Forty years ago, I covered Woodstock for The Burlington (VT) Free Press . Two days after my “Pop Festival Drowns in Mud Sea” front-page story (see below) I wrote a column entitled “The New Youth Culture: Nightmare in the Catskills” (also below).
I was an anti-war, acid-taking hippie at the time (check out the pants I was wearing at Woodstock — that’s me with the camera!) but i was obviously ambivalent about Woodstock. And in retrospect my premature prediction of the death of Hippiedom (it actually didn’t die until the violence at the Altamont concert, which featured the Rolling Stones and the Hell’s Angels, a few months later) make me sound like a fascist piglet.
Since then, I’ve thrown a “33 Years Since Woodstock” party at my home in the south of France and I’m still hippie enough to be walking around the Mediterranean Sea and writing about it (idiotandodyssey.com). The Woodstock myth has finally become my reality.
Here’s a look back at the day as I officially recorded it for a Vermont daily (hey, I’d just turned 21 so cut me some slack).
The Burlington Free Press Monday August 18, 1969
Photo caption: Crowded roads were virtually blocked to automobile traffic Saturday in White Lake, N.Y. when an estimated 300,000 persons flocked to the Woodstock Art and Music festival.
Pop Festival Drowns in Mud Sea As 300,000 Jam New York Village
By JOEL McCLURE
WHITE LAKE, N.Y. – Three days of publicized peace and music at the Woodstock Aquarian Exposition here turned into a complete fiasco when at least 300,000 persons from throughout the country thronged to this small hamlet in the Catskill Mountains, creating massive traffic jams and food and water shortages.
According to a medical spokesman, three people died during the weekend. One person was crushed by a tractor early Saturday morning when he was sleeping, and and two died Sunday. One death was caused by an overdose of heroin and one from a burst appendix. Another girl broke her back when she fell from scaffolding and many others are reported seriously ill from a variety of causes.
The hip and hairy, musically-attuned persons swarmed to the forested area and huddled body-to-body over a 600-acres rented ranch to be entertained by such rock groups and Creedence Clearwater and the Jefferson Airplane.
Everyone wanted to be “where it was happening” and this music and art festival was the place to be.
Promoters of the events stopped taking tickets early Friday night and anybody wanting to get into the trampled alfalfa and corn fields was welcomed.
A web of shabby campsites resembling a tent city of gold rush days, covered the hills to protect overnighters from thunder showers which lasted through the weekend and created a virtual swamp of the area.
The crowded ordeal became more serious when the available supply of food and water was deplete-d by the unexpected influx of turned-on youngsters. First aid and medical buildings were rapidly constructed to assist the rising number of persons suffering from viruses and injuries complicated by weather and living conditions and from adverse drug reactions. Thirty physicians were flown in from New York to help cope with the situation.
It was a miserable mess. This reporter arrived appropriately attired for an expected pleasant weekend at 5 p.m. Friday to hear rhythmic orchestral sounds within the hour.
Instead, I became part of the area-wide traffic jam which blocked all reads within fifteen miles of the site, and was forced to move in the low-speed, bumper-to-bumper road for eight hours before approaching the fairgrounds.
Vehicles were abandoned along the route to the fair and most festival-goers chose to walk the last miles on the sides of clogged roads weaving between the halted cars.
A number of weary and discouraged music lovers turned back.
“We’re going to the hills in Vermont where there’s fresh air and no people. This place is a circus. A real madhouse. I feel like an animal in a zoo,” one girl said as she tromped back to her car, parked miles away.
Another continued, “Why go away? Stay here and find God.”
Although some did leave, most stayed to get a glimpse of the bands and romp in the woods.
Why did they come?
“It’s like any big event of this sort. It has a magnetic force pulling you toward it. Even though it might not be fun, you know you’d regret it if you stayed home,” a tall blond miss, peddling the Village Voice among the rows of backed up automobiles, commented.
“This is the best gathering of popular musicians ever,” added another. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It’s just too bad everyone else feels the same way.”
The site of the activity was a giant sea of mud and a garbage pit by Saturday morning. Then it got worse.
Wearing rain-soaked and mud-splattered bell bottoms most of the persons tried to find a spot on the 20-acre hill to get a better view of the musicians. Most could hear the music only as a distant rumble, unable to see whether the source was a beloved musician or a record blaring on the sound system.
Hoping to find some of the expected peace and solitude, many left the amphitheater itself and walked back into the woods where they were greeted by a number of small jerry-built shops and exhibits.
The forest paths were lighted with strings of Christmas lights and named “Groovy Way” or “Gentle Path.”
The booths, constructed by the artisans out of corn stalks and tree limbs, featured everything from art work, sandals, and beaded necklaces to volumes on “Che Guevara,” the revolutionary idol of many of the politically minded youths, shirts and radical newspapers.
Peace signs, shouts of “love not war,” and gaily dressed flower children were seen throughout. Marijuana and hashish joints were liberally passed around.
Despite the conditions many seemed to be having a good time.
One group was distributing free food and beverages at t a communal kitchen but, like the concessions stands, they too ran dry. Unclad children were enjoying the puddles of mud.
