ANNOUNCER: This program contains content
which may not be suitable for all audiences.
Viewer discretion is advised.
(crowd murmuring)
It looks like we're going to get a little bit of rain,
so you better cover up.
(wind rumbling)
Everybody who's in the back, please move back!
Please move back.
We have to get away from these towers.
(wind blowing)
Put the mic stands down on the floor.
Cover all the equipment.
JOEL ROSENMAN: We were all in our mid-20s.
We had created something that was much bigger
than we had anticipated.
I see it.
(over speakers): All of you up on the towers,
please come down.
You're making it very, very dangerous.
(wind blowing)
All right, everybody, just sit down, wrap yourself up.
We're going to have to ride it out.
JOHN MORRIS: Everything that could possibly go wrong was happening.
I mean, it was all hell breaking loose.
MORRIS (over speaker): Hold on to your neighbor, man.
And let's think hard to get rid of it, please.
(shouting): No rain!
(crowd chanting "No rain!")
SUSAN REYNOLDS: When you think about it,
it could have been an absolute disaster.
(thunder rumbling, rain pouring)
BARON WOLMAN: And I just kept thinking,
"Which direction is this thing going to go?"
MAN (over speaker): Try to keep yourself comfortable.
It's gonna blow through.
♪
("Something in the Air" by Thunderclap Newman playing)
♪ Call out the instigator
♪ Because there's something in the air ♪
♪ We got to get together sooner or later ♪
♪ Because the revolution's here ♪
♪ And you know it's right
REYNOLDS: We did not plan ahead,
we did not plan where we were going to stay,
we didn't think about food.
It was just, like, "Hey, this sounds like fun.
Let's get in the car and go."
♪ We have got to get it together ♪ WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
♪ We have got to get it together ♪
♪ We have got to get it together now ♪
PETER BEREN: We would pack
as many hitchhikers as we could in the car,
sitting on top of each other.
And as we got closer,
there would be people walking on foot like pilgrims.
It looked like a pilgrimage.
LAUREEN STAROBIN: We were looking for answers.
We were looking for other people
that felt the same way as we did.
♪ ...and houses
♪ Because there's something in the air ♪
JON JABOOLIAN: No matter where you looked, you saw people.
It was like a field with people growing in it.
I had never, never seen that many people in my life
in one place at one time.
♪ And you know it's right
♪
PAUL GEORGE: My feeling was, "This is what we've been talking about,
"this is what we've been aiming for,
this kind of freedom."
STAROBIN: If 400,000 people could get together
and have absolutely no violence, absolutely no conflict,
I felt like, if we could bring all that love
back into society,
we could change the world.
♪ We have got to get it together ♪
(cheering)
♪ We have got to get it together now ♪
("I'll Take Manhattan" by Bobby Hackett playing)
(horns honking)
JOHN ROBERTS: I grew up in New York City,
and I came from a wealthy family.
My mother died when I was young,
so when I was 21,
I inherited about a quarter of a million dollars.
That was quite a bit of money in those days.
I had a-a job down on Wall Street doing research.
ROSENMAN: When I met John,
I had just gotten out of law school
and was playing with a band down in the Village
and at the clubs on Second and Third Avenue,
but I was starting to get a little frayed at the edges.
Neither one of us, I think, was really on a career path
that we knew was the right one.
ROBERTS: Joel and I met playing golf.
We hit it off.
And, uh, we thought we'd go into business together,
investing this money that I had.
AD ANNOUNCER: The denture cleanser you've hoped for
is here at last.
Start using new effervescent Polident tablets today.
JOEL MAKOWER: John's grandfather founded the Block Drug Company,
the maker of Poligrip and Polident.
That fortune was the source of the seed money
for a recording studio in Midtown Manhattan,
Media Sound, which for John and Joel,
actually turned into their first successful venture.
It was because of Media Sound that John and Joel WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
It was because of Media Sound that John and Joel
met Michael Lang and Artie Kornfeld.
MAN: How much do those matches sell for?
65 cents for the roll.
MAKOWER: Michael had a head shop in Miami, in Coconut Grove,
the center of the hippie culture down there.
Right there, is that a pipe?
Yeah, it's a Turkish water pipe.
With two hoses.
MAKOWER: In 1968 he moved to Woodstock, New York,
about 100 miles north of New York City,
and was introduced to Artie Kornfeld,
who was a vice president at Capitol Records.
ROBERTS: They called us in early 1969,
and said, "We're very interested in building a recording studio
"in Woodstock, New York.
"We know that you and Joel were involved in-in building one
"in New York City.
Would you meet with us?"
We said, "Sure!"
ROSENMAN: When we met them,
they were quite different from us,
meaning a lot of fringe, a lot of buckskin,
and a great deal of hair.
John and I were making an effort
to look like businessmen at the time.
(laughing): So we, we couldn't have represented
more distant ends of the spectrum.
ROBERTS: What Artie said was, basically,
Woodstock was a center for artists,
and that a recording studio there
would have a natural constituency,
and it would be a success.
ROSENMAN: As we were looking through the proposal
that they'd given us,
we noticed an idea for an opening-day party,
where musicians who lived in the area--
Tim Hardin, John Sebastian, Bob Dylan--
would perform.
I said, "The idea of having a concert with those stars,
"I mean, why don't we skip the studio idea
"and just do a big concert?
We could make a fortune."
So in late January 1969, the four of us shook hands
and started brainstorming what Woodstock could be.
REPORTER: To the hippie youth of today,
this is part of their real world.
This is the atmosphere at the Monterey Pop Festival.
The music is frantic, the sounds are wild,
and the mind is free.
BOB HITE: ♪ I rolled and I tumbled
♪ I cried the whole night long
BOB SPITZ: Outdoor rock festivals were a pretty new concept at the time.
They had begun in 1967 with Monterey Pop.
And by 1968, '69,
there had been a few festivals scattered around the country.
Michael Lang was the only one of the four
that had any experience in the concert business.
In 1968 he had helped produce a festival in Miami
that was a huge disaster.
It was held at a racetrack, had very little atmosphere,
it rained, there were a lot of lawsuits afterwards;
the festival never really came off.
But Michael knew that this is what he wanted to do. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
But Michael knew that this is what he wanted to do.
And he had this idea of taking the festival
out of the racetrack
and putting it in a bucolic place.
LANG: I had been thinking about doing
a series of concerts in Woodstock.
And I always thought if you could dream it up,
you could put it together.
And this was a chance to make, you know, a dream come true.
ROSENMAN: Michael and Artie had optioned a property in Woodstock,
but it was far too small-- it was just ten acres.
So that didn't work out.
A property in Saugerties didn't work out.
And then John and I found a piece of property
that was in Wallkill that was being turned
into an industrial park.
It-it didn't knock you out visually,
but it was available.
MAKOWER: Michael hated it.
It was everything he didn't want--
just a flat, barren piece of land
that had no trees, no soul.
LANG: You know how some pastoral scenes
are beautiful and calming
and make you feel comfortable, at peace?
This was completely the opposite.
But we needed to get going, we needed a site,
and I felt that we could transform it
into something more spiritual and special.
("Embryonic Journey" by Jefferson Airplane playing)
SPITZ: The town signed off on the festival
as a, kind of a music and arts fair
where kids would walk around and look at art
and hear some music in the background.
And "An Aquarian Exposition,"
which is what they called Woodstock,
had some kind of mystical feel to it.
ROSENMAN: Michael suggested that, like Monterey,
we should have a crafts village and an art exhibition
alongside the music.
We all loved it.
It was such a natural add-on to what we were thinking about.
We wanted to make it like visiting another world,
like visiting the world you were dreaming about
if you were a young person.
This shining place that you could go to
and feel that you weren't a misfit,
or that you weren't on the wrong side of a debate,
or that you weren't
under the suspicious eye of the authorities.
MAKOWER: For the generation that was coming of age
in the late '60s,
everything was up for grabs.
Young people were rejecting the status quo,
whether it was your parents or whether it was your community
or-or the business establishment.
This counterculture, as it was called,
influenced music, it influenced art,
and it certainly influenced the way people dressed.
But clearly, politics was at the center of the counterculture,
because the one thing that affected everybody
was the war in Vietnam. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
was the war in Vietnam.
Last week's casualty figures in the Vietnam War,
released today, showed 299 Americans killed, 355...
GEORGE: I remember watching the news in, you know, 1968
and asking my father, "Why are we fighting in Vietnam?"
And his answer was always, "Because they're communists."
I didn't find that satisfactory.
(artillery fires)
My father had been in World War II in Europe,
in the Signal Corps.
