Speaker 1: Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The story about Woodstock,
Speaker 1: the real story, the death, the destruction, the downright disaster
Speaker 1: movie that the three days supposed festival of peace, love
Speaker 1: and communalism really was is so complex that we needed
Speaker 1: two episodes to properly tell it. If you're just getting
Speaker 1: hip to this now, I suggest you hip pause and
Speaker 1: go back to the last episode of Disgraceland, Part one
Speaker 1: of the Woodstock Story, where we discuss the violent rock
Speaker 1: and roll festival foundations of Woodstock, the hypocritical hippie extortion
Speaker 1: that allowed the show to go on, the cunning and
Speaker 1: confidence of producer Michael Lang, the surge of hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of fans, the near immediate declaration of disaster by
Speaker 1: the State of New York, and the ominous signs of
Speaker 1: death and destruction on the horizon. In this episode, into
Speaker 1: the deaths of two concertgoers, bad acid, near chaos, and
Speaker 1: near death on an unimaginable scale. Woodstock's legacy and great
Speaker 1: music the Who, Joe Cocker and Jimmy Hendricks name a few,
Speaker 1: again great music, Unlike that music. I played few at
Speaker 1: the top of the show that wasn't great music that
Speaker 1: was a preset loop from my melotron called swatch out
Speaker 1: MK one. I played you that loop because I can't
Speaker 1: afford the rights in the year twenty five twenty five
Speaker 1: by Zager and Evans. And why would I play you
Speaker 1: that specific slice of futuro cheese? Could I afford it?
Speaker 1: Because that was the number one song in America on
Speaker 1: the morning of August eighteenth, nineteen sixty nine, And that
Speaker 1: was the day Jimmy Hendrix took the stage at Woodstock,
Speaker 1: turning in an electrifying performance that would seal Woodstock as
Speaker 1: the culture defining moment that it was. On this episode
Speaker 1: brown Acid, bad vibes, death, destruction, in the master movie
Speaker 1: that was Woodstock. I'm Jake Brennan in this his Disgraceland
Speaker 1: August fifteenth, nineteen sixty nine, Woodstock Aquarian Exposition, Bethel, New
Speaker 1: York Yasger's firm peace and Love were not going to
Speaker 1: save them. Smith and Wesson were Max Yasker, owner of
Speaker 1: the thriving and pastoral dairy farm, Michael Lang and Woodstock
Speaker 1: Ventures were hosting their three day music festival. On was
Speaker 1: hiding in his farm stands office. He his son and
Speaker 1: one of the workers on his dairy farm were fully
Speaker 1: armed shotguns with enough shells to keep a small army
Speaker 1: held at bay until hopefully this god forsaken festival mess
Speaker 1: he'd gotten him and his family in two blew over.
Speaker 1: They were coming to take his land, take his home,
Speaker 1: using the chaos of the festival as covered a pillage,
Speaker 1: and God help him rape the land and the life
Speaker 1: he'd spent thirty three years building since taking over the
Speaker 1: farm from his father. They were modern day vikings, set
Speaker 1: to maraud and kill his family, steal the valuables in
Speaker 1: cash he had on site, and make off into the night.
Speaker 1: Like the low down bandits they were. Max Yasgar wasn't
Speaker 1: going down without a fight. As soon as the call
Speaker 1: came that a carpetbagging set of MC outlaws were making
Speaker 1: their way with their bikes through the backed up festival
Speaker 1: traffic to Max's home to conduct a violent raid. Max
Speaker 1: went to work. He barricaded himself in with all the
Speaker 1: firepower he could find in his office, with his son
Speaker 1: and a local employee to beat back the violent bikers.
Speaker 1: It made for a sleepless, if on eventful night, and
Speaker 1: the Motorcycle Club raiders never rid It must have been
Speaker 1: a prank call, a false warning, one of the many
Speaker 1: forms of local harassment Max and his family had to
Speaker 1: endure since agreeing to host the festival, and back at
Speaker 1: the festival site, things weren't any less tense. Bad LSD
Speaker 1: was making the rounds. Kids were suffering drug induced psychotic episodes.
Speaker 1: So far was under control, but if word didn't spread
Speaker 1: fast and not take the brown acid, then mass psychosis
Speaker 1: for hundreds of thousands of teenagers and ensuing riots lay
Speaker 1: on the horizon. Improbably Hugh Romney and his hippie hog
Speaker 1: Farmers were enlisted to help solve this very dangerous problem.
Speaker 1: A mud stained hippie kid stumbled into the hog farm
Speaker 1: of special medical tent, the tent known as Big Pink
Speaker 1: On Cots all around were fellow acid had psychonauts, bad
Speaker 1: trippers way in outer space, some limp and catatonic, some
Speaker 1: crazed and mumbling in tongues. Hog Farmers treated them as
Speaker 1: only they knew how as they were expected to do,
Speaker 1: as was their job, part of the reason Michael Lang
Speaker 1: had hired them, and they applied cold water to the
Speaker 1: heads the kids on bad acid, for others, for the
Speaker 1: ones freaking the fuck out, for the ones caught in
Speaker 1: some terrible time loop or a psychic pattern they couldn't break.
Speaker 1: For the ones screaming and thrashing around, the hog farmers
Speaker 1: provided extra attention. They held them gently and talcked them down.
Speaker 1: And the mud stained kid was in a bad way.
Speaker 1: He kept mumbling Miami Beach, nineteen ninety four. Joyce, Miami Beach,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four. Choyce, Miami Beach, nineteen ninety four. Joyce.