Sleeping quarters, like the food status, were equally bleak at the camp-in. Sleeping bags cluttered the soaked turf and many persons were forced to bundle up in the back seats of cars and under trucks.
In order to get food, vegetable gardens in the area were denuded and corn fields plundered.
Toilet facilities and water spouts were out of order and queues formed at nearby homes. It often took an hour to get a small cup of water.
The tragic farce ended early today with the tired and dirty crowds ready to face the accustomed traffic conditions on their trek home. Police couldn’t prevent the insoluble situation.
Villagers in surrounding town were both flattered and frightened by the motorists and cyclists who overwhelmed the usually subdued area for the festival. Motels posted “No Vacancy” signs and restaurants battled to feed the crowds flocking t and from the area.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” one elderly inhabitant of nearby Jeffersonville said. “I hope everyone gets out of here alive/”
The exposition, which was hailed as the introduction to the utopic[sic] Aquarian Age, is scheduled to take place again next year. Promoters hope to find a more suitable site.
Wednesday, August 20, 1969
The New Youth Culture: Nightmare in the Catskills
By JOEL McCLURE
The long-awaited dream of having all the beautiful people flock to the wilderness of the Catskill Mountains to hear the wailing rhythms of the country’s top musicians from a hillside seat came true last weekend.
Some of the 350,000 turned-on youths at the Woodstock Aquarian Exposition found the advertised peace at the three-day fair and enjoyed romping in the sea of mud and dealing with the problems of the weekend community.
Other festival goers discovered only a frightening nightmare of congested roads and a too-civilized forest.
It is difficult to say whether the event was a rewarding colossal “high” or an atmosphere of idiocy for most of the youth in attendance.
This scribe’s clean bell-bottoms and summer-grown curly hair welcomed the happening as a respite from the “civilized Burlington crowds.” It was a rare opportunity to hear the much-admired Creedence Clearwater Revival and Jimi Hendrix at one sitting.
In retrospect, I can at best be ambivalent about the production. After battling with the clogged roads and stormy weather, I became somewhat disheartened.
Nobody could have forecast the overwhelming crowds who would make the religious exodus to White Lake, N.Y. Nobody could have known there would be a potentially disastrous situation wrought by inadequate sanitation facilities and a dire food and water shortage. But seeing these things occur transformed a Friday afternoon smile to a Saturday morning frown.
Disorganization and chaos rather than the expected ecstasy and euphoria reigned.
Highways leading to the site were impassable for both frenzied youths and local residents, police security was virtually nonexistent, medical facilities to cope with unforeseen emergencies were almost nil, and the opportunity to hear the bands was hampered by the throngs of musically-attuned youths.
Only a small percentage of the large crowd was able to see the performers and be certain a rock group, not a record, was blaring over the sound system.
But there were also some positive factors.
The communities surrounding the grounds showed great concern over the plight of the young and made available food and medical assistance. One would have expected less tolerance regarding the crowds which disrupted the usual rustic solitude of the sparsely populated hamlets.
The persons in attendance were living the peace they preached, enjoying the communal living despite the hardships, and trying to help alleviate the unexpected problems. Free food was available at a community kitchen while it lasted and some unclad teens conducted a nude-in which heightened their damp spirits.
As a 21-year-old, I could either join the masses and have a good time or reject it as madness and lunacy. Last fall at the Monterey Pop festival in California I rejoiced. This summer at Woodstock I rebelled. My near disgust with American society was over-powered by my distaste with American anti-society.
Drugs of unknown composition were distributed and used irresponsibly causing a number of serious injuries and various illnesses. The “I love you, have a flower” slogans were too abundant to appreciate. The spontaneous community feeling was too forced to enjoy. The conformity of my long-haired, bearded counterparts made even the Wall Street businessmen, whom I usually loathe, appear attractive.
The peace was too similar to war.
The art and music fair was hailed as a “great event in the development of the new American youth culture which hopes to replace the society they now abhor and greet the future utopic[sic] aquarian age. To many, including this disillusioned youngster, the era-to-be looks somewhat bleak.
When leaving the mass mess to return to the now respected tranquility of Burlington where I would trim my locks and replace mud-spattered bell-bottoms with neatly pressed shirts and slacks, one youth called out, “Don’t go. Stay here and find God.”
Despite his plea, I left. The new God was in somewhat sad shape over the weekend.
Joel Stratte-McClure is a Redding native and Shasta High graduate. He is a journalist/adventurer who lived in France for over three decades and has been writing about his global trekking and hiking adventures since the 1970s. His work has taken him to over 100 countries, and his articles on a variety of subjects have appeared The International Herald Tribune, Time Magazine, The London Times, People Magazine, Who Weekly, Fast Thinking and numerous other publications. He’s currently based in Los Angeles, where, when he’s not hiking, he writes the Tinseltown SpyWitness column for the Los Angeles Daily News and is completing a book entitled “Hollywood’s Twenty-Five Hottest Latinos: How They Got There, What They’re Doing Now And Where They’re Going.”
