LOCALS REMEMBER WOODSTOCK ‘69
“I was there.” So exclaimed many — in emailed remembrances to the Freeman — of their place at the iconic Woodstock Music & Art Fair in Bethel, Sullivan County. The weekend generationaldefining rock extravaganza took place in 1969, five decades ago this week.
Barbara Connelly (her maiden name), a Kingston resident, was 20 years old at the time and dating her future husband, Joseph Cohen, 21.
“We were trying to find our voice, our place in the world,” said Barbara Cohen. “The news showed our soldiers being brought home in coffins, President Nixon was supporting the Vietnam war, sending more of our youth to fight ... to attend a three-day festival of music seemed like an escape.”
So the couple, who now run an Uptown bed-andbreakfast, headed off to Max Yasgur’s farm, where they would wind up with 400,000 people or so, many seeking similar bliss.
“How innocent we were with packing for three days, no toiletry bag, suitcases, food, water, or tent,” Cohen said. “Instead, just us and a few dollars.”
Cohen’s dad, Jim Connelly, made up roast beef sandwiches that the couple ate before leaving. He gave them a U.S. Army blanket and a flashlight.
As they drove on the Thruway, the historic traffic jam blocked their way to the Woodstock site.
“We were not able to drive directly to Yasgur’s farm,” Cohen said. “The N.Y. Thruway was closed.”
The couple ditched the Volkswagen in Monticello
and “walked for miles until someone gave us a ride to the site,” Cohen said.
Then, Cohen said, she was there.
“We arrived to a sea of people smiling, talking, and setting up tents,” Cohen said. “For three days we were surrounded by the sounds of musicians Richie Havens, Joe Cocker, Crosby, Stills and Nash and more, each one sang the same message: live in a world of peace, love and freedom.”
“To be among so many people all the same age surrounded by music is a memory that will always stay,” Cohen said. “We slept outside without a tent and when it rained we just got wet. To this day when it rains I always say: “I survived Woodstock!”
Paris native Gilles Malkine, an Onteora High School graduate, was 20 years old when he and his band took to the stage at the Woodstock festival as part of Tim Hardin’s band. Hardin was known for his song, “If I were a Carpenter.”
“We got to the White Lake Motel in the afternoon but then couldn’t make it through the enormous traffic jam to the festival; a helicopter had to come and picked us up in a field by the road,” said Malkine, who played rhythm guitar. “When we came up over the trees and caught sight of the festival we totally freaked; it was an amazing sight, an ocean of people and tents and. . . buses.”
Then Malkine, who now lives in Olive, and the band arrived there too, at the performers’ tent.
“When we got there we were met with a swarming crowd that we thought would just swallow us up forever,” Malkine said. “In the performers’ pavilion was a party of faces straight off the covers of two dozen albums of the day.”
Malkine said he readied to take to the stage that was “full of amps and wires and microphones and people busy with the million tasks to get the place ready.”
“I was with Tim Hardin and he didn’t want to go on first. I mean, who can blame him?” Malkine said. “Richie Havens didn’t want to either, but he finally agreed, and played for two hours, to his everlasting glory – he was the perfect choice, got the place rockin’ – he had an awesome way of grabbing a beat and spreading a song over it like honey.”
Malkine said that “we finally got on between 8 and 9. We did OK but it wasn’t great, but there was such happiness everywhere.”
Malkine said Ravi Shankar came on and “blew everybody’s minds.
“He was miles above everyone else in musical mastery, he just took that crowd and had his way with them, made them cheer and yell with nothing but the flowing currents of his music,” Malkine said. “That was the high point of the festival for me, although truth to tell, I didn’t get to see everything.”
But not everyone there felt the good vibe.
Town of Ulster resident Lynda Sales Engholm, who lived in Woodstock for 30 years, says her experience was not all that uplifting.
Engholm was 22 in 1969. She taught Montessori school during the week and worked at the Fillmore East as a weekend receptionist.
