Woodstock: The Festival for Stardust, Golden Hippies

to cuss it you so bad right now. But I have been singing the Woodstock song in my head all day, which is a great song and one of those sort of rare not that rare, but one of those things where the cover versions are just as great. Yeah, it really is. It gets like all the versions. I mean, that's I don't think there's any any song that's captured the essence of that generation and that era better than that song, aside from We Built this City on rock

and roll. Yeah, And you know, I don't know if many people understand that it is a song written by Joni Mitchell, not Crosby, Stills, Nashing Young. She wasn't there either. David Geffen was her manager, and said, Nope, you can't go. You have to be on Dick Cavin on Tuesday, and I'm worried you won't make it back in time now, which is crazy. She wouldn't would have been amazing at

the concert. But they released that recorded version within a month of each other, which I never knew, just about six or eight or seven months after or eight months after the concert, but I didn't know. There was another version released also that same year from a British band

called Matthew's Southern Comfort. Boy. They really had some bad names back then, and I just listened to it, and boy, they really take all of the passion out of it in that version, and they skipped they just complete wholesale skip the coolest line I think in the song, which is they just say we are stardust, we are golden, and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden. They don't have that lyric in the middle we are billion year old carbon, which is so hippie dippy and amazing. Oh,

I never noticed that it's true though they're right. Joni Mitchell was right. They just skip it and it's just very mellow and lame. To my ears. It's like shoegaze drone. Yeah, I don't know. Apparently that was the biggest hit out of all of them though, which I no way. Yeah maybe in England, I don't know. Okay, thumbs down for me. Yeah, same here. I haven't even heard it, but it sounds sucky. Yeah, So we are talking about Woodstock and I think it's

one of those things. I'm probably in the majority for our age group. I've heard of it, I've I've got images of the film in my head. Sure, I have a general I could rattle off probably four or five people or bands that were there that played. They rained, and it was muddy, and there was brown acid that stuff.

The thing is is, when I was researching this, I was like, this really was like a really interesting event, and it's not necessarily because it was just so culturally significant, although it turned out to be, or that it was just such a special, magical, cosmic moment, which I'm sure if you were there, there are a lot of people who believe that, but more that it was just an exercise in putting half a million people together outdoors over three days, throwing as much drugs as you possibly can

into the mix, and then just seeing what happened, and what happened was really impressive, was very peaceful, basically worked like really communal. It was a really it was a cool thing. So out of all the stuff from the sixties that like all those old stars are saying like, hey, you know the sixties, you had to be there, King, this does seem to have some chops in that respect, Like it does seem to have been significant. Yeah, it

was one of those months in time for sure. And if you believe max Yasger, who we'll talk about quite a bit here and there he was. It was his farm very famously in Bethel, New York, that hosted this concert. But when he takes the stage and makes and speaks to the crowd, which is a very fun thing to watch on YouTube or if you watch the whole movie, he claims, and it might have been true at the time, that it was the largest grouping of human beings ever

in history in one place. I think I've seen that in places too that that's entirely possible, to tell you the truth, Yeah, I mean between four and five hundred thousand people. That's you didn't get crowds like that back then, no, And I mean I can't think of one since then. Now, yeah, the thing that went to that sprung to mind was I think Mecca gets pretty crowded on certain holy times. Okay, it's possible that like that's rivaled that before in the

past or even contemporarily. I don't know, but um, yeah, we'll put wood stock in Mecca together, how about that? Yeah. But even you're right though, when you think about the biggest like outdoor you know, even you know, there are no you know, outdoor arenas that hold anything close to this.

But even when they say like all right, we're gonna take over this part of Central Park or whatever or just this area, it doesn't really like a couple one hundred to three hundred thousand people is like a huge, huge deal. So this is four to five hundred thousand. I mean, the biggest hugest college football stadiums in the United States maybe crack one hundred thousand, and those things are just massive. Imagine four or five of those filled the capacity all dumped into just one of them. That's

just amazing on acid. Yeah, pretty neat. So yeah, let's start talking about this because there's a pretty cool story. I say we started at the beginning. How about that okay, and then pepper in some some stuff because Ed helped us with this one, and he really laid a bunch out in his intro, and I think we should kind of salt and pepper it in instead. All right, yeah, I think I know what you mean. Okay, cool, let's give it a shot. We do this on the fly everyone.

After all these years, we still do it the same way, just so you know, we'd like to go surprise. So Woodstock, and this is something Ed posed was why you know, we're talking about the four to five hundred thousand people, Why what made it special? Why were that many people? And one of the first kind of boring reasons is

just the mere fact of where it was. It was in Bethel, New York, and that was within six to seven to eight hour drive of New York City, Philly, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, DC, Buffalo, Boston, like within three or four hours of a lot of those. So it was just it was located in a place where and it was held over the course, you know, as you'll see, supposed to be three tight but it veered into the morning of the fourth. But you know, once word gets out that there's this free show, happening.

You could miss Friday and show up halfway there on a Saturday and still see a lot of the performers, you know. Yeah, and I don't think you would have missed a whole lot missing Friday. Frankly, hey, Ritchie Havens Okay, that's it. I'll give you amazing performance, for sure. I agree. I said miss much. It didn't miss nothing, all right, all right? So um yeah, that was a big, a big part of it. And it was in Bethel. It wasn't in Woodstock. Woodstock is like sixty miles away from Bethel.

