The Woodstock music festival ended 40 years ago this past week with an estimated half a million of America’s youth having tried, in Joni Mitchell phrase, to make their way “back to the garden.” My family, stuck on the New York State Thruway, would have been just happy to get back to New Jersey.
Neither I nor anyone else from my family attended one of the defining musical events—okay, let’s use the term of the time and call it a “happening”—of the Baby Boom Generation. We were vacationing elsewhere in upstate New York, in East Durham.
So, if you want the lowdown on what it was like to get stoned, frolic in the mud, line up at the Port-o-Sans, you know where else to look—unless, that is, you’ve been hiding under a rock the past few weeks while self-congratulatory reminiscences flooded through the media from participants.
Typical of this swelling latter genre: Arlo Guthrie’s remark to the reliably snarky Deborah Solomon of The New York Times a week or so ago, about whether the event was overrated: “No. We’re still talking about it. How many other events from 1969 are we still talking about?”)
More realistic was one of my favorite musicians, Creedence Clearance Revival leader John Fogerty, who told USA Today: “When Yuppies and Reagan Democrats came along, I'd say, 'Where's my Woodstock generation?' … A lot of that original fervor has been lost. Perhaps I made it more important than it really was."
I hate to say it, but yes you did, John.
If you want to know a handy way to think about Woodstock—something that really defined it—just remember this: It began as a business deal and ended as a massive traffic jam.
Let’s look at the business deal first.
Peter Aspden, writing in The Financial Times, notes that the improbable genesis of the self-styled “Aquarian Exposition” came through an ad placed by two TV writers, Joel Rosenman and John Roberts, that was, in fact, looking for fodder for a sitcom they were working on concerning financial investment.
They made the mistake that so many other boomers have done over the years: they became starry-eyed about the chance to make a quick dollar—in this case, in the form of Michael Lang, who wanted to build a recording studio in Woodstock. By the time they were done, it turned out to be quite a bit different from what anyone had planned. I’m amazed the organizers didn’t have heart attacks by the time it was over.
Yes, I’m as grateful as anyone that Woodstock didn’t degenerate into an Altamonte-style tragedy, so on that point, at least, I agree with the tiresome hippie Rip Van Winkles coming out of the woodwork these past few weeks. (Come to think of it, Rip was in the Catskills, too, wasn’t he?)
But Woodstock doesn’t remind me so much of, say, the Monterey Festival two years before, but of an event 39 years later.
Neither I nor anyone else from my family attended one of the defining musical events—okay, let’s use the term of the time and call it a “happening”—of the Baby Boom Generation. We were vacationing elsewhere in upstate New York, in East Durham.
So, if you want the lowdown on what it was like to get stoned, frolic in the mud, line up at the Port-o-Sans, you know where else to look—unless, that is, you’ve been hiding under a rock the past few weeks while self-congratulatory reminiscences flooded through the media from participants.
Typical of this swelling latter genre: Arlo Guthrie’s remark to the reliably snarky Deborah Solomon of The New York Times a week or so ago, about whether the event was overrated: “No. We’re still talking about it. How many other events from 1969 are we still talking about?”)
More realistic was one of my favorite musicians, Creedence Clearance Revival leader John Fogerty, who told USA Today: “When Yuppies and Reagan Democrats came along, I'd say, 'Where's my Woodstock generation?' … A lot of that original fervor has been lost. Perhaps I made it more important than it really was."
I hate to say it, but yes you did, John.
If you want to know a handy way to think about Woodstock—something that really defined it—just remember this: It began as a business deal and ended as a massive traffic jam.
Let’s look at the business deal first.
Peter Aspden, writing in The Financial Times, notes that the improbable genesis of the self-styled “Aquarian Exposition” came through an ad placed by two TV writers, Joel Rosenman and John Roberts, that was, in fact, looking for fodder for a sitcom they were working on concerning financial investment.
They made the mistake that so many other boomers have done over the years: they became starry-eyed about the chance to make a quick dollar—in this case, in the form of Michael Lang, who wanted to build a recording studio in Woodstock. By the time they were done, it turned out to be quite a bit different from what anyone had planned. I’m amazed the organizers didn’t have heart attacks by the time it was over.
Yes, I’m as grateful as anyone that Woodstock didn’t degenerate into an Altamonte-style tragedy, so on that point, at least, I agree with the tiresome hippie Rip Van Winkles coming out of the woodwork these past few weeks. (Come to think of it, Rip was in the Catskills, too, wasn’t he?)
But Woodstock doesn’t remind me so much of, say, the Monterey Festival two years before, but of an event 39 years later.
Yes, I’m talking about last fall’s meltdown of the financial markets.
I’m surprised that Woodstock wasn’t a jazz festival, because its organizers were surely into improvisation. Let’s see—their idea went from a recording studio to a rock festival, from holding it in Woodstock to moving it to Bethel, from running it as a paid event to declaring it free.
The last action was a large reason why the festival didn’t turn violent, but it also meant that Lang, Rosenman and Roberts would have to wait for the documentary to come out before they made money. They had to sweat things out—kind of like Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson last fall.
There are other resemblances between Woodstock and the Wall Street collapse:
* Think of the public assurances that everything was under control…when in fact, of course, it wasn’t.
I’m surprised that Woodstock wasn’t a jazz festival, because its organizers were surely into improvisation. Let’s see—their idea went from a recording studio to a rock festival, from holding it in Woodstock to moving it to Bethel, from running it as a paid event to declaring it free.
The last action was a large reason why the festival didn’t turn violent, but it also meant that Lang, Rosenman and Roberts would have to wait for the documentary to come out before they made money. They had to sweat things out—kind of like Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson last fall.
