Caught In the Devil's Bargain

The Woodstock 50 concert, scheduled for the third weekend in August 2019 at the Watkins Glen International Speedway in upstate New York, has been canceled. Thank God. This had to be one of the dumbest ideas in popular music history since Woodstock '99.

As I recall, the original Woodstock was a spontaneous, harmonious event that worked largely because of good music, good vibrations and plain luck. The concertgoers at the original 1969 festival arrived in greater numbers than the organizers could handle, but they defused the situation by making it a free concert and allowing people to camp out and chill out. And the concertgoers were in such a laid-back mood that they proved, much to the delight of Max Yasgur, whose dairy farm was employed for the festival, that they could come for three days of peace and music and have nothing but three days of peace and music. And thanks to great acts with innovative music like the Jefferson Airplane, Crosby, Stills and Nash, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, and Richie Havens, along with plenty of marijuana, the good vibrations and good feelings were inevitable.

And how could Woodstock 50 compare to all that? I mean, the acts scheduled included Miley Cyrus, the horrible band Imagine Dragons, Chance the Rapper, and Beyoncé's husband – hardly the voices of positivity and good vibes. It would have been a perfect festival for those who like nasty hip-hop, mindless auto-tuned pop, and overblown alt-rock, but it wouldn't have been Woodstock. The Black Keys, one of the few twenty-first-century rock bands that achieve anything resembling greatness, pulled out of Woodstock 50 when it became apparent that it wasn't worth their while. Many other bands and solo artists scheduled to appear didn't even bother to publicize their planned sets there.

I sort of knew that Woodstock 50 was doomed when I saw that David Crosby would be there with his own backing band rather than with Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young. I've been led to understand that Crosby urged his old groupmates to join him at Woodstock 50, but they weren't interested. Perhaps they knew that they weren't going to re-create the magic of the original Woodstock – certainly not on a racetrack (remember Altamont?).  Also, John Fogerty was scheduled to perform, but without Creedence Clearwater Revival who appeared at the original Woodstock, it would never have been the same. Santana, one of the other old-time acts booked for Woodstock 50, would likely have been the only connection to the original festival, and I have a feeling that there would have been little if any of the 1969 Santana lineup there in 2019.

The 1969 Woodstock festival worked not just because of the music but because of the hope in the future for a more peaceful and more socially and artistically involved civilization and the communal spirit that the music represented. Today, so many people are so divided over politics and popular culture that no one can find common ground anymore. You have rap fans dismissing rock fans as racist for protesting the idea that rap is music, and you have rock fans resentful over how their music is disappearing . . . and then there are country and pop fans who don't give a twit about any of that. No one can even seem to agree on what sort of future we should be striving for and what sort of country we ought to be living in. And truth be told, Woodstock wasn't such a big deal.  It was a weekend outdoor concert -like Tanglewood, but hipper.  I sometimes laugh at how people were there remember what a wonderful experience it was, even though they camped out in the mud, they couldn't hear much of the music, and they got to see legendary rock bands like Blood, Sweat & Tears, Sweetwater and Sha Na Na. Maybe if we stop memorializing historic concerts like they were as essential to our past as the adoption of the Declaration of Independence – does anyone care anymore, for example, about Jenny Lind’s U.S. concert tour in the 1850s? – we can get serious about what sort of a world and a culture we can have going forward.

Woodstock - 40 Years

The current hoopla over the anniversary of Woodstock impresses me somewhat. I'm too young to have been at Woodstock, and given the logistics and the lack of amenities there, I don't think I would necessarily have wanted to be there - but I do have a grudging respect for the four hundred thousand hippies who were just as responsible in making it a memorable event as the performers. Maybe more so. Nobody remembers Sweetwater, one of the bands that played on the first day of the festival. No one who was there wants to admit that Sha Na Na or Blood, Sweat and Tears - both of whom became symbols of seventies cheesiness - were among the acts, or that sometimes you couldn't hear the acts that were worth sitting in the mud to see (the Who, the Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone, etc.).

The main reason the Woodstock Art and Music Fair (as it was called) was a success was because the audience took the rain, the delays, and the boredom of listening to Melanie's warbling in stride and made the best of it. They listened to whatever music they could hear - and I have a feeling everyone heard Hendrix, he was so darn loud - took it easy, smoked pot, and generally enjoyed themselves. The festival started as a concert charging admission, but when the hopeful attendees stormed the gates, it became a free concert and there was no trouble. Max Yasgur, the owner of the farm the Woodstock festival was held on, said it best when he told the crowd that they proved they could successfully have three days of peace and music.

Unfortunately, three days of peace and music was all the Baby Boom generation could sustain. The Altamont festival headlined by the Rollins Stones four months later was full of violence and mayhem, including the stabbing of a black Rolling Stones fan by the Hell's Angels who were supposed to provide security for the concert. The annual Isle of Wight festival in the United Kingdom was such a headache when held a third time in 1970 that it wouldn't resume for another 32 years. Today's annual music festivals - Bonnaroo in the United States, Glastonbury in Britain - are less about making a cultural statement on the need for a better tomorrow and more about a good weekend's entertainment. And after Live Aid - the 1985 all-star bi-national concert that, if remembered for anything, will be remembered for Phil Collins managing the hat trick of performing at both the London and Philadelphia shows - no one imagines that the English-speaking world's biggest pop acts can make the Third World a better place by raising money to help lift it out of poverty, much to the chagrin of Bob Geldof.

Still, Woodstock was a concert that had some good music and some good vibes, and it proved that people could get together en masse and get along. I'm all for preserving the spirit of Woodstock, as well as the field the show was held on.

But a Woodstock museum? Don't we have enough music museums? And isn't the very idea of such a thing kind of dumb?

So where was I in the summer of 1969? My parents and I went to Ocean City, New Jersey. I was three years old. I only know I was there because Mom took pictures. I don't remember being there.

Just like a lot of the folks who went to Woodstock - thanks to too much pot - don't remember being there.

And just like I don't want to remember being at Live Aid.