But the reason that they named it Woodstock and hung onto that name for everything they had was because Bob Dylan had put this the town of Woodstock on the map when he moved there. It was like his little hideaway mountain I guess retreat in the sixties, and it just kind of became like a cool countercultural town. So the name itself Woodstock like meant a lot to the people who actually went to the Woodstock Festival in nineties

sixty nine. Yeah, and before people start screaming at you and me especially, it was famously where the band lived. One of my favorite, if not my favorite group from that era, and this is where Dylan and the band recorded the basement tapes outside or in the basement of Big Pink, the house that they rented. And I finally made my trip to Woodstock last year for a show at Levan's Barn, which I might have mentioned at some

point in one of our episodes. But that town is still holding on to that, and not in a bad way. It's still like embodies, i should say, that feeling and that artsy community, and it's just it's this magical place. I went in the dead of winter and there was hardly anyone there and me and my buddy Justin who you know, just like walked around Woodstock. A lot of the stuff was closed in the winter, but it just had this feeling there that is undeniable around Woodstock and

Bethel and Soagrates, where our buddy Joe Garden lives. By the way, I didn't know that. Shout out Joe Garden. Yeah, we went over to Joe's house. He's it's all right there together. It's a beautiful, beautiful country. So okay. So there's where the name comes from. Even though the whole thing was held in Woodstock and it was already kind of following in a tradition that was fairly new at

the time. Like we think of music festivals, you're like, like, any day of the week, you can find a music festival somewhere in the United States, Right, Yeah, for sure. It was actually still pretty new when Woodstock was held. The jazz festivals of the fifties and really starting the early sixties were the ones that established festivals, right because everybody knows, given the greatest jazz performers can't draw a huge crowd, so you have to put a bunch of

them together. Hence jazz festivals, right Yeah, Yeah, they were sort of the foundation. And I think the big the big one that kind of put these kind of festivals on the map. The first one was the Monterey Pop Festival right sixty seven, And I would argue that it sort of went away after the Altamont debacle with the murder at the Rolling Stones concert, and I think kind of I'd have to look it up. I'm sure there were some festivals here and there, but I think Perry

Farrell and Lallapalooza brought it back. I think it was down for a couple of decades. You're absolutely right, but I can't think of anything in between that was significant. There might have been something, but definitely like Lallapalooza is what really kickstarted the modern era of the festival. And like you said, now there they are just all over the place all the time. Yeah, And I should say there were plenty of like jazz festivals. There was New

Orleans Jazz Fest kept going on. Didn't really sea Perry Farrell and his aspirations. But yes, for the pop culture, it was definitely Lallapaluza. I couldn't agree more. Yeah, yeah, boy, I'm glad you said that about jazz fest. I would have gotten smoked in the emails. Yeah. Sure. So the festival craze was like at peak, the first wave of it, I should say, when Woodstock came, which was another thing that kind of helped make it such a legendary thing.

And the whole thing was founded by two guys, Artie Cornfield and Michael Lange, two guys put on Woodstock, and they did it with the backing of two kids, one of which came from a very very wealthy family of pharmaceutical dynasty, John Roberts and his friend Joel Rosenman. They bankrolled this thing and they actually were looking for interesting countercultural investments, so much so that they actually advertised in the New York Times that they had a bunch of

money and they were looking for interesting investments. And well, yeah, it turned out Larretie Cornfield, Michael Lange already knew Roberts and Rosenman and they had built like a recording studio together, and that kind of gave blossom to this whole Woodstock idea. Initially, it was going to be a one night benefit concert in Woodstock with Dylan as the headliner. That's Bob Dylan for those of you who aren't in the know like me, right um, And it was gonna pay for a music

studio that they were gonna build in Woodstock. That was the first idea of Woodstock. And then all of a sudden they're like, well, who else can we have and who else could we have? And all of a sudden, the music festival became way more important than the music studio that it was originally intended to help build. Yeah. Absolutely, uh.

And then you know, once they had this idea, they started searching around for a place and they tried Woodstock I think probably first, because, like you said, the cultural significance. Then they moved on to Joe Garden's house in Saugrate's and then get off my lawn. And then it was like, all right, was it quite big enough? Although Joe's house is great. It's like a little museum, so we can imagine.

And then wall Kill which is nearby as well, and they all, you know, smartly, we're like, no, like, we can't host something this big. Have you ever been out here? It is you're out in the middle of farmland, in forest and we can't hold a concert here. And this is when a gentleman named max Yasger, who was portrayed by Eugene Levy in the movie What was the movie? Was it? Oh you're you're serious? Oh? Yeah, yeah it was.

I thought you can say he portrayed him in the documentary now not finding wood stock, but something would stock or would stock? Ohoy, I think that was the name of it. But when you look at max Yasger, he looks a lot like Eugene Levies. It was great casting. But he, you know, was a guy that was a farmer and I think like a dairy farmer. Had about six seven hundred head of cattle and was the largest dairy farmer in the county, and he was not some

hippie sympathizer. He by all accounts, was kind of the opposite of that was what you might think he would be as a as a farmer in upstate New York, which is very straight laced, very Republican. But apparently he also kind of liked to thumb his nose at the man a little bit. And when the locals started himing and hawing about having a concert in Bethel, he was like, screw you, guys, you can have it at my farm. Right.

