Woodstock 1969: Get Ourselves Back to the Garden

Though Monterey Pop generated my favorite of Jim’s festival documentation, 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 (conga drumroll please): 1969’s Woodstock Music & Art Fair. Held Aug. 15-18 on 600 or so acres leased from Max Yasgur’s dairy farm near Bethel, NY (which is more than 40 miles southwest of Woodstock, NY.  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.

Over the next three blogs we’re going to highlight some of Jim’s prodigious outpouring of work from the original Woodstock festival.  Along with a smattering of iconic images we have dug a bit deeper in the archives to uncover many not-yet-seen images that capture what it was like to be there from all perspectives, onstage, offstage, behind the scenes, between the toes POV that only Jim would think to notice.  He was reportedly a dervish of non-stop shooting until he collapsed in a heap onstage sometime during day three (more on that later).

During the on-and-off again rainy weekend, nearly half a million people “watched” as 32 acts did their thing during an event that is (debatably) regarded as world-changing, but was certainly without argument seen as music-world-changing. On assignment for Newsweek magazine, Jim seemed to bring an extra focus to capturing the energy of the crowd, including the incredibly striking shot of the technicolor masses that opens this blog post.  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 “fisheye” lens (I think a 21 mm?).  This shot was used as the centerpiece of the 1970 live three-album set, “Woodstock: The Original Soundtrack and More”.

A bit afraid of heights, Jim said that he was 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. In doing my research I came across this quote, originally published in The New Times Watkins Glen Edition, July 28, 1973, from Max Yasgur’s wife Mimi. “Woodstock was no achievement for Max,” she recalls.  “The festival was just an extraordinary event that widened his experience in life because of his contact with these people.”  The man, a successful farmer and staunch Republican, is best characterized by a comment he once made to her: “When I decide that I have to drive by someone in need of help and not stop, that's not the kind of world I want to live in.” Joni Mitchell’s song "Woodstock" commemorated the event and became a huge hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, who played together for only the second time at Woodstock.  I think it does a terrific job of summing up the ethos and pathos of the times, almost as good as Jim's photos.

“Woodstock”

I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him where are you going

And this he told me I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm
I'm going to join in a rock 'n' roll band
I'm going to camp out on the land
I'm going to try an’ get my soul free
We are stardust We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it’s the time of man
I don’t know who I am
But you know life is for learning

We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation

We are stardust
Billion-year-old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil’s bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden