1.1.Introduction

We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden (Mitchell 1970)

These words are the chorus of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” song, that “named the generation” (Yaffe 2017: 3), meaning that it managed to capture the spirit of the whole event and what it stood for: Starry-eyed, idealistic young people gathered in the spirit of love and community to listen to music together. A symbol of the hippie generation, an organizational disaster, and a historical monument of humanity and kindness—that event contained all that, and more, in its boundaries. This essay attempts to reconcile these seemingly contradictory approaches by explaining how each one was true in its own right.

1.2.Symbol, but of what?

Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog
In something turning (Mitchell 1970)

Before we can see how Woodstock can be classified as a symbolic element of the generation, we need to understand what the generation was like. Encyclopedia Britannica (2022) lists the most important characteristics of hippies as middle-class Americans who grew disillusioned with the rigid mainstream culture, and instead embraced the spiritual search beyond Judeo-Christian traditions (such as Buddhism or astrology), experimentation with drugs in order to expand consciousness, free love, different types of families, and participation in folk and rock music.

The conflict with the mainstream stemmed from many reasons. Young people, in general, were extremely antagonistic towards the Vietnam War, with the war reports coming over and showing all its brutality. In fact, the war might have been one of the most important driving powers of the movement, as “the path of the hippie movement that emerged in the late ‘60s traced very closely the trajectory of American involvement in Vietnam” (Pruitt 2018). The other major distinction between the hippies and the generation before them was the way of life, which the former saw as materialistic, repressive, restrictive, and regimented, to which they preferred tolerance of alternatives (Britannica 2022).

The broad horizons needed to express such openness also expanded to the idea of literally broadening one’s cognitive horizons with psychedelic drugs. American historian Rorabaugh (2015: 48) claims that hippie counterculture was about psychedelic drugs and their way to spiritual perfection more than anything else.

Another important aspect of the counterculture was the Civil Rights movement that was happening throughout the US at the same time. The Hippies themselves were not protesters or activists, but they did agree with the overall message (Pruitt 2018), especially if that message was promoted by musicians they listened to when they were high.

The young generation at the time absorbed their worldview and ideologies through listening to music. The 1960s were an era in which people started using music to spread certain messages to wider audiences. People like Richie Havens, Muddy Waters, Jimi Hendrix symbolized the change for Black Americans. On the other side of the spectrum, the folk music circle also was particularly involved in the Civil Rights, with Joan Baez being one of the most prominent and important figures. One should not ignore the impact of Bob Dylan either, as he started writing the best songs the movement had (Baez 2018) that managed to push people to action and express the zeitgeist better than anybody else before him. There is a reason why in Tom Wolfe’s book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, one of the best reports about the Hippie generation, listening to Dylan is an activity being done in the very first couple of pages (Wolfe 2008: 2-16). One of the major aspects of Hippie lifestyle was listening to folk, folk-rock, rock ‘n’ roll, and psychedelic rock, thus ‘soaking,’ so to speak, with the messages their authors wanted to convey (Ramos [n.d.]).

Not only were there certain rules concerning behavior and beliefs, but there existed a particular dress-code that allowed everyone to tell a hippie from a mile away. This included long hair, beards, beads everywhere, and flower-related garments (Pruitt 2018). Needless to say, it was a controversial choice of clothes, very dissimilar to the traditional, mainstream way of dressing.

Every aforementioned idea and characteristic made the Hippie Movement a very recognizable image, to the point where nowadays it is almost immediately associated with counter-culture itself, almost a symbol or a synonym of it (Ramos [n.d.]). And if the hippies are so important, then through that importance, Woodstock, which aimed to define this generation and serve as a showcase and a key-point in its representation, also gains in relevance as a consequence. Before diving into the significance of the event itself, it is definitely worth understanding the practical elements that combined into the festival, and see how Woodstock itself was organized and experienced.