He was back in the two thousand aughts what you would have called the libertarian, probably so, so he also was one of those people. I get the impression he knew spunk when he saw it and he liked it. Yeah, I think you're probably right. So he really took a shine to Cornfeld and Lang. I think I've been calling him Cornfield. I don't know if you noticed or not,

but I meant Cornfeld and Lang. And so he helped them get this pushed through because they were, like you said, turned down at town after town after town in the area, and so Yasgar finally kind of got Bethel to to well at least with his support, Bethel was a little more accommodating, a little more allowable. But the way that these guys got this incredibly huge music festival pushed through city councils, got permits, and all that stuff was by lying, lying, lying, Yeah.

They agreed to anything that the city count souls asked for, including they agreed to hire one hundred and fifty off duty police officers. I don't think they ended up hiring one. They said that they expected fifty thousand, They expected actually two hundred thousand. The four hundred to five hundred thousand caught even them by surprise. But they were still expecting about four times more than they told the Bethel City

council they were. And they just basically said whatever they wanted to, whatever they thought they wanted to hear, and finally, like like you said, with the Yasgar's help, they got it, they got it pushed through, and they had a home. The problem is they had a home now for this festival, just five weeks before the advertised date. That's right, and I think it's a great cliffhanger. So we'll come back in a moment and see if the Woodstock concert even happened.

Well did it did it go down? I don't know. You tell me, did they fake that concert film like the moon Landing? Let's ask Eugene Levy. Uh No, the concert went down, And like you said, they only had five weeks and that presents a lot of problems logistically obviously, even though they weren't setting up like chairs and things

like that. It was like there's a lot of you know, people might say, just build a stage out in the middle of the field and it's taken care of, but there's so much more that goes into something like this, like food and water and bathrooms and you know, medical infrastructure and stuff like that. Plus I mean, if you see the footage from the documentary, there were legit like lighting rigs and sound rigs. Yeah, Like it wasn't just some like a bunch of plywood and Tubi fourds that

they put up. Like it was a legit like concert venue that they made out of nothing. Yeah, I mean it was. It was a money making venture. I mean, these guys were were sort of hippie dippie music fans, but they were out to make a buck. I think the original price was six bucks for a ticket. Eighteen for the weekend, which they didn't even give him a break on a weekend pass. It should have been fifteen for all three, yeah, real personally, and there were a lot of like they booked a lot of big acts,

but a lot of big acts at the time. Like Woodstock is kind of famous sometimes for who didn't play. The Beatles very famously did not play Woodstock. Led Zeppelin is mentioned in this article, but I would argue they, I mean, their first album was only four or five months old at this point. Zeppelin, Yeah, so I don't know. I mean, I'm sure it was a big record, but

they were trying to book like these whales. You know, the Doors didn't play, Dylan didn't play, but they were able to book as the headliners generally speaking, even though the times were pushed because everything was eight. So like the headliners ended up playing sometimes at like five in the morning or like with Jimmy Hendrix, you know, after

the sun came up on the Monday. But the Who and Jefferson, Airplane and Hendricks are generally sort of thought of is the biggest names there, yeah, at the time. And the thing is is like when you look back at Woodstock's line up, you're like, man, it was just huge act after a huge act. The reason why it

seems that way now is because of Woodstock. Like a lot of these YEA performers were not huge at the time, but they became huge even the who they credit the Woodstock performance for giving them a like a huge boost, basically taking them from rock stars to rock superstar like arena rock stars basically, yeah, in just a few months.

So it's it's easy to kind of take for granted that all these were big acts, but they definitely weren't, and a lot of them got paid relatively peanuts, you know, Like there were a lot of bands that took five thousand dollars or less to play at Woodstock, and at the time they didn't. When they agreed, they had no idea that it was going to be this thing. It just turned out to be a really good move for

all of them. Yeah, it was Santana's first I don't know if it was their first ever performance, but it was their first big show, like before their album was even out. And I think they were included because legendary rock promoter Bill Graham said, Hey, if you want the Grateful Dead, if you want credence, who. I watched a documentary on Credence not too long ago. They were the biggest band in the world the day after the Beatles

broke up. Oh really, like they were number two and then the Beatles broke up, and I was like, really Credence, Like I like Credence, But but then you go when you see the story, like they were huge and they had like twenty hits. You know, they were a big, big band. So anyway, well hold on, hold on before you move on. I had a similar experience. I saw, like I think Lifetime or somebody produced like a three

or four part Janet Jackson documentary that's really good. Oh yeah, and like it gets across she's if she wasn't one of the Ja Jaxon's right, she would be bigger than like Madonna and Celine diond rolled together like for that era, she was enormous. And yet that's how big a shadow her brother cast Rum that she no matter how huge she was, she was, you know, Michael Jackson's little sister. Yeah, but it's nuts, like the number of hits she had

and she's just like way bigger than I realized. And I mean everybody knows Janet Jackson, but I just had no idea like the success that she actually did have. Yeah, I want to check that out. I like Jane. It's it's good. It's definitely worth watching it. It It moves pretty fast too, it doesn't drag. No, not a lot of filler. Um.

So yeah, what was I saying? CCR? And and Bill Graham said, if you want CCR, you want the Dead, then you gotta take this new band that I'm representing called Santana and a very young Carlos Santana m not Neil Sean from Journey yet he was. He joined Santana as a fifteen year old right after the Woodstock performance. But because I was curious, I was like, did Neil Shan actually play at Woodstock? Because I knew he was a teenager, I get he's a founding member of Journey.