“The Woodstock Festival hired the Fillmore staff to work the weekend,” Engholm said. “They gave us hotel rooms in Monticello. No one knew that once you went in to the festival, you couldn’t really get out.”
Engholm says she and her boyfriend set up a box office with others.
“I don’t think we sold one ticket,” Engholm added. “The fences came down, and that was kinda that.”
Engholm says she got reassigned to security.
“I was assigned to the performers’ dining area,” she said. “It was so hot that day. They gave me a giant T shirt (which I wish I still had, but that’s another story) and I wore that and some underwear and that was it.” Hunger set in. “We had no food, because we thought we could leave,” Engholm said. “I was being overly “moral”… didn’t eat any of the performer food that surrounded me. It was torture, and I’m sure no one would’ve cared.”
Engholm said she didn’t watch too much of the show.
“I did watch The Who, because “Tommy” was (and is) my favorite thing, and a few others,” Engholm said.
There’s another thing she recalled.
“I remember going swimming at one point in the very hot day,” Engholm said. “Everyone was skinnydipping, and that was NOT my thing. I was young and cute, but I wasn’t comfortable with that.”
Engholm added, though, that “when I saw two busty young women (unlike me) swim over to my boyfriend and put their arms around him, I got over it, and went in fast.”
Saugerties resident Margo Mcgilvrey wasn’t there long.
“We went on Friday and left!” she said. “Hated the traffic, congestion and already chaotic behavior. Saw police arrest someone and then let them go because there was no way to detain them. Went with our friends to NYC and had a great weekend in Village.”
Tom Benton, who lives in Woodstock, was a 19-yearold garage band musician when he spotted an advertisement for the Woodstock Music & Art Fair.
“The list of performers in the Woodstock ad nearly stopped my heart,” said Benton, who is now an attorney.
On the morning of Aug. 14, 1969, Benton set off with his friend, Mickey, in his parents’ Chevy van.
“Although I fancied myself some kind of middleclass hippie at the time, I had also been an active member of the Boy Scouts in my teens, so I knew how to take a five-day camping trip,” said Benton, who added that the two got there early, but the fencing had already come down.
“When I offered my ticket to the official-looking guy at the gate, he just smiled and waved me through,” Benton said.
“By Friday morning, the crowd had swelled to unimaginable proportions, but the friendly and peaceful mood continued, albeit in a much more constricted environment,” Benton said.
Benton says he has favorite memories. Among them are:
• Arlo Guthrie: “The New York State Thruway is closed, man.”
• Joan Baez: “Her voice rolled across the pitch-black pasture like a giant bowling ball of sound when she sang with ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ a cappella.”
• Country Joe and the Fish: “the Fish cheer; need I say more.”
• John Sebastian: “Why must every generation think their folks are square?”
• Joe Cocker: “Is that air guitar or is he seriously damaged? And that voice!!”
“Remarkably, I saw them all, which was my mission from the start,” Benton said.
Benton says he even remembers getting home.
“When I arrived home Monday night, my parents were relieved to see me alive and relatively well,” Benton said.
Today, Benton says most of his life has been rewarding practicing law.
“I also teach and play music,” he said. “I have been involved with many civic and church organizations through the years and have a large, healthy and beautiful family.
“And, on top of all that, I was at Woodstock!” Benton said
For Phoenicia resident Bob Grimm, the experience featured a colorfully painted Volkswagen.
“Our painted VW bus was a truly inspired work of mystical and esoteric symbols, and we believed it
probably had an esteemed destiny in the company of our generation’s musical heroes,” Grimm says on his webpage.
The “Light Bus,” named after Grimm’s Baltimore band, blazed trails across the art and music scene in those days, and later that year was pictured in Rolling Stone Magazine, becoming one of the hippie icons of the age, Grimm said.
The Light Bus traveled from Baltimore, stopped over at the New Jersey shore, where the occupants, including Grimm, spent the day.
