Woodstock: 50 Years Later

This past Friday I went to Bethel Woods for the fiftieth anniversary of the Woodstock Music Festival. Ringo Starr and his All Starr band was headlining. Each of us had a special connection to the event. My mother grew up nearby, and was able to attend one day of the original concert, seeing Joe Cocker perform “With a Little Help from My Friends.” My brother and I, meanwhile, had gotten into the music from the sixties in high school, and had watched the Woodstock film many times. We had even seen Richie Havens, who opened the original festival, twice—once here in Bethel Woods. Besides that, all of us are devoted Beatles fans.

My mother stressed for months preceding the event. There were so many instructions—parking passes, when to arrive, what you can take in, and so on. She had called the organizers several times in order to make sure that we were properly prepared. Even so, when we arrived (after taking the same back roads my mother had taken, fifty years ago) we were promptly informed by a state trooper that we needed an additional parking pass, the “green one,” even though we already had one they had mailed to us. To get it, we had to drive over a mile to the information tent, asking for directions several times along the way (the original trooper forgot the name of the road, which was Huckle Puddy).

This done, we circled back and were finally allowed into the parking lot, being waved on by dozens of attendants. The walk to the venue took us past a great many signs, each one adding to the ever-increasing list of prohibited items and activities. No weapons, of course, or “any object that may be used as a projectile” (quite a broad category), nor professional cameras, posters, banners, selfie sticks, iPads, or lawn chairs. If you wanted to bring a camera, it could not have an interchangeable lens. If you wanted to bring a bag, it had to be plastic and transparent, allowing the staff to easily see what was inside. Among the list of permitted items were umbrellas, strollers, and “two 20oz. factory sealed bottles of water per person.” On the list of prohibited items were musical instruments.

Before going inside, we had to pass through metal detectors (no precaution can be omitted in the age of mass shootings), and then have our tickets scanned. After a slight wait, we were allowed inside. 

The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts is a cultural complex located on the original grounds of the 1969 Woodstock Festival. The site was opened partially to combat the economic downturn of the region. Years ago, the Catskill Mountains were a popular vacation spot for those living in New York City, especially in the summer when the city became unbearably hot. But events conspired to make this option ever less popular. The widespread use of air conditioning made it unnecessary to escape to the mountains, and the rise in cheaper air travel made destinations further afield more popular. Resorts and hotels closed down, leaving the region devoid of an economic heart.

Bethel Woods has several venues, including a small indoor one (where I saw Richie Havens) and the outdoor pavilion, big enough (with lawn space) for around 10,000 people. (Since you cannot bring in your own lawn chair, you must rent one from Bethel Woods if you sit on the lawn.) This is where Ringo was to perform. The complex also has a museum dedicated to the sixties: counterculture, Vietnam War protests, the Civil Rights Movements, and so on. I visited this museum back when I was in high school, and I remember an old Volkswagen Bus on display, as if it were an antique horse-drawn carriage or a space shuttle.

On this day there were tents set up all around the space, selling knick knacks, Woodstock paraphernalia, and overpriced food and drinks. A single can of beer cost $14. There were a couple cordoned-off bar areas that only catered to visitors with special tickets, who sat behind the barrier on plush chairs drinking overpriced drinks. People wearing tie-dye shirts and bell bottom jeans, with flowers sticking out of colorful bandannas, strolled around sporting bags and other merch that featured the iconic Woodstock symbol, a guitar with a dove perched on it. The average age has increased quite a bit since the first festival, though not quite by fifty years. In general the crowd was overwhelmingly white—more so, I suspect, than the original crowd, if I can judge from photos and videos. Despite threatening rain, it was a fine, sunny day.

When the original Woodstock Festival was held, this land was a dairy farm, owned by Max Yasgur. Like the anniversary concert, the original one was planned to make money. In today’s dollars, tickets for all three days cost well over $100. About 200,000 attendees were expected. But the organizers had difficulty finding a venue. The town was opposed to the concert, even though the organizers lied and said that only 50,000 would come. By the time they secured Max Yasgur’s farm, three days before the concert, they did not have enough time to build the fences. The event became, de facto, free; and more than 400,000 people came. Logistically it was a nightmare, with massive traffic jams, insufficient food, water, and toilets, and muddy fields caused by the rain. What prevented the event from becoming a calamity was a spirit of cooperation and camaraderie that prevailed among the concert-goers.

In short, the event became an iconic moment in the counterculture movement of the sixties. And though it was, financially, a disaster for the organizers, the 1970 documentary of the festival more than recouped the expenses.

Nothing I could write would capture the amazing energy of the original festival better than the documentary. While the youth were boiling over with indignation at the horrors of racism and the Vietnam War, they were simultaneously filled with an extraordinary hopefulness, actuated by the belief that music and love could herald in a better world.

No event, then, could be further in spirit from the original festival than the anniversary concert. Hippiedom has passed from counterculture to kitsch. If the original event was a logistical disaster, this one was impeccably planned. If the original event did not turn a profit, this one certainly did. The hippies were filled with a do-it-yourself ethos; they thought that they could escape the perils of commercial culture by creating things by hand, by getting back in touch with nature, by cooperating rather than competing with each other. Now, hippie garb can be bought at the gift shop, for inflated prices; and Bethel Woods transparently squeezes its visitors, by prohibiting them from bringing anything from home into the event.