He always made clear that he thought the Army
was a great experience,
and everybody should do it.
He just had a very positive view
of serving one's country that way.
And he did support the war in Vietnam.
("The Pusher" by Steppenwolf playing)
(gun firing, people talking on radio)
REYNOLDS: The men of World War II just assumed that their sons
would also be soldiers.
That's how you became a man.
You grew up, you served your country.
So my older brother Jim
signed up for the Naval Reserves.
I remember the day that he went to Vietnam
and being terrified.
MICHAEL LINDSEY: When I was 18, I had to register for the draft.
I was in college, so I got a deferment.
But there was always that thing in the back of your mind.
You knew that they were just one step behind you.
If you were in college, you-you'd better hope
that you had all your money straightened out
and grades were good and everything else,
because if you dropped out, you were going to Vietnam.
("The Pusher" continues)
BEREN: When I was 20 years old,
I was faced with a draft physical.
I'm putting down that I'm a bedwetter,
that I'm a homosexual, that I'm a communist.
I think there were 14 things in all that I had written down.
So they escorted me over to the psychiatrist.
He just said, "Kid, I'm gonna give you one year
to straighten yourself out,"
and he gave me a deferment for 12 months.
("The Pusher" continues)
RICK DILLS: There's no way to describe how terrifying it was
to be a 17-year-old,
knowing that the Vietnam War was your fate.
I wasn't alone in any way
in transitioning from being personally afraid of the war
to being politically opposed to it.
CROWD (chanting): You kill people!
You kill people!
(chanting continues)
(shouting, clapping)
BEREN: I participated in a couple of marches on Washington,
anti-war rallies.
The war was insane.
You know, an insane conflict that, um...
made everybody crazy,
whether you were fighting the war
or fighting against it.
CROWD (chanting): Hell, no, we won't go! WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
CROWD (chanting): Hell, no, we won't go!
("Volunteers" by Jefferson Airplane playing)
♪ Look what's happening out in the streets ♪
♪ Got a revolution ♪ Got to revolution
♪ Hey, I'm dancing down the street ♪
♪ Got a revolution ♪ Got to revolution
♪ Oh, ain't it amazing, all the people that I meet? ♪
♪ Got a revolution
(shouting)
REPORTER: This is a CBS News Special Report...
BEREN: And then, on top of everything else,
Martin Luther King was assassinated.
The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
was shot to death by an assassin late today
as he stood on a balcony in Memphis, Tennessee.
LINDSEY: When Martin Luther King was killed,
I knew a lot of people who just felt,
"We have to do things differently,
"because the way the establishment have done things
has led to this."
♪
GEORGE: By the time I got to be 16,
I was really questioning the way society is structured.
I objected to racism.
I objected to inequality, consumerism, and poverty.
I objected to the war in Vietnam.
ROBERT KENNEDY: One thing is clear in this year of 1968,
and that is that the American people
want no more Vietnams.
(audience applauds)
LINDSEY: Of course, we had hope for Bobby Kennedy.
He seemed to be one of us in a lot of ways.
We really felt that he was finally going to be able
to change things.
REYNOLDS: I mean, he was out there espousing peace,
and, you know, fighting against poverty and racism,
and all the things that we believed in
and wanted so deeply.
He was our voice.
BEREN: In June of 1968, I was leaving a bar in my hometown.
I turned on the radio.
REPORTER: The senator is lying with his eyes closed,
absolutely unmoving,
blood underneath his head.
BEREN: I heard the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
as it unfolded in real time.
And it just completely undid me.
FRANK MANKIEWICZ: Senator Robert Francis Kennedy
died at 1:44 a.m. today,
June 6, 1968.
STAROBIN: The shock of it was...
It was just devastating, absolutely devastating.
Martin Luther King and then Bobby Kennedy.
You know, all these peacemakers.
JABOOLIAN: It was, like, "Oh, this is what we do.
"This is what we do.
"You know, as soon as somebody tries to speak out,
"and they're too forceful,
"this big machine, whatever the hell it is,
is gonna shut them up."
The only thing that we took solace in WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
The only thing that we took solace in
was music,
and there was a lot of politically conscious music
we were listening to.
You know, like Buffalo Springfield.
♪ There's something happening here ♪
♪ What it is ain't exactly clear ♪
♪ There's a man with a gun over there ♪
♪ Telling me I got to beware
♪ I think it's time we stop
♪ Children, what's that sound
♪ Everybody look what's going down ♪
STAROBIN: When I was so disillusioned with everybody's else's thinking,
I could escape into my music.
It was such a comfort to me.
You know, I hadn't met a lot of people at that time
that felt like I did.
But when I listened to music, those people were there.
♪ Young people speaking their minds ♪
♪ Getting so much resistance from behind ♪
REYNOLDS: We couldn't wait for Saturdays,
when we could go buy the latest record
and then come home and literally lay on the floor
and play it over and over and over.
My father hated the music.
(laughing): He was always clapping his hands over his ears and just...
Would say, "Damn hippies!"
♪ Come gather 'round, people, wherever you roam ♪
♪ And admit that the waters around you have grown ♪
♪ And accept it that soon...
LINDSEY: Dylan's song "The Times They Are A-Changin'"
basically said to our parents' generation,
"Get out of the new way if you can't lend a hand."
♪ You better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone
♪ For the times they are a-changin' ♪
LINDSEY: Music had our ideas.
For my generation, that was the thing.
Especially our political views.
♪ It ain't me, it ain't me
♪ I ain't no military son
♪ It ain't me, it ain't me
♪ I ain't no fortunate one
(song ending)
DONALD GOLDMACHER: Music was terribly important to us.
I came to the San Francisco Bay Area in June '67,
and there was music everywhere.
There were free concerts going on in Golden Gate Park
with all of these bands.
I got to see Janis Joplin, the Jefferson Airplane,
and the Dead, free.
It really was amazing.
(playing in background)
BEREN: Music and lyrics became our tribal drum.
So we had a, kind of a secret communication going
in the river of music that flowed through us.
("Dear Mr. Fantasy" playing)
You know, it was a... wild liberation.
It was Dionysian.
And drugs played a big part in that.
STEVE WINWOOD: ♪ Something to make us all happy ♪
GEORGE: We smoked a lot of pot and did a fair amount of acid.
You know, the society that we're rebelling against, WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
You know, the society that we're rebelling against,
they don't want us smoking pot.
(laughing): Must be a good reason to smoke pot.
KATHERINE DAYE: The more that we as a generation
saw that what had been rammed down our throats
was false-- it was false, it was a lie--
the more it freed us up to experiment.
("Dear Mr. Fantasy" continues)
I mean, we had free love.
(song continues)
The pill allowed us to just go to a party
and be with somebody.
We just reveled in having that much freedom
and that much ability to piss off your old man.
RONALD REAGAN: Movies were shown on two screens
at the opposite ends of the gymnasium.
They consisted of color sequences
that gave the appearance of different-colored liquids
spreading across the screen.
Sexual misconduct was blatant.
The smell of marijuana was prevalent
all over the entire building.
("Dear Mr. Fantasy" continues)
LINDSEY: By 1969 it really did feel like we were finally winning
some kind of culture war against the establishment.
You know, this is how we lived,
and if you didn't like it, too bad.
We were seeing that America
wasn't what we were taught it was,
and when you stop looking at it that way
and you start trying to figure it out for yourself,
then, uh... it changes your life forever.
("Grazing in the Grass" by Willie Mitchell playing)
MAKOWER: Once they got the permits they needed
from the town of Wallkill,
the first thing that John and Joel and Michael and Artie did
was to assemble a core team to help produce the festival.
There was Stan Goldstein
who had worked with Michael on Miami Pop.
There was John Morris, who had experience booking acts;
Chip Monck, whose role was stage design and lighting;
Bill Hanley, one of the pioneers of event production sound.
These were guys who knew how to put together an event.
Stan called his friend Mel Lawrence
to be the director of operations.
LAWRENCE: My mission was to, um, plan
for all of the functions of the festival
aside from the actual show.
Everything from fences to food to transportation
to fire access, lines of communication,
security, water, sewerage-- you know this, that.
I made a checklist that blew everybody's minds.
GOLDSTEIN: One specific thing was toilets. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
GOLDSTEIN: One specific thing was toilets.
We knew we'd have to have a lot of them.
No one knew how many.
So I began going to events with a stopwatch and clipboard.
Madison Square Garden,
baseball stadiums--
anyplace that there were a lot of people.
And I timed them, going in and coming out
and going in and coming out.
