelb, then the metropolitan editor and the paper'due south culture czar, wrote decades after in his memoir, "Metropolis Room," he had expected Woodstock to be "just another big music festival," like the Newport jazz and folk festivals. When that reporter, Barnard L. Collier, got to Bethel, North.Y., on that Friday, he encountered enormous traffic jams as hundreds of thousands of people descended on Max Yasgur'due south farm. But it took a phone call from one of Gelb's younger reporters, Grace Lichtenstein, imploring him to ship more people to cover the festival, saying "this story is much bigger than The Times thinks information technology is."
Gelb told William East. Farrell, the Albany bureau main, that he could accept a helicopter to go there. And he instructed Richard Reeves, then the newspaper's master political contributor, to stop post-obit New York Mayor John 5. Lindsay around as he wooed vacationing Jewish voters at a Catskills resort and join the others. The result was a half dozen-story package on the Monday, anchored past one starting on the forepart folio.
Aug. 17, 1969
'Tired Rock Fans Begin Exodus'
Waves of weary youngsters streamed away from the Woodstock Music and Art Fair last night and early on today as security officials reported at least ii deaths and 4,000 people treated for injuries, illness and adverse drug reactions over the festival'south three-24-hour interval menstruation.
However, festival officials said the folk and rock music festival could go on until dawn, and most of the oversupply was adamant to stay on.
As the music wailed on into the early morning time hours, more than than 100 campfires — fed by argue-posts and any other wood the young people could lay their hands on — flickered effectually the hillside that formed a natural amphitheater for the festival.
By midnight, near one-half of the 300,000 fans who camped here had left. A thunderstorm late yesterday afternoon provided the first big impetus to depart, and a steady stream continued to get out through the dark.
Drugs and auto traffic continued to exist the main headaches.
But the crowd itself was extremely well-behaved. Equally Dr. William Ambruzzi, the festival's chief medical officer, put it: "There has been no violence whatsoever, which is remarkable for a oversupply of this size. These people are really beautiful.
The other articles, all crammed on to page 25, included a "Man in the News" profile of Max Yasgur, Reeves'south slice about the festival's fiscal woes and another with the headline, "Bethel Pilgrims Smoke 'Grass' and Some Take LSD to 'Groove.'" From nearby Monticello, Michael T. Kaufman wrote a piece about how the residents of the largest town in the surface area banded together to help "the sick, the hungry and the marooned." The description of the music, in a review by The Times's stone critic, Mike Jahn, was cached at the bottom of the page. His favorite performance belonged to Sly & the Family Rock.
The group, which is led by a former San Francisco disk jockey, Sylvester ("Sly") Stone, has artfully risen above the mass of soul bands past using melody styles vastly different from what is usual in soul music.
The best instance of the group'south audio fusion is "Everyday People," its song about alliance, which became 1 of the well-nigh pop records released this year. Sly and the Family Stone has managed to combine a happy-sounding tune line with an infectious and very danceable soul beat.
The crowd here responded many times more than warmly than to any of the groups or individuals that appeared earlier."
Aug. eighteen, 1969
'Morning Later at Bethel'
On Tuesday, The Times editorial page weighed in. Shakespeare was quoted.
Now that Bethel has shrunk back to the dimensions of a Catskills village and most of the 300,000 young people who fabricated information technology a "scene" accept returned to their homes, the rock festival begins to accept on the quality of a social miracle, comparable to the Tulipmania or the Children'southward Crusade. And in spite of the prevalence of drugs — sales were made openly, and "you could get stoned just there animate," a pupil gleefully reported — it was essentially a miracle of innocence.
The music itself was surely a prime number attraction. Where else could aficionados of rock expect to hear in i place Sly and the Family unit Stone, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jefferson Aeroplane and those other lineal descendants of the primeval Beatles?
Nonetheless it is inappreciably credible that they should have turned out in such vast numbers and endured, patiently and in adept humor, the discomforts of mud, rain, hunger and thirst solely to hear bands they could hear on recordings in the comfort of home. They came, it seems, to savor their own gild, costless to exult in a life style that is its own declaration of independence. To such a purpose a little hardship could only be an added allure.
***
Five thousand people were treated for injuries, illness and an excess of drugs. One hundred arrests were made on drug charges. And for three days traffic was tied in knots — for most of the rebels against the consumers' club have cars.
By adult standards the occasion was clearly a disaster, an outrageous upset of all normal patterns. Even so the young people's deport, in the stop, earned them a salute from Monticello'due south police chief as "the most courteous, considerate and well-behaved grouping of kids he had ever dealt with.
Maybe it was simply the communal discomfort, that whiff of danger, that they needed to feel united and at peace. For comrades-in-rock, like comrades-in-artillery, need great days to remember and embroider. With Henry the Fifth they could say at Bethel, "He that outlives this mean solar day, and comes safe home, will stand a tiptoe when this is nam'd."
Aug. 25, 1969
'Woodstock: Like Information technology Was in Words of Participants at Musical Fair'
A week afterwards Woodstock concluded, perhaps after recognizing that the original news coverage may have leaned a bit too much into the traffic jams, the mud and the drugs, and ignored what it was now calling "the well-nigh ambitious music festival e'er held," The Times ran another front end-page article. Gelb wrote that he had "the sense that something of considerable significance had taken place — but what?" To unpack that significance, the paper assembled six attendees for a circular-table conversation — five men, one woman, ranging in historic period from xvi to 22. Gelb even joined the four reporters to deport the interview, which lasted two and a half hours. The resulting piece came with a disclaimer:
"Because of the wishes of some of the parents — or, in one instance, because a participant was on probation for a drug offense — the full names of the immature people are withheld."