The original attendees slid around on the mud and bathed in the river; they entertained themselves with drum circles. You cannot bring a guitar or a drum into Bethel Woods, and to see the music you sit on either a rented lawn chair or within the concrete pavilion. The hippies tried to reject capitalism. Now, two jumbo-trons beside the stage play commercials and display ads before, between, and after the show. And the contrasts did not stop there.

The first band to play was Blood, Sweat, and Tears, who in another iteration had played at the original festival. The band’s line-up has changed quite a bit over the years; and nobody currently in the group was present at Woodstock. In fact, the current vocalist, Keith Paluso, was years away from being born in 1969. The 30-year-old singer rose to fame as a contestant on the NBC show, The Voice; before that, he informed us, he had been a park ranger in Tennessee. “So don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t be anything you want,” he said to a cheering crowd. But I wonder if the hippies of 1969 would have thought that being chosen on a corporate TV show by a cast of super-rich celebrity judges was a really inspiring origin-story.

The band played well, sticking to its signature style of jazz-rock—a fusion of exotic harmonies, elaborate solos, and a steady backbeat. Paluso said that they played nearly the same set as the band did fifty years ago (though their set wasn’t captured on the documentary).

The next to perform was Edgar Winter, brother of the famous guitarist Johnny Winter, and famous in his own right for the hit song “Frankenstein” in the seventies. The aging rocker played with a power trio, guitar, bass, and drums, while he switched between synthesizer, saxophone, and timbales, all the while singing in his surprisingly powerful falsetto (he’s 72 years old, after all). His act featured a lot of jamming, with Winter playing call-and-response with each of the instrumentalists in turn, scatting a lick and having the player repeat it. I thought it was a little much.

Finally Ringo came out, accompanied by his All Starr Band. The idea of this band is that Ringo gathers together former members of prominent rock groups, and each of them performs songs from the high points of their careers. It is like a retirement home for aging rockers. The current line-up features Colin Hay, of Men at Work; Hamish Stuart, of Average White Band; Steve Lukather, of Toto; and Gregg Rolie, who played with Santana at the original Woodstock. During their set, then, Colin Hay sang “Land Down Under,” Hamish Stuart sang “Pick up the Pieces,” Steve Lukather sang “Rosanna,” and Gregg Rolie sang “Evil Ways.” Ringo, for his part, sang several of his hits from the Beatles, including “Yellow Submarine” and “With a Little Help from My Friends,” as well as some hits from his solo career, like “Photograph.”

Ringo was charming as ever, effortlessly funny even if occasionally sounding out-of-tune, such as when he asked “Are there any young girls in the audience?” before singing “You’re Sixteen.” In the age of Jeffrey Epstein, this does not sound like an innocent question. The other members played and sang well, too, delivering a crowd-pleasing performance. I was happy to see Ringo, not only since I think he was one of the keys to the Beatles’ success (despite his reputation, his drumming was innovative and crucial to the band’s sound), but also because this meant that I had seen both living Beatles (having seen Paul McCartney in Yankee Stadium, years ago). For a man of 79, he looks and sounds great.

While I do not wish to disparage the music of the anniversary, I think it also illustrates a major shift since the days of Woodstock. Rock music used to be the affair of amateurs, who figured out how to play and sing by themselves. Nowadays, rock music has been professionalized. The musicians at this concert played with a technically immaculate polish that was very different from the original generation of musicians. As a contrast I might offer Richie Havens, a man with no musical education who created an entirely original way to play the guitar, tuning it to an open chord, barring it with his thumb, and strumming like a madman. Or I might mention Jimi Hendrix, whose self-taught style has remained basically inimitable. The guitarists who played at the anniversary, by contrast, were studied professionals, capable of playing flawless blues solos, jazz chords, or funk riffs. They could sound like anyone, in other words, except themselves.

So what are we to make of this immense contrast? In truth, it is not surprising that the youthful hippie culture puttered out. People get older, more successful, more integrated, and more conservative. Besides, such an outpouring of naïve hope was perhaps unsustainable. In any case, as a method of social change, the hippie way was rather self-indulgent and hedonistic, hoping that drugs and dancing was enough to change the world.

The change also illustrates the immense power of the culture to absorb a counter-culture, commercializing everything to the extent that it loses its teeth and even its identity. We actively buy into this commercialization. Money is basically irresistible.

Yet for all the naiveté, the fuzzy thinking, the hedonism, and the self-righteous nonsense of the hippie movement, it is difficult not to regret the disappearance of that immense, hopeful energy, that impossible dream of ushering in a new world. Now we have many of the same problems as the hippies had—foreign wars, racism, exploitative capitalism—but without the spirit of cooperation, inventiveness, and optimism that might allow us to push back. For Woodstock was not about the trappings of hippiedom, or even ultimately about the music. It was about a dream.