Amusing The Million

Woodstock

In 1970 a two-hundred and thirty minute documentary was released entitled “Woodstock.” This documentary has set the standard for other documentaries to come. This documentary covers a three day festival that was held in August of 1969. The festival symbolized the ideas of the late 1960’s in terms of music, politics, and society in general. The documentary depicted the event as a major love and drug fest.

Woodstock was a historic event that was the idea of four men by the names of Michael Lang, John Roberts, Joel Roseman, and Artie Kornfeld. Two of the men, Roberts and Roseman, placed an ad in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal stating “Young men with unlimited capital looking for interesting, legitimate investment opportunities and business propositions” (Spitz, 1979, 13). This ad resulted in the four men getting together and discussing the possibility of a retreat-like recording studio in Woodstock, New York. As we all know now, the idea blew up into a festival that was portrayed in the Academy Award winning documentary “Woodstock.”

The concept of a documentary arose when the men made an offer to Warner Brothers to make a movie about the upcoming event. Kornfeld asked Warner Brothers for $100,000 to allow them to do the movie. Warner Brothers took them up on the offer because they felt “it could have either sold millions or, if there were riots, be one of the best documentaries ever made” (“How Woodstock happened,” 1994).

The Woodstock rock concert was described as “a symptomatic event of our time that showed the tremendous hunger, need, yearning for community on the part of the youth” (“Big Woodstock”, 1969, 17). If you really want to understand why “Woodstock” happened, you must know more about the time period in which this documentary was made. The 1960’s decade was the beginning of rock and roll and many describe it as being a decade of moral decline. The youth of this time were known as the “love generation” and they were called Hippies. Many people felt that the hippie generation had very inappropriate ideals. They dressed in shabby clothes and felt this was sort of a symbol of their freedom. A hippie’s typical dress was faded jeans, worn tee shirts, and beads around their neck. Typically their hair was long and would be pulled back in a bandanna.

The decade of the hippies symbolized peace, love, and harmony. It was not uncommon to see hippies openly make love and they believed in open marriages. Many of them lived in communal living quarters and they would have weekend love fests. The hippie movement of the 60’s neared its peak in 1967. It was estimated that there were approximately 300,000 followers of the hippie movement by this time. The hippie movement was centered in San Francisco, California. It was common to see groups of them just sitting around the streets and playing their guitars. Rock festivals were held in response to this love movement.

The hippie’s peace movement was the result of the antiwar movement that was spreading across the United States during the Vietnam War. The hippies were against the war. During this time there were many anti-war protest rallies and you could count on seeing a lot of hippies in attendance. They were known to burn their draft cards in public places and some even went to prison rather than participate in the military service when drafted (Hertsgard, 1995). Hippies also did not value wealth, culture, social position, or physical attractiveness. They didn’t do things like wear makeup or jewelry, go to restaurants or bars, or do many other things that the wealthier society would do. Hippies felt their personal freedom to express their selves was the most important thing in life.

Hippies were just kind of rebels against society. They were fighting against the moral standards of America that they felt were unjust (Hertsgard, 1995). Rock concerts were their platform to express their dislike for everything they resented. They used these concerts to act like a political stage for the youth of the 60’s. Woodstock was the prime example of this. Woodstock enabled thousands of middle class young people to experience the communal spirit. For the first time the hippie generation felt empowered by the massive numbers of support that turned out for Woodstock.

When the 1960's began we had very strict laws in place against drug use.

However, in the 1960's, large numbers of people thought that cocaine and other drugs were harmless as long as you used them with good judgment. Marijuana was made popular once again by nonconformist college students and hippies. The severe criminal penalties really didn’t deter the drug use of these people. As a result, a profitable black market easily developed due to the gap between the laws and the opinions of a large segment of the population. Many people thought the drug laws were ridiculous and not scientific. So, we had severe laws without public support. In the late 1960’s President Richard Nixon reinvigorated the war on drugs which greatly affected his worst critics, the youth and urban minorities.

Woodstock was held on August 15, 16, and 17, 1969 near Woodstock, New York. It took place in the town of Bethel located in Sullivan County. The concert was held in a pasture owned by a man named Max Yasgur who was a local dairy farmer. The four organizers decided to have this concert to get publicity for the recording studio they wanted to build in Woodstock, New York. They planned for the event for about nine months and estimated they would spend approximately two million dollars on the project. The original estimates were that this concert would draw anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 people. As word spread about the concert it became clear that it was going to be much larger than expected.

By August 14, 1969, the day before the official opening, traffic jams miles long blocked most roads leading to this area. The abundance of cars and people created one of the nation’s worst traffic jams. The New York Thruway was forced to close. It was estimated that 400,000 people showed up for the festival. Thousands of more probably would have come but police blocked off access roads. Many roads leading to the festival literally turned into parking lots of cars. Many people took out on foot walking to the concert. It was reported some walked as far as 20 miles to get there. Footage from the air in the documentary was truly amazing regarding the mass