The Myth of Woodstock
Ellen Willis, in her September ‘69 New Yorker debrief, describes the Woodstock festival as near fiasco rather than hippie utopia. Which is not to say that it was bad, or anything less than a miracle. But her suspicion of the starry-eyed promoters feels remarkably prescient. Before the riots of Woodstock ‘99 and the Fyre Festival debacle, before even the trash was cleared from Max Yasgur’s farm, she was calling bullshit.
The Woodstock Myth is not all bullshit. There’s truth in how the half million people in '69 somehow lived up to the byline of Peace, Love, and Music. But Willis writes: “The festival succeeded in spite of the gross ineptitude of the masterminds.” The central “mastermind” was the indefatigable Michael Lang. It’s hard to get a read on him, given his Myth description as some hippie wizard and his dopey charm in documentaries. Money and logistics were incidental to his vision. His partners were a firm of hip venture capitalists from generational wealth, along with a team of fixers faced with impossible demands. The rest was left up to good vibes.
Good vibes were integral to the ‘69 festival’s success. Consider the infamous scene when Abbie Hoffman commandeered the mic during The Who’s set to be shoved off by Pete Townshend. It’s a symbolic moment. Woodstock was not a stage for Yippie showboating. The guiding spirit was set by the quiet heroes offering free food and medical assistance. It spurs a favorable view of the Myth, as a cultural shift from attacking the system to providing for one another within it.
Still we can note how the dreamy chaos leading up to initial Woodstock mirrors the Fyre Festival of 2017. Billy McFarland promoted Fyre as utopia with a price tag, leaving the rest up to luck and vibes. Woodstock faced similar perils with the loss of their site just a month before the advertised date. No town wanted a three-day hippie orgy in their jurisdiction. Even without a site, preparations went on to secure proper permits, police, sanitation, and basic provisions. Fate provided in the form of Max Yasgur’s farm, for which investors laid out a formidable sum. But we can imagine their scurrying akin to the Fyre promoters, who kept borrowing money and leveraging dwindling goodwill. Lang and McFarland share a certain audacity, also seen in gamblers willing to risk everything on a single game.
Music was incidental to the Fyre concept, with musicians supplanted by social media voices. But music has never been as important to Woodstock as the experience. The shaky, shambolic performances of ‘69 are part of its charm. Watch as the Jefferson Airplane sing “got to revolution!” from “Volunteers” on Sunday morning without much verve, as if this is the revolution and it’s scary and unsustainable. Jimi Hendrix played a jammy set with a new band in an opportune time slot after most of the crowds had left, with a weariness far from his usual mastery. The other performances feel like an epitaph, not indicative of the next wave in music. In ‘69 only The Who foresaw the future, with a set that presaged the next three decades of macho hard rock.
In ‘94 Woodstock was catching up to Lollapalooza, which set the blueprint for alternative rock energy. By comparison Woodstock ‘94 was the Establishment, mixing Aerosmith and Bob Dylan in with current also-rans like Blues Traveler and Spin Doctors. Trent Reznor bitterly told Rolling Stone that he only played the ‘94 festival for the paycheck. That seems like a quiet truth among musicians, to complain after the fact. Roger Daltrey of The Who told The New York Times in 2019: “Woodstock wasn’t peace and love…People were screaming at the promoters, people were screaming to get paid.” The Band and the Grateful Dead were also unsatisfied with their performances. At best we can note a certain equity between artists and audience, sharing the experience, the hardships and skittery acid highs, to create it together.
That brings us to Woodstock ‘99, which at the very least managed to capture some zeitgeist spirit. Documentaries tell the story of consumerism run amuck, of angsty bands with bratty penchants, and the unruly crowd that stole the show. As you watch the aggro dudes tearing down the walls, you hear a shout: “This is history!” So the Myth of Woodstock turned in on itself, giving kids license to destroy the world. Rage Against The Machine didn’t perform in ‘99, but were there in spirit. In the ‘60s Richie Havens chanted “freedom!” So did RATM, sardonically adding “yeah right.” I hear some inspiring truth in both sentiments, as well as a reflection of the sea change in youth culture.
In her essay, Ellen Willis makes a point about the passivity inherent in the Woodstock ideal: “The cooperative spirit did not stem from solidarity…so much as a general refusal to adopt any sort of emergency psychology.” Which suggests that Woodstock was more of a faith healing event than a music festival that ended up treating its disciples with the insolence of the Righteous Gemstones. The riots of ‘99 were caused by price gouging and poor conditions, without the ethos of hippie community to bail out the promoters’ incompetence.
Did we learn the lesson of Woodstock? The promoters didn’t. Michael Lang tried again in 2019, before investors pulled out due to a series of gaffes in planning. By then his spiritual successor Billy McFarland had exposed the hustle by bungling it so with his Fyre Festival. Details of Woodstock ‘69 speak of nearly averted disasters, from mass electrocution to hoarded food supplies. Whatever good the Myth once generated, which Bob Spitz in Barefoot in Babylon summed up as “a reminder of how close we came to utopia, and of our ongoing gamble with the vicissitudes of fortune,” that spirit was squandered by later iterations. The next Myth will be different, perhaps eschewing music for a festival of podcasts and self-help gurus. Hopefully we’ll see it with some clarity, with less emphasis on the magic of the moment and more on the responsibilities of the promoters.