And I took all the information I gathered,
multiplied by the size of the crowd we thought we might have,
and came up with outrageous numbers of johns.
Tens of thousands, just...
Impossible numbers.
So we lined up as many as we could get.
("Grazing in the Grass" continues)
MORRIS: I was in charge of the booking,
and Creedence was the first band that we booked.
And then we got Jefferson Airplane,
Joe Cocker, and Ten Years After.
We didn't get the Stones or Dylan or the Doors,
but we booked a lot of the acts we wanted to,
including the Who and Jimi Hendrix.
("Carry On" by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young playing)
DAVID CROSBY: We had just started planning our first tour
as Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young
when we heard that Hendrix was going to play it,
and the Who, and Sly, and Airplane, the Band,
the Grateful Dead--
you know, everybody that we thought was cool.
("Carry On" continues)
SPITZ: They needed to get the word out about the festival.
They had a channel to do that,
through the alternative press.
There was the "Berkeley Barb"
and the "Rat" and the "Village Voice,"
and word about the festival poured out,
not just to New York, where they thought
they would draw the most people from,
but all across the United States.
Woodstock was on everybody's lips.
♪ Carry on
♪ Love is coming
♪ Love is coming to us all
DAYE: Tom and I subscribed to "Rolling Stone" magazine,
and long about, oh, early May,
I started seeing these ads for a three-day festival
with all these bands that we loved.
And I said, "Tom! You wanna go to this?"
RADIO ANNOUNCER: For tickets and information,
write to Woodstock Music and Art Fair...
GOLDMACHER: We heard it on the radio.
They were describing this happening-to-be
and that people were coming
from all corners of the United States,
and apparently abroad, as well.
BRUNO ELIARD (speaking French): WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
(speaking German):
SUSIE KAUFMAN: I was hanging out at the fountain
in, in Washington Square, with my guys,
who were all musicians,
and then all of the sudden,
tickets were being made available.
You could buy one day, two days, or three.
And jeez, three days!
"Wow! That means staying there over...
"Wow, what an adventure that would be!
We gotta do this!"
♪
SPITZ: It was early June,
so they started to build at the Wallkill site.
They brought in electricity,
they started to lay the groundwork for a stage,
and they hired a couple of hundred kids to help out.
And these kids, they didn't look like anybody else in this town.
ROSENMAN: They were a little suspicious about us,
but we just forged ahead.
All that did was, I guess, sound the rallying cry
for what called itself
the Concerned Citizens Committee of Wallkill.
ROBERTS: They didn't like the looks of the people
who were working on the site.
They didn't like long hair, rock music,
and all that that implied to them.
We really tried to practice good community relations,
but the Concerned Citizens had the wind up.
SPITZ: Wallkill was a pretty conservative place.
The way they saw it, these were kids who smoked dope,
who had casual sex...
They didn't want these hippies in their town.
ROSENMAN: John and I were having dinner in New York City
when the town of Wallkill passed an ordinance
saying, "You can't have a gathering
of more than 5,000 people."
Essentially, it just legislated
the possibility of a festival on this property
out of existence.
But we had already sold so many tickets
and hired so many bands,
we couldn't turn back at that point.
ROBERTS: It was like being on a rollercoaster
that had just crested the rise,
you know, before that first enormous plunge.
I contemplated the abyss of a total wipeout and thought,
"Let's not declare bankruptcy-- let's throw this festival."
♪ I'm going up the country, baby, don't you wanna go? ♪
WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
♪ I'm going up the country, baby, don't you wanna go? ♪
♪ I'm going to someplace...
MAKOWER: It was the first week of July, about five weeks out,
so there was a mad scramble to find a new site.
They drove around upstate New York
talking to local people, real estate brokers--
anyone who would listen.
LAWRENCE: Michael and I,
we must have looked for a week or maybe ten days,
renting helicopters and going here and going there.
And then we meet Max Yasgur.
SPITZ: Max was a farmer.
And he was very successful.
His dairy supplied almost everybody in that area
with milk.
Everybody knew Max Yasgur.
JOHN CONWAY: Yasgur was a, you know, he was a law-and-order Republican,
but, you know, he also believed
in personal freedom and freedom of expression,
and that's what he hung his hat on.
LANG: We went to see Max, and we just hit it off.
I think he liked the fact that we were doing something
in the face of a lot of adversity
and that we believed in.
LAWRENCE: Max takes us to the top of this hill,
and there it is!
A natural amphitheater.
Michael and I looked at each other: "This is it!"
SPITZ: This was exactly what they were looking for,
and they made a deal with Max right there on the spot.
♪
ROBERTS: Joel and I went up to get some kind of a-a handle
on the town politics.
(chuckles): We sure didn't want to get into the same problem there
as we had in Wallkill.
ROSENMAN: We were asked to fill out our attendance expectations
on the permit application.
We used Monterey Pop's record,
28,000 people a day, or something like that,
as the baseline.
We multiplied it times two,
and said, you know, "In our wildest dreams,
this is what we're hoping for."
And within a couple of days, we got our permits.
MIRIAM YASGUR: A sign was erected near our house,
and it said something like,
"Don't buy Yasgur's milk, he loves the hippies."
And I thought to myself, "You don't know Max,
because we're going to have a festival."
RADIO ANNOUNCER: The Woodstock Music and Art Fair,
the three-day Aquarian Exposition,
will be held at White Lake,
in the town of Bethel, Sullivan County, New York.
And on Friday, August 15, you will hear and see:
Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie,
Tim Hardin, Richie Havens, the Incredible String Band...
("Wasn't Born to Follow" by the Byrds playing)
ROBERTS: Everyone felt excited
about the possibilities of the new site,
but there was a lot to be done. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
ROSENMAN: We had to start all over again
to construct what we had built in several months in Wallkill
in less than four weeks.
ROBERTS: The half a million at the old site
was all down the drain, right?
And we have to put another $800,000 into this one.
Building a stage, getting the lights and the sound system up,
fences.
Food concessions.
Portable toilets-- I mean, it was extraordinary.
And Joel and I had never done any of this before.
ROSENMAN: But because of ticket sales,
we actually felt that we were gonna turn a profit.
SPITZ: They knew by this time that there were going to be
more than just 50,000 people.
Ticket sales looked like it was going to be closer to 100,000.
And with 100,000 stoned-out kids,
they knew that there could be some difficulties.
REPORTER: There's been some trouble at a few of the pop festivals.
What do you think brings that about?
Why will it happen at one place and not another?
PAUL BUTTERFIELD: You know, I, I really don't know.
Like, in Miami, they broke down the fence,
and they had a lot of fights.
REPORTER: Do you think it has anything
to do with the size of the audience?
I think it has to do a little bit to do with the size.
It has more to do with the way the festival is organized.
WES POMEROY: To see what was really happening,
we sent people to almost all the major rock festivals
that summer.
They went to Atlanta,
they went to Denver,
and they went to Newport.
And every one, there were problems.
They had tear gas used in Denver,
they had violence in Los Angeles County.
So back in New York, they kept insisting
that they needed to have security people for safety.
I told John that all the cops in the world
weren't going to prevent violence.
It had to depend upon building the kind of expectation
and the feeling of this event we're gonna have
so that people didn't want to hurt each other.
GOLDSTEIN: We also knew that there would be a lot of drugs around
and there would be a lot of people
who couldn't handle whatever it was
that they were going to take,
and that that had to be dealt with as well.
(gong rings)
Hi, there.
Uh, my name is Hugh Romney,
and I'm going through a series of changes
in this fur room at the Electric Circus store.
What is essentially on the front of my brain
is this Hog Farm poster,
which we're gonna be moving all around the country--
"we" being a-a commune.
ROSENMAN: Stanley Goldstein suggested that we look to this...
(laughing): This commune called the Hog Farm,
and that we should bring
as many of these folks to the festival as we can,
and have them handle our security.
So he went and met with a fellow named Hugh Romney,
also known as Wavy Gravy.
WAVY GRAVY: We'd been driving around the country,
putting on these shows. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
putting on these shows.
We had a certain skill
with working with large crowds.
We were a happening.
(guitar playing, bell clanging)
So Stan Goldstein showed up and says, "How would you guys
like to do this music festival in New York state?"
And we said, "Well,
"it sounds like a good time,
but we're gonna be in New Mexico."
And he says, "That's all right,
we'll fly you in in an Astrojet."
And indeed, 85 of us boarded this American Airlines Astrojet
going to Woodstock.
TOM LAW: We all arrived at the Albuquerque airport
and loaded up a couple of sets of teepee poles
and flew off to New York.