After the Woodstock attendees talked about why they went and their impressions of the scene — Lindsey, "a sixteen-year-one-time junior at one of the city'due south improve individual schools," said the music drew her at that place and she was blown away by the atmosphere — the conversation turned to drugs. And the paper performed some Times-splaining:
All the console participants carried some kind of drug to the festival — mostly marijuana (known equally "grass" or "pot.") Just in that location was also hashish (abbreviated as "hash"), barbiturates ("downs") and LSD (called "acrid" after its chemical proper noun, lysergic acid diethylamide).
On the manner to Bethel, the participants worried about being searched by the police. One time concealed drugs in a hollowed-out arm balance of a car; some other hid his on the floor, reading to ram information technology through a pigsty if a search began. A third said he was prepared to hide his in his underwear and demand that the officers produce a warrant made out in his name. None was searched.
In one case they reached the festival their caution evaporated in the air made sweetish by thousands of burning "joints" (cigarettes hand-filled with marijuana). Annihilation they didn't bring seemed to be readily available, fifty-fifty heroin (called "skag") though none of the participants actually sought or saw any.
Not infrequently drugs were given abroad past young people eager to share. What couldn't be had free could be bought from dealers roaming freely through the oversupply, or others who stayed back in the woods on what they took to calling "High Street."
Most of the participants regarded the drugs as an essential function of the scene — similar flags at a Fourth of July celebration.
What The Times called "conflicting themes of alienation and commitment" were woven throughout the conversation, as the other attendees, all from "comfortable middle-grade backgrounds," weighed in.
Some of the young people had taken function in the political fervor that culminated in last year's Democratic convention in Chicago. Some had been in peace marches and campus protests. Ane of the boys had spent his Easter vacation rebuilding the run-down business firm of a poor black family. Simply at that place was also the temptation of living a life of condolement gratis from "likewise much responsibility."
Judy. There were and then many people there, I thought, wow, wouldn't information technology be a skilful idea if nosotros could testify our power by, you know, getting political. And then I thought a trivial more than almost it and I said, oh, what for? It'southward already here. We already know it, nosotros haven't got to bother.
Dan. I recall it was apolitical, if anything. Chicago was very political. Woodstock was just similar government and politics just didn't exist.
Jimmy. But although they didn't exist up there in Woodstock, people were very aware. Like whenever Joan Baez said anything nearly, you know, about the laws that do exist, whether they were beingness put into upshot at Woodstock or non, the fact that they do be was not forgotten by anybody.
Pecker. Oh yes. There was evidence of outside politics. I mean you saw the Ground forces and you thought of Vietnam and things like that. I mean when I saw the helicopters landing and picking upwardly the wounded, it reminded me of Vietnam.
Sept. 7, 1969
'Mike Lang (groovy child from Brooklyn) plus John Roberts (unlimited capital) equals Woodstock'
Several weeks later, Mr. Reeves, who would go on to write critically acclaimed books almost John F. Kennedy and Richard 1000. Nixon, delivered a lengthy piece for the Sunday magazine that evoked the New Journalism then revolutionizing magazine writing. He used his incredible backside-the-scenes access at the festival to capture the frayed relationship among the organizers, every bit Woodstock Ventures careened toward $1.3 million in debt.
Here comes Mike Lang! He's rolling forth the New Jersey Turnpike in a U-Booty truck filled with a few thousand psychedelic posters and other salable stuff. The kid from Brooklyn is coming domicile from Florida, 23 years old, curly brownish pilus down to his shoulders, Indian vest and dungarees. Smashing! February, 1968. Look out, New York! Look out, America." Wait out, John Roberts!
In that location's John Roberts in his flat on East 85th Street. Aforementioned age equally Mike, horn-rimmed glasses, Rogers Peet suit. At 25 he'll inherit the first million dollars from the Polident trust fund. Outasight! A year ago he and a friend put that advertisement in The New York Times: "Young men with unlimited capital looking for interesting and legitimate business enterprises."
Beautiful! There were 1,400 replies, including ane from the man with the flight car and another from the lady with a formula for watermelon-flavored Popsicles.
Mike and John were meant for each other, poet and patron. Distressing, Popsicle lovers, merely Mike got nearly of that unlimited capital letter. He had an idea, the greatest happening in history — The Woodstock Music and Art Fair.
"I knew it was going to happen," Mike said the other day as his white Porsche stopped in front of the Plaza. "Fifty-fifty before I found his coin, I knew it was going down. I have this sense of fourth dimension."
"Mike's from another planet," said the lank redhead with him every bit men stopped to watch her climb up out of the little car. "He has these two bumps on his caput, like horns. And funny leprechaun ears and eyes that slant up."
Nov. 6, 1969
'Woodstock Festival Costs Bethel Official His Mail service'
Woodstock has continued to reverberate throughout the ensuing decades, as the event took on virtually mythic qualities. But at that place were some more down-to-earth, and much more local, repercussions, soon afterwards the festival, equally this Associated Press article in The Times made articulate.
The Democratic Supervisor of the Town of Bethel lost a re-election bid past eight votes yesterday after a campaign with one issue — the massive rock festival last summer.
Daniel Amatucci has permitted the Woodstock Music and Art Festival to be held in Bethel. About 300,000 young people descended on the tiny Catskill Mountain community.
Mr. Amatucci lost 598-590.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/09/arts/music/woodstock-new-york-times-archives.html
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