WOODSTOCK REVISITED

THE ONLY WOODSTOCK BOOK TO FOCUS ON THE "KIDS" WHO ATTENDED THE LEGENDARY FESTIVAL IN 1969, THEIR PERSONAL STORIES AND THEIR TAKE ON THE EVENT 40 YEARS LATER

This eclectic, entertaining, and historical anthology contains stories that go beyond the mud, rain, lack of food, and far out music scenario to unique experiences, some of which included drug binges and sexual escapades, but also include glimpses behind the scenes, including one by Hog Farmer and famous Flashing on the Sixties filmmaker Lisa Law. For those who attended, this book will catapult them back to Yasgur’s farm 40 years ago when they inadvertently participated in the rock-and-roll love fest of a lifetime. For others, Woodstock Revisited documents the event itself, but also provides a mesmerizing portrait of America as that tumultuous decade came to a close. It is a nostalgic, historical, and fascinating read that will appeal to all Baby Boomers, their offspring, and anyone who wonders what it was really like—and what became of all those “hippies.”

A FEW STORY RECAPS

Shortly after arriving in Woodstock, John DeVoe found his way to the intersection of High Way and Groovy Way in the woods above Max Yasgur’s farm, where he purchased his first hash pipe from hippie vendors, hooked up with some hippie freaks, and sampled mescaline. Instead of enjoying his new experience, John stumbled around the concert site until random apocalyptic thoughts led him to seek out the Hog Farm’s famous Freak Out tent, where observing enough bad acid trips, including one a policeman slipped LSD was experiencing, cured him of a penchant for experimentation. Once he came down, John had a rollicking great time watching some of the best bands of the 1960s, and he ended up with an incredible souvenir—Sears and Roebuck Co. created a matching shirt and bellbottom pants that had his picture, along with his friends, printed squarely on the seat of the pants.

Lisa Law flew from Arizona to Woodstock with Wavy Gravy and almost 100 appointed caretakers from the Hog Farm, one of the largest and most famous communes at the time. Once there, alarmed at the 50,000 squatters who had shown up early and rumors that many more than the anticipated 50,000 people per day would attend, Law made an emergency run to New York City to spend $6,000 on food and supplies. When all the other food concessions ran out of food on the first day, Law mixed muesli in new plastic trash cans and spoon fed half a million stranded kids.

When Jeremiah Horrigan scored some marijuana at Woodstock, despite being engulfed in the haze that hung constantly above the Woodstock crowd, he felt newly paranoid. Equally desperate to join the revelry, he walked three miles back to where he had pitched a little pup tent, climbed inside, zipping and snapping the flap closed. He rolled an inept joint, and took a few, quick tokes. But every time he heard noise outside—which was every 30 seconds—he panicked again, ripped the joint up, spreading the dope like fertilizer on the tent floor, flapping his arms at the bit of incriminating smoke. When things quieted down, he’d start all over again, becoming what he described as “the only guy at Woodstock to get stoned by hyperventilating in a pup tent.”

Alan Kolman, who worked for the organizers, Woodstock Ventures, Inc., recalls soaping himself head to toe and trundling down to the pond and joining all the other naked people having some good clean fun. In his words, “There was nothing sexual about it—we really were Mother Nature’s children that weekend. Woodstock was the psychedelic epicenter of the universe, and we were the blissful ripples. The music, as cosmic as it was, seemed secondary to the feeling of infinite possibilities we all carried away from the event—we believed real, substantive change was just around the corner. Unfortunately, what we perceived as the birth of the Aquarian Age, was, in retrospect, more like a giant Irish wake.”

Seven-year-old Louis Denaro remembered Woodstock as that crazy weekend his family headed for a weekend retreat in the Catskills and ended up surrounded by hippies and chaos. Recounting hilarious interplay between his father and the hippies, Denaro captures the generation gap from a unique perspective. To him, the weekend was filled with interesting sights, sounds, and sensations. To his father, it was and remained, a nightmare. Denaro describes his father as driving past rows upon rows of hippies and giving them the very opposite of a thumbs up. The author finds it equally amusing that his Italian mother seemed to find it liberating, later opening a boutique that sold love beads and mood rings.