MICHELLE MARGETTS
The most over-the-top festival for social impact, size of crowd, quality of vibe, and quantity of mud, plus nausea-inducing porta-potties, was the 1969 Woodstock Music & Art Fair. It was held on six hundred or so acres leased from Max Yasgur’s dairy farm near Bethel, New York (more than forty miles southwest of Woodstock, New York; I guess the “Bethel Festival” just didn’t have the right ring to it). The Woodstock festival was three days of cultural and musical experimentation, melded with a very, very heavy dose of, well, doses.
Jim’s outpouring of work from the original Woodstock festival was prodigious. His images capture what it was like to be there from all perspectives—onstage, offstage, behind the scenes. He was reportedly a dervish of nonstop shooting until he collapsed in a heap backstage sometime during day three.
On assignment for Newsweek magazine, Jim seemed to bring an extra focus to capturing the energy of the crowd, including his incredibly striking shot of the technicolor masses. Jim said he had to climb up one of the huge lighting scaffolds bracketing the stage to get this bird’s-eye view, taken with a wide angle “fish-eye” lens. This shot was used as the centerpiece of the live three-album set Woodstock: The Original Soundtrack and More, released in 1970. Jim was a bit afraid of heights, but he had been dosed with acid by the Grateful Dead earlier in the day, and that was the only way he had the guts to climb up on the stanchion and get this now world-famous shot.
Crowds at the Woodstock Festival, Bethel, New York, 1969
CARLOS SANTANA onstage, with BILL GRAHAM crouching behind a speaker, Woodstock Festival, Bethel, New York, 1969
Crowds at the Woodstock Festival, Bethel, New York, 1969
State police, Woodstock Festival, Bethel, New York, 1969
Crowds at the Woodstock Festival, Bethel, New York, 1969
“Mudpeople,” Woodstock Festival, Bethel, New York, 1969
Dancing couple, featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine, Woodstock Festival, Bethel, New York, 1969
JIM MARSHALL at the Woodstock Festival, Bethel, New York, 1969
Bird’s-eye view with a fish-eye lens and a filter of CARLOS SANTANA on stage at the Woodstock Festival (used as the centerpiece of the live three-album set Woodstock: The Original Soundtrack and More), Bethel, NY, 1969
In 1969, only a couple of weeks after Woodstock, Marshall was at the North Carolina Blue Grass Festival. If ever there was proof needed that Marshall’s ears and eyes knew no boundaries, this would be it. One week he was pulling all-nighters to grab early dawn shots of Jefferson Airplane and the Who, and the next he was noticing the beautiful symmetry of a line of Good Ole Boys with stand-up basses in North Carolina.
Booking agent and festival promoter Carlton Haney had been putting on these bluegrass gatherings over Labor Day since the mid-1960s. In 1969 he bought several acres at Camp Springs, North Carolina, to give the festival a permanent home. The festival’s lineup featured some of the biggest acts working at the time, including Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley, Josh Graves, and many, many others.