Speaker 1: He was caught in one of those bad loops, trapped
Speaker 1: inside of himself, a carnival horror show of fears and regret,
Speaker 1: visions of the future and not good ones. Hugh Romney,
Speaker 1: head hog farmer, could see it in the kid's eyes
Speaker 1: Miami Beach, nineteen ninety four. Choice. Rodney grabbed the boy
Speaker 1: gently with both hands by his cheeks. Tune into your
Speaker 1: third eye, man, Rodney advised him. And Romney asked his
Speaker 1: where he came from, and brought the muddy tripper down
Speaker 1: to earth, led him do a cot, told him to
Speaker 1: sit awhile, and then when he was well, Romney pointed
Speaker 1: to the next lost soul wandering through the door. See him.
Speaker 1: He pointed at the new patient who just wandered in himself,
Speaker 1: blitzed on acid in a bad way. Romney then looked
Speaker 1: at the mud stained boy he'd successfully talked down from
Speaker 1: the bad trip and applied the finishing touch he gave
Speaker 1: the bad tripper purpose, gave him a distraction, gave him
Speaker 1: a reason to believe in himself, and to take control
Speaker 1: of a situation. Romney told the boy he was now okay.
Speaker 1: He nodded again to the new patient who just wandered
Speaker 1: into the medical tent, and told the mud stained boy quote,
Speaker 1: now you're the doctor, take over. That was how things
Speaker 1: worked in the Big Pink. The medical Tent was a
Speaker 1: peace and love psychedelics mass unit, but it wasn't all bad.
Speaker 1: To assist bass player Rick Danko of the band, a
Speaker 1: dude who knew all about another Big Pink came through
Speaker 1: and posted up with an acoustic tar. He strummed and
Speaker 1: sang softly to help chill out the kids who were
Speaker 1: having a tough time on their trips. It was a
Speaker 1: moment of genuine goodwill, like many others from that weekend,
Speaker 1: that were necessary to help offset the destruction taking place.
Speaker 1: Words spread of the various disasters, most were untrue, Abby
Speaker 1: Hoffman spiked the water supply with brown acid. Richard Nixon
Speaker 1: called him the National Guard. The Hell's Angels have taken
Speaker 1: Yasker's wife hostage, but some were true, like the story
Speaker 1: about the young concertgoer who went to bed on that
Speaker 1: first night of the festival in his sleeping bag and
Speaker 1: awoke to the sound of a tractor inches from his
Speaker 1: body that then proceeded to roll right over him, crushing him,
Speaker 1: and they airlifted him by helicopter to the local hospital.
Speaker 1: He died of his wounds before the chopper even landed.
Speaker 1: He was seventeen years old. His name was Ray Mizick.
Speaker 1: He was from Trenton, New Jersey. And then there was
Speaker 1: the constant buzz about overdoses, not just bad trips from
Speaker 1: acid from LSD, but also from heroin, opium, cocaine, mandricks
Speaker 1: all manner of late sixties narcotics that contributed to more
Speaker 1: than three thousand drug related incidents and overdoses, three most
Speaker 1: seriously resulted in near death and whisked off by helicopter
Speaker 1: to area hospitals where they were revived. So steady was
Speaker 1: the air traffic from the concert to the area hospitals
Speaker 1: and clinics that SOS messages concerning the drug wounded or
Speaker 1: eventually coordinated through the United States Aerospace Command Headquarters in
Speaker 1: Colorado Springs via the Pentagon, which eventually authorized US Army
Speaker 1: Air Force Task Force pilots to run rescue missions in
Speaker 1: and out of Woodstock with Huey helicopters, the same exact
Speaker 1: kind of helicopters used to airlift the wounded out of Vietnam.
Speaker 1: The drugged out and otherwise wounded Woodstock concert goers were
Speaker 1: flown to an emergency medical facility set up by the
Speaker 1: US government in nearby Monochello, New York, for treatment and
Speaker 1: then dispatched to local facilities for further care if necessary.
Speaker 1: But one Woodstock attendee was not so lucky, an eighteen
Speaker 1: year old marinem on leave taking in the peace and
Speaker 1: Love and a jack of illicit heroine that killed him.
Speaker 1: His name was Richard Beller. He was from Holbrook, Long Island. Death, Drugs,
Speaker 1: Destruction and great music Sly and the family. Stone went
Speaker 1: on Wayley at three point thirty am and turned in
Speaker 1: what to that point it was the best performance of
Speaker 1: the concert thus far, laying waste nearly all the performers
Speaker 1: who preceded them. Sly Stone was a soul assassin and
Speaker 1: the land of stoned hippies. He and his band worked
Speaker 1: the crowd into a delirious state with their high energy,
Speaker 1: dirty funk. Everyday people danced to the music I Want
Speaker 1: to Take You Higher, all infectious bangers, seemingly composed to move,
Speaker 1: shaken and thraw half a million people in one sitting
Speaker 1: as they just had. Steam was coming off of Slyzafro.
Speaker 1: The Mammoth crowd demanded two encores, and when the band
Speaker 1: left the stage at four twenty am, sly Stone had
Speaker 1: one message for Pete Townsend about to go on next
Speaker 1: with the Who, and the message was this follow that
Speaker 1: motherfucker Pete Townsend was too annoyed to care. It was
Speaker 1: late and this festival was a fucking disaster and they
Speaker 1: sure as hell weren't getting paid enough for this bullshit.
