Posted on 08/14/2009 10:21:07 AM PDT by a fool in paradise
The editor of the Veterans of Foreign Wars' national magazine thinks the media have been irresponsible to throw around the term "defining a generation" as we near the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair.
In an article titled "GIs Died While Woodstock Rocked," Richard K. Kolb challenges giving mythological status to the (in)famous concert held Aug. 15-18, 1969. He takes umbrage at concertgoers frolicking in mud while an equal number of soldiers (following in their fathers' footsteps) were crawling through mud to protect the celebrants' freedom to party.
Granted, Pete Townshend's guitar smashing, Country Joe's "We're-All-Gonna-Die Rag," and Jimi Hendrix's feedback-heavy rendition of the National Anthem are all cultural icons of the '60s. And the uninhibited Woodstock attendees did represent a large percentage of the nation's youth, but did everyone born between 1946 and 1964 really walk in lockstep where drugs, sex, and rock and roll were concerned? Mightn't some baby boomers have preferred getting high on life, saving themselves for marriage, and listening to country/classical/gospel/jazz music?
If profiling is bad, can any generation be treated as a single-minded entity? Tom Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" that fought WW II is generally considered to be made up of people who were patriotic, hard working, and loyal to family -- but it had its share of cowards, crooks, and cads.
TV brought the excesses of Woodstock into our homes, but were the questioning of authority, "letting it all hang out," and "telling it like it is" really such distinctive characteristics of a single generation? Socrates, who died in 399 B.C., wrote of children who contradicted their parents. The Roman orgies weren't exactly knitting circles. Courageous American colonists risked their lives to publish the truth.
Did the mellow "flower power" mood of Woodstock really become a permanent part of the psyche of a generation? I'll bet all of you can rattle off the names of people in their fifties and early sixties who could be accused of littering, road rage, and selling out to The Establishment.
Was the "Woodstock Nation" groundbreaking in its anti-war sentiments? Isolationists fought to keep the U.S. out of World War II. Every armed conflict has had its detractors. Jesus Christ and his early followers were pacifists as far as earthly conflicts were concerned.
Woodstock gave a (sporadic) platform to women's lib, ecology and other issues, but was it really unprecedented in its idealism and progressive thought? Many of the concertgoers were nurtured by professors born during the Warren G. Harding administration! Dwight Eisenhower (born 1890) warned of the military-industrial complex. Jackie Robinson (born 1919) broke color barriers when the first Baby Boomers were in diapers.
The American, French, and Russian revolutions all came and went without the boomers. The Voting Rights Act, child labor laws, women's suffrage, the national parks system, the United Nations, and campaigns for and against alcohol were all spearheaded by older generations. The ebb and flow of morality, political activism, and public modesty are part of mankind's entire history.
I come neither to canonize nor demonize Woodstock. I just want it kept in perspective. Although I do enjoy some of the mythology. Like the story about the giant wooden horse that was rolled into the compound so a strategically-placed Lawrence Welk could drop out under cover of night and...
Note: Danny Tyree, who was 9 years old at the time of Woodstock, welcomes e-mail
NY Thru way’s closed, man!
I’m obligated to attend a “Remembering Woodstock” party this weekend. Wondering how I can avoid the mythos without being a party pooper.
Don’t eat the brown acid!
If you can remember Woodstock, you weren’t there.
The best moment of Woodstock was when Pete Townshend smashed his guitar over Abbie Hoffman’s head!
Or was it Jerry Rubin? One of them scumbags anyway...
Some great music happened there (I've seen the movie, that's how I know), thanks to the great artists that showed up and did their things.
But that was 40 years ago, and it was an accident. I cannot be willed back into existence.
Just ask the residents of Altamonte, California.
Well, this is true (and probably a good thing) but I meant to write, "IT cannot be willed back into existence."
And I would like to add a Generation-Lost-In-Space alert.
Abbie Hoffman.
I only wish there was video (I hear that there IS audio of it).
The performances are suprising considering how messed up the performers were on drugs that day (Santana was peaking on mescaline when he went on stage, turning his back to the mass of people made it easier to concentrate; the Who’s drinks were dosed with LSD and not happy about it, and Jimi Hendrix was so whacked out on drugs that I think they had to give him some kind of tranquelizer to get him “good enough” to go on stage).
Mike Lang has been getting his recycled 15 minutes of late. Parts of his story conflicts with that of the backers of Woodstock as told in their book, "Young Men With Unlimited Capital." Their description of Lang is that he cannot be trusted. Kornfeld they portray as a slacker.
“Get away from the towers! Stay off the f’ing towers.”
