Woodstock – notes through the woods

In 1969, Michael Lang started the “3 Days of Peace, Love and Music,” a free celebration of music that has become hallowed with time.

Nabila Habib

In 1969, Michael Lang started the “3 Days of Peace, Love and Music,” a tradition of free celebration of music and counter culture that has become hallowed with time. The start of the tradition itself has turned into one of the greatest moments in popular music history. That four days of chaos bound some Woodstock attendees to the fair in a way that even after 40 years the emotions and memories are warm with nostalgia. The sense of community keeps them tied to the place. Following that fateful week in ’69, musical celebrations took place in 1979, 1989, 1994, and now it has begun again from 5 in the evening of August 15th. The gala celebration is slated to continue till the wee hours of August 19th. The event celebrates Rock and Folk, including blues-rock, folk rock, jazz fusion, Hard rock, Latin rock, and psychedelic rock styles. This year Conor Oberst's rendition of Jimi Hendrix's acclaimed electric guitar version of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ kicked off the festival. Then Country Joe McDonald played MC and created an aura of remembrance for the nine service members from the local county who were killed in Vietnam, and the five killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He dedicated his anti-war anthem ‘Feel like I'm fixin' to die’ to them. Woodstock Music & Art Fair was a music festival, billed as ‘An Aquarian Exposition’, held originally at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in the rural town of Bethel, New York. Here thirty-two acts were performed during the rainy weekend in front of nearly half a million concertgoers. The place is now a manicured green expanse surrounded by wooden fences, with a performing arts center and a museum dedicated to the 1960s and to Woodstock. This year the fair is scheduled to have a ‘Heroes of Woodstock’ concert featuring a number of bands and graybeard performers who are still around: Country Joe McDonald, Tom Constanten, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Canned Heat, Ten Years After, Jefferson Starship, the Levon Helm Band and Mountain. Unlike the original ’69 version, when the audience sprawled on blankets across the grassy stretch of land (avoiding the slushy patches, of course!), now things have changed. Many of the 15,000 concertgoers expected by organizers will be in seats - not sprawled on blankets. And attendees would spend the night at inns and motels up to 60 miles away. “We understand what peace, love and music is all about. We understand how to live in harmony, not like today's world. None of this stuff was here,” says Groovy, who worked as a stagehand in ‘69, building the giant stage and helping the musicians. “Jimi Hendrix was the best,” he said. “He was just like normal people.” Others speak wistfully about Sly and the Family Stone or the Who or the Grateful Dead. And the most striking thing is, Woodstock happened by accident. Four promoters carved out the original plan that was to have a giant music and arts festival, and to attract some of the big-name musicians, like Janis Joplin, who lived nearby. But in mid-July the location for the fair became unavailable. The Wallkill town zoning board rejected the permit, leaving the promoters without a venue. That was when Max Yasgur, a Sullivan County farmer, came to the rescue. His son Sam Yasgur recalls, “During the festival, it was intense. There were threats. There were neighbors who couldn't get out and milk their cows. Their fields were being chewed up by cars, their crops were being destroyed.” But not all the townsfolk were upset with the invasion. When Leni Binder heard about the huge crowds gathering, she went to a local market and bought all the bread, peanut butter and jelly she could, and made scores of sandwiches. She then instructed her delivery drivers to go out and hand out the sandwiches to anyone who was hungry. According to informal reports, at least two babies were born at the festival! “There were a lot more conceived,” another veteran informed. Woodstock veterans are convinced that the 1969 festival's ending up here was no accident, that this is a holy place, recognized as such by the earliest Native American tribes. This area of central New York in the Catskill Mountains still has a large number of Hasidic Jewish communities, ashrams, a cloistered community of French nuns and, since Woodstock, a number of drug rehabilitation centers. And now it has the museum and arts center, which continues to draw the old-timers looking to relive that one magical part of their youth. Essra Mohawk, who was slated to perform at the first fair but could not, would be performing this time. She told a news daily, “I bring it full circle because I didn't get to play the original Woodstock. Music is the environment that pulls people together. They are isolated behind their computer screens without true social interaction. These festivals provide something that is a real human need.” She is to headline this year’s celebration and capture the sound of past music – which she had witnessed and heard herself. “The 1960s, for that brief time is not just history, it is a preview of the golden age,” said Mohawk.