Sara Davidson
|July, 5, 2019
This is Part 2. To read Part 1 click here.
I don’t know how or when I got home. I remember driving my black Beetle out through the tight-packed crowds. This time, though, without police escorts, I was tense and anxious, the beetle crawling forward as we waited for people in front of the bumper to move aside. The only other memory I have is that we were nearly out of gas, but all the gas stations in a 60-mile radius were closed.
Pulling into one, I inserted a hose into my gas tank, pulled the lever so whatever gas was left in the hose would trickle in. I did this 4 or 5 times at different pumps, until I had enough to reach a station that was open.
But that’s it. I don’t remember where we spent the night. When I looked for details about going to Woodstock in Loose Change, my book about three women growing up in the Sixties, I was surprised to read this: “The bodies were packed so densely and the smell–rotting fruit, urine, sweat, incense!—was so strong I thought I would faint and be trampled. It was not until dark that I was exhausted and stoned enough to enjoy the music.”
Leaving Sunday, we missed a signature moment of the festival: Jimi Hendrix on Monday morning, playing a weird, screechy, brilliant rendition of the “Star Spangled Banner.”
Both Jimi and Janis Joplin would be dead from overdoses the following year, at age 27. This prompted Jacob Brackman, film critic for Esquire, to write in the New York Times, “It feels as if a great many of us have been overdosing, in one way or another; as if it’s nip and tuck who’ll make it into his thirties intact.”
As people began straggling home, when asked what the highlight of the festival was, they said the same thing: “the people.” They did not talk about the music, which was sensational, on a level no one had heard before. They spoke about the instant intimacy they’d felt with people they met, and the validation of who they were and their ideals.
Look at the pictures. This was not a gathering of hippies, radicals and crazies.
They were the children of mainstream America, caught in a generation-wide clash with their parents. The parents did not like their hair, their clothes, their drugs, their sexuality, their politics, and their questioning of everything.
An 18-year-old from New Jersey, who was hiking out Sunday with a muddy orange sleeping bag on his back, said the most important part of the festival was “being here with people like me. I guess it will reinforce my lifestyle, my beliefs, from the attacks of my parents and their generation.”
So many households were fractured. When I was studying at Berkeley, it was painful to be home with my parents. I was taking part in civil rights marches in San Francisco, picketing the Sheraton Palace for discriminating against Negroes (as they were called then), and my parents were realtors, worried and resentful about Negroes moving into white neighborhoods.
My father said Jews had faced discrimination when they immigrated here. “We pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps,” he said. “We didn’t ask for any special treatment.”
At Woodstock, kids were connecting with others having the same struggles with their families. And they were walking their talk. Left to their own devices, they created a community governed not by laws and rules but “peace and love.” As Grace Slick announced when she took the stage Sunday morning, “Believe me: this is the new dawn.”
“When we finally got to Woodstock…” The name came to stand for everyone in the generation, and we felt certain that, by our sheer numbers, we could move the world.
So why did it turn out to be a false dawn? Four months later, when the Rolling Stones gave a free concert at the Altamont Raceway in California, Hell’s Angels kept people away from the stage by beating then with pool cues. While the Stones were singing, “Under My Thumb,” an African-American man, Meredith Hunter, brandished a gun and was stabbed to death. Some attributed this disaster to the hiring of an outlaw motorcycle gang to serve as bodyguards for the Stones. The Stones embraced a demonic image—“Sympathy for the Devil”—and, unlike at Woodstock, the crowd was aggressive, shoving and tussling with each other.
The three days of Woodstock turned out to be a bubble in time, never repeated. While the festival was taking place, history was moving in a different direction. There were currents gathering force, unseen as yet. Hunter Thompson wrote in 1971 in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: “Every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash.” He thought, as many did, we were riding the crest of “a high and beautiful wave,” that would roll from sea to shining sea. We did not sense that if Woodstock was the crest of the wave, it would crash, as all waves do, pulling back with an undertow. The year before, Richard Nixon had been elected President and begun the inevitable backward roll.