1.3.A muddy disaster

I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm
I’m going to join in a rock 'n’ roll band
I’m going to camp out on the land
I’m going to try and get my soul free (Mitchell 1970)

The enthralling legend of Woodstock can often make us forget how difficult such event was, logistically speaking. In some ways, Woodstock almost did not happen. Local authorities of a small town of Rustic Woodstock several hours from New York City, where the organizers wanted to hold it, did not issue permits. Similarly, it happened in quite a few other places where local opposition proved to be fatal towards the festival. Not until “just a month ahead of the concert, 49-year-old dairy farmer Max Yasgur offered to rent them part of his land in the White Lake area of Bethel, New York,” (History.com Editors 2018) did the organizers find the proper place for it. An interesting anecdote is that Yasgur was a pro-war conservative farmer. He did believe in freedom of speech; however, and as such he knew he should not try to stop people from such gatherings simply because of a different world-view (Ramos [n.d.]). In a sense that is symbolic on its own. The hippie festival being conducted on a ground belonging to a conservative individual is akin to the counter-culture spreading in America dominated by particular conservative mainstream beliefs.

Finding the place was not the only problem the organizers had to face, though. Indeed, it was only the beginning, and it soon turned out that there were many more hassles to overcome. One of them was taking care of so many people. Despite initially planning to accommodate just 50,000 people, but twice as many bought pre-sold tickets, and ultimately an estimated half a million viewers arrived (History.com Editors 2018). Obviously, that had to mean scrambling for more place and food hastily by the organizers, an extreme over-crowding, and a lack of resources. The gates and fences were not even finished, as other things had to be prioritized, which led to Woodstock becoming a free event in the end, as nobody could regulate so many people with so little infrastructure and manpower (History.com Editors 2018).

Such an incredible influx of people also meant that roads were completely clogged with traffic. Some of those traffic jams spanned over miles, and people abandoned their means of transportation in order to walk to the destination. But those were not only spectators being stuck, it also applied to artists themselves. The first band that was supposed to play on Woodstock—Sweetwater—could not make it on time. As such, there was a matter of rescheduling. Richie Havens was the only person available on site when the festival started. That is why he was called to perform instead, and he played every song he knew, including his own material and cover songs. For his seventh encore, he performed an improvised spiritual with the word “freedom” repeated as lyrics. It became an iconic performance and one of the highlights of his career, all thanks to a traffic jam (Golsen 2022).

Traffic jams required almost all the attention of the local authorities. As such, there was little to no other police jurisdiction in Woodstock. Initially, there was a plan of employing off-duty police officers as security guards by the organizers. That idea fell through once it became apparent that it was illegal for police officers to work off-duty (History.com Editors 2018). This basically meant that there were no arrests for drug possession, which caused them to be particularly widespread. Especially LSD and marijuana were of great popularity. It could have potentially led to a situation where people could get intoxicated even without intending to. There was an incident in which The Who’s lead singer unintentionally dosed himself with LSD by drinking tea and had a “bad trip” related to this intake (History.com Editors 2019).

The lack of any real infrastructure not only caused disorder among people, but also had a much more practical and less social effect. Being completely out in the open basically meant that people were at the mercy of the natural weather conditions. And while the first day of the festival was sunny, Saturday, the one right after, started to become problematic. The clouds gathered and, soon enough, rain began to fall. Not only did that create a giant pool of mud through which people had to waddle, it also created technical issues that caused the organizers to prolong the whole event for a whole day, since thunderstorms disabled some performances (Balena 2019). Not to even mention the constant movement of these people, day and night. If anybody wanted to sleep undisturbed, that was effectively impossible due to unending tides of folks moving about and splashing mud everywhere.

It might not have been nearly as bad if the participants of Woodstock knew what to expect. But nobody prepared properly for these conditions. They did not even take bottled water with them, believing that they would get it once they arrived (History.com Editors 2019). Some of the particularly harsh weather incidents caused situations akin to even floods. When an especially brutal thunderstorm came, “[w]aves and waves of torrential water hitting hundreds of thousands of people who had nowhere to go. It was pathetic. ‘Drowned rats’ doesn’t even come close to describing it” (Porter as quoted in Roos 2019). One can only imagine the hardships of trying to sleep or even just lie down under soaked, and thus, useless, sleeping bags when such events were transpiring.

Satisfying physiological needs was also problematic. Because there were so many people over there, way more than anticipated, if you moved, even a bit, from your spot, it would have been taken by someone else (Porter as quoted in Roos 2019). The only solution was to leave someone from the group behind so that they would guard the sleeping bags thrown around the ‘claimed’ area and then go. Each trip like that would take two hours, one to and one from, the portable toilets. Yet another obstacle in enjoying the event was the food, or rather, its lack. A couple of hired providers quickly ran out of all their supplies, the very first night, in fact, and so it was not easy to access nourishment. There were other alternatives set up by organizers, but they also were far away and meant a journey to get to them. The situation escalated so quickly that, at some point, they even air-dropped sandwiches (Roos 2019).

