My Woodstock Condo, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #131
August 17, 2009 Mike Gold 21 Comments
Yes, indeed. It’s been 40 years. I get that. I’m real, real old. I get that, too.
Of course I was at “Woodstock,” which wasn’t in Woodstock but in Bethel, New York. They kicked the festival out of Woodstock a couple weeks before all the fun started. My boss, Abbie Hoffman, called me in Chicago and said I was needed to help out. Awesome; particularly since I had to be in New York the week before anyway for some stuff that, honest, I won’t put in print even though the statute of limitations might have run out.
We were at the festival to help spread the word about the Chicago Conspiracy Trial and, while we were at it, do some fundraising and hustle bands to do benefits. It was an amazing time for this punk-ass 19 year old, on a great many levels. I got to meet Janis Joplin and Neil Young and Grace Slick and even Pete Townsend, although that meeting is now a historical footnote. But it wasn’t exactly pretty.
The mud storm was less fun in real life than it was in the movie. I woke up in a tent I shared with a half dozen friends, under a huge bubble of water that looked as though it was about to burst. I slowly, quietly, considerately squeezed the bubble so the water would drain off to the side – to my side, unfortunately – and then looked out to something really ugly. Where once there was ground, now there was muck.
I hesitate to mention the impact this had on the already overflowing, already overcrowded, already impossibly pungent outhouses. You might want to have lunch or dinner or something, say, maybe, sometime in the next year.
The night before the music started, I was given a tablet of LSD by a friend, head shop distributor George Sells. Being “Woodstock,” being 1969, and being 19, I took it without hesitation. About an hour later, he asked me what I did with the other three pieces.
“What?” I asked, dumbfound.
“Oh, didn’t I tell you that was a four-way? I must have mentioned that,” George avered.
“Umm, no,” I said in the last intelligent thing to come out of my mouth for the next six hours. As my trip intensified about 400,000 people joined us – literally – on Max Yasger’s farm and tents were spreading like bunny rabbits at the Viagra plant. I started hallucinating apartment buildings made entirely out of tents. After a while, Chicago Seed editor Abe Peck and New York Rat editor Jeff Shiro (two of the best editors I ever had) walked me around the grounds, babysitting me nicely while tolerating my most profound observations.
Actually, I had a good time, both that night (except for the part about sleeping on a boulder) and throughout the festival. I’m very proud to have been part of that slice of history, but enough was enough and the prospect of leaving along with a half million others was daunting. A friend and I hitched out several hours before the show ended. We wound up on a bus for Manhattan, and got there in time to go to a Broadway steak house two hours before curtain. Having been restricted to questionable macrobiotic food and even more questionable Kool-Aide at the festival, this was the finest meal I’d ever had in my young life.
The maître d looked at us like he was Franklin Pangborn at the gates of hell. I’m still amazed they seated two abominable mud hippies. But they were surprised we actually paid for our meal.
My mud-encrusted boots were left at a friend’s apartment in Chicago. We both regret that decision, even though it was decades before eBay.
“Woodstock” wasn’t the first mega-festival, although it turned out to be the largest. Had it been a paid event the way it was intended, and had it realized the attendance promoters Michael Lang and Artie Kornfeld anticipated, it still would have lost money. They already had their movie and record deals in place, and that was where their fortune was going to hit, and they knew it.
Abbie told me Lang and Kornfeld were two of the wisest men he’d ever met: in those days, such multimedia package deals were quite rare indeed. I never met the other two partners, John Roberts and Joel Rosenman, and Abbie never referred to them.
“Woodstock” commemorates an important era in our cultural history, one that continues to capture the imagination of the masses. Peace, love and music. Why not? There’s nothing wrong with that idea. Even with the mud.
—
Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking bizarro music and blather show starts up Sundays at 7:00 PM Eastern on www.getthepointradio.com , replayed the following Thursdays at 10:00 PM Eastern. Likewise, his Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind rants pop up every on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday exclusively at www.getthepointradio.com . The regularWeird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind rants continue every Monday and Friday on The Point podcasts, available right here at www.michaeldavisworld.com , as well as at www.comicmix.com,www.getthepointradio.com, www.zzcomics.com, and www.ravenwolfstudios.com. You can subscribe to The Point podcasts at iTunes by searching under “The Point Radio.”