WAVY GRAVY (laughing): The stewardesses locked themself in a little room,
and we just took over the plane.
("Apricot Brandy" by Rhinoceros playing)
We got to New York City, piled off the aircraft,
and there was the press.
What is the Hog Farm going to be doing in Woodstock?
Well, the Hog Farm is a many-sided, multi...
We're a kind of a family,
a huge expanded family.
And we could do any number of things,
because each one of us is gonna do a different thing.
But mostly we're just gonna try and be groovy,
and spread that grooviness through everybody.
Well, the Hog Farm has been hassled by security people,
and they're calling you security people,
so how do you feel about the, you know, the name?
Well, I feel secure.
I don't know what "security people" means.
I never was called a security person before.
It's, like, you're the first person
that's ever called me that-- how do you feel?
(laughs)
Well, I feel..
Do you feel secure?
(all laughing)
ROBERTS: There was a picture
in the "Post" the next day.
My father called and said, "Nice cops you've hired."
He thought that I was really out of my mind,
to be involved in this thing.
("Sally and George Theme" by Alec Puro playing)
(kids shouting)
MARION VASSMER: We're a small town, we'll never have all those people here.
They'll never... they'll never be here, you know.
I didn't believe it.
("Sally and George Theme" continues)
ARTHUR VASSMER: That's all you heard on the radio.
"Woodstock, town of Bethel, Woodstock," you know?
And ha-ha, we're all laughing, you know?
And a guy come to me, he says, "Look out,
this might be something bigger than you thought."
I've been here all my life, you know?
They're talking about hundreds of thousands of people,
and so on and so forth.
We never saw that in this town.
("Sally and George Theme" continues)
DEBRA CONWAY: There was a certain backlash,
but mostly, you know, it was kind of a daily little buzz WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
but mostly, you know, it was kind of a daily little buzz
from the locals.
LOUIS RATNER: We started to hear rumors
that this thing was more or less out of hand
because no one knew
the amount of tickets that were sold.
One time they said 25,000, and then it was,
all of a sudden, it's 50,000,
then they don't know,
and it got to a point where, uh,
you started to get a little worried about it.
("Sally and George Theme" ends)
♪
MORRIS: It was early August,
and we were about a week out
from the beginning of the festival,
when, all of a sudden, people started showing up.
(people talking in background)
♪
MIRIAM YASGUR: About a week before,
they started showing up in small groups
and camping and so on,
and the thing that Max and I were trying to figure out is,
they hadn't gotten the fence around the field.
And we thought, "Boy, they'd better rush and do that
if they want to sell tickets to this thing."
♪
ROSENMAN: In the last week,
if you saw what was going on, you were immediately aware
that it couldn't possibly be finished in time.
On Monday,
everything was in a state of preparation
roughly on target for a festival
to be thrown some time in November
and not for one that was supposed to begin in four days.
Let's clear the road, please!
BEREN: We showed up three days before the festival opened,
because that's what we were supposed to do as food handlers.
It was thrown together at the last minute,
so we had to build our own food stands before we manned them.
ROBERTS: We have spoken
to a lot of different food concession people,
and all of them, the legitimate guys,
went by the wayside when we lost Wallkill.
What was left was an outfit called Food for Love.
There were three of them-- three guys.
I think one of them
had some kind of food catering experience.
I don't think the other two did.
But we didn't have any alternative.
ROSENMAN: I think it was Tuesday,
the construction foreman tells us,
"We just don't have enough time to finish everything.
"So which would you like to have us finish,
"the gates and the fences, or the stage?
We don't have enough men and material to do both."
I remember thinking, "If we don't have gates and fences,
"then we're not gonna collect tickets. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
"then we're not gonna collect tickets.
"We'll be bankrupt.
"And if we don't have a stage, we'll be in jail.
(laughing): "Because there will be 100,000 kids running around
"with nothing to do.
For three days."
So that was the answer.
The answer was, "Build the stage."
(welding torch buzzing)
TICIA AGRI: I'd go there in the middle of the night,
and people were building the stage.
It was going 24 hours.
MONCK: There was obviously so much to do,
and so little time in which to do it,
we had all come to-to realize that all of our individual jobs
were going to be left somewhat undone.
So we all kind of banded together
into one sort of SWAT team trying to run around and finish.
("You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" by the Byrds playing)
GEORGE: I quit my job at the restaurant in Ocean City with no notice.
(laughs)
I just told them that I wouldn't be in anymore.
And they said, "Why?"
And I said, "Well, I'm going to Woodstock."
("You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" continues)
DAYE: We didn't get on the road till around noon,
and by the time we got to within,
I don't know, miles of Bethel,
the traffic was just, you know, crawling.
The folks on the-the road, the people who lived there,
one would think that they would throw things at us.
No!
They just welcomed us.
♪ The morning came, the morning went ♪
KAUFMAN: Never before in my life
did I feel so much anticipation.
(laughing): This is going to be so cool!
♪ My bride's gonna come
♪ Oh, ho, are we gonna fly
♪ Down in the easy chair?
(speaking German):
STAROBIN: We were at a dead standstill for hours.
People just got out and sat on their cars
and started talking to each other,
getting to know each other.
You know, starting long conversations
about politics and about music.
Before long, we felt like we had hundreds of best friends.
♪ My bride's gonna come...
ARTHUR VASSMER: We were sitting on the back porch
and my God, the traffic, all of a sudden, it started.
And I'm telling you, it never let up.
We just opened the one door.
But you couldn't let them in.
It was impossible.
And we let 40 or 50 people at a time, WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
And we let 40 or 50 people at a time,
they'd get their groceries or whatever they needed,
let them out the back,
and then open up the door, let another 50 in.
And these people, some of them walked four and five, six miles.
"Where's the Woodstock? Where's the Woodstock?"
♪ All his kings supplied with sleep ♪
♪ We'll climb that hill...
REPORTER: This sight is hard to believe.
We're over White Lake,
in the midst of this music festival encampment.
We're up over the trees now, we're coming in over...
JOE TINKELMAN: We were on the state highway, and cars were stopping.
And we realized that this was parking for the concert,
so we got out of the car and started walking,
and we saw people setting up lawn chairs
to watch this spectacle.
(laughing): It looked like this whole part of New York state
was just being turned upside down
by this event.
REPORTER: The traffic is terrible.
It is backed up from White Lake
right back through on the Quickway past Monticello,
and there's no place to park-- everything is full.
REYNOLDS: They were announcing on the radio
that you couldn't get there, and, you know, "Don't go."
(laughing): They were saying, "Don't go, don't go!
"You can't get in, it's already overcrowded,
and they're shutting it down, and turn around and go home."
(laughing): Nobody was turning around.
It sort of increased our desire,
more than anything.
Like, "One way or another, we'll get there."
("Get Together" by the Youngbloods playing)
(people talking in background)
♪ Love is but a song to sing
♪ Fear's the way we die
LINDSEY: As you walked in, it hit you.
Suddenly, it just all came into view at once.
♪ You can make the mountains ring ♪
LINDSEY: This whole enormous bowl full of people.
It was mind-boggling.
ROSENMAN: Coming over the hill and feeling the energy of that crowd
is something I'll never forget.
There was so much power in it.
♪ Come on people now
♪ Smile on your brother
♪ Everybody get together
♪ Try to love one another right now ♪
STAROBIN: It was indescribable,
the feeling that came over me of warmth,
and, "Oh, my God, there are this many people in the world
that think like I think."
(laughing): "There are all these people here!"
I never knew there were that many people in the world.
("Get Together" continues)
REYNOLDS: Once we got there, the fences were just trampled.
We walked up that hill, and we saw, you know, WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
We walked up that hill, and we saw, you know,
all these people--
our age, looked like us, dressed like us.
You know, us.
I mean, it was just... it was...
It was like, you know, meeting your brothers and sisters.
It was really beautiful.
♪ Come on people now
♪ Smile on your brother
♪ Everybody get together
♪ Try to love one another right now ♪
♪ Right now
("Get Together" ends)
MORRIS (on speaker): We'll be getting our show on in about five minutes.
Just keep cool and relax.
We'll be with you as soon as we can.
Thank you.
Do you realize that half of these people don't have tickets,
and there are people five miles away
sitting on a highway with tickets
who have driven 2,000 or 3,000 miles?
MAN: Right. Whatever has to be done to make it right,
this is wrong. Yeah, yeah.
ROBERTS: It was obvious we were in deep (no audio).
After having worked that afternoon,
trying to organize people to put the fences up,
and actually pounding in posts myself,
I realized it wasn't going to happen.
