Chapter 3.5: The Woodstock Nation: You can listen to Jimi but you can’t hear Jimi.
When we arrived at the 600 acre farm in Bethel in early August, there was a trailer that served as headquarters for the organizers, Artie Kornfield and Michael Lang. And very little else besides a pile of lumber and fencing material. The festival field formed a natural bowl sloping down to a large pond on the land’s north side. The stage supposedly would be set up at the bottom of the hill with the pond in the background so that all attendees could view the stage from the hill.
My stepbrother went to work immediately for the brilliant head sound engineer, Bill Hanley, who had to build speaker columns on the hills with 16 loudspeaker arrays in a square platform going up on 70-foot (21 m) towers. Behind the yet to be built stage were three transformers providing 2,000 amperes of current to power the amplification setup.
I scouted the area and found a small pond with fresh water away from the main field but within walking distance, and I set up camp for my stepbrother and myself.
Kornfield and Lang were insanely busy as they were totally unprepared but were expecting 50,000-150,000 people descending on them in less than 10 days. I had nothing to do, so I spent the next few days scouting out the 600 acre farm. Then my stepbrother told me they were looking for “bodies”: carpenters, electricians, security guards and traffic controllers, anybody who could walk. So I went to the headquarters, and because I knew the lay of the land, I was put into traffic control and issued my Walkie-Talkie and a T-shirt and a windbreaker with the official Woodstock Dove and Guitar Emblem, which was the official badge and pass. My paycheck was promised to me the day after they had collected entrance fees from the yet- to- be built ticket booths.
The logistics of traffic control were challenging. There were three exits from the New York Throughway leading to a series of small roads through and around the town of Bethel and the farm. We had to coordinate with the State and local police to make all roads one way to allow free traffic flow, the Police were to blockade all entrances and exits to this purpose and we traffic controllers were to find parking for the many buses and cars that would be arriving. So that was my job, designating the parking fields to move vehicles off of the roads quickly. I had walked the farm, so we set a plan on where to send the attendees to park and camp, depending on which direction they came from, to be coordinated on a dedicated police band communicating with the Police blockades on the NY throughway.
On Tuesday, August 12, the organizers had an emergency meeting. The stage was yet to be built, the fencing was not complete, there were no ticket booths to collect money for the festival that would start in 3 days. 35 of the greatest artist-performers had been booked to play at Woodstock, including The Who, The Band, Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter, Credence Clearwater Revival, Jefferson Airplane, Ten Years After, Joan Baez, Santana, Joe Cocker, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and Jimi Hendrix.
The organizers faced disgrace from the musicians, a possible riot from ticket holders, and probable bankruptcy and endless litigation. So they ordered the stage to be built as a priority.
The next day, Wednesday, my job began to evolve from careful strategy to the difficult to the merciless to the surrealistic and then to the impossible. Over 10,000 vehicles arrived that day. Easy, the next day, Thursday, maybe 40,000 vehicles, still without issue, and we had a set up a field for the “Hog Farmers” commune accessible close to the field, for they would feed many. Friday was a nightmare; over 100,000 vehicles came through traffic jams on the New York State throughway onto the farm. Our system held up, barely.
Richie Havens kicked off the Music event Friday night with a long set starting at 5:15. The traffic kept other bands from arriving, so he had to go on for hours, exhausting every song he ever wrote or Sung or even heard of. Eventually Joan Baez and Arlo Guthrie arrived also performed on Friday night. Rain started to fall, making the parking fields muddy. I worked through my second night without sleep.
Saturday morning was surrealistic. At about 12:00 p.m., the Police blockades failed and a mile plus stream of traffic, each in the opposite direction, came head on with no place to go. Miles of vehicles face to face, no in or out, it was Checkmate. The hippies realized this and hopped on the hoods of their buses and cars and broke out the pot pipes to pass around. Radio to the Police frequencies confirmed the failure of the blockades and the one way routing system.
I was out of a job. I radioed HQ but nobody answered. The Police coolly ignored the rampant drug usage, “hey, peace bro, we just in the hood.” They had no choice. Over 500,000 people showed up. It was now the third largest city in New York State, impromptu. But just epic: The Woodstock Nation!