We also did not sense the uniqueness of the music produced during that era and played at Woodstock. In my opinion, the outpouring and quality of songs–by the Beatles alone, who wrote 207 songs, plus Bob Dylan, who wrote 458, the Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell, the Mamas and Papas, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and dozens of others–has not been equaled at any other time in our lives. As a friend, Charles Horowitz, who was not at Woodstock, said recently, “The music lives on and on, for me and many of us.”
It’s notable that, thus far, the music has been more durable than the ideals of peace and love, of oneness and caring for our neighbors. One can only hope that the great pendulum of history will reverse direction again. Could the seeds of love and peace, now underground, be germinating, gathering momentum to blossom again?
To re-experience the 60s as they happened, or to experience what it was like to be young at that time, read Loose Change.
Thank you Sarah for this wonderfully poignant and moving reflection of Woodstock and those times of hope and expectation. It touches my heart!
Sara,
Reading this was as much fun as I’ve had since the first time I read Loose Change in- when was it? The seventies? I clicked into a memory I remembered from decades ago of your distinctive, humorous voice, and I still love it.
Awww, Ellen, that warms my heart. Thanks for taking the time to send your message. I had a great time writing about Woodstock. It took me back to the joy and crazy wonder of that time.
So true that the music endured more than the ideals. That is sad. And yes, let’s hope the pendulum of history does its work. Thank you Sara
Thank you!
A friend from Rochester Michigan sent me wonderful letters he wrote while at Woodstock.
We lived in golden days…
You’ve nailed it! Hopes and dreams ultimately faded, but the music has carried its life
to the present time. A little corner of my mind is hoping that perhaps Trump’s
reign may be bad enough to spawn a coming together of those Woodstock ideals, this
time to hold together and really begin to form the evolutionary leap that humanity
needs to take to survive. Maybe if we’re smart enough to seize our chances, we’ll this time
be able to “get ourselves back to the Garden.”
It seems that the two years between those born in 1941 and 1943 is a huge gap in generations. I was at Berkeley when crowds were beginning to gather and I did not understand or sympathize with them, I did not understand why adults were abandoning their authority and values to accommodate the demands. The belief in peace and love did not seem reflected in the world I saw. But I think that movement was world wide. It was also the time of the red guards in China. And others in the world. It was zeitgeist.
I wonder….the children of mainstream America were raised to sit and listen to authority, to do what they were told, to “be good.” Perhaps those instincts allowed them to hear the volunteer’s on-stage request that they share and take care of each other. But now, the current generation has been raised on the importance of individuality, self-esteem, following your own path. So, today’s kids wouldn’t have the same instinct to sit and listen….they’re too focused on their uniquenesses.
So enjoy reading your description of events around Woodstock and the perspective you put them in.
Wonderful hope that the seeds for Peace and Love will blossom and thrive.
There are a few things I want to comment on. We went to LA High. The school was amazingly inter racial. I had been raised by parents who taught us before Martin Luther King said to judge people by the content of their character. They had Negro and Chinese friends. I’m sorry your parents were different. I remember when a black dentist and his family moved onto Burnside and the whole block (and neighborhood) went up for sale. So sad. Then the first school I taught at in 1966 was in South LA. Most of the students and teachers were black. It was an excellent experience. Later when I moved to the SF East Bay, I was shocked that the black neighborhoods in Richmond had mainly, if not all, white teachers.
As for the changes in the 60’s regarding sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll, I wasn’t much of a participant. I wasn’t like the characters in Loose Change. When I moved up to SF in 1967, I was appalled at the state of the Haight Ashbury. Seeing young people strung out on drugs was also sad. I did participate in a march against the Viet Nam war. I was involved in some other activities like the Soviet Jewry Action Group. Woodstock had no meaning for me.
I’m sure you sensed that you and I were on different paths after you started college. Nonetheless, we both move in a liberal direction.
Enjoyed both Woodstock entries, Sara—thanks for posting. Although it’s easy to feel that the music endured while the ideals did not, I’m not sure I agree. Think of the Whole Earth Catalog and the consciousness of caring for the planet, Health Food and the dawning of an era of trying to put non-poisonous things into one’s body, the Steinem/Friedan/Abzug/Greer wave of feminism, Ram Dass and Be Here Now and the rise of interest in spirituality (and by the way, loved your book about Zalman.). Yes, there is evidence that after this reign of we baby boomers, the planet is in rough shape, but there are also significant accomplishments in the areas highlighted above.
Then again, I’ll agree it didn’t turn out quite the way I thought it would when the Youngbloods played on campus and we all swayed as Jesse sang “C’mon people, now, smile on your brother…….”
Everybody at Woodstock had their own memories, and they varied vildly. I have friends who had a great time, grooving on the peace, love, music, and drugs . . . and friends who had a terrible time, overwhelmed by the mud, the paucity of food, the inadequate sanitary facilities, the rain. My one cavil about this account is the notion that this was a unique event. Yes, it was unique in that it was enormous, the largest such event ever held in the U.S. and maybe the world. But the confluence of music and the flower power of this generation at an outdoor festival was far from unique. Events like Monterey Pop and others elsewhere, some on college campuses, had that same feeling of sharing, love, and musical bliss. And of course it’s also true that Altamont was not the only time there was a distinctly different and darker mood to a music festival. The mid and late sixties and very early seventies was a chaotic time that was defined more by its chaos–the overwhelming amount of change, of drugs, of social and political disruption–than by any single overriding esthetic. The peace and love of Woodstock is mistakenly seen by some as representing the dominant zeitgeist of that time. If only it were that simple . . .
Thanks Sara, the music does live on! Now I can hardly wait to read Loose Change. I wasn’t at Woodstock, but I did live in California during the sixties. Forever hopeful, Carol
Hi, Sara!
I was a little too young for Woodstock–in ninth grade. But years later, somehow, I got hold of a blue Woodstock button–which was later stolen.
BTW, I’m pretty sure I’ve read Loose Change at least five times. It’s one of my all-time favorite books, ever!
I still long to know what Tasha and Susie and all of the other “girls” are up to these days. Maybe, sooner than later, a blog about them? Cheers! Hilary
I agree — love to hear what Tasha and Susie are up to! And you too of course!
Sara, I enjoyed reading your memories of Woodstock! I also read Loose Change many, many years ago and loved it. I also saw the mini-series on television, and remember it well. Wish I could see it again! On Thursday I’ll be attending a Woodstock Tribute concert in Woods Hole, Falmouth, MA — on Cape Cod. The singer is Dawna Hammers, very talented — you should hear her sing Joni Mitchell songs — Amazing!
Diane Mandeville
Cape Cod, MA
Hi Sara,
I was at Woodstock on Saturday afternoon – Sunday morning; for the record, therefore, I feel qualified to note that there are 1 or 2 minor inaccuracies in your account:
1) You write: “The music ran all night: Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, The Who, and when the sun rose, Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane announced, “Believe me: this is the new dawn.” Santana definitely played on Saturday afternoon, not in the evening or overnight. (see below).
2 (This point is more of a source’s inaccuracy; no one could really tell back than – no Google Earth or cellphones, maybe a few landlines installed) You also report that, “We’d heard that all roads leading to the festival were blocked, with people abandoning their cars to hike 10 or 15 miles to the site.” It’s not clear when you heard this, Friday night, early Saturday morning? In any event, that report was conjecture or rumor. This is going to sound like a math problem: If you left Boston at 8am, I’m guessing you got to Liberty around 1pm Saturday afternoon. Leaving from New Jersey around 9am, I drove up the NY Thruway and got off on Route 17 around noon. The Thruway WAS NOT shut down at this point nor was Rt. 17 blocked. My friend and I got approximately within 7 miles of the site and parked along the right gulley. We walked to the site, waited for about an hour with anticipation for Santana’s performance. We were blown away; I recall liking their first album but it didn’t touch the pure power of their live performance.
One important detail that I’ve never seen reported: As a green 20 year old from Fanwood, NJ, I was definitely not prepared for a beastly hot White Lake Saturday afternoon and a freezing cold overnight. The Woodstock spirit saved my tender tushy.
After Woodstock, I became an underground dj on my college radio station and migrated to Boston in 1972 where I volunteered on Max’s show at BCN when it was still on Stuart Street. I’m curious who you were married to back then…Jim Parry, John Brodey? I’ll bet on Norm. I went on to spend the 70’s mostly at WCAS in Cambridge. My greatest radio disappointment was that I wasn’t good enough to make to BCN. CAS did beat BCN in softball once, though.