We weren't going to be able to ring
about a mile of perimeter.
MORRIS: What are you going to tell a few hundred thousand people
who are sitting in your field
when you're supposed to be collecting money from them?
"Go back out and come back in when we get the tickets
and we finish the fences and the rest of it"?
You are now giving the world's greatest three-day freebie.
Okay, there's only one way to do it. That's what it is.
No, there's a way to do it. There is no way.
MORRIS: Artie came up with,
"Can't we get a whole bunch of girls,
"and put them in diaphanous gowns
"and give them collection baskets,
and send them out into the audience?"
It was the most ludicrous thing I had ever heard in my life.
ROBERTS: As a business venture, it was dead.
And I don't know why, but sort of a curious calm overcame us,
and it seemed like the gates
just weren't really what was important here anymore.
MORRIS (on speaker): It's a free concert from now on.
(crowd cheering)
That doesn't mean that anything goes.
What that means is,
we're gonna put the music up here for free.
What it means is that the people who are backing this thing,
who put up the money for it,
are gonna take a bit of a bath.
A big bath.
That's no hype.
That's truth-- they're gonna get hurt.
But what it means is that these people
have it in their heads
that your welfare is a hell of a lot more important--
and the music is-- than a dollar.
(crowd cheering and applauding)
BEREN: The roar that went up from that crowd
was incredible.
Despite its roots
in trying to be a capitalist enterprise,
the concert was liberated.
(coins clinking, people talking in background)
You don't even have to bother
bringing your tickets or anything,
because they aren't going to collect them.
There's no way they can.
They got a fence that's, like, half up,
and there are people just sitting in that field. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
and there are people just sitting in that field.
It's really beautiful.
MAN (on speaker): We're still waiting
for the arrival of group one.
Now, please bear with us.
Due to the traffic problems,
we're going to have to start a little later.
MORRIS: The bands were all in different hotels,
and if you tried to drive down to the site,
it would take you six hours to do it.
It became obvious that we needed helicopters.
But then Richie Havens showed up,
and it was, like, "Richie, please go on now."
And he said, "I'm not scheduled to go on till later."
I said, "Richie, we don't have anybody else."
HAVENS: I actually was afraid to go on first,
basically because I knew the concert was late,
and I didn't want to get beer cans thrown at me.
You know, "Don't do this to me.
Don't put me in front of your problem like this," you know?
"My bass player isn't even here."
But I went on, you know, and it was beautiful.
♪ Hey, look yonder, tell me what's that you see ♪
♪ Marching to the fields of Concord? ♪
♪ Looks like Handsome Johnny with his flintlock in his hand ♪
♪ Marching to the Concord war
♪ Hey, marching to the Concord war ♪
BEREN: Once the festival started, we opened the food stands.
And a throng of people came running up the hill.
There were too many people, too many arms reaching out,
so we just started handing out hamburgers.
And people began to shower us with joints.
I had one in each pocket, one in my ear,
and I was smoking two at a time.
I got really high.
(audience cheering)
HAVENS: I was onstage for something like two hours
because nobody else was there to go on.
(chuckles): I did about four or five encores,
you know, until I had nothing else to sing.
And then "Freedom" was created right there on the stage.
That's how "Freedom" was created, onstage.
It was the last thing I could think of to sing.
I made it up.
(playing opening to "Freedom")
CAROL GREEN: I remember hearing Richie Havens
playing "Freedom."
I was way up on the hill,
and I heard it, and I was transported.
HAVENS: ♪ Freedom, freedom
GEORGE: It's a good word to use.
And it wasn't just the freedom of being able to smoke a joint,
it was the freedom of being able to be who you were.
Not feeling that somebody was going to judge you
or threaten you.
So, yeah, freedom on a lot of levels.
("Freedom" continues, audience clapping to rhythm)
AGRI: I left the backstage area, and I went into the crowd,
and I went up, and I got in the middle of the crowd, WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
and I went up, and I got in the middle of the crowd,
and that was, like, "Wow, look what we've done.
We actually pulled it off, and it's happening."
MORRIS (on speaker): What better way to start
than with the beautiful Richie Havens?
MORRIS: The audience reaction was just wonderful.
It just brought the spirit right up and you felt,
"Okay, this is going to work.
We're going to be okay."
And then, thank God,
we got the helicopter rotation working,
and started to get people in.
MAN (on speaker): We apologize for the noise of the choppity-choppity,
but it seems there are a few cars blocking the road,
so we're flying everybody in.
SPITZ: Once the artists started arriving,
the first band to go on was Sweetwater,
followed by the acoustic acts.
(Sweetwater playing "What's Wrong")
(strumming opening to "Joe Hill," crowd cheering)
♪ I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night ♪
♪ Alive as you and me
BARNARD COLLIER: It was after midnight,
and, in fact, it was starting to rain.
All through the crowd, there were matches
and cigarette lighters and candles,
it looked like fireflies.
BAEZ: ♪ "I never died," says he
CHRIS MOORE: The field was illuminated.
Not as bright as the blue light on Joan Baez on the stage,
but the immediate impact was the size of that crowd.
("Joe Hill" continues)
MOORE: There was nothing in that field but human beings.
(song ends, crowd cheers)
MORRIS: Joan Baez was just wonderful.
She ended that night in a drizzle.
I looked out in the field and saw all these people,
and it was, like, "Let's go to sleep."
MORRIS (on speaker): Maybe the best thing for everybody to do,
unless you have a tent or someplace specific to go to,
is carve yourself out a piece of territory,
say goodnight to your neighbor, and say thank you to yourself
for making this the most peaceful, most pleasant day
anybody's ever had with this kind of music.
(motorcycle engines revving)
ROBERTS: Joel and I got on the Hondas.
And we rode up to a hill
that was, you know, maybe a mile away from the stage.
And in the distance, you could see hundreds,
thousands of little campfires.
It was like an army at rest
before an enormous battle the next day.
It was really beautiful.
That moment will stay with me forever.
♪
(crowd cheering)
MORRIS (on microphone): I guess the reason we're here is music. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
MORRIS (on microphone): I guess the reason we're here is music.
So let's have some music.
Ladies and gentlemen, Quill!
(playing "Waiting for You")
(band vocalizing)
LINDSEY: The first day of the festival,
there were a lot of people there.
Maybe 250,000, 300,000 people.
That was the folk day.
The second day of the concert was the rock-'n'-roll day.
That's when everyone showed up.
They wanted to see the Who, Airplane,
the Dead, later that night.
So the crowd grew by about a hundred thousand.
DILLS: "Holy (no audio), this thing
is way beyond what we ever could've imagined."
We just felt like we were going to get crushed up
against the stage,
and we didn't really want that.
So like a lot of people, we just decided to go out exploring,
walking around to see what was going on.
BEREN: On the periphery of the crowd
was a two-lane highway of people,
and it never stopped moving for the entire festival.
People were going to the food stands,
they were coming from the bathroom.
They were going God knows where.
GEORGE: If you just started wandering,
you'd come across all kinds of stuff.
("Buzzin' Fly" by Tim Buckley playing)
A lot of it was like just walking the boardwalk
and seeing the sights
and taking in the scene.
("Buzzin' Fly" continues)
DILLS: Walking around, I remember thinking,
"Holy (no audio), there are a lot of breasts here."
Most of the nudity I'd seen previously
was in "Playboy,"
and small bits on a hot date,
but, you know, really not much.
And there were a lot of people, girls and guys,
who were very, very open with their lack of clothing.
Especially down by the water.
STAROBIN: The good thing about skinny dipping is, we all went in.
Fat, skinny, it didn't matter.
Nobody looked, nobody cared.
It was just plain fun.
SCHOENBERGER (speaking German):
GEORGE: I was 17.
Normally, my jaw would be on the floor, staring,
but when everything, to a certain extent,
is beyond belief to begin with,
nothing surprises you. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
nothing surprises you.
BUCKLEY: ♪ And sometimes, honey, in the mornin' ♪
GEORGE: There was kind of a, a path in the, in the woods
where people had all kinds of different shops set up.
They were selling, you know, musical stuff,
things like beads and crafts that they had made.
Hand-tie-dyed clothing, blown-glass pipes,
and stuff like that.
Kind of head shops in the woods, that sort of thing.
There was one table set up where they were just selling pot.
(chuckles)
We were well supplied.
("Buzzin' Fly" continues)
STAROBIN: Saturday was kind of a day
where, you know, we walked, like, a couple of miles,
checking things out.