Speaker 1: It must be real. What this was was bullshit. This
Speaker 1: wasn't a movement, This wasn't about peace and love. This
Speaker 1: wasn't about a new way. This was about music for money,
Speaker 1: and poorly planned at that. This was a new mob
Speaker 1: trying to usurp the old mob. Meet the new boss,
Speaker 1: same as the old boss. This was tie die in
Speaker 1: place of starch suits. This was a new pig and
Speaker 1: a new silk tie Paisley instead of pinstripes. Either way,
Speaker 1: it was a lie. Might as well just call it
Speaker 1: what it was, capitalism, but worse capitalism without efficiency going
Speaker 1: on at five am? What the fuck was that about?
Speaker 1: The Who's storm through their set with maximum power, maximum
Speaker 1: rock and roll, maximum rhythm, maximum blues, maximum R and B.
Speaker 1: Everything was maxed, whose volume, whose energy, to whose attitude?
Speaker 1: And the thinly veiled contempt Pete Townsend had for this
Speaker 1: whole fu gazy affair. The English guitarist was a tightly
Speaker 1: wound ball of fairly containable violence, doing his best to
Speaker 1: blow up the stage right there in front of half
Speaker 1: a million confused and frightened hippies. This was not passive,
Speaker 1: This was not placid. This was nothing like the previous
Speaker 1: Woodstock performers. This wasn't Arlo Guthrie or Joe Bias or
Speaker 1: Country Joe in the fucking Fish Country Joe. Pete Townsend
Speaker 1: heard he named his son Joseph after Joseph Stalin Americans.
Speaker 1: The fuck was wrong with these people, But Pete wanted
Speaker 1: to get the gig over with and get the hell
Speaker 1: out of there, Pete stewed while he Tunedes Gibson SG.
Speaker 1: Let's get this bullshit over with, he thought. In the
Speaker 1: wings at the side of the stage, cly Stone wired
Speaker 1: out of his mind from either the set he'd just performed,
Speaker 1: or from the white lightning acid being passed around the
Speaker 1: ho Chi Minh trail, or both. Sly was there with
Speaker 1: Gray Slick from Jefferson Airplane, who is set to take
Speaker 1: the stage even later than the Who, And of course
Speaker 1: there was that dude who wouldn't shut the fuck up,
Speaker 1: the big guy with the big hair and the bigger mouth,
Speaker 1: talking white panther jive, non stop Sinclair, this yippy, that steal,
Speaker 1: this concert, smoked, this revolution, Brothers, Sisters, Pigs, police, blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah, Abbie Hoffman. He reminded Pete of
Speaker 1: a less talented, less attractive, less interesting Lenny Bruce. He
Speaker 1: thought about how this guy's stick would play back in London.
Speaker 1: Not even Princess Margaret would fuck this guy. Why did
Speaker 1: the Americans pay him any mind? Whatever, it didn't matter
Speaker 1: who was ready, The set was about to start. Finally,
Speaker 1: Roger looked at Pete and he nodded. Shot a look
Speaker 1: at John, then peered over to Keith behind the kit,
Speaker 1: and then Abby Hoffman rushed the stage. He grabbed Pete's mike.
Speaker 1: Four thousand of our brothers and sisters are being persecuted
Speaker 1: for no more than we're doing on this hill. It's
Speaker 1: only fair that we help out. We are the Woodstock Nation,
Speaker 1: We are one. What the fuck was this? Someone cut
Speaker 1: the mic thankfully. Hoffman, pissed, kicked the mic stand over.
Speaker 1: That did it? Fuck this guy? Pete grabbed the neck
Speaker 1: of his guitar, swung it back like a tennis racket,
Speaker 1: and swatted it flat into Hoffman's hairy grill. Hoffman, dazed,
Speaker 1: stumbled for a step or two toward the front of
Speaker 1: the stage before falling over into the crowd. He was
Speaker 1: absorbed by the audience, who, a day and a half
Speaker 1: into the festival, were too sleep deprived and blitzed on
Speaker 1: acid to comprehend the violence that had just taken place
Speaker 1: at this fugazy festival of peace. Pete wasted no time.
Speaker 1: He looked again to Keith behind the kit, who quickly
Speaker 1: counted the band off and into the racous set. The
Speaker 1: Who's set, violent and unnatural as it was, was nothing
Speaker 1: compared to the potential threat brewing for more natural causes.
Speaker 1: English singer Joe Cocker in his backup group The Grease Band,
Speaker 1: took the stage round two pm on Sunday afternoon to
Speaker 1: open the day's festivities with his brand of blue eyed
Speaker 1: epileptic soul and enthralled the audience who had never seen
Speaker 1: anything like him before. The Grease Band had been touring
Speaker 1: the US since spring, but it was as impressive an
Speaker 1: American debut as he could have hoped for, and little
Speaker 1: did the singer know at the time would go on
Speaker 1: to become an iconic performance. But when his performance was done,
Speaker 1: Joe Cocker felt it in the air, the coming rain.
Speaker 1: The clouds moved in out of nowhere, and the temperature
Speaker 1: took a slight, sudden drop, and the audience began to
Speaker 1: stir uncomfortable, and Joe Cocker grabbed a bottle of something
Speaker 1: hard and split in search of a roof in four walls.
Speaker 1: Black clouds draped over the half a million concert goers
Speaker 1: and gobbled up the pink afternoon sky in an instant,
Speaker 1: and the crowd gasped on mass. No one had planned
Speaker 1: for this for rain if festival producer Michael Lang was nervous.
