WOODSTOCK TURNS 50
Celebration of rock music revered as cultural touchstone of a generation
AFREEWHEELING weekend of indulgence. A New York farm transformed by idealistic youths into a mid-size city. A celebration of rock music and utopian ideals.
Woodstock was many things but one thing is clear — it is revered by many as the cultural touchstone of a generation.
The 1969 festival of peace, love and music marks its 50th anniversary this weekend, triggering a wave of nostalgia for an era when rock was for the young, tie-dye was cool, long hair was a statement, and kids said “groovy” without a trace of irony.
It’s estimated that anywhere from 400,000 to half a million people descended on Max Yasgur’s alfalfa fields in upstate New York that Aug 15 to 18, embarking on a trip of a party that saw icons like Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Santana jam as increasingly filthy festival-goers danced, stripped and dropped acid in torrential rain.
The organisers were charging US$18 (RM75) a ticket for revelers to attend the event, which featured now legendary rock bands like Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Who, and Crosby, Stillsas
well as Nash and Young.
John Roberts and Joel Rosenman bankrolled the festival, which they dreamed up with fellow 20-somethings Michael Lang and Artie Kornfeld as a business opportunity to promote a wouldbe recording studio in upstate New York.
But as news of the bucolic rock concert spread, a crush of eager attendees bottle-necked country roads winding to the festival site in White Lake, a hamlet of the small town of Bethel, some 100km southwest of the namesake town of Woodstock. The overwhelmed masterminds had little choice but to declare that Woodstock would be, like the love, free.
As the music began, rains swept in, food ran out and helicopters whirred overhead — sometimes delivering musicians, other times supplies.
Despite the mud and warnings of bad acid, the myth of Woodstock lived on — the festival was venerated as a beacon of hope that emerged out of the tumultuous 1960s, rife with assassinations and riots as the Vietnam War raged.
Sri Swami Satchidananda, a yoga master from India, opened the festival with an address urging compassion, a moment seen as embodying the non-violent culture Woodstock aimed to represent.
By the time Hendrix tore through his electrified, abstract rendition of The Star-Spangled
Banner, now considered iconic, the masses were heading back to the real world, beginning to sear their collective myth into the history books.
Rumours persist, but mystery endures whether any babies were born at Woodstock. Sleuthing over the decades has fallen short, and no one has come forward as offspring born onsite — though it’s likely some were conceived there.