There was so much happening,
(chuckling): that that was almost as interesting
as seeing the music.
♪
JABOOLIAN: Just to the other side, it was a wooded area.
Well, that's where the Hog Farm was set up.
This was commune life.
You know, I-I had heard about it,
but I had never seen it in action.
JAHANARA ROMNEY: We'd been living in a group for years by then,
and it was quite an amazing experiment.
You know, the understanding that the people around me
are all part of the same spirit.
HENRY DILTZ: There was, like, a couple hundred of them
with all these kids running around.
They had teepees and yurts, you know,
and all these various little, you know, dwellings.
DAYE: A whole bunch of them came on all these exotic buses
that they had painted up.
It was magical.
(music playing in distance)
JABOOLIAN: And the Hog Farm had built a small stage.
And there was music there as well.
I didn't realize that at first.
GEORGE: There was always some kind of musical jam going on over there.
(playing blues tune)
Away from the, the actual concert,
the Hog Farm was kind of a center of gravity
for the festival.
ROSENMAN: The Hog Farm turned out to be
an interesting choice for security.
They didn't call themselves a police force;
they called themselves a please force.
They substituted, "Hey, you, do this,"
with, "Would you please do this?"
Or, "Would it be all right with you if..." and so forth.
Keep back, keep back now, let them through.
Everything's got room to flow here.
(plays "Que Sera Sera" on kazoo)
WAVY GRAVY: The please chiefs were myself and-and Tom Law.
We turned it into fun.
Oh, yes. (hums through kazoo)
ROBERTS: They gave a nice flavor to the festival.
We paid them $18,000.
I remember that. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
I remember that.
ROSENMAN: I don't remember paying them anything.
I thought we just chartered the jet.
ROBERTS: Maybe that's what that cost.
Maybe that's where the 18 grand went.
ROSENMAN: They did it just because they wanted to be there,
and because they felt that they could be useful.
They were really nice people.
COUNTRY JOE MCDONALD: ♪ One, two, three, what are we fighting for? ♪
♪ Don't ask me, I don't give a damn ♪
♪ The next stop is Viet Nam
STAROBIN: In the afternoon, I kind of wandered back to the concert.
I was determined I was not going to miss
all these incredible people.
McDONALD: ♪ Now come on, mothers, throughout the land ♪
♪ Pack your boys off to Viet Nam ♪
DEBRA CONWAY: My boyfriend was draft age.
And, you know, we had this future planned out,
and it certainly didn't include him coming home in a body bag.
And so, you know, when Country Joe McDonald got up
on Saturday afternoon,
we were right there with him.
♪ And it's five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates ♪
♪ Well, I ain't no time to wonder why ♪
♪ Whoopee, we're all goin' to die! ♪
All right! (crowd cheering)
REYNOLDS: We were 400,000 kids on a hillside
who all were vehemently against the war.
And, you know, for me, it was like, "These are our people!"
(chuckles)
"We found our people!"
(cheering continues)
REPORTER: Are you enjoying the festival?
Yeah, it's out of sight-- it's beautiful.
Why did you come to the festival?
To see the best music in the world, man.
("Soul Sacrifice" by Santana playing)
MOORE: The only bored moment I had that weekend
was when Santana was about to appear,
and I didn't know who Santana was.
And Santana woke me up.
("Soul Sacrifice" continues)
JABOOLIAN: You got... you got drawn into this music.
The song was "Soul Sacrifice,"
which most of us had never heard before.
("Soul Sacrifice" continues, Santana plays guitar solo)
BEREN: Listening to it, I felt like we had gone from civilization
to someplace where there was no rules.
And some people took the freedom to extreme places.
("Soul Sacrifice" continues)
GOLDMACHER: People were there to have a good time
and they were doing it.
Now, it meant a lot of drugs.
It was mostly marijuana, hashish, and LSD.
("Soul Sacrifice" continues)
COLLIER: One girl told me that just standing still,
she was getting stoned.
And my guess was that within a thousand feet of the stage,
everybody was stoned.
("Soul Sacrifice" fades)
GOLDSTEIN: There were a lot of people who took a lot of drugs WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
GOLDSTEIN: There were a lot of people who took a lot of drugs
in very strenuous circumstances
and were incapable of dealing with that.
The freak-out tents were oases.
GOLDMACHER: Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm were taking care of bad trips.
Freak-out tents had been set up where people could lie down,
and folks from the Hog Farm were in there, you know,
just holding people's hands
and just really being able to guide them through it.
WAVY GRAVY: We're telling them, "You know, it's,
"it's going to be cool, man, it's going to wear off.
You took a little acid, and it's gonna wear off."
And then when somebody was near normal to rock 'n' roll,
we said, "Hold it.
"Now, you see that brother coming through the door?
"That was you three hours ago.
Now you go and help them out."
And that's the way the scene regenerated itself.
♪
SPITZ: They always knew that there were going to be medical problems,
and they had prepared themselves as best they could.
But like everything else at the festival,
they were woefully understaffed,
and an emergency situation was developing.
MAN (on speaker): We need a doctor or a medic, please,
over on this side of the stage, please,
at your earliest convenience.
GOLDMACHER: One of our people came rushing up to me and said,
"We're out of medical supplies."
And I said, "You've got to be kidding."
All the panoply of medical situations you could encounter
will happen during the course of 72 hours.
It's just what happens in a city of 400,000 people.
This is a medical disaster in the making.
(siren blaring)
GOLDSTEIN: Leaving aside for the moment
those people who were diabetics who needed insulin and so forth,
the casualties were mounting.
♪
MORRIS: We got a call from the governor's chief of staff
telling us that Rockefeller was considering
sending in the National Guard.
SPITZ: Nelson Rockefeller's office--
he was the governor at the time--
was in pretty constant communication
with the festival people,
and Rockefeller was always threatening
to send in the troops.
MORRIS: They said it was a danger to the community,
it was a danger to public health,
it was a danger to any damn thing they could think of.
They wanted to get rid of it.
And they were stupid enough to believe
they could mobilize the National Guard
and move these kids out.
And I kept saying,
"There's only one way to do this,
and that's play it through."
In the end, there was an assistant to the governor
who got it,
and he said, "What can we do?"
ERSKINE MILLER: Why are there Army helicopters flying overhead?
You know, it looked like what I saw on the news every night WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
You know, it looked like what I saw on the news every night
in, you know, the pictures from Vietnam.
DILLS: Seeing that they were military helicopters
was very disconcerting.
We didn't know really why they were flying in.
You know, is this the start of a militarization
to close this thing down?
MORRIS: I was standing onstage,
and I could see these Hueys coming in.
There were three or four of them in a row.
And all I said was, "Ladies and gentlemen,
the United States Army."
MORRIS (on speaker): The United States Army has lent us some medical teams.
There are 45 doctors who are here without pay
because they dig what this is into.
They are with us, man.
They are not against us, they are with us.
They're here to give us all a hand and help us.
♪
MORRIS: That sound system was the only source of communication
we had with the audience.
MAN (on speaker): Elliot from Harvard,
the hitchhikers you picked up
need the pills from your car.
Please go to the information station right away.
MORRIS: What started happening was,
people would bring messages to backstage.
And we did as many of them as we could
in between performances.
MAN (on speaker): Sidney McGee,
please come immediately to backstage right.
I understand your wife is having a baby.
Congratulations.
Wheat Germ,
Holly has your bag with your medicine.
Please meet at the information booth
as soon as you can, please.
MORRIS: The information booth became a center.
And we just said to people,
"If you're looking for somebody, you got to go up there."
JABOOLIAN: Everybody would put messages on it.
So if you're looking for somebody,
or you're trying to get a ride home,
or, or whatever,
you could stick stuff up on there.
MAN 2 (on speaker): Larry Alexander, Cousin Al is sick.
Meet near the information center.
ROBERTS: We took a lot of phone calls
from worried parents,
wondering what was happening up there.
And, you know, if it was, like, "Call home,"
we'd relay it to the stage.
MAN 1 (on speaker): Helen Savage,
please call your father
at the Motel Glory in Woodridge.
DILLS: I definitely wondered if my parents were watching
and what they thought.
Because after Friday, I'd had no contact
with anybody from the outside world.
MAN (on speaker): The "Daily News,"
in rather large headlines,
"Traffic Uptight at Hippiefest."
GEORGE: The stage announcements
really became our news radio.
How we found out
what the outside world was paying attention to.
And they would've thought it was an utter disaster,
from what they were seeing in the news and stuff.
♪
ROSENMAN: The world expects this to explode. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
ROSENMAN: The world expects this to explode.