Speaker 1: He didn't show it. He suppressed a slight grin. Perhaps
Speaker 1: he was amused that it was learned the unexpected rain
Speaker 1: being thrown their way was courtesy of a storm moving
Speaker 1: up the coast called Hurricane Michael. But this was no
Speaker 1: time to be amused. A smart stage hand screamed at
Speaker 1: everybody and nobody in particular, Hit the power. A small
Speaker 1: battalion of backstage roadies took to the stage with the
Speaker 1: quickness and began covering everything with slipcovers, power cables in particular,
Speaker 1: and they all shared the same look on their faces, fear.
Speaker 1: Another voice rang out from backstage, Kill the fucking power man,
Speaker 1: Kill the power. Nobody was volunteering for the job. And
Speaker 1: the wind picked up and bill in Diaskar's natural amphitheater,
Speaker 1: lifting as much random trash as it could along the
Speaker 1: way and sending an airborne and the strength of the
Speaker 1: wind was sudden and intense. The clouds grew even more black.
Speaker 1: The vibe was beyond ominous straight fear. Hanging above festival organizers'
Speaker 1: heads the massive one hundred foot sound towers, huge metal
Speaker 1: and plywood constructions holding the speakers that were used to
Speaker 1: blast sound from the stage. They slowly creaked as they
Speaker 1: swayed and the wind pressed, the towers lurched, thunder rumbled
Speaker 1: in the distance, the clouds got even darker. Kids on
Speaker 1: the crowd braced themselves for a torrent from the heavens,
Speaker 1: and the towers bent a little more. Most festival organizers
Speaker 1: feared the worst and tried to play it cool, and
Speaker 1: one did not kill the fucking power. Power was needed
Speaker 1: at the moment, because there up in one of the towers.
Speaker 1: Some kids sat high above the crowd, taking in the show,
Speaker 1: oblivious to the twin hazards of lightning and wind and
Speaker 1: breaking with the hippie edicts. Then let live. One smart
Speaker 1: woodstock organizer jumped on the mic and got into it
Speaker 1: with the crowd. Do you please get away from the towers,
Speaker 1: Please clear away before someone gets hurt. And the wind
Speaker 1: picked up again, and the towers, all of them, swayed
Speaker 1: a little more and more kids were situated on them
Speaker 1: than before. How had this happened? The wind picked up again,
Speaker 1: and when it did, the towers near the gave way
Speaker 1: they bent even further. If they fell all the way,
Speaker 1: it would be certain mass destruction. Hey, get off those towers.
Speaker 1: Get off those towers, and the kids and the towers
Speaker 1: ignored the voice, the idiocy on the mic. The organizer
Speaker 1: pressed for calm, let's keep it nice and cool. Just
Speaker 1: sit down and be cool. Thunder then interrupted his plea
Speaker 1: with a loud crack. He continued, afterward, looks like we're
Speaker 1: gonna get a little bit of rain, so you better
Speaker 1: cover up. If it does, we should have a slight
Speaker 1: power problem. Just cool it out. We'll sit here with you.
Speaker 1: You'll be okay. Just then, Thunder exploded in the sky,
Speaker 1: as if to mock the comments coming from the stage.
Speaker 1: And that's when the organizer felt it. The stage the slip.
Speaker 1: The whole stage had shifted under his feet. The massive
Speaker 1: stages foundation was slipping, and forget the towers, the stage
Speaker 1: was about to go down in front a massive kids
Speaker 1: were oblivious to what was about to happen, the stage shifting, sliding,
Speaker 1: potentially crashing down on top of them. The stage sholted
Speaker 1: forward in a quick burst and then stopped. The sky
Speaker 1: cracked open again with a massive thunderclap, and then the
Speaker 1: rain poured down. Kids in the crowd immediately started to rejoice,
Speaker 1: dancing in the rain, sliding in the mud, feeding off
Speaker 1: of the chaotic energy in the most peaceful way possible.
Speaker 1: It was borderline miraculous. But how long could it last?
Speaker 1: How long before the kids got tired, got cold, and
Speaker 1: bolted for the exit. Backstage A volunteers sprinted for her boss,
Speaker 1: looking for direction. How are they going to call the crowd?
Speaker 1: How are they going to keep them still in the
Speaker 1: rain and not stampeding each other? In an effort to
Speaker 1: head some for dry land, she made it past the
Speaker 1: backstage wall of dead instrument cases. Her boss was nowhere.
Speaker 1: She ran through the small makeshift artists VIP area, no
Speaker 1: boss around, toward where the crew served them sells, mushy
Speaker 1: food and warm drinks, and still no boss. Back toward
Speaker 1: the festival command center's trailer. There in there he must
Speaker 1: be in there. In the trailer. She ran toward it,
Speaker 1: in and around darting staff. She reached the trailer, put
Speaker 1: her foot in the first metal step, and was blasted
Speaker 1: up and back and away from the trailer and onto
Speaker 1: her ass from the electric surge. Her boss opened the
Speaker 1: door at the moment took in the scene, barely noticing
Speaker 1: his felt volunteer. She shouted to him, don't step on
Speaker 1: the stairs, you'll get shocked. And he leaped over the
Speaker 1: three stairs and down to the ground, and the ground
Speaker 1: was softened. Trampled grass, long since reduced to dirt, was
Speaker 1: now transforming into mud, and the mud was splashing away
Speaker 1: and under it. The festival's main power feed cable was emerging.
