Talk:Woodstock

in the description it says "The Who did not take stage until about 4:00 in the morning" but when you school down it says 3:00. Consistancy?

Attendance

How many *actually* attended? Claims of 400,000 are regularly made, but where does the figure come from? --Robert Merkel, 15 November 2001

Monterey Pop Festival

I added a link for the Monterey Pop Festival, which deserves an article of its own. Monterey was, as far as I know, the first rock festival of its kind, and probably served as the inspiration for Woodstock. I have to say that, after looking at the roster of artists who performed at Woodstock, I am blown away with just how impressive it was. No wonder so many people wanted to attend.  :) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Conversion script (talk • contribs) 15:43, 25 February 2002 UTC.

Neil Young

I changed the Crosby, Stills, & Nash (and Young) reference to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, but I later read that Young only joined the trio after Woodstock. Apparently he did perform some numbers with them, but I don't know if he and they were featured separately and this was just serendipity. Could someone chime in on this? -- Jeff Q 06:25, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

Neil Young joined CSN during the electric portion of their Woodstock set. He can be heard on lead vocal on the song, "Sea of Madness" which is on the original 1970 album. 24.118.0.57 04:08, 13 May 2007 (UTC)Jonathan Hiatt

Eye-witness account

I was twenty years old in 1969. I was a seminary student and on vacation that summer. I was a loner, a peripheral man on the fringes of both the counterculture and society at large.

It was a turbulent time in America with wars raging on both the foreign and domestic fronts. With assassinations of our liberal leaders, civil unrest, discrimination, the questioning of all authority, the institutions of this country were rocked to their foundations. In this environment the counterculture took on added appeal. My favorite group was "The Doors". I had an old plastic player that spun single records. The only record I owned was "Riders on The Storm" which I played over and over. I also enjoyed the Beatles, Temptations, Dylan, Lovin Spoonful, Rascals, Kinks etc. music which acknowledged our underlying feelings of alienation and angst.

The Hippie movement was more than bell bottom pants and long hair. It was a state of mind, a world view, a philosophy and lifestyle. It was so pervasive that it crept into, and finally overran the mainstream culture. We were all part of it to some degree. We shared common values such as rights for all people, the sanctity of life, a search for truth and a better world, the power of change, a distrust of those in power.

Civil unrest was the first major wave of change to sweep the country. Demonstrations quickly turned violent as hatred and division ran rampant. Then came women rights and the counter-revolution. Middle America (the "hard hats" and the government) were terrified and struck back. Black people were savagely hosed and beaten in the streets, as were student protesters at the '68 Democratic Convention. Our fellow young men were being shipped home from Viet Nam in body bags by the thousands. Bombings of Vietnam and Cambodia, assassinations of Presidents and Civil Rights leaders, all brought to us in living color each night on the 6 o'clock news. The Vietnam War was percieved by many of us as an evil war. Perpetrated on a foreign people by a government determined to advance it's capitalistic and political agenda, with total disregard for human life. The drug scene was a way out (albeit not a real good one) of the day to day oblivion and despair many of us felt. I began riding motorcycles, studying philosophy, visiting the town of Woodstock regularly, riding the subways of Manhattan alone and spending time in Greenwich Village.

So barely twenty years old, I followed a girl I had met the week before in Tarrytown up to the Woodstock Festival on my motorcycle. I intended to stay the entire three days. I wasn't a protester, but a young seminarian questioning my vocation. I was on vacation and went spur of the moment. At first no one knew what to expect or what was in store for us up there.

