CHAPTER 6
Saturday
Early Saturday morning, the audience woke up to a man at the stage microphone shouting, “Goood morrrning!” It was Mel Lawrence from the Woodstock Ventures staff. The volume on his microphone had accidentally gotten turned up too loud. Immediately, heads in the audience popped up. People were groggy and a little annoyed. Lawrence apologized, lowered the volume, and began announcements. “We’re going to have another groovy day,” he predicted. At this, cheers sounded.
He told the audience that the outside world thought things were bad at Woodstock. But really everything was okay and they should all be proud of themselves. Joel Rosenman would later tell interviewers that it seemed like the more the outside world expected disaster, the more the fans refused to allow Woodstock to fail.
Big plastic garbage bags were passed around. The crowd helped out, stowing their trash till the bags were full. “What we have in mind is breakfast in bed for four hundred thousand,” Wavy Gravy announced. The commune served granola to the fans. For much of the crowd, it was either that or go hungry. So they ate it. Few had heard of granola back then. The festival helped make it famous.
Back home, many families were worried. Were their kids okay? The newspapers told of parked cars blocking roads for miles. Gas stations were out of gas. Even townspeople were trapped at home for the weekend. No one had cell phones in those days. There were pay phones at the festival, but not enough. Parents started calling local police or festival headquarters for news.
At least three-quarters of the people at Woodstock were between ages seventeen and twenty-three. Most had never taken care of themselves in the outdoors, away from home for a whole weekend. Some came prepared, but others didn’t. They didn’t bring extra clothes, tents, sleeping bags, or blankets. Some came barefoot.
Most didn’t bring much food or water. Maybe they only brought a few oranges or bags of chips. Some left their supplies in their cars, thinking they could go back for them later. They didn’t realize how far they had parked from the festival, though, and didn’t get back till the concert was over. Fans had expected to be able to buy food and other supplies at the festival or in nearby towns. But the stores quickly ran out.
During the festival, Michael Lang went around to check on things. He rode a motorcycle and usually wore jeans and a leather vest. He worked hard but was laid back. That meant he didn’t worry too much. When his team got upset, he might tell them to relax and enjoy the music. Sometimes that was helpful, but sometimes it just meant other people would have to fix problems that he didn’t.
There seemed to be a new crisis every time the festival staff turned around. By now, the portable toilets along the edge of the hill were overflowing. Trucks couldn’t get in to clean or repair them. The only choice was to dig big holes and bury the stinky mess. For the rest of the festival there were long lines for the bathrooms. Toilet paper was like gold and just as hard to find. Some people got frustrated and went in the nearby woods or in the yards of Yasgur’s neighbors.
People would leave their groups to use the bathroom, then couldn’t find their way back again. Woodstock was so crowded that it could take hours just to walk from the back of the crowd to the stage. Since there were no ushers and no seats, it was easy to get lost. Kids looking for friends wrote messages that were read aloud by staff onstage. When this became too much, only the most urgent ones were read. Others were posted on bulletin boards or tacked to trees around the festival grounds.
Doctors and nurses treated about four thousand fans with medical problems in a tent at the bottom of the hill. Most injuries and illnesses were minor. Some fans caught colds. Lots of feet got cut from stepping on rocks by the lakes or trash in the mud. However, dangerous illegal drugs like LSD were being passed around. If someone had a bad reaction to drugs, there was a “freak out” tent. Inside, Hog Farmers tried calming them down. More serious medical cases were flown out to a hospital by helicopter.
There were two known deaths as a result of the festival. One fan died of a drug overdose at a nearby hospital. Tragedy struck again when a tractor accidentally ran over a teenager in his sleeping bag, killing him. The Woodstock team was horrified and saddened. However, most of the crowd probably didn’t know until after the festival when they read about it in the news. There were rumors of a baby being born at the festival, but that may not be true. It’s more likely the birth happened in festival traffic or that the mother was airlifted out of the festival to have her baby in a hospital.
Friday’s rain had turned the hillside into a muddy mess. However, the audience made the best of it. Some even slipped and slid in the mud for fun. It was a hot summer weekend, and there was no place to take a shower, though some kids swam in the lakes.
If you care about staying clean and well-fed, Woodstock was not the place for you. Are you wondering why so many people in the audience stayed despite things getting kind of tough? Probably for the music and friendship. All around were people of the same age. People who understood one another and the problems they shared. People who liked rock music, long hair, and a good time. These fans knew they were in the middle of a once-in-a-lifetime event. No way were they leaving! Not yet.