Speaker 1: As more and more people trounced over it. The more
Speaker 1: the main power came, insulation wore away, and the more
Speaker 1: the insulation wore away from the cable, the more it's
Speaker 1: electrical surge escaped. And the more water the flooded the
Speaker 1: area around the cable, the more likely the chance for
Speaker 1: the electricity to travel. At that moment, it became very
Speaker 1: clear that five hundred thousand people were connected by more
Speaker 1: than peace, love and music. They were now connected by
Speaker 1: the heavens, by rain and by water, the perfect conduit
Speaker 1: for mass electrocution. We'll be right back after this word
Speaker 1: word word. This was it the last straw. No one
Speaker 1: planned for the rain, and Michael Lane couldn't really flash
Speaker 1: a quickstone smile to stop the rain, nor could he
Speaker 1: stop the stage from slipping. And he couldn't stop those
Speaker 1: towers from swaying and toppling over and He especially couldn't
Speaker 1: stop electricity from escaping the main power feed cable and
Speaker 1: transferring itself through the wet festival grounds, in effect barbecuing
Speaker 1: the half a million kids he'd assembled on old Man
Speaker 1: Yasker's farm. It was all beyond his control. Planning and
Speaker 1: producing this festival had been his life over the past
Speaker 1: several months. His entire identity was now tied to it.
Speaker 1: It's a glorious thing if he looked at it through
Speaker 1: the right lens. Half a million kids getting along on
Speaker 1: their own, a new generation doing it their own way,
Speaker 1: the biggest cultural gathering in American history, most likely in
Speaker 1: so far. Despite the many close calls in constant stress,
Speaker 1: there was little incident. Sure, two kids had already died,
Speaker 1: but that would quickly be forgotten. With the right message,
Speaker 1: the rain would stop, the kids would settle into their
Speaker 1: own groove. Michael knew it, and this ride he'd been
Speaker 1: on with Woodstock from a dream to a reality, then
Speaker 1: to having the location ripped out from under him at
Speaker 1: the last minute, to finding Yasker's farm, just setting the
Speaker 1: show up in under thirty days, to the extortion from Hoffman,
Speaker 1: from the cops, from the grateful dead refusing to go
Speaker 1: on unless they're paid in advance in cash. To Jimmy Hendrick,
Speaker 1: so at this moment was still threatening to not perform
Speaker 1: to the massive financial debucle that this entire event had
Speaker 1: turned out to be. All of it, all, the problems
Speaker 1: would find a way of working themselves out, and the
Speaker 1: glory on the other end of this thing was immeasurable.
Speaker 1: Michael would be the guy. Michael Lang would be the
Speaker 1: one who did something no one else had done, and
Speaker 1: that would be worth every ounce of energy he'd put
Speaker 1: into this thing. His business partners, John Roberts and Joel
Speaker 1: Rossaman did not have the same utopian view of their
Speaker 1: shared venture with Michael Lang. Forget about the hassles and
Speaker 1: the massive financial loss, they were concerned with something much darker.
Speaker 1: If someone didn't get the situation with the electricity sorted out,
Speaker 1: they'd be seen as far worse than financially failed festival producers.
Speaker 1: Six pm Sunday night security, along with the festival organizers
Speaker 1: who were huddled around the main feeder cable backstage. Their
Speaker 1: worse fears, it seemed, were becoming real. The cable's insulation
Speaker 1: had been nearly completely worn away. It was only a
Speaker 1: matter of time, some argued, before the electricity surge beyond
Speaker 1: the cable and was carried by the water over the
Speaker 1: festival grounds to blast the crowd. The kids in the
Speaker 1: crowd were jammed together, soaking wet. Mass electrocution was most
Speaker 1: certainly an option if the cable failed and the potential
Speaker 1: destruction and loss of human life was incalculable. The options
Speaker 1: were this cut the power and the festival prematurely, with
Speaker 1: at least eight of the weekend's promised performers yet to play,
Speaker 1: including top drawing acts like Crosbie Stills, Nashing Young and
Speaker 1: Jimmy Hendrix, in risk total mayhem, a full blown riot
Speaker 1: by the upset crowd of five hundred thousand, or waited
Speaker 1: out do nothing and hope that the main feeder cable
Speaker 1: would not free any further and remain intact enough to
Speaker 1: contain the electricity. The fear from Michael Lang's partners John
Speaker 1: Roberts and Joel Rossaman was so intense that Roberts actually
Speaker 1: began to whimper and Rosamond dared not speak. The two,
Speaker 1: along with the festival's master electrician, and sat in silence
Speaker 1: contemplating the fate of a half a million souls, and
Speaker 1: Michael Lang was nowhere to be found. This decision was
Speaker 1: too heavy for him anyway, but not for Joel Rosamith.
Speaker 1: He broke the silence by grabbing the phone and the
Speaker 1: command center trailer backstage and ordering the sound man to
Speaker 1: keep the power on. He then ordered the master electrician
Speaker 1: to lay out all the options for him. Was there
Speaker 1: a way to fix this without interrupting the live performances
Speaker 1: and risking a riot. In the meantime, they'd ride it out,
Speaker 1: do what everyone around them had done since the beginning
Speaker 1: with this god forsaken festival, Hold their breath and pray
Speaker 1: that it all worked out. Their lives are on the line,
Speaker 1: and they'd put the lives of others on the line
Speaker 1: as well if things went horribly wrong, if hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of kids ended up dead on their decision, they'd
Speaker 1: do the honorable thing. John Roberts convinced himself in the
Speaker 1: moment if Woodstock ended in mass destruction, he would kill himself.