You're saying, well, yeah, Neil Shan from Journey was first in Santana as a fifteen year old. I did not know that. Well. Actually, to tell you the truth, I didn't know who Neil Shawn wasn't a minute. Excuse me, I'm a little uh for clem. I've just got a little chess congestion. So yeah, same here is it? The allergy is kidding you? It is I've been I haven't felt bad at all. But anyway, oh good h So yeah. Neil Shan, founding member of Journey, was in Santana as

a fifteen year old alongside Greg Rowley. Also he was a Journey's first piano player and singer before Steve Barry. I had no idea that there was such a deep Santana Journey connection. I know, how about that? Pretty cool? All right, So back to the timeline they are, or I should have said, back to the garden um. They had about five weeks to pull this thing together, and they had to make some tough choices, like when the construction supervisor comes up and says, you got a choice.

We can finish the stage or we can build fencing and make sure these tickets get sold and people don't get in. And I think the riding was on the wall a. They definitely said, all right, well, we've got to have a stage, of course, like a completed stage. And also like there's already kids camping out here while you're building the stage, like this thing is. They knew what was coming. I think they definitely do a certain degree, but ed makes a pretty good point that must have

dawned on them. There's no point in putting up really good fencing for a venue that doesn't have a stage, right, So they really had no choice whatsoever. They still tried to put up some fencing because, like you said, it's a money making venture, but it was just so totally inadequate that when they looked over. So this is like midweek when the construction supervisor comes over and says, do

you want fences or a stage? And there's already, from what I saw in some places, fifty thousand people camped out in the area where they're building the stage already. This is what they told Bessel was the total. And this is Wednesday and there's already fifty thousand people camped out for the show that starts on Friday. Yeah, they er to be. So those guys, very very very wisely, Cornfeld and Lang, they very wisely said there's nothing we can do. We're just going to announce that this is

a free concert from now on. And that did a few things that it just turned this into like a if it wasn't a hippie fest before, it's just totally now. Yeah, sure, because it's a free concert featuring some of the some really huge acts. And then secondly, I think by not putting up really good fences, they prevented gate crashing, like actual real gate crashing, which I think would have cast

a really different vibe over the whole festival. Because if you enter a festival, if the first thing you do when you come into a festival is break the law or steal, essentially you're stealing in the ticket price, Yeah, that just kind of puts a spin on your experience. From that moment on. No one really had that experience at Woodstock because the guys said, fine, it's it's free, and it prevented that, And I think that that helps really lay the groundwork for the vibe that that was,

you know, that grew at at that festival. Yeah, you can't complain about inadequate water and food supplies when you have crashed a free concert. Very good point. Although people would do that today, but they didn't Beck then for sure. So after they announced it, though, Chuck, they were like,

it went from like a pretty big concert. Remember they were expecting a couple of hundred thousand, which is huge, to at least double that because words spread really quickly and people just started coming from all of those cities within a seven hour drive, and people were driving there. That's really the only way to get there aside from a helicopter, and very few hippies at the time had helicopters,

just that they could fly themselves. So everybody was driving their car, probably ten hippies to a car, and those cars started to pile up, not like on top of one another, but right around one another, and people just started realizing, like, we're not going to go any further. This is the this is the where the line to get in begins. Is where our car is now. So everybody just left their cars and started walking miles in some cases to the farm to where the stage was

that and that. They were like, oh, we'll come get our car in a couple of days. Yeah, absolutely, that's the right thing to do. They could hear Richie Havens in the distance. They're like, screw this, I'm walking. Yeah.

They ran out of by the time Saturday rolls around, they had run out of food, they had run out of medical supplies, the whole you know, all the towns around really chipped in, the National Guard, the US Army, people donated food, they donated eggs and water, and max Yasger donated milk and yogurt, and the local townspeople made

sandwiches to send along in ten thousand of them. Yeah, like everyone really chipped in to make sure that something bad didn't happen, and to their credit, like nothing really bad did happen. No. I mean, can you imagine half a million people all getting angry at the same time. That would be bad. And there was another group that chipped into, the Hog Farm. Here comes your buddy. I'm so excited. So the Hog Farm was a hippie commune.

I don't remember what state it was, and I think maybe Arizona, but they had established themselves as really great at providing security and services at music festivals, hippie music festivals. And one of the reasons why they were so good at it was because they were led by none other than possibly the greatest hippie of all time, Wavy Gravy. That was his group was the Hog Farm. And I gotta tell you, I did not see him coming, and when I saw him, I was awesome and I have

even more love for him now. I just liked him before because of his name, but it turns out he was a pretty awesome dude. It's great. Yeah. So the Hog Farm, when they were providing security services at festivals, they called themselves the police force, and I think it has a kind of a double meaning, like they're pleasing the people that they're having to deal with, but at

the same time, they were exceedingly polite their method. When there was a problem or there's a static or something like that, they would intervene, but they wouldn't physically intervene. They would just kind of come up and be like, hey,

let's move on over this way. And they were very polite in breaking up problems, preventing like contagions from spreading throughout the crowd by just completely de escalating whatever whatever was going on, whether it was maybe a fight that was about to break out, to somebody who was on a bad trip because they took too much brown acid. Yeah, and there there was a sort of um, you scratch my back, I'll scratch your back ethos to the whole thing.

