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by Tom Anselm

It was billed as “An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace and Music.”

To some, it was a deplorable display of wanton sexual promiscuity and rampant drug abuse. To others, it was a seminal moment in the phenomenon called rock music, and a marker for a new generation of youth.

It was Woodstock, and it was 48 years ago last week, August 15.

In the late summer of 1969, I was a simple 20-year old getting ready for my junior year of college at UMSL, finally deciding on a major in business. Not that I was really good at it, just a way to stay in school and out of the jungle war and get a diploma as quickly as possible. Even joined a business fraternity, to meet people… make the connections, you know. In my previous year at Mizzou, found out quickly that I was not that guy. And, as stuff happens, it was back home for me. So that fall, here I was, business major, wearing a green Army surplus jacket and cutting my accounting class to hang out on the fringes of the anti-war rallies at Bugg Lake. Trying to find my way, so to speak, like so many others of that time. The fraternity thing lasted about half-a-year. Not that guy either, it turned out. Nice guys they were, just not for me.

Senior year, made the soccer team, new set of friends, many of whom I just saw last weekend. Got that BS in Business, which was aptly named, since I couldn’t get a job. Applied at Bellefontaine Habilitation Center for a Teacher Assistant II gig. Got it, loved it, went back to the school on the old Bellerive Golf Course for my education cred.

That war wound down in those first few years of the 1970’s. Stagnated is more like it. Still producing lots of unnecessary dying. My lottery number was 199, and my draft board in Ferguson never got past the high 180’s. Alas, no jungle war for me.

So here I was, wearing a fatigue jacket and bell-bottom jeans, curly hair in a white-kid-afro driving a 1973 lime-green push-button-transmission Rambler American, and fresh into my first real grown-up job. A member of Woodstock Nation, but only by birthright. Little did I know, my life was on the cusp of something great.

I mention all this only as a reference point. A “where were you when”, if you will.

The promoters of The Woodstock Music and Arts Fair thought it would be a good idea to get some of the more prominent musicians of the time all together for a concert. They were in it for the money, as were all the acts, in spite of what has been written since about this “social phenomenon.” (And why not make a few bucks promotingt a peace and love fest? Ironic note of Counter-Culture Capitalism.) Woodstock was a town in New York where Bob Dylan and other artists hung out, kind of a musician’s enclave. But the city wasn’t interested and it almost didn’t happen, until a farmer named Max Yasgur offered his dairy farm, 50 miles from Woodstock near Bethel, New York. It turned out that the organizers wanted to make some money, sell the movie rights, get themselves a record deal. All on the speculation that they might get 50,000 to show up.

As word spread, the final total of attendees came out to be around 400,000. Not a bad gate, except after a while, there was no gate. Or fences. The place became so overrun that people just walked in for nothing. Typical of that time, I guess. The promoters actually lost a truckload of money on the days of mud and music. However, don’t feel sorry for them, as they eventually made it back in spades from the movie and recording rights.

Now this event can be seen in several ways. Like I mentioned earlier, it was a party, with lots and lots and LOTS of drugs, most prominently marijuana, LSD, mescaline and speed. More than a few participants had bad “trips”. And there was plenty of ‘coupling’, as one commentator noted, based largely on the recent popularity of the birth control pill and that element of youth’s growing disdain for their parent’s mores. It was muddy and dirty and unsanitary and not enough toilets and people had little to eat and the National Guard had to bring in food and medical help (more irony here, with

The Military bailing out the peaceniks) and the farm was so ruined that good old Farmer Yasgur said “no, thanks” when asked to do it again next year. Plenty of anti-war songs, as you could imagine. Pretty much a general Baby Boomer Bash, the likes of which had never been seen and wouldn’t be seen again. But, surprisingly, very little politics, save the anti-war stuff.

There is a story that the self-anointed leader of the so-called “Yippies”, Abbie Hoffman, tried to jump on-stage to speak to the crowd, when none other than the leader of The Who, Peter Townsend, bashed him over the head with his guitar. So there’s that. Fun times, right?

Add to that, all this craziness came off with little if any violence. Amazingly, only three poor souls died. A few fights and arrests here and there, but mostly just people under the influence of who-knows-what.

But then there was the music. Here is a short list of those who hit that main stage. Joe Cocker. Richie Havens. Arlo Guthrie. Ravi Shankar. Joan Baez. Country Joe and the Fish. Canned Heat. Creedence Clearwater Revival. Crosby, Stills, Nash AND Young. Ten Years After. Jefferson Airplane. Sha Na Na. Melanie. Gracie Slick. The Grateful Dead. Janis Joplin. Santana.

Jimi Hendrix, who on the last morning of the fair played16 songs (SIXTEEN!!).

A veritable cavalcade of stars and soon-to-be superstars of the times. Yeah, a seminal moment for rock, to be sure.

I claim no real allegiance to the hippie dream. Like I said, just hung on the fringes, and not even that so much. Still, it was a phenomenon of my growing up.

And there is no denying that these few days of psychedelic mayhem in that summer of ’69 fueled a movement that eventually led to an end to a very unfavorable war, and a beginning to an era of music that shaped generations to follow.

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