Speaker 1: But that wasn't going to happen. John Roberts and Rossamnt's
Speaker 1: decision proved to be the right one. Rossa men hadn't
Speaker 1: made the decision on a wing and a prayer, and
Speaker 1: the master electrician had informed him that there was a
Speaker 1: way they could reroute the power away from the master
Speaker 1: feed cable without disrupting the power to the main stage.
Speaker 1: And at long last, it seemed like the adults were
Speaker 1: in charge. Turns out that you can't simply be cool,
Speaker 1: improve on each other and rely on peace and love
Speaker 1: to carry the day. At a certain point, you need
Speaker 1: to step up and take responsibility. Jill Rossaman was the
Speaker 1: one who made the decision to keep the show going,
Speaker 1: not Michael lang And, as it had been happening since
Speaker 1: the show began two days earlier, various responsibilities were assumed
Speaker 1: and executed by those who would be considered squares as
Speaker 1: establishment as God forbid grown ups by some of the
Speaker 1: more idealistic festival organizers and attendees. But they were also
Speaker 1: the people whose actions and the tangible results of said actions,
Speaker 1: kept the festival from turning into a full blown disaster.
Speaker 1: There was old man Yaster, himself rock ribbed Republican, offering
Speaker 1: up his farm at the last minute, the ground on
Speaker 1: which the whole festival was raised to a bunch of
Speaker 1: war protesting long hairs. And there were the local radio
Speaker 1: DJs who sent out the alarm when the festival food
Speaker 1: began to run out, alerting the local farmers, who responded
Speaker 1: by donating on mass canned goods and produce. Then there
Speaker 1: were the wives of the farmers who took it a
Speaker 1: step further and set about boiling hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: eggs to keep the crowd fed with hard boiled eggs
Speaker 1: they donate. And there were military personnel from the US
Speaker 1: government who painstakingly coordinated the food drops and medical evacuations
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, and the scores of area doctors and
Speaker 1: nurses who volunteered their time to help out with the
Speaker 1: endless stream of wounded. There was even a local small
Speaker 1: town banker, up banker who opened up his bank in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night on a weekend to process
Speaker 1: alone for woodstock organizer John Roberts, so that Roberts could
Speaker 1: pay some of the headlining acts who, devoid as it were,
Speaker 1: of any generosity of spirit themselves, were refusing to go
Speaker 1: on without getting paid in advance cash. A bank of FEDS, doctors, nurses, farmers' locals,
Speaker 1: all of them quote unquote squares, who generously committed themselves
Speaker 1: to helping the massive stoned kids on the farm. These
Speaker 1: weren't people down with the cause. These weren't hippies, these
Speaker 1: weren't even kids. There were good, solid, working adults who
Speaker 1: saw a bunch of kids who were in trouble and
Speaker 1: a bunch of young adult concert organizers who were in
Speaker 1: over their heads and decided to help out out of
Speaker 1: the goodness of their hearts for no other reason. None
Speaker 1: of these people had any invested interests in Woodstock's success
Speaker 1: other than simply caring about the well being of their
Speaker 1: fellow Americans, their fellow young Americans. These people weren't counterculture
Speaker 1: anti establishment types who came to the rescue. They were
Speaker 1: the establishment. But without these people, without these squares, without
Speaker 1: the establishment, Woodstock, a three day festival of peace and
Speaker 1: music and unofficial rally against the establishment, never would have
Speaker 1: survived itself or its organizers. Which isn't to say Woodstock
Speaker 1: wasn't supported by intensely hard working staff and volunteers years
Speaker 1: young people in working touring music industry, adults and professionals
Speaker 1: who believed deeply in their mission to create a one
Speaker 1: of a kind music festival that showcased the best their
Speaker 1: generation had to offer. Because it was but hard work
Speaker 1: and good intentions aside. Every organization is a product of
Speaker 1: its leadership. When lives are on the line. Haphazard hippie confidence,
Speaker 1: men ramblings about peace love in a new utopian way
Speaker 1: only go so far. It was a miracle Woodstock didn't
Speaker 1: end in total disaster. Mercifully, the show approached its end
Speaker 1: by Monday morning, but not without some final fireworks. At
Speaker 1: nine am, as concertgoers slowly began to dwindle lot of
Speaker 1: the festival grounds to make their way home, Jimmy Hendrix
Speaker 1: finally took the stage. Jimmy Hendrix is said at Woodstock
Speaker 1: ended the festival In the nineteen seventy documentary on Woodstock,
Speaker 1: directed by Michael Wadley, the festival ends with Hendricks's version
Speaker 1: of the Star Spangled Banner. It's an iconic moment, Jimmy
Speaker 1: Hendrix on stage in the early morning hours, garbed in
Speaker 1: the hippie fashion of the day, his sole power afro
Speaker 1: barely contained by his headband, and he's playing the country's
Speaker 1: rallying cry. But it's clearly not your father's national anthem.
Speaker 1: This is something new, something exciting, something decidedly subversive. Hendrix's
Speaker 1: excellent feedback driven, bombastic take on the song under the
Speaker 1: New Morning Sun at Woodstock can help but give the
Speaker 1: impression that Woodstock was about a new day, a new way.