So if you had it we're having a bad trip, and someone helped you out from the Hog Farm and talked you through this experience, then they were like, all right, now you go help someone out. Or if we helped feed you, why don't you help feed and like kind of take a shift. And so the crowd, you know, responded and kind and that's what kept it. I think Ed says like, not a single fight broke out. I'm sure that probably wasn't true, but there's some people who

swear that. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I'm cynical, but I don't know. People you can have your eyeballs on everything all at once. No, for sure, I'm with you, but it's one of those that's a part of the myth that I'm happy to just keep going. Okay, not not a single fight broke out, not one. It's documented fact. And you mentioned the brown acid. That was a very sort of legendary announcement made by a guy, believe it or not, whose name was his real name Chipmunk. Well

that was his nickname, was Chip. Well, I know, but that was his name, like, well that's what people call him. Sure, what I'm saying is it wasn't like his name was Chipmunk. I'm not saying his parents named him that. But do you know his real name? I think it was Edward, but his last name was m O n c K. And people just called him Chip. I'm pretty sure he had four names, and I'm pretty sure the first one

was Edward Edward Monk, whist way way less cool than Chipmunk. Uh. Like I said, his name was Chipmunk, which is very fun. Despite you trying to kill that fun, I'm sorry. And he was the de facto MC. He was the lighting designer. He ended up winning like Tony Awards and stuff and came up with the lighting system and one of the I'm not sure which of the com producers said it, but one of them said, Hey, we don't have anyone to do this job, so you're gonna m see this

thing if you will. So. Throughout the Woodstock documentary, which was released in March of nineteen seventy from director Michael Wadley, Great great documentary, When the Academy Award, there are many announcements from Chipmunk that are very He just had this sort of droll like. He wasn't a professional MC, he wasn't like ladies. He wasn't Michael Buffer out there. But his very famous don't take the brown acid announcement is

really funny. You know, he said, take it, take it with however many grains of salt you wish, but we suggest that you stay away from that the brown acid. Of course, it's your own trip, so be my guest, but please be advised there is a warning on that one. Yeah, and like that definitely helps set the tone too. Like everything was calm, including when he was like, there's a lightning storm coming and we're all in the middle of

a field. So if you're on one of those lightning rigs watching the show, please come down kind of thing, or we're out of food. There's a lot of stuff that really could have gone differently if he hadn't been the cool dude that he was very calm and collected, which is that it's just another little fortuitous thing, you know that that just happened. Everything kind of came together. There's one other thing I wanted to mention. You said, everybody's kind of coming together and you scratch my backall

scratchers kind of thing. There was a ton of volunteerism there where a lot of the people who were attending it also ended up volunteering for all sorts of different stuff. And one of the things that was really important was they had planned the medical staff to cover two hundred thousand people, and they now had double that, and like the guy who was like the chief physician for the

whole thing was really worried. And so as word kind of spread that, like they didn't have that many people to take care of everyone, and the roads were impassable, so the best you could hope for it was an airlift via helicopter. People who were mds and r ns who were there to see the show ended up coming and volunteering with the medical staff and just to pitch in. It was just that kind of that kind of spirit.

I just love those little stories and there's a million of them in this uh, in this um, around this festival. How about that at this concert? Sure? Uh you mentioned the rain storm. The rain came through Sunday and it did thin the crowd a little bit. A lot of people by that point we're like, all right, this is sort of the last straw. We've had our fun. We saw Richie Havens, we saw Sean on Ah. I wouldn't we'll talk about that in a minute, but maybe we should go home. So the crowd into a little bit,

but a lot of people stayed. And that's when you know. If you've seen the famous footage of of naked hippies taking mud bats. That was from Sunday on and a lot of them stayed and that that acid was still going strong, and who needs clothes at that point, right, I can imagine sure square yeah right, so um so yeah, that was a big deal too. But he just kind of ran with that with the rain and everything. But as all this going on, there's food that they've run

out of and that's now being trucked in. Seven hundred and ninety seven bad trips that were bad enough to go seek attention at the medical that's all, yeah, astoundingly and only I think thirty I read a Journal of Emergency Medical Services article that I found linked to from a Grunge article on woodstock, and it was basically a rundown of that. They said, seven ninety seven and only I think twenty or thirty of them couldn't be talked down and had to be injected with valium. That was there.

That was the final, the final countdown, because they would if you just wouldn't stop raving about how nuts you were, right then they would shoot you up with valium. Interesting, yeah, so right, while all this is going on, everybody's like having just a great time. There's plenty of bands playing. We haven't really talked too much about the bands. There were a ton of people that played, everybody from Janis

Joplin to Jimi Hendrix to Melanie. Never heard of her before, but she was one of the folk singers that played on Friday. There's just a ton of different people. He did that song in Boogie Knights, Paly Boogie Knights, No the one. Uh I got a brand new bearer, Rolskap. Oh sure, sure, yeah, I think that was Melanie. Yeah, okay, cool, Yeah, love Melanie. I love that song at least. But there's just a bunch of different people and all, you know, I don't want to say all of them did really well,

that's just not true. Some of them did terribly and some of them turned in some, you know, good enough performances, but some had like some real breakout performances too. Yeah. I mean, Richie Havens was one of them. He opened the show. If you've never seen Richie Havens before or heard him, just go watch the Woodstock performance. It is a it is a lesson in like soulful performance. He he I don't think it was supposed to open the show,

but he was the only one there. And they didn't have other people to follow him, so they just said keep playing. In his memory, he played for like over two hours, but I think it was really about an hour or so. But he kind of set a tone and again, like he said, this just serendipitous experience, one after the other. I think Richie Haven's opening that show. Really, I don't know who was supposed to open. I don't

