2024-03-09 11:01:22
Not everyone knows that Woodstock did not take place in Woodstock. One of the most famous music festivals of all time took place on land in the cadastre of the town of Bethel, about 70 kilometers from Woodstock in the US state of New York. An estimated 450,000 people gathered here in mid-August 1969 for “three days of peace, love and music”.
They were young then, today many are nearing the end of their lives. And that’s why the Woodstock Museum, located on the site of the original festival, has started a five-year project to record the memories of those who witnessed them while they are still alive. As the AP writes, the curators of the institution called Bethel Woods Center for the Arts have been traveling around the US for this since 2020.
“You have to hear it straight from the mouths of those who were there,” explains 77-year-old music journalist Rona Elliot, who connects curators with survivors of the 1969 show. She herself attended and worked with organizers including Michael Lang, who before his death in 2022 entrusted personal archive. According to the journalist, Woodstock is like a puzzle, “a mosaic of the entire sixties”.
The festival started the era of giant rock concerts and changed the rules of the music industry. Although its visitors have given hundreds of interviews over the past decades, especially on the occasion of anniversaries, the museum tries to capture their memories more holistically. The experts use a method similar to that of former American historian Studs Terkel, who filmed hundreds of testimonies about life during the economic crisis of the 1930s or World War II.
“There’s a difference between doing an interview for a newspaper or a documentary and doing an in-depth interview for museum purposes,” says Neal Hitch, curator and director of the museum affiliated with the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts.
When the project started in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic, interviewers first tried to talk to people remotely. But it turned out that this is not the most suitable way. “It’s important to go to people in person. If you just call a person, they won’t give you their often very personal memories of something they experienced when they were eighteen or nineteen,” Hitch found out.
Festival attendee Richard Schoellhorn with music journalist Rona Elliot. | Photo: ČTK / AP
He received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a US government agency, to enable his curators to travel around the US collecting testimonies. The contribution in the amount of 235 thousand dollars, converted to about 5.4 million crowns, will cover travel costs, continues the AP agency.
As one of the first curators, they headed to Santa Fe, the capital of the state of New Mexico, where a hippie commune called The Hog Farm still operates on the site of the former pig mold. From its ranks, Woodstock organizers recruited volunteers who helped provide food, drink and sanitary facilities.
The museum staff then continued to Florida, where they interviewed people centered around the Flower Power Cruise, which is an experiential cruise ship with a 60s theme. Through the city of Columbus, the journey then led the curators to San Francisco, the former home of members of the bands Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead.
Seventy-seven-year-old Richard Schoellhorn also came here from the Californian town of Sebastopol to meet the museum workers. Woodstock organizers originally hired him as a security guard to guard the ticket booth. At the time, it looked like Woodstock would take place in Wallkill, New York. However, local resistance forced the organizers to change the location, so in 1969 the participants met on the land of farmer Max Yasgur in the cadastre of the town of Bethel.
When Schoellhorn arrived, he found that he had come here in vain – the rush was so great that visitors tore down the fences and poured into the space without paying. In the end, the organizers had no choice but to announce that Woodstock was free, even though they had sold over 180,000 tickets in advance. Roads within a radius of several tens of kilometers were blocked, many obeyed the calls of the police and returned home. Others like Schoellhorn didn’t want to stand in traffic on the way out.
Wooden Ships as performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young at Woodstock. | Video: Columbia Records
“So I’m walking around Woodstock, I don’t have anything to poke fun at, when I meet my friend Hugh Romney here and I tell him that I just got fired. Hugh asked me if I would like to volunteer,” Schoellhorn recounts.
He ended up completing the festival at a booth where he supervised people who had a bad reaction after taking hallucinogenic drugs. It was the first concert in his life – and it ended with Schoellhorn himself trying drugs. “My impression was that we were all equal there. There were no better and worse places or VIP sectors for the rich,” he recalls.
Before heading to Woodstock, Richard Schoellhorn pursued a career in marketing. But the festival changed his life. As a result, Schoellhorn drifted into a hippie commune where he lived for several years. For the next 35 years, he provided care to dialysis patients.
Curator Neal Hitch and his colleagues have already heard more stories like this, when Woodstock turned people’s lives upside down.
Museum staff have now recorded over 500 testimonies, but they have set a goal of obtaining 4,500 interviews – which will still be only one percent of the people who attended Woodstock. They hope the most from trips to New York state, where, according to Hitch’s estimates, roughly half of the participants still live.
32 groups and performers performed at Woodstock in 1969, and the organizers did not sign the first contract with Creedence Clearwater Revival until four months before the event.
An estimated 450,000 people attended Woodstock in 1969. | Photo: ČTK / AP
The organizers were not prepared for the visit of 400,000 people, and the rain turned the pastures into mud. Because sound technology was not nearly as advanced as it is today, nothing could be heard 100 meters from the stage. “Due to blocked traffic, only a small part of the audience experienced the final, best performance of guitarist Jimi Hendrix,” wrote music critic Josef Vlček.
According to him, Woodstock brought together people who were attuned to the same note of opposition to the American war in Vietnam, the consumerist way of life and the establishment in general. Despite the poor organization, the festival became a symbol of good music. For singers Janis Joplin and Joan Baez, guitarists Jimi Hendrix and Santana or the group Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, it meant one of the highlights of their careers. The event’s fame was enhanced by a documentary film from 1970.
Video: Rain turns Woodstock pastures into mud
Beneath the myth of a gathering of wonderful people at Woodstock, there was also considerable chaos, exacerbated by the rain that turned the pastures into mud. | Video: João Ratão