My motorcycle had been parked against the curb on Beekman Avenue in Tarrytown when a pretty girl pulled up in a new Mustang. She noticed me admiring her car and asked me if I wanted a ride. I said yes but only if I could keep my helmet on; because "I didn't trust female drivers." We drove around Tarrytown for two hours and became friendly. She invited me to follow her and her girlfriend up to Woodstock the following week. I met her and her girlfriend and two guys at the foot of the Tappan Zee Bridge that Friday, and we headed up the New York Thruway. When we got within 15 miles of the site, the traffic began to back up. The girl jumped out of the car wearing only jeans, a top, and no shoes. She made me throw my gear in the trunk of the car and we rode along the edge of the highway into the festival site and waited for the car to catch up. It never did. All the cars came to a stop and we realized we would not connect with our friends. I turned to her and asked if she had any money? She had $60, which was a fortune in 1969. I told her that the rules of he road dictated I watch out for her the entire weekend, but she would have to split the dough. She agreed and jumped back on the bike and we got a bottle of wine and rode into the Festival. So there I stood on the edge of the grassy oval with this pretty seventeen year old girl with hair down to her waist (who looked like the girl on the Mod Squad TV show), a bottle of wine and my bike, surrounded by 400,000 soul mates. It doesn't get any better! Then we watched as a tractor drove along a cleared portion of earth (all the grass was trampled and the mud and 500 years of cow manure were coming to the surface). I watched as the tractor ran over what appeared to be a mound of earth, and a human hand flung out. It became evident that a person who was inside a mummy sleeping bag, had been accidently run over. I flew to the trailers and banged on a door until the doctor came out. I told him he had to come and help because someone had been run over! "What do you want me to do!" he said, explaining that thousands of people were overdosing, having babies etc. "Are you kidding?" I screamed "I'll knock you out, damn it!"

" I'm sorry," he said "but I will call a medi-vac unit." Several moments later a helicopter flew in and removed the already dead young man. It was like a replay of the 6 o'clock news. Then the rain came. We were cold and wet and found refuge in people's tents where we slept briefly an hour at a time. We sloshed around up to our knees in the mud together the entire weekend, listening to the music and taking in the scene. My friend stepped on glass and cut her foot. She got help in on of the medical tents. Meanwhile the music played and everyone got along.There were no assaults nor murders. People were just groovin with each other. Saturday night Sly and The Family Stone came on stage and sung "Gotta Get Higher" and 500,000 young people worked out to the beat on car rooftops, shouting the lyrics at the top of their lungs.

By Sunday I was sick and thought I had pneumonia. So I decided not to wait for Hendrix and took my friend home. Riding down the Thruway in a torrential downpour I had a premonition of a crash. Just then I remembered my seminary roommate, worked in a camp somewhere in the Catskills. I turned off the road and stopped at a store and asked if they ever heard of St. Vincent's camp. It was just down the road! I pulled in to the camp with a full beard and leather jacket, a big knife strapped to my waist on my black bike. The young girl on the back was literally in tatters at this point. The old Irish Catholic nun at the gate was mortified when I told her who I was. My roommate identified me and we were let in. I collapsed under ten covers in a big log bed while news reports about the "disaster area" we had just come from, blared over the TV.

The next day it was sunny and clear as I drove down the NY Thruway. I dropped my new friend of on a corner in Tarrytown. Tears welled up in her eyes as I explained I was headed back to the seminary. Once back at school in my vestments, I opened my prayer books and the picture of that sweet girl with tears in her eyes would appear. I put up with it for three months before I cranked up the bike and rode back over the Throggs Neck Bridge to tell Maria that maybe I might be able to see her, once in a while. She gave me a present at that time, a St Christopher's medal which I wear to this day. PS: Thirty five years later (June 28,2005) we are still married!

There was no police harassment at Woodstock that I observed. Just the opposite. They left everyone alone and were friendly.

I felt a camaraderie with the downtrodden and oppressed. I was poor, strong willed, and a fiercely independent thinker. I was a philosopher and an existentialist. When I ultimately decided to leave the seminary (I had studied since age 13 for the priesthood) I underwent a religious and moral crisis. It was a time of deep emotion and psychological soul searching.

I think a lot of us became disillusioned back then after Woodstock, with Altamont and Kent State. We all went on with our lives and buried our ideals. We became jaded and cynical. We pursued wealth and power. We ultimately matured (how horrible!). But I feel there is a reawakening, a resurgence beginning to sweep the country. A lot of us including myself are beginning to look back to those times and question the paths we have taken.We are trying to recapture what we left behind.

The experiences of the past were both liberating and debilitating. Many of us who experimented with mind altering substances for instance, may have actually changed who we were, the very makeup of our own brains and personalities. There is something sad in that I think.