I never saw either. I just saw that he was not expecting to and they're like, you're literally the only performer here, can you please open the show? So yeah, he did what he could and he just kept playing until somebody else showed up. I'm not sure who came on after him, but he really Yeah, he put that first tent Pagan and it was a yeah, it was

a doozy. Joan Bayaz was another. They made a conscious choices organizers of the event to not and it was of course it was going to be political with the hippie contingent and Vietnam and everything, but they didn't politicians to speak or have a political tents set up, which is something that you would have it like a lot of these festivals. Yes, but Joan Baiez of course is going to bring bring the the awareness no matter where she just she uses awareness everywhere she goes. Right, so

did Richie Havens too. For sure. I think probably almost everybody on Friday was had some sort of anti war, anti draft message going, you know. Yeah, a lot of folky stuff on Friday. Um, like you said, Santana, Um, this wasn't his first show obviously, but this was this This show came out before his first album ever was released, right, yeah, and he he says that he took some mescaline that Jerry Garcia from The Grateful Dead had given him because acid.

Yeah was it acid? Yeah, I've seen both for sure. I'll watched an interview with him today. Oh he said acid Okay cool? Yeah, so and that makes a little more sense too. But anyway, Jerry Garcia dosed Carlos Santana with Carlos Santana's a willingness before the show because Santana thought he had like plenty of hours before he needed to go on, so he's like, sure, I'll just trip

first and then go on afterward. And just like everyone else at Woodstock, he was shoved out on stage long before he had planned to go out there or else everyone else went on way after the time that they had planned out. Their schedule just went out the window exactly. So he ended up going and playing his show while he was peeking, and he turned into really great performance.

It was great. I mean he you know, you can see interviews with him, like of old Carlos Santana talking about his experience and talking about how the neck was like moving in his in his hands like a snake, and he just he said, I kept saying to myself like slow down, man, slow down, And but then he's like, or am I playing you know, the perfect speed? And you could see the rest of it. And I think the rest of the group was on acid too, and they were just they were crushing it. It was amazing. Yeah,

pretty amazing. Who's the picture? Doc? Who's oh, doc Ellis? Doc ellis? Yeah? Yeah, who did not crush it? Um? According to their fans, and this is who knows. I'm sure there's some Dead fans that love this performance, but I think it's widely known within the Dead community that the Woodstock performance by the Grateful Dead was not their best. Don't know what that means, Oh, oh it was. It was like for the Grateful Dead, it was terribly loose.

They played a fifty minute version of love Light. Lovelight is such a terrible song anyway, And one of the big problems with The Grateful Dead is that they always extended that stupid song way too long. A fifty minute version of love Light. Right, I don't know about any of this. So there's, um, there's ten I beseech you to go just listen to a regular love Light and then imagine fifty minutes of um and then uh, and apparently there's ten minutes of them just basically standing around

talking in the middle of that fifty minute Lovelight. It was just really it was bad. It was not a good, good performance. And in their defense, um, they're a rainstorm had just blown through and the stage was hot electrically speaking. Yeah, yeah, that was part of it. I don't think that was all of it. So I think what I'm reading for you is what could have been a ninety second fix

ended up being ten minutes basically. Yeah, And I think that I have the impression that they like that they were playing love Light still while they were standing around talking to one another too. It wasn't stop. Yeah, And I saw the set list and it looked like it had had them. It was possible, it could have been something really great. But I get the impression that they just weren't weren't in the right mindset right then. I always forget that. You you had a little Dead spell.

Yeah you, I mean you never like followed him around or anything like that. Did you know they were gone? I remember remember I had a chance to see their last show at the Omni. One of my friends had just gotten into him. It was like, dude, you gotta go, come on, let's go. And I was like, I'll just catch him next time. That was the famous thing of mine. And they did that with Stevie ray Vaughan to Lloyd Um a lot of people. Yeah. I was just like, I'll just catch him next time. So I've learned now

to just be like, Okay, yeah, let's go. That's why you you will travel to go see air supply man? That so not gonna take that chance. No way they might run out of air. No, they have a full supply. Okay. Um. So the Dead's performance is supposedly not so great. Uh CCR did play and apparently he's a really good set. But John Fogerty, he's a pretty cranky guy, or at least was back then, and I think he kept shouting out that they were the second biggest band in the world.

No one believed him. Everyone said CCR really all right, and he would not release or he wouldn't sign the release to um make it into the Woodstock film. And the Dead was not in the Woodstock film. I don't think either, right. No, the lighting was not good for some reason. I guess because of the lightning and rain that had just blown through. I'm not sure why, but yeah, I saw that it was so bad that they couldn't

use the footage. Yeah, so a lot of people who are familiar with Woodstock through the film may be surprised that CCR and the Grateful Dead performed or cranky Neil Young who Crosby Seals, Nash and Young very famously played their second ever show together. They played one show the night before in Chicago, and this was show number two, and Neil Young didn't want to sign the release for the film, so I guess they just cut around him. Yeah, be my guests. I have a little brief Dead anecdote

from recently. Actually, if you want to hear it, should we take a break and hear it right after No, I think it's a pre break and okay, all right, let's hear it. So I actually downloaded a Dick's Picks like where it's a live show. I think one of their soundboard guys like picked over the years, and it was like, this one's so good, we're gonna release it