By far IMHO Sly and the Family Stone delivered the best performance at Woodstock. Just a great band, and it’s a shame that Sly wasted it all away with drugs.
My husband and several of his college friends were at Woodstock. They are mostly conservatives today. One still dresses like a hippie but he’s a huge NRA/2nd Amendment guy.
I thought it was Hoffman. I have a couple of bootlegs of that concert (plus the regular record co issue)and I was told that you can hear it on the boot copies but I sure can’t. Must take a real expensive set of headphones or something...
Ha! That sounds like me. I’m far right and a Lifetime NRA member with below the shoulder length hair...8-)
I don’t know what percentage of the audience was five years old to 23 years old but I doubt that many of the promoters, managers, musicians, reporters and such was in that age group.
For all the people that attended that rock concert of whatever age, the boomers themselves produced 9.4 million military veterans and the 18 to 29 year old vote in the 1972 election went 52% for Richard Nixon and 46% for the democrat.
I’ve been to Woodstock - albeit about 20 years late. Was camping nearby and a dozen of us decided to take a look at the site. Saw the memorial plaque, covered with trinkets left as offerings.
While there at twilight, we saw a car drive into the field & turn off. All quiet, we snuck up, surrounded the car, and started singing Christmas carols to the occupant - in July. Freaked him out. Turns out he had made the 1000-mile drive on a whim. Still chuckle about him going home and trying to explain that one to people (”...yeah, man, I like pulled into the field and stopped the car, and there was nobody there, and then suddenly all these kids were around me singing...no really I wasn’t stoned...”).
It’s a shame that the 40-year anniversary of Woodstock is getting a lot more play than the 40-year anniversary of the Moon landing.
Thought about going but the NHRA National Drag Races in Indianapolis was a bigger lure for me in August of 69. Hot cars, hotter women, good food and an air conditioned motel room made it a no brainer for this 19 year old.
That should say it all, but it doesn't!! I was in my 20s, serving in the Navy when the Woodstock concert happened and it DIDN'T represent the boomer generation!! It represented the counterculture movement to a T. However, young Mr. Tyree needs to understand that MOST boomers during Woodstock were attending college to get an education in those days, or they were working in a variety of different jobs. Most of the college students weren't wrapped up in the counterculture movement which was mostly centered in California and the west coast, they were wrapped up in becoming engineers, scientists, physicists, astronomers and the like to help Team America get men on the moon.
And, the assertion that he makes about the flower power movement is absolutely absurd!!! Look at the likes of flower children like 9% Nazi Pelousy, Barbara Boxer, Germaine Greer, et al; THEY are the face (literally!!) of the flower power movement!
It is the LEFT that has romanticized and iconized Woodstock, and Tyree is just it's latest proponent to emerge from the wood . . . . work!
Lang was also behind the boondoggle at Altamont speedway.
And I don’t find the murder at the end of Gimme Shelter to be “the failing”. The guy was near the stage and brandishing a gun. You can use lethal force to take down an armed assailant when you are hired as security.
There were provocations in some of the other fights.
But Lang wanted to ride out on his 15 minutes again.
There was a concert in Palm Beach Florida that same year that had bands including the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, and others that gets little rememberance these days. Same way with the Atlanta Pop Festivals.
If there was no movie, it wouldn’t have been marketed and there would be no concept of “Woodstock Nation” these days.
There were even some concerts that drew 600,000 people without the rememberances.
And remember, if Woodstock had been entirely peaceful, they wouldn’t have torn the fences down to begin with. They wouldn’t have burned down the “capitalist” who paid for a booth at the event to sell hamburgers. They wouldn’t have used a goon squad to try to steal the film crew’s equipment (rented) by force. Etc. Etc.
Most of the people at Woodstock were nothing but trendies, by ‘77 they were in their white suits and heading to discos.
I bought the album.
Megadeath!!!
That's because most of them didn't get high to the sounds of Neal Armstrong!
Click the pic for a "flashback"-
I’m glad I was just a kid when that happened and not a teenager. I might have been caught up in that liberal crapola.
Yep. I did go out and see Buzz Aldrin speak about his experiences this year.
And on the 30th anniversary, I shook hand with Neil Armstrong at a reception at a park near NASA.
It was a myopic take of self-involved narcissists who continue to think they are in the game and, sadly, they are nowhere on the field.
Chalk it up to one hell’uv’a weekend, totally wasted, totally without meritorious accomplishment, but satisfying to those whose goals were so low that it met their expectations.
The media has a culture to shape, this is 2009 and have you noticed that in TV shows that the grandfather or the uncle is still a WWII vet or a Korean War vet, but never, ever, a Vietnam vet?