Gold is also a regular contributor to www comicmix.com, and edits their online comic book content. Check out the all-new GrimJack: The Manx Cat #3, and Jon Sable Freelance: Ashes of Eden #1, now being solicited in the IDW Publishing section of this month’s Diamond catalog.
pennie
August 17, 2009 - 4:21 am
Wooo-hooo!
What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?!!!
Had to be there.
Why deny the obvious? Mike, we’re about the same age, appear to have had similar experiences–celebrated and mourned some of the same events–and emerged with some of the same perspectives.
Not a bad thing at all.
No matter how hard I’ve tried to camouflage it, I am not a refugee or one who is stuck but a proud result of that special, tumultuous time in American life. Nothing like prior–nothing since.
Had to be there.
Funny part was, summer of ’69, I was yo-yo’ing between coasts with Ben Morea and his partner Joanie Rocket and the Motherfuckers. From New Mexico’s Sangre de Christos with Hugh and the Hog Farm to Woodstock, some of us headed to the Haight where the Wild West Festival was being planned. When that crashed and burned, Altamont became the fast rebound. We know what happened there with Woodstock and that poorly planned and executed latter event serving for some as bookends.
For me, not so much.
The human spirit encompasses so many possibilities, what transpired amidst the anarchy clearly illustrated some of those. It all resonates. It’s clear as day.
We can do so much…I’m still stuck on that peace, love and understanding thing. Why change now?
Martha Thomases
August 17, 2009 - 6:05 am
I really really really wanted to go to Woodstock with my boyfriend, but my mom wouldn’t let me hitchhike.
Also,years later, he told me he didn’t think he was my boyfriend. So that summer broke my heart twice.
John Tebbel
August 17, 2009 - 7:11 am
If he was thinking of hitchhiking to Woodstock with you, he was your boyfriend.
Martha Thomases
August 17, 2009 - 7:20 am
He went. I guess I mean that in all ways.
Mike Gold
August 17, 2009 - 7:35 am
Pennie —
Yup, I’m a big Nick Lowe fan, too.
You were a UAW/Motherfucker? Okay, now it’s getting scary. We must have at least met, 40 years ago. We joined them in a lotta stuff, like organizing free nights at the Fillmore and the attacks on the Stalinists. Never understood the New Mexico thing, though. I’m too much of a city boy to get it. And Hugh Romney… was weird, even by the standards of the time. Wavy Gravy, indeed.
As for Altamont: that gig signified nothing more than a truly, astonishingly stupid decision. It ended nothing — economic realities killed the megafestival, and besides after Woodstock everybody thought they should be free. Sure, but there’s only so many movie deals out there, and Monterey and Woodstock were about it. Maybe Joe Cocker…
The three most stupid statements of the 20th Century:
1) “There will be peace in our time.”
2) “Hey, let’s hire the Hells Angels to do security!” (I exempt the NYC Hells Angels from the Lower East Side; those were great guys)
3) “I think Bush’s kid should run for president.”
Martha and John —
I’ve hitchhiked with women who were not, and didn’t become, my girlfriends. MUCH easier to get a ride.
Marc Alan Fishman
August 17, 2009 - 9:51 am
Well, another article that makes me feel like I’m 6 years old, and have no friggen clue about the world I live in. My generation killed woodstock, in 1999. Peace? Love? Drugs? Well… we got the drugs right. But for those who didn’t pay attention, my generation’s “Woodstock” cost $150 bucks to get in, $5 for a bottle of water, and featured Limp Bizkit. If that wasn’t sign enough for the apocolypse, I don’t know what was.
Once again Mike, your life unfolds to us young bucks like a movie waiting to be filmed. I admit I’m not a big live music goer… but to able to have been a fly on that tent back in 69 would be a priceless experience.