as an album. Okay. So anyway, I downloaded it from iTunes and um, I was I went to go listen to it, and I was about to press play, and I was like, I don't really want to listen to the Grateful debt again, but I do want my money back. So I went to the whole trouble of contacting Apple to ask for a refund on it, and it said why And I really wanted to make sure that they gave me my money back, so I said, my friend told me this is a drug band and I don't want to hear that. Oh my god, And they gave

me my money back. What year was this? Like this year? He's serious, Yeah, it was just a few months ago. That's amazing. Yeah. Thanks, I'm sorry. I'll let you know that they're a drug band. I'm sorry I ruined that for you. No, I can take a break. All right, boy, that was great. I'm gonna ruminate out on that. We'll be right back. We should mention the Who. Probably they were one of the bigger bands, but like you said, this vaulted them from theaters to arenas after that movie

came out. But Who were kind of cranky there because there was no green room. They were used to better treatment. The monitors were crap, apparently, even though supposedly the sound system is designed by a man named Bill Hanley, was was great, but the onstage monitors weren't good. So what Roger Daltrey couldn't hear himself and he feels like he was off key, and so they were just like not

having it. I think Keith Moon and John ent was Sold purposefully took LSD in a station wagon with some girls, but Daltry and Townsend accidentally took LSD. Townsend from coffee and Roger Daltrey from some tea that was spiked right, So by the time they got up there, they were not happy. They were pushed to like a five am slot and when Abbie Hoffman jumps up on stage to

you know, God bless Abbie Hoffman. But admittedly it was quite a buzz kill when you hear the audio from this to interrupt a WHO show to talk about freeing his friend and activist John Sinclair for cannabis possession, Pete Townsend wasn't having it, and he moved him forcibly out of the way with his guitar very famously. Yeah, supposedly injured Abbie Hoffman. But Roger Daltrey's like NOAA didn't happen,

and so did Pete Townsend. But I've loved it. They were surly, yeah, kind of which which was not how most of the other bands were. But I can't really blame him. You said that there was no green room and they had to wait backstage. I read that they had to wait backstage for fourteen hours. Yeah, it was a drag. Anybody would be surly at that point, you know. But they had a really cool thing that happened, just

kind of serendipitously. Their set got pushed so far back that they were playing the end of it as the sun was rising, and it's really neat in the documentary to see that, you know, that's true. Yeah, so they lucked out. I mentioned Shanna Nah. Yeah, it's if you've ever seen that Woodstock movie. One of the great performances is from the fifties throwback du wop group that became

famous for their TV show in the seventies. But you would think it would be antithetical to these hippie dippy late sixties kids out there, But it was that perfect, like nostalgia bomb for them, like this is the music they either heard when they were kids or their parents music, and they it was a lot of fun. Yeah, and Shana and I was like they were a club act and they ended up becoming like Shanna Nah because of

that Woodstock appearance. But you said that it was nostalgia. Um, I guess the Cornfeld and Lang tried to get Roy Rogers to sign on to Yeah, he was gonna do he was gonna be the last act and just play Happy Trails and the whole thing. And Roy Rogers was like, I'm not doing that, Get off my lawn. So he got Van Halen to sing happy Trails. Oh yeah, I forgot. They sang that David Lee Roth is cool. That's the poll quote. Can we make that our little Instagram things? Sure?

And then of course Jimmy Hendrix. We would be remiss not to mention the Monday morning. Most people are gone. Performance by the Band of Gypsies, like not just Monday morning, took Monday morning commute time. Yeah, like the last time for an acid fueled rock concert. Yeah. And that then that's where you get the very famous Star Spangled Banner performance. And the reason why he played that is because it was in his contract that he performed last, and that

all those delays just bumped him to Monday morning. And what's cool, so many people had cleared out that if you see pictures of him playing I'm not sure if it's in the documentary or not, people are just hanging around like the stage, like fans are just right like hanging on the speakers and sitting around watching him like

that closely. It just became that loose. Yeah. It was sort of the effect of like, I don't know if you've ever worked in restaurants, but when you put on your music after the restaurant is clothes and everyone's kind of milling about, drinking and like cleaning up. That was Jimmy Andricks in the Band of Gypsies. It's crazy. It

is crazy. So the Lang Cornfeld, Roberts and Rosenman apparently Lange Cornfield were like, guys, we need more money, more money, more money, like a bunch of times, and Roberts and Roseman actually went back to their families and we're like, this is a sure thing, just give us some more money. And they ended up sinking one point eight million into the whole thing, which I saw was about seventeen million dollars in today's money, which is still not bad considering

a concert with half a million people. Yeah, but but they they were almost almost entirely in the red for that, Like, they made basically no money whatsoever. They just lost at one point eight million dollars and they owed it to Roberts and Rosenman and their families. And apparently Langon Cornfeld finally paid off the debt in the early eighties, and it was largely because of the documentary movie and the

album that was released. Yeah, the documentary made a lot of money, like thirty million plus, and I think that doesn't even count you know, home video and streaming releases and stuff like that since But like I said, Michael Wilde won the Academy Award for that, and a very young Marty Scorsese was I think one of seven editors, and I think he was there shooting as well, if I'm not mistaken, and his legendary film manager the almost Schunemacher or is it I don't know if it's Schoonmacher

Schunemacher both, Okay, one of the all time great film editors. She was one of them as well. And that movie boosted a lot of careers for people that ended up and I think ended up in the film. And I think a lot of people who didn't sign over their rights or refused to have their footage us probably ended up regretting that. Yep. And there's nothing sweeter than thinking of Neil Young regretting one of his surly decisions. You know, No,