Other than my minor points, I really appreciate your bringing that weekend to life again!
Rock on,,
Don Cohen
Thanks, Don, for your memories and specificity. You’re right, Santana played in the afternoon. But you’re wrong about the NY Throughway. All the radio and tv stations in the area announced that the throughway had been shut down. (whether it actually was or not)
One of the commentators to this blog wrote:
“The news came on, and the lead story was that the New York Thruway was shut down.
“The Thruway is shut down?! From a rock concert?!! We shut down the New York Thruway!!!!”
By the way, I drove from NYC, not Boston. And I drove to Liberty, so the road there was no problem.
Warmest,
Sara
Thanks Sara. You have always been in the right places at the right times. What a gift!
Wonderful re-cap, truly… full of sensual triggers and heart-pulsing memories.
But I just can’t agree with the turning of the tide. The back-wash is a natural sociological rebounding that happens when the status-quo is disturbed.
Perhaps if we could see from a larger perspective, we would feel more comfort that we planted seeds that struggle to emerge–and thrum deep within our soil of consciousness with energy yet to bear fruit.
Social change is slow. We may not live to see the results which lie with the children we raise and the twists and turns it takes to get there.
Hope… Work… Blood, sweat and tears…
I am so jealous I was born in the sixties but far too young to take part in any of the “cool stuff” that was going on. The music of that era is my life’s blood. It resonates like no other music ever can do. It must have been wonderful and overwhelming to have been part of that surge of optimism and energy and the feeling that the world could change and it would be the age of…something better at least. My teenage pop music of the seventies was kind of catchy, but flashy and meaningless. Punk was edgy and desperate but with no sense of possible redemption. The pop music now is pushed out from corporations and is devoid of anything but conformity. Even the edges of the human vocals (Joe Cocker anyone?) have been through the electronic processor. It’s all the same, safe and predictable, not dangerous. People think they like it because they are pre-programmed to like it. The corporations seem to have won.
Hi Sara,
Thank you for this blog. So many of us were touched by Woodstock and use it as a cultural anchor.
I had completed my freshman year and was home from Boston University that summer. That weekend I remember my parents taking our little family to a Chinese restaurant in Plainfield, NJ. (It’s funny the details you remember 50 years later). As my father drove to the eatery, I remember he had the radio tuned to his favorite station, WNEW am. At the time that was the station with Sinatra/Steve & Edie/pop music for our parents’ generation. The news came on, and the lead story was that the New York Thruway was shut down.
“The Thruway is shut down?! From a rock concert?!! We shut down the New York Thruway!!!!”
I instantly rejoiced at the rebellious act our generation had just performed. And I was happy to take full credit, all the way from my lovely suburban home in New Jersey…where traffic was flowing. I guess I wanted to attach myself to the pulse of what was happening in some way, even if I couldn’t be there myself.
A year or two later, I was attending one of my classes at B.U. Before the teacher arrived, a few students were talking dreamily of the wonder and glory of Woodstock. The students in the discussion couldn’t make it to the concert either, but we all were in awe of how wonderful it must have been. It was such a cultural landmark. Then one young woman spoke up with a caustic and barbed tongue of sarcasm.
“I was there. You want to know what it was like?”
We all turned to her, waiting to hear the emmes from the front lines.
“It was a nightmare. No food. Soaking wet for two days. And I got hepatitis there. I wish I’d never gone.”
And just like that, another reality reminded us that all is not what it seems…at least not to everyone.
Decades later, my wife, a native of Los Angeles, told me her story of Woodstock. She was there. Well…sort of. She and her boyfriend had driven from Los Angeles up the coast of California, through Oregon and Washington, then across Canada to Montreal to visit friends and family. It was a trip of a lifetime. They were preparing for their trip back via Route 66, when a teacher they met in Montreal asked if she could hitch a ride back to the States – just a little out of their way – to a concert that was happening in upstate New York. They said sure. What the heck? It wasn’t that big of a change in their itinerary, and they had plenty of time.
They pulled in during a pouring rain. They arrived the Wednesday before the concert, and watched the stage being built. My wife’s boyfriend looked around, sized up what he saw and said that it looked like just another concert. Another hippie love-in. Coming from California they’d been to many before, and there would be many after. Nothing special there. He decided they should go, so they left.
