Remembering the moment Rage Against the Machine burnt the American flag on stage at Woodstock 1999
Read More
Credit: Alamy
Why Woodstock ’69 was almost as awful as Woodstock ’99
Over the last week, the world has become absorbed by Netflix’s new documentary about the disastrous Woodstock ’99. However, contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t all peace and love, and Woodstock ’69 faced a slew of disastrous issues of its own.
The fact that the original Woodstock even went ahead in 1969 is a miracle, especially considering the logistical problems organisers faced during the run-up to the event. With just a month to go, they were forced to find a new venue and were only permitted to use Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in Bethel on the condition only 50,000 could attend. However, the actual number of attendees was almost 500,000.
Most people who attended Woodstock didn’t have a ticket. For safety reasons, organisers simply changed it to be a free event to stop a possible stampede causing fatalities in the entrance queues. It was utter chaos to get into the event, with a backlog lasting for miles, and artists booked to play were among those who couldn’t make it in.
Richie Havens opened the festival and ended up playing for three hours because no other artists were available to perform. While it looked like a utopia in the original documentary about the festival, the reality was incredibly different and a torrid experience for artists.
“A lot of people really lived Woodstock through the movie,” Joel Makower, author of Woodstock: The Oral History, told History. Detailing further, he added: “And so the movie influenced, I think, more people than the actual event.”
Makower also said the organisers were incredibly fortunate there was no major disaster involving electricals. “The conditions were suboptimal to say the least. There were electrical wires going under the mud and the ground was vibrating.” He also claims “everyone was praying that [the light towers] weren’t going to fall because they just weren’t well-tethered. And so the conditions for the acts to play were challenging.”
The Grateful Dead’s set was ruined by the extreme rain, which caused technical difficulties and caused Bob Weir to get an electric shock every time he touched his guitar. The Who also faced similar issues, and to make matters worse, Pete Townshend was also spiked with LSD.
“Well, it changed me, I hated it,” Townshend once revealed. “I took my six-month-old child, and it was very weird. I didn’t like it all. They dumped us out of a limousine into six feet of mud, and we stood there for five hours waiting to go on. I drank a cup of coffee, and five minutes later, I’m on an LSD trip unwillingly. They put LSD in the coffee, LSD in the mud, if you fell over and accidentally drank some muddy water, you were on a trip.”
Jimi Hendrix was the last to perform at the festival, and while it’s painted as an era-defining moment, the reality is less glamorous. Due to the delays caused by the rain, he only took the stage at 8:30am on Monday, and by this time, the drugs had worn off, and most attendees had returned to reality. It’s estimated only 30,000 were left by the time he performed, with more flocking to the exits while he was on.
Tragically, there were also two deaths at the festival, with one person dying from a drug overdose and another passing away after being run over by a tractor in their sleep. In reality, the deaths could have been considerably higher, and it was fortunate that only two people didn’t return from Woodstock.
To Woodstock’s credit, it was the launching pad for a whole generation of artists. However, this probably wouldn’t have been the case if there was no documentary. There’s no doubt Woodstock was a seismic cultural moment, but the romanticised version paints over the cracks.