To borrow a phrase, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." To be fair I have enjoyed the fruits of my labors to some extent in my adult life, but I never became a slave to money. I did become a slave to the retail business, however. A workaholic, putting in 12 hour days for thirty years. I took few too many vacations, and smelled few too many flowers. Yet for what reason, I now as others begin to ask myself.

Christopher Cole author of "The Closer's Song" xyzauto@comcast.net —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.85.88.95 (talk • contribs) original edit in the article 00:40, 17 October 2004 UTC. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.38.82.102 (talk • contribs) last edited 01:07, 29 August 2005 UTC.

Copyright (c) 2004 Christopher Cole. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

---

I moved the above from the article as it is inappropriate to include extended first-person narratives in Wikipedia articles. And there is also the question of whether this is a copyright violation as well from [1]. older≠wiser 00:46, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)

One too many tokes, Christopher

Your story was long-winded, disjointed, and quite poorly written. I expect that the only purchasers of your book either; bring it back for a refund soon after reaching the second page, or still dig into their stash of mind-altering substances frequently while reading your book. This encyclopedia is hardly the place for your hallucinogenic ramblings. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 207.200.116.65 (talk • contribs) 03:18, 15 August 2005 UTC.

Overlinking

Don't you think there are way too many hyperlinks in this article? Words like "rainy"... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tiiba (talk • contribs) 05:24, 5 December 2004 UTC.

Just for the Record

I am happy to relate that I haven't smoked pot for over twentyfive years nor have I used psycho-active hallucinogens either. I apologise that my article was not written to your personal satisfaction, and evoked a not so neutral reaction from you. Sincerely, Christopher Cole. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.38.82.102 (talk • contribs) 00:11, 29 August 2005 UTC.

Chris - I actually thought the story you wrote above on this page was pretty cool man; keep on truckin'. TommyDaniels 06:36, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Use of the USPS Stamp

I hate to be a killjoy but doesn't the license on the stamp used on this page specifically rule out its use in this manner? Nrbelex ^(talk) 03:05, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Edit - Grateful Dead

The Grateful Dead played at the festival but did not appear in the film or in any music releases due to their refusal to sign the contract given to them just before they went on stage.

I took this out, because this isn't true about the Dead and Woodstock. This happened with the Dead and the Monterey Pop Festival. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jck strw (talk • contribs) 15:09, 13 October 2005 UTC.

Myths, realities, and the enduring shadow of Woodstock

Is it just me or does this part seem long winded? Olga Raskolnikova 04:48, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

it's just you

Inconsistencies

Minor, but bothersome: How many died of a drug overdose (one place says one, another two). When did The Who start (3am or just before 4am)? John (Jwy) 06:03, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah I noticed that too.--67.50.233.95 20:21, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Me too.--josh3580 16:07, 23, Jun 2006 (UTC)

I heard from an expert that it was only one, so I fixed it. --Thetruereddragon4 01:33, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Complete, more organised setlist?

There's a setlist at DigitalDreamDoor, but it's inconsistant with the one here, and I think there should just be a complete setlist rather than an small, short description of their performance, for the time being I will be using the setlist at the website, and people who know differently can change it as they please if their information is wrong. Meddling 21:47, 7 July 2006 (UTC)Meddling

I have two quibbles with the setlist. (1) There is a Jimi Hendrix song on the "Woodstock Two" album (Cotillion Records, 1971) titled "Get My Heart Back Together." (2) OK, I wasn't exactly sober at the time, but I saw Mountain at New York City's Felt Forum on December 31, 1973, and I recall Leslie West introducing their performance of the song "Nantucket Sleighride" as "a song we played at Woodstock."

Abbie Hoffman incident

I took the entire part in the Abbie Hoffman article about him and Woodstock and created a section in this about it. Meddling 00:26, 8 July 2006 (UTC)Meddling

I just read the section. it was funny reading about how he states that the incident didn't occur - I've listened to a bootleg of the performance and Townshend clearly yells at him "fuck off my fucking stage" before the sound of him being hit with the body of a guitar is heard and the audience starts laughing.