Her boyfriend passed away in the 1980’s, but in the 1990’s my wife made an earth shattering discovery. She spoke with her old boyfriend’s parents and few friends from those heady times…and the story her boyfriend had told is that they were there. They attended the concert. He couldn’t handle the embarrassment of admitting they had driven 3,000 miles across the entire country from L.A., that they were there…at THE defining moment of a generation… but they left before it happened. So, he said they were “there,” which technically was true. And he let them all fill in the gaps in their imaginations, so he could live in the glory of the idea that he drove 3,000 miles across country and lucked out by being at our generation’s cultural touchstone. It was too important to destroy his “cool factor” and his ego by admitting he left before the concert actually started.
(What we do for love!)
I was going through some old things, and recently came across the one piece of Woodstock memorabilia that I have. It wasn’t from the concert itself – it was from the documentary which came out the following year. For some reason I must have had a knowing about how important that event would be for our whole generation. I saved and mounted on foam board (which probably destroyed any collector value) a page from the promotional news flyer the Boston movie theater handed out. I’ll attach the a photo of the poster in an email.
Enjoy!
I’m 69 (!) and I’ve been a huge fan since Loose Change. Cowboy was a particular favorite (Along with J. Colins’s Someday Soon). You were my shero before that word existed. Finding your blog gave me happy chills.
Thanks Sara, the music does live on! Now I can hardly wait to read Loose Change. I wasn’t at Woodstock, but I did live in California during the sixties.
I loved both of your pieces. I was 16 in 1969, living in the NY metro area and I vividly remember hearing on the radio that the NY State Thruway had been closed. Your descriptions are so textured it is easy to time travel there. I just saw David Crosby’s Remember My Name, so finding your pieces was kismet. Crosby Stills and Nash were my heart, as was Janis, Grace Slick, Jimi, Santana…
I do think it is unduly harsh and a little grim to conclude that the Woodstock generation failed, inasmuch as all of society wasn’t transformed. Having worked in the trenches as a civil rights lawyer and lobbyist/field organizer for the ERA Extension bill and the ERA itself, I saw and learned that meaningful change which endures, occurs slowly, in increments, more often than not (though of course one would wish for immediate drastic change for the better).
So, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Clean Air Act and Amendments of 1977, the creation of the Department of Energy, the March on Washington, the end, at last of the Vietnam War. And the spread of decency, conscience, and good heart, and a plethora of music which still, in my universe beats almost anything by way of singing my soul. Not a bad showing for a generation populated with SOME flower children – – how I wish we’d been the majority!
Well tonight I ramble, but I thank you for your contribution to the many things prompting me to be pensive about the past and the present tonight. And we carry on. Because we must. Thank you. And thank you to everyone who has commented. It’s a fascinating read. And a lot of excellent human beings are still here.
Hi Sara from sunny Spain! I came across your blog via many different avenues and I was so pleased I did! I was in Ontario the summer of Woodstock, a hippy who’s parents were English, father a Military Policeman and very very old-fashioned. They tolerated my hippy phase as they called it and although I managed to get to a lot of local festivals my biggest regret to this day was being refused permission to attend Woodstock with friends. I was 17 and considered not old enough to attend. The following year I flew to England and eventually ended up at Victoria train station in London. There were hippies with backpacks everywhere! Guess where they were all going – the very first Isle of Wight Festival – and you got it, I couldn’t go as my grandfather was expecting me imminently.
Two of the biggest festivals and I missed them both! Your account of Woodstock 1&2 made me feel like I was a part of it, in soul if not body and I would like to thank you for that. I’m an old lady now, but still have my copy of the Woodstock album and my memories……..
Thanks for sending Sara. We live in sadder times, so its good remember the great time we had there. It’s still our music, and the music of generations after. It was a wonderful trip we had together!
well, i missed it. i loved music, grew up in MS where there was a marvelous melange of blues, country, swing, soul, you name it. i was on cape cod that year and should have gone. instead, i worked. wrong move. thanks Sara. your 2 blogs are as close as i’ll get. lucky me, lucky you.
Not everybody wants to wallow in the swill of naked drugged out hippies rolling in the mud.