WOODSTOCK ‘94: 25 YEARS LATER MUSIC AND MUD
While not as famous as the 1969 concert, the Saugerties festival created memories — good and bad — for those who were there
SAUGERTIES, N.Y. >> Twentyfive years ago this week, some 350,000 people descended on a small farm here to celebrate the anniversary of one of the most iconic rock concerts in history.
Billed as “2 More Days of Peace and Music,” (a third day was ultimately added), the event from Aug. 12-14, 1994, was intended to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the original Woodstock festival. That took place Aug. 15-17, 1969, on Max Yasger’s farm in the Sullivan County town of Bethal.
Like the festival 25 years earlier, Woodstock ‘94, didn’t happen in Woodstock at all, but it did take place on a farm, this time Winston Farm, in the Ulster County town of Saugerties, which bordered the town that gave the festival its name.
And, like the festival Woodstock ‘94 was meant to memorialize, attendance at the event quickly surpassed the expectations of its producers, and the festival, for which tickets sold for $135 for the three-day affair, almost immediately became a
free concert.
A handful of those who the event shared their recollections in emails sent to the Freeman.
John Miggins, of Stone Ridge, who was 31 at the time of the original festival, said he had grown up intrigued by the aura of the original concert, so he jumped at the chance to attend the anniversary festival
“We weren’t in the concert site five minutes before I saw people streaming into the field through a large hole in the fence,” he recalled. “It was already a free concert.”
Still, he added, “this lifechanging event was worth every penny of the $135.00 ticket price to me.
“The bands, the Mud People and just the aura of the entire event was staggering,” he wrote to the Freeman. I’ll never forget one skinny guy that I kept seeing who was totally naked throughout the entire 3-day event. I will also never forget the beer runs we made into the old Grand Union supermarket. And I will also never forget paying $35.00 for a case of Miller Light beer at the El Rancho Mexican restaurant on Route 32 (when Grand Union had long run out of beer). The partying inside the event was a thing of beauty. Seeing my cousin P.J. McManamon’s local band, The Paul Luke Band, play the North Stage on Friday, August 12th was also very memorable.
“But what I remember most of all is the camaraderie with total strangers that occurred during this entire event. Everyone shared everything that they had. Just like I had heard happened at the original show back in 1969.”
Eric Vogel said even though he wasn’t born for the original concert, to him, Woodstock ‘94 “contained the spirit, weather and diversity of music pictured in the film and photographs from (1969).”
The former Woodstock resident said living in the neighboring town made it easy to get to the concert.
“The incredible moment for me was when my grandparents Joseph and Barbara Forno took the stage with The Band and my uncle Joseph Forno Jr. while I was out in the muddy mess.”
Ann Hildebrandt and her husband, Mark, lived on Finger Street, in the heart of the village at the time of the concert. While the couple didn’t attend first two days of the event, they didn’t miss the music: “We were able to stand in the middle of our street and hear the music,” said Ann Hildebrandt in an email to the Freeman.
“Friends from around the country were calling to see what was happening so we just let them hear for themselves,” she said, adding that the village did a “good job” of minimizing the traffic impact to village residents.
On Sunday, the couple ventured to Winston Farm and found they could just walk in; no tickets needed. “My husband was really thrilled because we got to hear the Allman Brothers and Bob Dylan live,” she recalled. “And there was mud, at least we think that was what we were walking through, it was just everywhere.”
Not all, though, found being in the midst of the hundreds of thousands of people an experience they recall fondly.
For Michele Darling, who took a Trailways bus with five others from Kingston to Saugerties on Saturday and snuck in through one of the “giant holes” in the fence, the experience was “a nightmare.” While they got to see Joe Cocker perform, as they tried to walk around they got caught in a crush of people. ”I was holding hands with my sister ... and my friend ... because I was afraid to lose them in the crowd.
“It was terrifying,” she recalled. “It took us 90 minutes to go 100 yards and we could only walk in the direction that the crowd was taking us. We got out of there as soon as possible and went home. It really affected my life because I was convinced that I was going to be crushed in that crowd of people and be killed ... I avoided going to concerts for 20 years after that.”
For many at Woodstock ‘94, like those who attended the original festival, the mud is something they won’t soon forget.
Indeed, at one point during her nearly hourlong set on Saturday, Melissa Etheridge made reference to her “mud people,” eliciting roars from the throngs of mudcovered people gathered in front of the stage.
Chris Beall was drafted to be a chaperone for his 14-year-old daughter, who wanted to attend but was too young to go alone.
The first night, he said, they slept in his car because the promised buses intended to shuttle concert goers to the site from remote parking lots never arrived. The next day, he said, they started to hike to the site, then ended up paying a “local entrepreneur $5 each to drop us at the front gate.”
And he remembers the rain. And the mud. And “inching through the crowd and hoping the four inches of muck didn’t suck my boots off.”
It would take a solid 24 hours for the crowd to clear the area on Sunday, with state police closing down several roads in the area and National Guardsmen called out to help direct traffic.
Two deaths were reported during the three-day event, although authorities said both were “medically-related.”
What was left behind was a landscape that was described at the time as one “reminiscent of a war zone, with bottles, sleeping bags, clothing and other items covered with and submerged in mud.”
Rosendale resident Ed Peters was one of those who were tasked with helping with the cleanup, a job, he said, he remembers vividly.
“The fields one could see were dense with stuff,” he recalled.
“There were tents, sleeping bags, panties, and other stuff, more stuff than grass. Each item when lifted revealed another ubiquitous site: worms. It was astounding. Each square foot, or square inch in the case of the panties when picked over revealed a worm or two or dozens. The rain had driven these creatures up for air. The old pastureland supported many. I remember other things too, much to do with things left behind, and each item has a tale to go with it.”