And I remember thinking to myself, "This is perfect."
Because there's nothing kids like better than to disappoint
what the world thinks they're going to do.
MAN (on speaker): Ladies and gentlemen, Keef Hartley.
("Spanish Fly" by Keef Hartley Band playing)
("Spanish Fly" continues)
REYNOLDS: Late afternoon, the sun came out, and it was hot.
And we walked around a bit, because we got hungry.
And we quickly discovered there was no food.
All the booths were out of food.
There was nothing.
BEREN: We ran out of food.
Delivery trucks could not get through the traffic jams,
so there was no more food.
No soda, no burgers, no hot dogs, no nothing.
And then word spread very fast.
SPITZ: Sure, there was a sanitation crisis,
and there was a medical crisis,
but when the food started to go,
the producers knew that this could turn
into an even more immense problem.
But something really incredible happened.
The people of White Lake and Bethel
literally went in their pantries.
Anything that was in the refrigerator,
anything that was in the freezer,
anything that was in the house,
they contributed.
MAN: We got word over WVOS
that a lot of kids didn't have anything to eat.
Stuff was taken over to the school,
and they flew it to the, to the site.
I have a 19-year-old myself,
I felt that we got to give them a, a fair shake here.
Kids are hungry, you got to feed them.
JOHN CONWAY: Those helicopters were going over constantly.
And also a lot of the neighbors were involved
in efforts to make sandwiches
and get them to the, to the helicopters.
GORDON WINARICK: It was on the radio, "Bring whatever you can."
And I decided, we'll just send eggs,
because it's an egg area.
I tapped people for donations.
I said, "Look, give me cases of eggs."
So we hard-boiled hundreds of thousands of eggs.
LENI BINDER: We would never have said,
"We don't want any part of you, leave.
I don't care if you're hungry or starving."
That was not our communities.
Maybe we were hicks, but we did go,
as the Bible says, welcome the stranger.
They were hungry.
We fed them.
ROMNEY: Helicopters came in
with anything people wanted to donate.
Like little bags of picnic supplies
or green beans-- even a tiny can of olives.
(chuckling): You know, I just, "Yes!
"Bring it on!
We can take it and make it into food for the masses."
DAYE: The Hog Farm had set up this huge kitchen,
and they were boiling brown rice
and frying up vegetables,
and it was fabulous.
♪ WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
♪
JABOOLIAN: I found out about the Hog Farm serving food
from the guy that sat next to me.
He says, "Yeah, man, they got free food up there.
You just, just go up there and get in line."
♪
DILLS: I and one of my friends offer to help,
and they just put us on a pot,
and we, we scooped it for people.
It was kind of cool to feel like, "Wow,
"I'm helpless here, as are most of these people,
"but there are people who are taking care of us,
and in a sense, we're taking care of each other."
BILL WARD: People were good to one another.
I would see, I would see people
passing around a Coke or something;
other people were sharing their food.
♪
STAROBIN: Everybody around us had something,
and we just passed everything around.
It was like the loaves and the fishes,
it really was.
GEORGE: This was actually kind of a functioning city
out in the middle of nowhere,
and we realized that it was functioning
because of people pulling together.
It just had this feeling that, "This was ours.
"This was the new city.
This was the alternative city, and it worked."
♪
("Woodstock Boogie" by Canned Heat playing)
MORRIS: Saturday afternoon, the show was good.
But Saturday night, we really came up to speed
when the sun went down.
♪ Well, the little red rooster told the little brown hen ♪
♪ "Meet you at the barn about a half past ten" ♪
♪ Sing a last little boogie... ♪
MORRIS: I guess we got to a point where we felt more comfortable,
and maybe we were proving
to the press and the outside world
that we knew what we were doing,
and that this was special,
that there was some kind of magic here.
And I would say that probably gave us the second wind.
("Woodstock Boogie" continues)
GEORGE: I was sort of in a daze.
You'd been listening, watching music
starting in the afternoon
and going pretty much all through the night.
There's no way you couldn't get oversaturated
with the stimulus.
♪ I want to take you higher
CROWD: ♪ Higher
♪ I want to take you higher
GEORGE: For me,
the most memorable performance that night
was Sly and the Family Stone.
SLY: ♪ I want to take you higher
GEORGE: The music, yes, but the, the crowd
and just feeling this incredible electricity.
I mean, it was the middle of the night,
and everybody was up dancing.
It was just a pulsing hillside
of hundreds of thousands of people.
("I Want to Take You Higher" continues)
♪ I want to take you higher
♪ Higher WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
♪ Higher
♪ I want to take you higher
♪ Higher
("My Generation" by the Who playing)
DILTZ: I was in front of the stage,
shooting it, you know, taking pictures.
Roger Daltrey, up there,
with fringe on his cape flying around.
And he'd twirl that microphone around,
and, you know, he would just miss the floor,
and then it would come arcing through the air,
and he'd grab it just in time,
you know, to get into,
"Talkin' 'bout my generation."
And then there was Townshend leaping in the air,
and doing his splits, and landing on stage.
DALTREY: ♪ And don't try to dig what, what, what we all say ♪
♪ Talking 'bout my generation
GREEN: "Talkin' 'bout my generation,"
and that was my generation.
When they sang that song,
they, you know, elicited this clarion call,
and we went, "Rock and roll!"
♪ This is my generation, baby
("My Generation" concludes)
(crowd cheers and applauds)
DILTZ: The Who was absolutely fantastic,
and they were still playing as the dawn came up.
("Naked Eye" playing)
("Naked Eye" fades)
All right, friends, you have seen the heavy groups.
Now you will see morning maniac music.
Believe me, yeah.
It's the new dawn.
("The Other Side of Life" by Jefferson Airplane playing)
The regular guys and Nicky Hopkins.
("The Other Side of Life" continues)
PAUL KANTNER: I could barely remember our performance,
because it was 6:30 in the morning.
We just went out and played as best we could.
We were pretty burned, though, by the time we got onstage.
Good morning, people!
KANTNER: And we could see there was a lot of people just asleep.
And the fires were starting to go out,
and people were crashing.
LAWRENCE: I was walking around, and everybody was sleeping.
I mean, people were horizontal all over the place, you know?
It looked like after a big party.
("Sunday Morning" by the Velvet Underground playing)
♪ Sunday morning
♪ Brings the dawn in
♪ It's just a restless feeling
♪ By my side
♪ Watch out, the world's behind you ♪
WAVY GRAVY (on speaker): Good morning.
What we have in mind is breakfast in bed
for 400,000.
Now, it's not going to be steak and eggs or anything,
but it's gonna be good food, and we're gonna get it to you.
We're all feeding each other.
(crowd cheering) WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
(crowd cheering)
We must be in heaven, man!
ROMNEY: What we served was plain raw oats
with honey and powdered milk mixed up,
'cause it wasn't any time to toast oats.
(chuckling): And, you know, it was just,
we threw nuts and seeds and raisins in it.
And I think we had ten serving stations,
and the lines of people in front of each of the serving stations
were as long as you could see.
("Sunday Morning" continues)
The Yasgurs supplied us with milk and yogurt.
And it was just like a gift from an angel.
♪ Sunday morning
("Sunday Morning" fades)
MORRIS (on speaker): We have a gentleman with us.
It's the gentleman upon whose farm we are,
Mr. Max Yasgur.
(crowd cheers and applauds)
MORRIS: In the early afternoon, Max came down to the stage,
and he said, "I'd like to speak to the crowd."
And I said,
"I think the crowd would very much like to meet you."
MAX YASGUR: Is this on?
I'm a farmer, I don't know...
(crowd cheering and applauding)
I don't know how to speak to 20 people at one time,
let alone a crowd like this.
But I think you people have proven something to the world.
Not only to town of Bethel,
or Sullivan County, or New York state,
you've proven something to the world.
The important thing that you've proven to the world
is that a half a million kids-- and I call you kids,
because I have children that are older than you are--
a half a million young people can get together
and have three days of fun and music,
and have nothing but fun and music.
And I God bless you for it.
(crowd cheering and applauding)
DILLS: It was an affirmation, you know,
that instead of being angry,
that he was that positive about us.
And I'm sure that his fields were just destroyed.
But if a conservative upstate New York farmer
could feel that way,
well, that was pretty cool.
In that moment, I realized, being in the middle of it,
that not only was Woodstock bigger
than we ever could have imagined,
but it was symbolically even bigger.
(crowd cheering, clapping rhythmically)
MAN (on speaker): Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Joe Cocker.
Let's go for Sunday!
Yes, yes, well, good afternoon.