Having no more work to do, I went to the Hog Farmers to get some rice and hotdogs, then returned to my station to figure out what was my next move. I climbed to the top of a remaining section of the 10 foot fence and sat and took in the scene. Awesome, thousands upon thousands of young men and women, bound in harmony, stoned, wandering in awe, peace and love and much music, as was billed, as the greatest musicians of the era played in the background, even as the rain came and went.
I noticed this extremely beautiful girl, just staring at me from below. For nearly 30 minutes she just stared at me with those woman’s laser eyes that can penetrate a man’s soul. I don’t know if it was my long hair and looks or the imprimatur of power from my Walkie-Talkie and T-shirt with the official Woodstock dove on guitar emblem, but she was locked on to me like a heat seeking missile. So eventually I bounced down from the top of the fence and took her hands and we sat opposite each other, holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes. She was a “12” on a scale of 1-10. Her name was Francie, from New Jersey, a 15 year old Virgin, a good Catholic girl from a normal functional family, and she had chosen me to be hers in this swirling festival of music and peace. It was a layup, but something strange came over me, I think it is called nobility or chivalry or lunacy, for I was only a little bit older, but this is what I said: “Francie, you are so incredibly beautiful. You are only 15 and you have the entire world ahead of you and can choose any man you want, have babies, go to your family dinners in New Jersey every Sunday night. A normal life, a good life. I am not what I appear to be, I am not normal, I have no home, I probably will have to go soon to Vietnam and die. Let’s just kiss and say goodbye. Your world lies ahead, mine is behind.”
Thus we hugged and kissed, she went off to a hopefully stable future, and then I was back to the Woodstock Nation. I began to make my way to the stage to find my stepbrother, who I had not seen for 2 days, and I needed to turn in my Walkie-Talkie at HQ. As I made my way to the stage, I was recruited to clear and rope off a helicopter landing zone on the hill, for National Guard Helicopters from the Stewart Air Force Base that were needed to fly in food, water, medicine and the performing artists. From there I could see The Grateful Dead were playing around 2:00 a.m., then my favorite, Janice Joplin came on, but as usual she was drunk on her Southern Comfort, yet again.
The Who came on later, and then the only violent incident in the Woodstock Nation humorously occurred on stage in this impromptu city of 500,000. Abbie Hoffman, that cowardly rabble-rouser, rushed the stage and grabbed the mike, and started a Yippie rant. Peter Townsend wacked him on the head with his guitar, took the mike and said “get off my stage”. That cowardly Yippie scum Hoffman disappeared quickly.
I met Gracie Slick of the renowned Jefferson Airplane as she boarded the Helicopter Sunday Morning. Then some beautiful girl collapsed in my arms. So I quit my post and dragged her off to the Medicine Tent to be treated for an overdose of something.
Then I went back to my tent to get a quick nap. Sunday night I went to HQ to drop off my Walkie-Talkie and officially quit. When I got to HQ, Woodstock financiers John Roberts and Joel Rosenman were freaking out because they had lost their shirts. They were out almost $2 million and had spent most of Sunday on the telephone exhaustively convincing Governor Nelson Rockefeller not to send in 10,000 National Guard troops, which would have caused massive riots. I surrendered my Walkie-Talkie, but kept my official Woodstock T-shirt and windbreaker with the Dove on Guitar logo. It would be worth a small fortune today, but I lost them both over the following years.
They asked me that Sunday night to escort Jimi Hendrix to the stage as he was one of the last acts and they wanted desperately to stop the hemorrhaging of their huge losses. But Jimi was passed out on Quaaludes and was slouched on their couch, face between his legs, his arms hanging loose. I shook him, then I bitch slapped him not on the face but on his shoulders. I got an “ugh”, he was still alive! “Jimi” I cried, “This is the New America, the Woodstock Nation, sing to it!” “Ugh” was his reply. So I bailed. I booked it out of there. My job was done. I needed sleep.
Chapter 3.6: The Star Spangled Banner: Shame on you fools, you can’t hear Jimi. Stand to colors or leave.
But Hendrix dragged himself back from the dead on early Monday morning, and did the “Star Spangled Banner” impromptu. I woke up and went to watch. It was amazing performance by arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music. The New America and its beautiful flag had been saluted by a great talent that would kill himself on drugs a little more than a year later.