“By the time we’d proceeded up the New Jersey Turnpike and approached White Lake and the Festival area, we were sorry we hadn’t forgone the shore stop,” Grimm says. “It was the day before the first performances and we discovered that we might not be
able to get in.”
“Approaching the access road, a policeman said, ‘You can’t drive in, you’ll have to walk!’ Thinking quickly I said, ‘We’re taking this bus to the art exhibit.’”
Grimm says the officer told them to go on ahead.
“We drove the Light Bus up the tree lined dirt road to the festival grounds and into our little bit of Woodstock history,” Grimm said.
During the drive, Grimm says, the VW was surrounded by people walking.
“At one point, two guys jumped on the rear bumper,” Grimm says. “I slammed on the (brakes), leapt from the driver’s seat and, in a manner not to be confused with the love generation, told them to get the hell off my bus!”
The Light Bus crew didn’t participate in some of the festival’s ancillary activities.
“There was much we didn’t do at Woodstock; we didn’t swim naked; we didn’t eat the purple acid,” Grimm says. “We didn’t indulge
in the various tribal rituals that seemed to permeate the place. We came for the music!”
The first day offered the Light Bus travelers a stunning view of the stage from the front window of the VW and from its roof.
“The ultimate deluge found us huddled inside, thankful to have the refuge,” Grimm said. “We ventured frequently into the crowd toward the stage, relative to the performances of our favorite groups.”
But something else stood out.
“We soon became aware that we had become a city of America’s latest social phenomena: long-haired, pot smoking hippies believing that we could change the world!:
“Well, we did!” Grimm said.
Woodstock resident Dr. Rhoney Stanley, who was 21 years old in 1969, had heard about the peace and love rock rest while a student at the University of California
at Berkeley.
“When I heard about the upcoming music festival called Woodstock, I wanted in,” Stanley recalled. “At the time, the Grateful Dead needed a secretary. No one wanted this bad job with no pay.”
“When the Grateful Dead were contracted to perform at Woodstock for $2,500, I made a deal with Jerry Garcia, who was nominally the leader of the band,” Stanley said.
Stanley would agree to be secretary if the band would take her to Woodstock.
“When I got on the plane in San Francisco with the Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead band members, sitting next to my partner, Owsley Stanley aka Bear, I was already experiencing the peace, love and community that the Woodstock Music Festival, August, 1969, would represent,” Stanley said.
Stanley said the Woodstock-bound crew wound up in a limo to Bethel.
“We took a limo from the airport to upstate NY, and were stuck in a long line of traffic, slowly making our way to the festival site,” Stanley said. “There Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm had set up a long tent with sleeping bags for the Grateful Dead family.”
Stanley says she recalls skinny dipping too.
“The next day during the bright sunshine that filled the air along with the storms and clouds, Phil (Lesh) and I went skinny dipping in the beautiful lakes of the Catskills,” Stanley said. “Here was a young musician, now as famous as they come, humbling being one with the hippies and enjoying the freedom of nature and connection.”
“In some ways, the music that day was a background to the powerful immediacy of life — the music, sometimes, was not the main event,” Stanley said.
Stanley recalled the Grateful Dead’s performance, marked first by a
frightening microphone mishap.
“For me, the Grateful Dead’s performance was memorable,” Stanley said. “For us, standing at the side of the stage, the fact that they made it through without any other major mishaps, was all that counted, and they came off stage, disappointed in their performance, as survival rather than inspirational music, had been the driving force.”
Stanley says the final day of the festival was most striking.
“The most moving happening occurred as the sun came up on the final day of this festival of peace and love, the muddy field littered with debris, when Jimi Hendrix, alone center stage, in his gorgeous luminous regalia, played the Star Spangled Banner, our American anthem with all his heart and virtuoso musical ability, stirring our emotions, bringing in the cacophony of the troubled times. . .,” Stanley remembered.