Taking into consideration all of these problems one would be justified to ask precisely why the Woodstock festival is so prominent and important in US history and Western culture in general. To answer that, it is essential to see the other side of the coin, the reaction of everyone involved, as well as the impact on those who did not manage to participate.

1.4.A showcase of humanity’s potential

And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation (Mitchell 1970)

Some people say that catastrophes are usually appealing. It seems hard to look away from a train crash. Can that be an explanation as to why Woodstock is so remembered nowadays? I would argue that it is definitely not the case. Train wrecks may be morbidly interesting because of their horribleness, but they do not leave a lasting image and impact as Woodstock did. Why did some people stay right until the end and are recalling the experience fondly? It seems the everlasting legacy is connected to the symbolic and ideological impact the event had on culture and society. What made the whole occurrence revolutionary was the motivation and the spirit behind it, when young Americans truly wanted to unite in song in response to the issues of racial inequality, the brutality of war, and general consumerist mainstream conformism. Were it not for the sociopolitical context of the whole event, it would not have had such an influence (Ramos [n.d.]), as evidenced by many (failed) attempts to recreate the festival.

We live in a democratic society, absorbing the Western ideas of being an active citizen who will fight for what they think is right. In this activist sense, Woodstock remains the symbol of how you can peacefully protest certain things you find abhorrent in the world and change it, at least ideologically in one’s mindset, if not necessarily in practical terms. It proved to the entire country that you cannot send “half a million soldiers around the world to fight a war that people do not support […]” and that Woodstock audience was “young, self-righteous, reckless, hypocritical, brave, silly, headstrong, and scared half to death. [But they] were right,” as Abbie Hoffman (as quoted in Ramos [n.d.]) succinctly summarize

Despite all the technical problems with the organization that were mentioned earlier, it is incredible that there were not any violent or deceitful acts during the whole event. Only two deaths happened, and none of them in any way connected to misconducts, but rather an accident related to a tractor, and drug overuse (History.com Editors 2018). Throughout these three days the police were not necessary to keep order because everyone was acting with kindness and compassion all the time. There are multiple accounts of people sharing food and other necessary materials (Roos 2019), which is especially relevant when the conditions are taken into consideration.

Even the most devout cynics had to acknowledge that people who went to Woodstock practiced what they preached; peace and love were common and widespread. Even the police officers were positively surprised, the local chief of the police Lou Yank (as quoted in Pareles 2006) even told the New York Times that “[n]ot withstanding their personality, their dress and their ideas, they were and they are the most courteous, considerate and well-behaved group of kids I have ever been in contact with in my 24 years of police work.” Meanwhile, the participants of the events provided similar perspectives with Howard Loberfeld (as quoted in Sclafani 2006) claiming that “[he] was raised not to trust people and to be wary of strangers (…) [and there] were 500,000 of them who were being so nice and so happy and just listening to the music and sitting in the mud. It really gave [him] a different perspective of humanity.” No matter how incredible that may seem for anybody raised in a similar manner of skepticism and distrust, the Woodstock myth of mellowness and gentility is true.

The last account that is worth bringing forth to the light is the words that Yasgur himself said to the crowd that gathered on his farm: “[y]ou’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 who 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 God bless you for it!” (History.com Editors 2018). The statement is the more amazing when we recall his ideological differences with these people. Apparently, the spirit was so infectious that it transcended the political divisions.

1.5.Conclusion

Well, maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it’s the time of man
I don’t know who I am
But, you know, life is for learning (Mitchell 1970)

It is not a secret that our world seems to progressively get worse and worse over time. The recent years, the wars breaking out all over the world, blatant examples of attacking human rights, populism raging in many countries, and the pandemic all successfully make our internal landscapes bleaker and bleaker daily. Events like Woodstock are essential to remember precisely because of that. In order not to lose hope in humanity, it is beneficial to recall such showcases of what humanity can truly be when we really want to. I sincerely believe our society could benefit from bringing back and recapturing the optimism and idealism of the Hippie Generation. Sometimes it is just worth it to be “heroes, just for one day” (Bowie 1977), than not to reach such heights because of cynicism and disillusionment.

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