[2 articles]
Outside Edge:
Spirit of '69 minus the peace and love
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/04e839f0-1b02-11de-8aa3-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1
By Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Published: March 27 2009
It is a date the inhabitants of upstate New York have come to dread
the anniversary of the Woodstock free festival in 1969, when almost
half a million hippies encamped on a farm in Sullivan County in
search of a counter-cultural New World.
Commemorative events have duly followed in 1979, 1989, 1994 and 1999.
The original's ethos of peace and love has not always been observed:
the 30th anniversary festival, attended by 200,000 people, ended with
pyromania, looting and rioting. It was, as the 1969 generation would
say, a bit of a bummer.
Michael Lang, co-founder of the original festival, admitted this week
that the 1999 concert had "ramifications" but said he thought
Woodstock's integrity was undamaged. The optimistic Mr Lang is
searching for $10m sponsorship for a 40th anniversary event, and has
flagged up Central Park in New York City as a possible venue.
Considering the potential for mayhem, I suspect he has more chance of
holding it in my back garden than Central Park. But Mr Lang will
surely find somewhere to stage Woodstock 2009; not just because
nostalgia is a powerful emotion but also because counter-cultural
forces are once again stirring.
The original Woodstock boasted an extraordinary line-up, from The Who
to Jimi Hendrix. Yet it has passed into popular legend for the
atmosphere as much as the music. The vast numbers attending defied
inadequate sanitation, rain and dire warnings of social breakdown to
come together peacefully in ramshackle but functional communal conditions.
Even as the weekend unfolded, its meaning was clear. There were
almost as many "flower children" present as there were US soldiers in
Vietnam. Woodstock was not merely an opportunity to take powerful
hallucinogens and nod along to the Grateful Dead. It was also proof
that the counter-culture's way of life worked for a long weekend,
at any rate.
Woodstock's triumph did not last much longer than that. The new
movement that hippy idealists imagined sweeping the US did not come
to fruition. Free love, drugs and rock music turned out to be paltry
weapons against the onward march of global capitalism.
The counter-culture did not disappear, however. It flickered on in
the anti-globalisation campaigns of the 1990s, and now, after a
decade of quiescence, is re-emerging with the financial crisis. An
echo of Woodstock will be heard at next week's Group of 20 protests
in London, when a miscellany of anti-capitalists, climate-change
campaigners and anarchists gather to denounce The Man. The question
is, which Woodstock will the protests echo: the peaceful one of 1969
or its violent follow-up in 1999?
No doubt Mr Lang's Woodstock sequel, if it happens, will be a more
sedate affair. He envisages "legacy bands" such as Crosby, Stills and
Nash reprising their 1969 turns for an audience of dewy-eyed baby
boomers. But one aspect of his plans chimes pleasingly with the age
of the credit crunch it won't cost a cent to get in.
--
The writer is the FT's pop critic
-------
Plan for free festival to mark Woodstock's 40th anniversary
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article5963439.ece
March 24, 2009
Ben Hoyle, Arts Correspondent
The original Woodstock festival was the high watermark of Sixties
flower power, memorable for its music, its nudity and its mellow atmosphere.
The last attempt to revive it, for a 30th anniversary festival in
1999, ended in chaos with hundreds of police officers called to the
site to stop rampaging fans from torching the stage and looting the
overpriced vendors.
Now Michael Lang, the organiser of both events, is risking the
Woodstock name once again by attempting to put together a free, green
festival for the 40th anniversary.
All he needs is sponsorship of $10million (£7million) in the next
three weeks, he told The Times yesterday. "The chances that something
will happen are probable but I don't really have the answer yet as to
what that will be," he said.
Central Park and various other outdoor spaces in New York City have
been scouted and talks have been opened with a distinctly retro
line-up of bands, including The Who, Santana, Crosby, Stills and
Nash, Joe Cocker, the Dave Matthews Band and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
The first four played the original festival. The Who headlined the
second night, sealing their reputation as a live act in America -
although Pete Townshend now recalls their performance as "f***ing awful".
The first Woodstock festival was dreamt up by Mr Lang and three other
people as a profit-making scheme, but such was the turnout that it
ended up being free to many when the fences were cut.
From August 15, 1969, an estimated 400,000 people battled through
epic traffic jams to reach Max Yasgur's dairy farm near Bethel, New
York State, which had a population of about 3,000.
There they spent three era-defining days sitting around waiting for
technical hitches to be sorted out, rolling around in the endless mud
and taking myriad forms of recreational drugs before Jimi Hendrix
closed the festival by inimitably mangling The Star Spangled Banner
into an anti-war protest, some time after nine o'clock on the Monday morning.
For the 1994 and 1999 festivals, punters were charged up to $180 per
ticket, but this time round Mr Lang wants to put on a "free and
totally green event". Unfortunately, this demands a pragmatic
approach at odds with the hippy dream.
Speaking about Woodstock 2009 at the South By Southwest music
festival in Austin, Texas, at the weekend, Mr Lang announced: "It's
got to be sponsor-driven."
For visitors to the 1999 site this brought back memories of the
Planet Hollywood restaurants, Woodstock Platinum cards, Budweiser
beer gardens and $5 bottles of water that rendered laughable the
comparisons with the shambolic but idealistic original.
Some observers blamed the blatant commercialism of the 1999 festival
for the unhappy atmosphere that spilt over into rioting on the final
day. Mr Lang hopes to avoid such problems this time by ensuring that
his sponsors have "green leanings" and exerting a tighter grip on the
musical line-up.
"I think what happened in 1999 was a function of the times and the
music that we booked," he said last night.
"There was a lot of anger around with bands like Limp Bizkit and Korn
who were heavier than I would have liked. It turned into more of an
MTV event than a Woodstock event and that was a lesson learnt. This
time we will go for bands with more of a social conscience."
This summer will be awash with Woodstock nostalgia even if Mr Lang
fails to get Woodstock 4 off the ground. Ang Lee will have a new film
out, called Taking Woodstock, about the hotelier who helped to rescue
the festival by providing a new site for it after the citizens of
Walkill, New York, blocked it at the 11th hour.
There's also a four-hour director's cut of the concert film
Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music, which a young Martin Scorsese
worked on, and a six-CD box set of Woodstock performances to listen
to after reading Mr Lang's forthcoming book The Road to Woodstock and
watching the imminent History Channel documentary.
--
Who they came to see in '69
Joan Baez
The Band Blood, Sweat and Tears
Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Canned Heat
Joe Cocker
Country Joe and the Fish
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Crosby, Stills and Nash and Young
Grateful Dead
Arlo Guthrie
Tim Hardin
Richie Havens
Jimi Hendrix
Incredible String Band
Jefferson Airplane
Janis Joplin
Keef Hartley Band
Melanie
Mountain
Quill
Santana
John Sebastian
Sha-Na-Na
Ravi
Shankar
Sly and the Family Stone
Bert Sommer
Sweetwater
Ten Years After
The Who
Johnny Winter
Source: Woodstock69.com
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