Speaker 1: The imagery on screen Hammer's Home the significance of the festival,
Speaker 1: except it didn't really happen that way. Jimmy Hendrix played
Speaker 1: the star Spangled banner, and then he can continued to
Speaker 1: muddle through the rest of his set with his less
Speaker 1: in stellar band at the time, Gypsy's Sun and Rainbows
Speaker 1: the experience or band of Gypsies they were not, and
Speaker 1: finished his set and the Festival of Peace and Love
Speaker 1: unceremoniously with Hey Joe, A Song about Murder. July twenty fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, Rome, New York, one hundred and forty
Speaker 1: miles from Bethel and thirty years removed a new Woodstock
Speaker 1: Griffiths Air Force Base, two hundred and twenty thousand Kids Hot,
Speaker 1: Red Hot Chili, Pepper's Ice Cube Corn Rage against the
Speaker 1: Machine in Limp Biscuit topped the bill of the new
Speaker 1: Woodstock Venture by Michael Lang Woodstock ninety nine. Musically, it
Speaker 1: has little to do with the original festival from nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine. The passive folk stylings of Joan bias, Arlo
Speaker 1: Guthrie and Richie Havens would be booed off stage instantly
Speaker 1: at the festival. Yet the ethos of peace and love
Speaker 1: still exists, at least in the marketing at the Festival
Speaker 1: of nowhere else. But on stage, bare chested macho aggression
Speaker 1: leads the day and you can feel it in the crowd.
Speaker 1: At an MTV crew stand up, Carson Daley is getting heckled.
Speaker 1: I could fuck Jennifer Love Hughett better than you could.
Speaker 1: Someone throws water in the vj's face. He sheepishly pleads,
Speaker 1: just tell me that wasn't your piss man. And near
Speaker 1: the east stage, hundreds of people roll in the mud
Speaker 1: behind a row of portable toilets to cool off, even
Speaker 1: if it means writhing in human filth. And by this
Speaker 1: point one hundred guards the Peace Patrol had quit, leaving
Speaker 1: little internal security. Gangs of so called mud people have formed,
Speaker 1: dripping in the stuff. They roam the grounds and supposedly
Speaker 1: guard the scattered public water fountains, which barely work. Unlike
Speaker 1: the original Woodstock, Woodstock ninety nine is blatantly commercial, with
Speaker 1: four dollars bottles of water and twelve dollars pizzas on
Speaker 1: top of a whopping one hundred and fifty dollars ticket
Speaker 1: price that seems normalist today in twenty twenty one, but
Speaker 1: at night teen ninety nine, all it was seen is
Speaker 1: exorbitant by fans in the pit body thrash, mud flies.
Speaker 1: A dozen or so college dudes sit above on a
Speaker 1: production trailer, more concerned with the thrashing crowd than the
Speaker 1: band on stage, which seems as though it's a mile
Speaker 1: away and they're chanting, show us here, tits, show us here, tits.
Speaker 1: Dudes in the crowd get all horned up and begin
Speaker 1: man handling the girls in the crowd, lifting them up
Speaker 1: as human trophies to signal their obedience to their chanting
Speaker 1: brethren on the trailers. The women are understandably horrified. Some
Speaker 1: oblige and lift their shirts and bras the dudes are
Speaker 1: erupted in approval. The girls are dropped and scurry away.
Speaker 1: At limp Biscuit plays, the crowd goes fucking bananas for
Speaker 1: the nookie and especially literally for the song break. Stuff
Speaker 1: in the pit, ribs are cracked, wrists or snap more.
Speaker 1: Women are harassed, their clothes torn off by force. A
Speaker 1: crowd surfer is raped all over. Glass bottles fly through
Speaker 1: the air and shatter against skulls. The crowd turned mob
Speaker 1: tears a siding off the media towers and camera platform,
Speaker 1: but MTV has already abandoned the show to cover the
Speaker 1: medical tent. It's overflowing with serious injuries, broken arms and legs,
Speaker 1: a fractured spine. Rage against the Machine takes the stage
Speaker 1: and figuratively proclaims to Michael Lang's Woodstock generation that subtlety
Speaker 1: is dead. With pummeling beats and heavy rifts, they work
Speaker 1: the crowd into an orgy of aggression. They lyrically rail
Speaker 1: against capitalism while playing for a hefty paycheck for what
Speaker 1: amounts to little over an hour's worth of work only
Speaker 1: in America, and before they leave the stage, they burned
Speaker 1: the American flag. Perfect Woodstock ninety nine is more of
Speaker 1: a destructive mess than its original predecessor. One person died
Speaker 1: after overheating and collapsing during Metallica set. Police launched four
Speaker 1: rape investigations officially, and many sexual assaults are also reported
Speaker 1: and beyond the police record. Concertgoers reported witnessing multiple gang rapes,
Speaker 1: fires destroyed or damaged a dozen trailers, in a bus,
Speaker 1: not to mention many of the overpriced booths and filthy
Speaker 1: porter bodies. The booths and ATMs that weren't destroyed broken
Speaker 1: into how could this happen? Not at Woodstock, the entire
Speaker 1: media gasped as it collectively clutched its pearls. The stories
Speaker 1: from the mainstream, non rock and roll press were typically
Speaker 1: simple minded and played off the contrast between the peace
Speaker 1: and love success of the original Woodstock with the destructive
Speaker 1: failure of Woodstock ninety nine, But in reality, the two
Speaker 1: festivals were very similar Woodstock. The original Woodstock was a
Speaker 1: literal disaster, declared so on its first day by the
Speaker 1: State of New York. Yet the lasting image of Woodstock
Speaker 1: is one of idyllic harmony. Woodstock was born of violence,
Speaker 1: sparked into existence out of Michael Lang's Mexican standoff with
Speaker 1: hillbilly armed guards and cops from down in Florida, and
Speaker 1: there were fights on stage, armed black shirted Hippi Gestapo
Speaker 1: on patrol, and most notably, two dead kids on record.