I’m guessing though, that you’ve officially beaten Alan Sizzler’s “can’t find my apartment” story by 1,000,000. 🙂
pennie
August 17, 2009 - 3:12 pm
Mike,
Is there anyone else on this board who could put Ben Morea, Hugh Romney, the Hells Angels, Augustus Stanely Owsley III, the Stones, and mudpeople together in the same sentence?
Wooo-hoooo!
I hooked up with Ben, Joanie and many friends for political and social reasons. I liked the politics and really liked feeling protected while sauntering the innards of Tompkins Square Park feeling like I was visiting Venus while tiptoeing through Mars. You had to know the turf wars with the layers of the incessant kunga drummers, junkies, and people pissed off at hippies, women, and human race in general.
I guess between Rat, the MFs, free music at the Fillmore East, Diggers, not to mention all the other marvelous chaos of the day, we probably shared something at some point. We certainly are now.
I just keep meeting people I know–and I still don’t have Alzheimers yet!
Wooo-hooooo!
pennie
August 17, 2009 - 3:53 pm
Mike, to add one more to that list of yours, I just couldn’t let this one pass:
“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”
President George W. Bush (August 5, 2004)
Reg
August 17, 2009 - 4:12 pm
@ Mike…
NOT YOU TOO??!!!
Your four way experience ignited my memories of a very similar ‘misunderstanding’. I too was given a blotter of Purple Microdot without also being provided the caveat of ‘DON’T TAKE THE WHOLE THING’….
Ummmm. Yeaaaaaaaahhh Thus was the beginning of a long, strange, journey….that GREATLY expanded my faculties….for about ….let’s just say… Purple Haze was all in my mind for an uncomfortably long time.
If it hadn’t been for my older brother who was very fortunately for me, home from college at the time, who knows where I might be today. I’m occasionally reminded to thank Him for His timing.
Those were the days.
Mike Gold
August 17, 2009 - 4:15 pm
Pennie —
OK. Tit for tat.
“”The police are not here to create disorder. They are here to preserve disorder.” – Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, 1968 Democratic National Convention.
Reg —
Yep, those were the days. Oddly, most all of us survived. And we are blessed for having seized the opportunity to be involved in ’em.
Reg
August 17, 2009 - 4:53 pm
Mike…
Indeed. I was one of the few ‘Black Hippies’ of my community. My Peace and Love flow was mixed with a fairly healthy dose of radicalism. Which on an occasion or three tipped the scales with results that I’m proud of.
pennie
August 17, 2009 - 5:09 pm
Mike,
Would could forget those immortal Daley lines?!
PS: who’s tat? Like to hook up with the mysterious tat sometime? Whole lotta love lost there…}’;>)
Steve Atkins
August 18, 2009 - 1:06 am
Woodstock…
As a musician, I think every one of us goes through a “Woodstock Phase.”
I remember the first time I had ever listened to the music.
The pounding of Ritchie Havens’ right hand on “Freedom.” The snarky middle finger of Country Joe’s “Fixin’-To-Die Rag.” Arlo Guthrie’s ringing twelve-string sound in “Flying into Los Angeles.”
Then, I heard a series of songs that warped my mind.
Joe Cocker belting “With A Little Help From My Friends.” Ten Years After playing their cranked-to-eleven, balls-to-the-wall “I Go Home.” Crosby, Stills, And Nash blended voices into a single, time-frozen moment with “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.” Santana’s tour-de-force performance of “Soul Sacrifice.”
As my mind and imagination reeled, Jimi Hendrix struck like some mystic lightning bolt.
I know. I wasn’t there and I wasn’t a part of those times. It seems little more than some film footage, a few tracks on a CD, or a hazy memory to some.
But, like many other times of the past and many more of the future, the music was such a treasured gift.
I know I would not be the musician I am today, if there had been no Woodstock Festival.
To all those who attended in mind, body, and/or spirit, I thank you.
My life would have definitely been the poorer without it.
Steve
John Tebbel
August 18, 2009 - 6:28 am
I want to know who marketed this thing. I remember one advance word-of-mouth: “It’ll be like Newport, but rock and roll, and no one knows about it so there won’t be any crowds.” Somehow they got this message to untold millions of folks in order to get a million of them to leave their homes for days on end to ultimately pack a half a million onto the site.