• Yeah, Abbie Hoffman is clearly trying to downplay the incident. Townshend wasn't merely tuning up. They were in the middle of performing Tommy. And Townshend obviously didn't simply turn around and bump into him. You can hear the anger in Townshend's voice and the surprise in Hoffman's when Townshend lights into him. Clashwho 13:53, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Template:More sources

I've added the above header to the article. There are many sections in the "Festival" section that reference facts and figures that should be sourced. This is a good area for footnotes so the remarks can be verified. I don't like to use the {{fact}} template because it makes articles look clunky, but just about every paragraph in this section could and should be referenced. There are also numerous single sentence paragraphs here that either need to be expanded or reworked. I don't have the expertise in this subject to do it myself or else I would be bold and do it. -- Malber (talk • contribs) 14:56, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

John Lennon?

The promoters of Woodstock refused John Lennon? Any reason why? Sure, it would have been nice if the Beatles had been at Woodstock, but why refuse Lennon?-10/4/06

--Because Abbey Road and Let It Be hadn't even been released yet, and so for many the Beatles weren't over yet. John Lennon wasn't an act on his own.--SMac

The most famous

We really need a source for that. Otherwise it's just original research. bogdan 20:42, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Local View

I recently lived in the area of the concert for almost two years (I lived in the town of Thompson, Sullivan County, N.Y., adjacent to the town of Bethel). I am young (born 15 years after the festival), and I was surprised that many longtime local people I met from the area, did not have fond memories of the event. As other areas did not originally want the concert, this area of Sullivan County was somewhat unwelcoming and unprepared for the festival. People told me that the strain it put on the police and other public employees/officials as well as the roads being shut down were the biggest problems. Even in retrospect today, some people wish the festival had never happened. I also herd a rumor of a recent find: An old car trunk contained a dufflebag filled with unused, untorn tickets from the festival, and was found by a garage mechanic in Monticello, N.Y.(Town of Thompson). Maybe someone knows about this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.69.116.124 (talk • contribs) 23:35, December 15, 2006 (UTC)

Of course the local people didn't like the Woodstock festival; mostly they hated it. They were country people, mostly too old to be fans of the musical genres represented, and these outsiders were disrupting their lives. You need to realize that in 1969 no one in a small town over the age of 40, and very few over the age of 30, would tolerate acid-rock music, marijuana, LSD, long hair, beards, exhibitionism, and so forth. Only the shopkeepers liked it -- they were able to sell all the twinkies, milk, soda pop, and cigarettes they could get their hands on. At that time the USA was very polarized (even more so than in 2007) and the largely middle-aged people of this rural area were on the opposite side from the young people attending the festival. (Of course the people attending the festival are in their 50s and 60s today, so age is no longer a very reliable guide for one's attitude toward neo-bohemianism, but it certainly was back then.) Paul 04:57, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Don't forget Benny Hill

Benny Hill did an hilarious--and pointed--parody skit of the Woodstock Festival. Entitled "Woodstick," the segment featured a song with a refrain that went, "Woodstick, la-la-la-la Woodstick. . .three whole days of love-and-peace-and-joy," as the camera panned across a vast, trampled field littered with garbage. That about sums it up for me, as an early Gen-Xer who grew up with four insufferable Baby Boomer siblings and their pothead friends: "You can't remember the Sixties, man. You just don't understand." Yeah, these narcissistic, smug, self-satisfied Boomers have gobbled up everything as they've marched through life, leaving successive generations to fight over the shrinking pie, be it in education, jobs, housing, and, soon, retirement. The generation that gave us the Summer of Love is about to send Medicare spiralling into bankruptcy thanks to innumerable premature age-related illnesses induced by all of their toking up, junk food and other habits indulged in during those supposedly halcyon days and long afterwards. Benny Hill (born 1924) got it right. Drop dead, Woodstock. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.27.73.102 (talk) 06:40, 10 January 2007 (UTC).

Someone's been watching too much South Park. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.113.123.1 (talk) 16:34, 16 May 2007 (UTC).