Speaker 1: Yet the word on Woodstock was it was born out
Speaker 1: of and demonstrative of, an ethos of peace. Woodstock's organizers,
Speaker 1: even Michael, were from the beginning driven by profit. Yet
Speaker 1: the word on Woodstock was it was an anti commercial
Speaker 1: venture conceived out of communalism. But hell, even the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties counterculture radicals, the most anti commercial among the hippie movement,
Speaker 1: avowed Marxist led by Abby Hoffman, extorted Woodstock organizers for
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of dollars in cash. Woodstock is hailed
Speaker 1: as an improbable organizational achievement that showed the power of
Speaker 1: young people coming together on mass in service of a
Speaker 1: higher ideal, a common good. Yet festival organizers nearly mass
Speaker 1: electrocuted hundreds of thousands of kids due to their poor planning.
Speaker 1: So strong was their fear of this possible deadly outcome
Speaker 1: that one organizer broke down on the scene and pledged
Speaker 1: to kill himself. So how then did we end up
Speaker 1: with this accepted narrative that Woodstock sixty nine was vastly
Speaker 1: different than Woodstock ninety nine? How then did we wind
Speaker 1: up believing all these years in the hippie dream in
Speaker 1: sixties idealism. It's permeated our cultural power centers ever since
Speaker 1: sixty Idealism, since Woodstock, has transcended politics, sports, art, academia, film, television, media,
Speaker 1: and of course music. But why if Woodstock was such
Speaker 1: a disaster, why is its legacy so strong? Something else,
Speaker 1: something good, something ideal, Simple because, unlike Woodstock ninety nine,
Speaker 1: the original Woodstock had a better movie. Concert films don't sell,
Speaker 1: but Woodstock the movie sold, grossing fifty million dollars in
Speaker 1: its original box office run and earning universal critical acclaim.
Speaker 1: Why Because Woodstock the movie isn't a concert film. It's
Speaker 1: a love story. Actually, it's a love letter to the
Speaker 1: sixties generation. At every turn, the film highlights the good
Speaker 1: from the festival and ignores the bad or should I
Speaker 1: say the reality. Creatively, there is no shame in that.
Speaker 1: The director, Michael Wadley, had a point of view, and
Speaker 1: he expressed it in the editing room, going so far
Speaker 1: as to say so himself, saying in nineteen nine tinety four, quote,
Speaker 1: I saw this as a sort of back to the land,
Speaker 1: back to the garden, beautiful event. If you look at
Speaker 1: the film that I edited, the whole film then created
Speaker 1: this kind of mythology. What was the real Woodstock and
Speaker 1: what was the mythological unquote? The film is an idealized
Speaker 1: version of the events that took place that weekend. In Bethel,
Speaker 1: New York, in August of nineteen sixty nine. It is
Speaker 1: not what really happened. If the director were to make
Speaker 1: a realistic movie about Woodstock, the film would have been
Speaker 1: a disaster movie, because the entire weekend, on balance, was
Speaker 1: fraught with tension, violence, near death, actual death, chaos and
Speaker 1: destruction peppered in. There was, of course, some great music,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure some good times. But this notion that
Speaker 1: Woodstock was a generation defining moment, so significant that it
Speaker 1: marked actual, real change for generations to come is complete,
Speaker 1: in total bullshit. Nothing changed. Soldiers remained in Vietnam for
Speaker 1: another six years. In the next presidential election, Republican Richard
Speaker 1: Nixon's scourge of the hippie generation was elected in the
Speaker 1: biggest presidential landslide in modern times, winning forty nine of
Speaker 1: fifty states, declaring with authority what the majority of Americans
Speaker 1: actually felt about peace, love, and the vaunted ideals of
Speaker 1: the sixties. Nixon later resigned in disgrace. In his Republican replacement,
Speaker 1: Gerald Ford, was defeated in nineteen seventy six by Democrat
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter in what was no doubt a rebuke of
Speaker 1: Nixon's Party, but twelve years of Republican rule followed after Carter,
Speaker 1: the first quote unquote rock and roll President. Numbers don't lie,
Speaker 1: but films do, which is why the legacy of Woodstock
Speaker 1: the baby Boomers the sixties is so strong. It's why
Speaker 1: after two disastrous festivals Woodstock sixty nine and ninety nine,
Speaker 1: not to even mention the rainy blip on the cultural
Speaker 1: radar that was Woodstock ninety four, which was essentially Allowa
Speaker 1: to loose a knockoff. Michael Lang was once again given
Speaker 1: the opportunity to produce yet another Woodstock in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: but alas that effort completely failed, good old hippie planning
Speaker 1: finally caught up to Woodstock, which is a shame. It
Speaker 1: would have been great to go on up to the country,
Speaker 1: pay two hundred and fifty dollars for a ticket, six
Speaker 1: bucks for a bottle of water in a twenty spot
Speaker 1: for some shitty pizza to see. Imagine dragons and the
Speaker 1: lumineers pump out some uninspired nowhere rock jams on a
Speaker 1: stage a million miles away under the blistering sun. I'm joking,
Speaker 1: of course, festivals don't interest me. I'm a bigger fan
Speaker 1: of the movies, not love stories, disaster movies. The bigger,
Speaker 1: more violent, destructive and disgraceful, the better, you know. Kind
Speaker 1: of like Woodstock. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland,
Speaker 1: they would. Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and is
Speaker 1: produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode
Speaker 1: can be found on the show notes page at disgracelampod
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Speaker 1: thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it.
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