“For the benefit of those of you who paid to get in, the Woodchuck Festival of Peace, Love, and Death is now a free concert!”
If you were at Woodstock,
you were seventy miles down the road from
Max Yasgur's 600 acre dairy farm
in the rural town of Bethel NY.I know I was at both that weekend.
After playing “Acid Queen/Underture” Abbie went to Townshend’s mike between songs and said “this is a pile of sh*t while John Sinclair rots in jail”. Townshend was to his right and promptly jabbed the headstock of his Gibson SG Special into the right side of Abbie’s head. Abbie was stunned as Pete then grabbed him by the scruff and pushed him toward the back of the stage where others escorted him off.
I was maybe 30 yards away ... not Abbie’s finest moment.
zig
yep, that’s exactly how I’ve always heard it happened...
You don’t F with Pete in the middle of a concert, Pete said that he was lucky he didn’t take Abbie’s head clean off.
Just a technicality, but there is no Altamont, Ca. The event was held at Altamont Speedway which is located in the Altamont Pass between Tracy and Livermore CA.
"Cartoonist Charles Schulz announced today that he plans to create another character for his popular comic strip Peanuts, famous for such personalities as Snoopy and Woodstock. According to Schulz, he will replace Woodstock with a bird named Altamont, who will beat the other birds to death with a pool cue."
I had that album when I was 12. Never liked it, thought the music sucked. I have older siblings that embraced hippydom but I always felt out of place venturing there as I grew up.
How 'bout some perspective, folks? These kinds of festivals go on every weekend during the warm months wherever warm months happen. To this very day. And if you hang out on the festival grounds during the overnight hours, you will see the same kind of silliness as was recorded for posterity at Woodstock.
Chalk it up to one hell’uv’a weekend, totally wasted, totally without meritorious accomplishment,
Sounds a lot like a typical weekend at college, even for the conservative kids. I've heard that even conservative kids binge drink while young and foolish. Hard to tell them from the liberal kids, in fact. At least it was in the 70s. And from what I saw this past weekend at a wedding, things have not changed much.
Remember the movie, where Steve Stills says "You people have to be the strongest people I've ever seen! Three days! Three days, man!" but a few minutes later, hopped into a helicopter and jetted away to a plush hotel. Jerry Garcia was waxing on about feeling “the presence of the invisible time travelers from the future,” apparently overlooking the reality before his eyes of “kids freaking out from megadoses of acid or almost audibly buzzing from battery-acid crank like flies trapped in a soda can."
Leftist writer and editor of the Gadfly, David Dalton wrote “there was a lot made of how peaceful the event was. But what else would half a million kids on grass, acid, and hog tranquilizers be? Woodstock, if anything, was the point at which psychedelics ceased being tools for experience . . . and became a means of crowd control?"
sorry but your characterization bears no resemblance to the reality there ... and I was there before Havens began on Friday and after Hendrix finished Monday.
Sure some of the older crowd smoked weed and did other things but most of us were pretty straight is my experience.
Its like you always see the pics of the 20 or so skinny dippers, but the rest of the 450,000 or so kept our clothes on. Sheesh, in 4 days I saw maybe 4 or 5 girls go topless total! Go to Bourbon street tomorrow night and you’ll see that in 1 minute!
I enjoyed the wine they passed around though .. and it was not dosed.
z
Dalton was there all three days. Hoffman was bashed, and he and Townshend both wrote about it.
Watkins Glen drew considerably more people than Woodstock. I believe that Grand Funk Railroad was the headliner.
Eggzactly! Hardly anything to memorialize at the tax payer expense, hardly anything to tout as the pinnacle of societal accomplishment. It was, however, a group far in excess of the ages of the sophomoric children of privilege who attend college today. Let’s all just “move on.” When your great grandparents enjoyed their salad days, when your grandparents enjoyed their ragtime, goldfish swallowing college days, when we set a world’s record for the demolition of a pristine field and porta-pottys and beer bongs today — No one expects or should have a memorial to asinine behavior — enjoy it and move on.
The complaint is commonly made that the Monkees didn’t write their songs (originally) or play their instruments (originally). But then again, neither did the Motown stars.
I have some Apollo era posters by Schultz (pre-moon landing). He’s got the bird on them even though it didn’t have a name.
I’m curious. On the DVD there is a lenghty radio excerpt following the event.
And the host repeatedly calls it Altamonte (or Altamonty). Why?
I was at Watkins Glen. Grand Funk wasn't. The lineup was (in chronological order) The Grateful Dead, the Band and the Allman Brothers.
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