Someone out there hates this page

protect was unfortunate, but it had to be done...this is getting out of hand Meddling 03:08, 7 February 2007 (UTC)Meddling

FYI: Placing the "sprotect" template on the page doesn't mean it's actually semi-protected, it just means that there's now a box at the top of the page saying that it's protected. As you've no doubt noticed, we're still getting anonymous IP vandalism. To request Semi-protection you need to go to WP:RPP. I think we have a pretty fair case, given the amount of vandalism we've been reverting on a daily basis. Cgingold 14:43, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Nah, we have no case. There's been 10 vandalism edits over a week, that's nopt enough. The only pages that get protected are the ones with 10 vandalism edits a DAY. -- Scorpion 14:46, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure it's only been 10/week? (I haven't gone back and counted them.) At any rate (no pun intended!), it definitely doesn't require 10 per day to get semi-protection from anonymous users. (Full protection is another matter entirely.) It may be somewhat on the low side, but I think the severity of the vandalism needs to be taken into account -- for some reason, this article gets a high quotient of blanking, which strikes me as a more serious concern than mere nonsense edits. Cgingold 15:55, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

SInce February 1, there have been 7 sets of vandalism (10 edits), that is not enough. They will merely say that the vandalism is containable by having the page on watch. Perhaps it's not 10 per day to get protected, but I can tell you that this page most likely would not be protected. -- Scorpion 15:58, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Wavy Gravy

Shouldn't he and his "Please Force" be mentioned?

Jay Underwood

"Jay Underwood got most of the bands to perform and was also on stage for many of the songs." Who? The only Jay Underwood otherwise known to Wikipedia was then a baby. —Tamfang 21:05, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Promoters

This article needs the names of the promoters and financial backers of Woodstock. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 192.173.35.26 (talk) 22:08, 3 May 2007 (UTC).

The promoters were: Artie Kornfeld, a former Capitol Records A & R executive; Michael Lang; John Roberts, heir to the Polident denture cream fortune; Joel Rosenman. A very stoned Kornfeld and Lang appear in the movie. It should be noted that Lang went on to promote the subsequent festivals (1994 and 1999). Because the festival lost huge amounts of money and John Roberts allegedly had signed over $500K worth of bad checks (Source: Trivia, 1994 Woodstock box set), Roberts basically cashed in a portion of his inheritance. The story of Woodstock Ventures, Inc. and the festival's organization (including the chronology of events during the festival) can be found at a number of trusted Woodstock-related websites.

-Jonathan Hiatt

P.S. Please also note that the set list is not accurate and that I added Arlo Guthrie's set list for Friday, August 15. Please go to any of the better Woodstock websites for this source material.

Guess Who

Acording to Randy Bachman, The Guess Who were invited, but because they played some other festival, which the considered to be the best, they declined. They went on to record American Woman at thet time. He said this on his radio show some time back. I can't remeber exactley how it went, but if anyone can eleborate upon this, it should be included.
ufossuck 01:39, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

When

The Clarence White-era Byrds were given an opportunity to play, but refused to do so after a melee during their performance at the Atlanta Pop Festival earlier that summer.

This will work better if a more exact time was specified, as the usage of "summer" here is ambiguous.

A new interpretive center dedicated to the Woodstock Festival and its meaning is scheduled to open in the summer of 2007.

This is also ambiguous. Substituting the exact date will work better here. --B.d.mills 03:58, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

An exact date for the opening does not exist. Working dates have been Memorial Day, July 4, and Labor Day, but currently there is a hold on setting the exact date due to rights clearances for several performances. The opening is not likely to occur before October 2007, but could be later

I just visited the site yesterday (August 4th, 2007) and one of the staff said it was scheduled to open this fall, but will most likely be moved back to spring 2008.

The museum is scheduled to be opened sometime in Spring 2008, although there is no exact date available.

Title

Why is the article at "Woodstock Festival"? I notice that the most common name, "Woodstock", is a redirect here (I would have thought that the best spot for the article unless "Woodstock" was a disambiguation, which it isn't). I also see that acording to article, the official name was apparently "the Woodstock Music and Art Fair" and I didn't notice an explanation of why it should be called "Woodstock Festival" in the article. Just wondering, -- Infrogmation 03:38, 1 September 2007 (UTC)