Did they do posters? College radio? Regular radio? Trails of breadcrumbs?
Kyle Gnepper
August 18, 2009 - 6:45 am
Since no one seems to have touched on this I’ll go ahead and do so: You did a four way of acid and were okay? My god!
Aside from that I’m with Marc, here these stories are always interesting and cool, but make me feel like I’m sitting at the kiddies table at Thanksgiving.
On well, keep em coming Mike, I’ll just have more stuffing.
Mike Gold
August 18, 2009 - 7:11 am
Reg —
As you were undoubtably all too aware at the time, the “Black Hippie” thing of the late 60s gave a lot of white kids their first real opportunity to socialize with black kids. Boundaries were that strict — in college back then, by and large races pretty much kept to themselves. But the hippies shared culture, experience, and weed. In 1968, that was progress.
It seems like a minor move forward by today’s standards, but we’re talking about the time of Martin Luther King’s assassination and Malcolm X’s assassination, a time when George Wallace ran for president on a segregationist ticket, a time when our generation was raised on teevee images of black people getting mowed down by water cannons and idiot community leaders selling hatchets to white people to protect the blood strain.
It certainly took more courage for you to inject yourself in a largely white phenomena, particularly during a time of growing black identity awareness. I strongly suspect there was backlash from your childhood friends. But without all that, by now we’d be speaking entirely different languages.
You know, I think there’s a really good story in all this. Coming of age by creating a new era.
Mike Gold
August 18, 2009 - 7:20 am
Steve —
That’s why I’m completely immersed in American culture. Endlessly fascinating. My daughter (33 years old) turns me on to new music all the time, but we share a deep appreciation and love for The Who, The Clash, and others. Then again, her mother and I enjoy a passion for the music of Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, Bix Biederbecke, and Louis Armstrong. As William Congreve said only 312 years ago, “Music has Charms to soothe a savage Breast.”
But if you can’t get into KoKo Taylor, you ain’t gonna be hanging out with me very long.
By the way, I worked with both Country Joe McDonald and Arlo Guthrie during the Conspiracy Trial a few months after Woodstock, and both were among the nicest people I’d ever met.
Mike Gold
August 18, 2009 - 7:23 am
John —
“Did they do posters? College radio? Regular radio? Trails of breadcrumbs?” Well, I remember massive subway posters all over Manhattan and Brooklyn in the weeks preceding the event, but I think nationally the buzz was shared by the so-called underground press and burgeoning free-form radio scene. Of course, I would think that….
Mike Gold
August 18, 2009 - 7:28 am
Kyle —
:”You did a four way of acid and were okay? My god!” Aside from the quality of the drug itself — and by summer 1969 that was starting to come into question more frequently — the dosage wasn’t particularly of issue unless the overdose was truly massive. A four-way of good stuff would give you a more intense experience, but it isn’t necessarily more dangerous in and of itself. LSD is dangerous enough when it comes to doing anything other than lying around and listening to music — you don’t want to be working in a steel mill while dosed, although I knew some autoworkers who were tripping damn near every day. Lucky for most of us, on LSD about the only thing you want to do is lie around and listen to music. Or stare into a candle. That was a big deal, too.
Reg
August 18, 2009 - 11:55 am
Mike…
Truth on every point you mentioned. But I was also fortunate in those presented opportunities to ‘keep it real’ for the struggle.
“Lucky for most of us, on LSD about the only thing you want to do is lie around and listen to music. Or stare into a candle. That was a big deal, too.”
Or trying to catch your hand or watching the individual wing beats of bees and dragonflies…and hear them in stereophonic sound.
kado verjaardag
August 19, 2011 - 5:48 am
I was curious if you ever considered changing the page layout of your website? Its very well written; I love what youve got to say. But maybe you could a little more in the way of content so people could connect with it better. Youve got an awful lot of text for only having 1 or 2 pictures. Maybe you could space it out better?