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The Cultural Revolution Saved from Drowning (The New Yorker, September 1969)
- University of Minnesota Press
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36 You have to give the producers of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair this much credit: they are pulling off a great public relations coup. They have apparently succeeded in creating the impression that the crisis in Bethel was a capricious natural disaster rather than a product of human incompetence, that the huge turnout was completely unexpected (and, in fact, could not have been foreseen by reasonable men), and that they have lost more than a million dollars in the process of being good guys who did everything possible to transform an incipient fiasco into a groovy weekend. Incredibly, instead of hiding from the wrath of disappointed ticket-buyers and creditors they are bragging that the festival was a landmark in the development of youth culture and have announced that they plan to hold it again next year. But before history is completely rewritten, a few facts, semifacts, and strong inferences are in order. For at least a month before the festival, it was obvious to everyone involved in the music scene—industry people, writers for both the straight and the underground press, radicals, and hippies—and also to the city fathers of Wallkill, New York, that the crowd was going to be enormous and the facilities inadequate. The four under-thirty backers of Woodstock Ventures seemed to be motivated less by greed than by sheer hubris: the ambitiousness of the project was meant to establish them as the pop producers, kingpins of the youth market. Their promotion was pervasive. On July 18th, a month before the festival, the Times reported that the management expected as many as two hundred thousand people and had already sold fifty thousand tickets. At that time, they were planning to hold the festival in Wallkill, on a three-hundred-acre site—half the size of the grounds in Bethel—linked to civilization by three country roads. When a Concerned Citizens Committee warned that Wallkill’s water supply could not The Cultural Revolution Saved from Drowning Cultural Revolution Saved from Drowning 37 accommodate the anticipated influx and that festival officials had not made realistic plans to cope with traffic, health, or security, the producers vowed to fight the town’s attempt to exclude them and implied that the opposition came from antiyouth rednecks. When the change of site was announced, just twenty-four days before the scheduled opening of the fair, there was a lot of speculation that it would never come off at all. An experienced promoter told me, “It’ll happen, but only because they’ve got so much money tied up in it. They can’t afford to back out. But they’ll never finish their preparations in three weeks. Monterey took three months. It’s going to be complete chaos.” Alfred G. Aronowitz, of the Post, one of the few journalists to cast a consistently cold eye on the four young entrepreneurs, wrote witty on-location reports giving them the needle and adding to the general pessimism. Meanwhile, back on St. Marks Place, Woodstock was rapidly evolving into this year’s thing to do. A “Woodstock Special” issue of the underground weekly Rat, published the week of the festival, featured a page of survival advice that began, “The call has been put out across the country for hundreds of thousands to attend a three-day orgy of music and dope and communal experience.” I left for Bethel in much the same spirit that I had gone to Chicago at the time of the Democratic Convention. I was emotionally prepared for a breakdown in services and a major riot. If I enjoyed the festival, that would be incidental to participating in a historic event. The actual number of people who showed up was a surprise. The only other real surprise was that there was no riot. The extra numbers could not excuse the flimsiness of the water pipes (they broke down almost immediately), the paucity of latrines (about eight hundred for an expected two hundred thousand people) and garbage cans, or the makeshift medical facilities (the press tent had to be converted into a hospital). One kid reportedly died of a burst appendix—an incident that in 1969 should at least inspire some questions. Although it is possible that the fair lost money, many knowledgeable people are inclined to doubt that the loss was anywhere near the one and a half million dollars Woodstock Ventures is claiming. The corporation should open its books to the public. The thousands...