I love Neil Young in his surliness. So one thing that came out of Woodstock was that it became a bit of a brand, as seen in like some revivals that were made for attempts. I think there was Woodstock ninety four, there's definitely Woodstock ninety nine, and then there's going to be a Woodstock fifty in twenty nineteen, but it got scuttled right because of the disaster of the last Woodstock I think, yes. But there's one thing I want to say. We talked a lot about people pitching in,

volunteering all that stuff. On Monday morning, after Jimmy Hendrix finished playing, almost everybody laughed, but about eight thousand participants, fans, people who came to Woodstock. They stayed behind to help clean up, and this place was trashed yea when they started, And apparently they did such a good job that archaeologists who excavate the site are routinely frustrated at finding basically nothing. Because the eight thousand volunteers who stayed behind to clean

up did such a good job at it. That's pretty great, you know, no disasters. I think there were two deaths, and it seems like neither one were because of the thing. I think the one reported overdose was later found or believed not to be an overdose and was a heart thing. Yeah. The other one was very sad too. Well. Yeah, that was a straight up tragedy. The kid was sleep asleep in the field and don't run over by a tractor. Yeah, Raymond me Zach. There was no alcohol or drugs found

in his system either. He was there with his older sister who probably still feels guilty about it. The other guy who died was Richard Biler and it's like, man, that's that's a real bummer. Still not bad for half a million people. And I saw it compared to um Buffalo, New York, which at the time had a population of about the same as the number of people who came to the Woodstock festival. And over that same weekend, that same period of time, Buffalo New York registered forty deaths.

There are only two at Woodstock. And I can tell you Buffalo New York wasn't entirely on acid over that weekend either. Well, but there were a lot of olds. If you fact you're an age, sure that's true. Wait no, yeah, that excuse it the other way. Still, I know it's a wash. There was always the rumors of the Woodstock baby too, and in fact, at one point in my life I thought that would have been a fun movie to write, and I think I worked on it for

a little while. Someone that finds out that there were the wood Stock baby, But there was not a baby born, you know, in the crowd at wood Stock, like the legend has it. I think someone was airlifted and had a baby and then one was in a car maybe yes, on the way there. Yeah, So no, no, true, would Stock baby but that still would be a good movie. I think. So what, um, what did the protagonists in

your script feel like? Was there like they had problems with being the woodstock baby or well, yeah, I mean I think the obvious thing to do was make them like a like Alex P. Keaton type and Alex P. Keaton type, and then what he turns into like a mole at the end they find free love in the end. Of course, you could write that thing. It writes itself, Martin Mole's the quintessential hippie. That's right, as was Maxie

asger Um, which is not true. He did not get flipped to movie style into being a hippie, but he did get sued by his neighbor, at least one neighbor. I think the organizers and the guys who funded the thing ended up suing one another. There were various lawsuits over the years, but max Yasker ended up selling his farm, moving to Florida and died there like a year after he moved. But he addressed the crowd at one point,

and it's really a really great clip. This kind of conservative farm guy got up in front of four hundred thousand people plus and said, wait, wait, can you do it as Eugene Levy? No, but he said, you know, he said, I'm not used to addressing twenty people, much less this MANI And it's about a minute and a half. But the one takeaway is he said, I think you

people have proven something to the world. The important thing that you prove into the world is at a half a million kids can get together and have three days of fun in music and have nothing but fun in music, and I God, bless you for it. Very nice, pretty good stuff, and happy trails to you, he said. I hear not one fight broke out. His name is is just a nickname. Look, I'm just glad we get if we didn't get into another argument like we did in the what was the episode we did and we're like, oh,

I don't know. Recently, yeah, yeah, remember I was like saying something. You're like, yes, I'm saying the same thing, and oh oh yeah, what was that that was really recently that made not even be released yet? No, I don't think it has Okay, that was a fun one. All right, Well you got anything else about Woodstock Man, I got nothing else? Good one that I mean. It's the briefest of overviews for such a big topic, but I think I think it was pretty good. I agreed.

Since Chuck thinks this episode was pretty good everybody, That means, of course it's time for a listener mail. This was just something I thought was great. Hey, Josh and Chuck. I recently introduced Stuff you should Know to my seven year old son John. He loves you, guys, as even adopted some of your phrases, regularly telling me not to

yuck as he hum. A few weeks ago, during some of your somewhat off topic banter, he asked me if you guys were married, and I said no, you know, they talk about their wives all the time, and he paused and looked confused. Then he said no, I meant to each other and he said I laughed and said no. And the next morning, while listening to the show, he said, Daddy, are you sure those guys aren't married? And he is convinced it because you guys get along so well, you

must be married to each other. That means Tom and his wife must have a good marriage. Sure. Now, he asked me that every time we listen, which is funny, So keep up the good work. We love with the content of the show and you're on air chemistry even if you weren't married to each other. And that is Tom from Baltimore and his seven year old son John. So, hey John, we're not married John. If I were gay, you could do a lot worse, thanks man, And I would.

I often think about having your beard rub against my chin once in a wile you like, I prefer my guys a little more fit, but no, I like something to really kind of grab onto and I'm hugging and kids. All right, well we could have a good time. Then, Hey, John, thank you for creating this weird conversation, but thank you for writing in. That was one of the most adorable listener mails I've heard in recent memory, and thank you

very much for listening. If you want to be like John and Tom you said too right, yep, and write in to us. You can do it via email. It's stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listening to your favorite shows