And this title just about puts this all into focus.
It's called "With a Little Help From My Friends."
("With a Little Help From My Friends" playing)
♪ What would you do if I sang out of tune ♪ WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
♪ What would you do if I sang out of tune ♪
♪ Would you stand up and walk out on me ♪
♪ Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song ♪
♪ I will try not to sing out of key ♪
♪ Oh, baby, I get by
ELIARD (speaking French):
DILLS: I really liked what Joe Cocker was singing about,
because in one sense, I had 450,000 friends.
("With a Little Help From My Friends" continues)
COCKER: When we got into "Little Help,"
I just felt that we'd really caught a massive consciousness
in the crowd.
It was a powerful feeling.
(crowd cheering and applauding)
MAN (on speaker): That's Joe Cocker!
COCKER: And then somebody yelled at me, "Joe, look over your shoulder."
MORRIS: It was hot as could be.
And you look up in the sky behind the audience,
and you can see these black clouds
like Armageddon coming at you.
It looks like we're going to get a bit of rain,
so you better cover up.
All of you up in the towers, please come down.
You're making it very, very dangerous.
COLLIER: Hanging on these big light stands
were a bunch of kids who had used them
to get a better perch to watch the show from.
People screamed, "Come down, get down from there!"
MORRIS (on speaker): All right, everybody, just sit down, wrap yourself up.
We're gonna have to ride it out.
Jody, get off the stage.
Get off the stage.
(wind gusting)
MORRIS: I mean, all hell started breaking loose.
And then, Barry Melton of Country Joe and the Fish
grabbed a mic.
No rain, no rain, no rain!
MELTON AND CROWD: No rain, no rain, no rain, no rain!
No rain, no rain, no rain, no rain, no rain!
(thunder rumbles)
LAW: And then it hit.
It hit like a major, you know, country storm.
It was not a tornado, but it had that kind of feel to it.
(thunder rumbling)
Everyone scrambled to cover equipment.
I mean, there was a billion volts of equipment.
You wouldn't believe the amount of electrical energy
on the stage and in those towers.
ROSENMAN: During the storm, I learned
that 50,000-volt cables had become unearthed.
Then we could have a mass electrocution. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
Then we could have a mass electrocution.
Fortunately, that didn't happen.
(rain pattering, thunder rumbling)
VIC WELLS: There were a lot of people who had plastic and blankets.
Of course, the blankets got soaked.
You know, you either just covered up,
or you just held your head up and enjoyed it.
♪
STAROBIN: The outside world thought it was a disaster area.
Well, that's not what we thought.
And so people started playing in the mud like children.
It was like they were six years old,
going down a waterslide in their front yard.
♪
JAMES SALZER: After the rain, the crowd really thinned out.
I guess a lot of people just wanted to get back home.
♪
DEBRA CONWAY: I had to go to work the next day.
So, you know, like a lot of people,
we hiked back to where the car was
and went home.
SPITZ: For everybody at the festival,
battling the elements was a constant struggle.
They were plagued by weather from the get-go.
Then after the Sunday storm, the site was a mess.
But the festival went on.
(Country Joe and the Fish playing "Rock and Soul Music")
Marijuana!
SPITZ: Country Joe and the Fish was first up.
("Rock and Soul Music" continues and fades)
There were a lot of great performances that night.
But I think the one that really stood out for most people
was Crosby, Stills, and Nash,
because it was their first time
they had ever performed together.
MAN (on speaker): ...Stills, and Nash.
(playing "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes")
CROSBY: I remember being terrified.
Nobody had seen us get up and sing harmony together.
Nobody had seen it, this was it.
This was the first time.
♪ It's getting to the point
♪ Where I'm no fun anymore
DAYE: There were moments where the music was so mesmerizing,
so internalized,
that I became the music I was listening to.
I remember sitting in the mud
listening to Crosby, Stills, and Nash,
looking at the sheer beauty of the night sky,
wrapped in a blanket of music.
It was the feeling of oneness with it all.
("Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" ends) WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
("Star-Spangled Banner" by Jimi Hendrix playing)
WAVY GRAVY: The last morning of the festival,
I'm wandering through people rising up out of the mud.
And this amazing music, suddenly...
(makes explosion sound)
It was Jimi Hendrix just filling my ears
with the wonder of the national anthem.
("Star-Spangled Banner" continues)
(playing improvisational riff)
COLLIER: I was backstage writing up some notes,
when suddenly, into my head stabbed this sound.
(continuing riff)
It sounded exactly like rockets, missiles,
and bombs bursting in air.
(Hendrix continuing riff)
I'd never heard anything like that in my life.
(Hendrix resumes melody of "The Star-Spangled Banner")
LAW: We're at the most peaceful gathering
that was probably happening on the planet at the time.
And he hooked us up with Vietnam.
It was the devastation and the brutality and the insanity.
(riff continuing)
That was a quintessential piece of art.
(playing pedal effects and whammy bar)
("Star-Spangled Banner" melody resumes)
(holding chord, chord feeding back)
GREEN: There was an essence that is indescribable.
You can feel it in your body,
you can feel it right here in your heart,
when you know that this is life.
This is the essence of life.
He had it, and he gave it to us.
(modulating tone with whammy bar)
(playing pedal effects)
(song pausing)
(concluding "Star-Spangled Banner")
DILTZ: Everybody was so still.
Most of the crowd had left.
I was onstage.
I was shooting right next to him.
Just, God, it was just a moment, you know,
that was just wonderful.
It's his guitar ringing out.
(Hendrix playing riff, pedal effects)
And then suddenly, it was all over.
("Star-Spangled Banner" fades)
MORRIS: The site looked like Civil War pictures of battlefields. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
I was terrified I might find somebody dead.
And so I walked all of the site.
And it stank, it really stank.
There were just a few people wandering around.
Nobody injured, nobody dead.
A great relief.
And then we started the cleanup.
DILTZ: What was left behind was this incredible sea
of soggy, wet sleeping bags and cardboard boxes
and tents that were all, you know,
knocked down and trampled on.
All this flotsam and jetsam.
("Highway Anxiety" by William Taylor playing)
GEORGE: We stayed for a while,
helping clean up trash.
There were a lot of people out there helping clean up.
("Highway Anxiety" continues)
STAROBIN: We so did not want to leave.
We kind of sensed that, you know,
we could change the world for three days,
but the rest of the world wasn't with us,
and we knew that it was going to be a real culture shock
coming back into society.
REPORTER: More than 350,000 people came looking for peace and music.
Many said they learned a lot about themselves
and learned a lot about getting along together
and priorities.
And for most, that alone makes it all worthwhile.
("Highway Anxiety" continues)
WAVY GRAVY: We realized that we were part of this amazing event
that nothing like it ever was before.
LAW: The festival became a symbol of intelligence and humanity
and cooperation and love and affection.
It was the start of a phenomenal change
in a lot of people's lives.
MAX YASGUR: When I realized, Friday night and Saturday morning,
that we were getting up close to the half-a-million mark,
and there was a sea of people here,
I became quite apprehensive.
Uh...
Thoughts flashed through my mind
of some other problems that they have had throughout the country.
And these kids,
these young people made me feel guilty today,
because there were no problems.
They proved to me, and they proved to the whole world,
that they didn't come up for any problems.
They came up
for exactly what they said they were coming up for,
for three days of music and peace.
DAYE: It was a mark in cosmic time.
I have no doubt about that.
I'm not saying it never happened before
or that it couldn't happen in the future.
But that, that stopped the clocks for three days. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=MPEGTS:187507, LOCAL:00:00:00.000
SCHOENBERGER (speaking German):
GEORGE: I felt like I had finally gotten to fully experience
what I was hoping the counterculture meant.
Woodstock was a very powerful confirmation
that, "Yeah, this is what you're looking for,
and that you're headed in the right direction."
("Highway Anxiety" continues)
STAROBIN: Everyone looking after one another,
everybody caring about one another.
I mean, once I experienced that,
I made it the basis for the whole rest of my life.
("Highway Anxiety" continues)
ELIARD (speaking French):
ROSENMAN: At Woodstock, we tried to let the audience know,
in every way that we could,
that we believed in them.
That inside them was a loving nature,
a decency, and a fineness of spirit.
You can forget it sometimes,
but very few of us want to be other than that.
You just need the opportunity.
(cheering and applauding)
("Highway Anxiety" continues)
(song ends)
♪
ANNOUNCER: "American Experience:
"Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation"
is available on DVD.
To order, visit ShopPBS or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
"American Experience" is also available
on Amazon Prime Video.
♪