There are other resemblances between Woodstock and the Wall Street collapse:
* Think of the public assurances that everything was under control…when in fact, of course, it wasn’t.
* Think of the transition from free-market capitalism to…what, socialism?
* Think of the common demographics. We know Lang was 24 at the time of Woodstock, putting him at the vanguard of the boomers. How about Paulson and Bernanke? Well, Paulson’s 62 and Bernanke 54. That makes them Lang’s contemporaries.
* Now, let’s find out if the latter were at Woodstock. If the answer is yes, that explains everything: they must be still having bad flashbacks from the “brown acids” those public-service announcements were warning about up at Max Yasgur’s farm.
If you want to know the truth, I think the boomers fell down on the job when it came to the environment at Woodstock, too. Forget all the debris left after the crowd—how on earth was the human waste of approximately 400,000 people disposed of?
If the baby boomers were so smart, why didn’t they think of better, cleaner methods of getting to the festival? Why didn’t they have buses? Why didn’t they carpool?
What I haven’t read about all week is the number of Woodstock fans who ended up way off course—yes, even in East Durham, where the boomer-hippies asked directions of the locals and nonplussed tourists like my father.
If anything, East Durham was the anti-Woodstock. Dozens of bungalows, boarding houses, motels, pubs, restaurants and gift shops lined both sides of Route 145, with names like Mooney’s, Gavin’s, and O’Neill’s. Shamrocks in windows were redundant indications of their Celtic ownership and clientele.
No wonder the hamlet was variously nicknamed “The Irish Alps,” “The Emerald Isle of the Northern Catskills,” or “Ireland’s 33rd County.”
My parents had been coming here for nearly 20 years. In fact, this was where they had first met. Like most other working-class Irish and Irish-Americans who could not easily afford a plane ticket across the Atlantic, they found in East Durham not only an escape from the noise and nastiness of the New York metropolitan area, but a place where they could dance and catch up on news from “the other side.”
It was a resort with wholesome family entertainment resort, far different from the rumored Prohibition-era site of many a still. It provided continuity, a link to the way things were and the way they always would be. Or so it seemed.
(Geographic note: Bethel is in Sullivan County; East Durham, in Greene County. The towns are on opposite sides of the thruway—in other words, far apart. Does anyone know how stoned you have to be to think that Bethel is close to East Durham?)
Normally, on the way home from “the mountains,” my brothers and I would spend the two-plus hours counting woodchucks on the side of the road. This time, we counted the number of cars with peace signs, or—something that seemed just as plentiful that day—the number of cars that were overheated, even abandoned.
It was getting easier to count these cars because we were slowing down. Eventually, we came to a complete standstill going south on the New York State Thruway.
“Lord save us and guard us!” my dad moaned. “I’ve never seen anything like that in all my years—not even driving into the city every day.”
“Must be that concert--Woodstock,” John explained helpfully.
“The one with all the hippies? Great, just great—we’ll never get home, at this rate!”
Eventually—after God knows how long—the traffic began to inch forward again. While cars with peace signs passed us in the other lanes on our side, a military convoy--undoubtedly carrying soldiers getting ready for training--traveled northbound. John--who, at 16, would be eligible for the draft, if the Vietnam War continued that long--noticed the juxtaposition.
My thoughts moved back and forth from the week that had just passed to the one I expected to experience again the following summer.
But the events of the great wide world were about to alter the course of our lives. The next year, my father was laid off from his job at the A&P plant.
When he could afford to go on vacation, my brothers’ interests lay elsewhere—in summer jobs, in teenage girls who would be at the Jersey shore but not at our family-friendly resort, and in the loud, challenging music that electrified the Woodstock Nation and made the parents of East Durham recoil. Not surprisingly, this ended up being our last vacation together as one family.
In its way, Woodstock still made its impact on my dad—25 years later, when a reunion concert—not quite as convulsive, but still massive—was held. My parents, having booked their trip to East Durham weeks in advance, did not have the slightest idea of the upcoming event.
When they returned home, I asked my father how the trip had gone. “All right,” he said, “till we started home. Then we hit traffic. I’ve never seen anything like that in all my years!”
I smiled. “You did,” I answered. “At least once before. Think back, twenty-five years ago…”
But the events of the great wide world were about to alter the course of our lives. The next year, my father was laid off from his job at the A&P plant.
When he could afford to go on vacation, my brothers’ interests lay elsewhere—in summer jobs, in teenage girls who would be at the Jersey shore but not at our family-friendly resort, and in the loud, challenging music that electrified the Woodstock Nation and made the parents of East Durham recoil. Not surprisingly, this ended up being our last vacation together as one family.
In its way, Woodstock still made its impact on my dad—25 years later, when a reunion concert—not quite as convulsive, but still massive—was held. My parents, having booked their trip to East Durham weeks in advance, did not have the slightest idea of the upcoming event.
When they returned home, I asked my father how the trip had gone. “All right,” he said, “till we started home. Then we hit traffic. I’ve never seen anything like that in all my years!”
I smiled. “You did,” I answered. “At least once before. Think back, twenty-five years ago…”
2 comments:
Thanks for the links--particularly interesting to me, as I'm a member of "Generation Jones" (as is President Obama, who has, as you've indicated, "taken over U.S. leadership"). I'll check out the link--and your blog.
By the way, how did you find this blog? I hope you come back!
I found your blog just by googling about generations the other day. I don't have a blog, but I do encourage you to check out the links I posted as well as the many other articles and videos about GenJones. After all these years of being ignored, our generation needs to help spread the word of our existence to help facilitate a growing collective consciousness among GenJonesers. It's our turn and we can accomplish much as a collective group...
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