Everybody my age says they went to Woodstock, but I actually did go.
Working at the Fillmore East had been a real trip, going half deaf listening to Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, the Dead. But Woodstock was a whole different kind of loud music and freewheeling lifestyle experience. We were going to change the world. Change it for three days that summer, anyway.
Two college friends, Deli Bob Shaw and B. J. Stringer, joined me and about half a million other fools driving or hitchhiking to somebody’s farm somewhere in upstate New York’s dairy land. City record stores were charging eighteen dollars for advance three-day tickets, but God only knew what the hell “Woodstock” was and what was going to happen in the unlikely event that we actually got there.
We exited the New York State Thruway and got on a skinny dirt road winding slowly to nowhere. Word had spread about Arlo Guthrie’s announcement to the gathering crowds: “The New York State Thruway is closed, man.”
Meanwhile, traffic on the dirt road had virtually stopped. Then it did stop.
So we parked. Just left the old VW there and joined the amped-up crowd, which we hoped was walking in the general direction of Yasgur’s Farm in Bethel, New York.
Then, there it was—nirvana. Except that once we actually got to the Woodstock festival, I don’t think we were ever closer to the stage than a quarter mile.
There were loudspeakers everywhere and the sound was decent (I think). But we were sure a long, long way from the live acts.
Still, we were there—smack in the middle of all that peace and love.
We listened to gravelly voiced Richie Havens, the great lung-busting Janis Joplin, and crazy-ass Country Joe and the Fish. The only thing missing, my only disappointment, was that John Lennon decided not to appear at Woodstock.
In the late afternoon, it started to rain—and it rained, and it rained, and it rained some more. And then I think it must’ve started to rain mud.
Late that first night, I fell asleep on the side of a hill. I woke up because I was sliding down the hill in a river of mud. I was soaked to the skin, probably a little stoned, and I was laughing like a wind-up idiot. That was Woodstock.
We stayed for about a day and a half as it continued to rain. The mud got feet, not inches, deep. My friends and I finally made a group decision: “Okay, well, we did this thing. We were at Woodstock. We made history. It’ll be a story someday.”