
Full Circle: Why I’m Glad I Returned to the Original Site for the 50th Anniversary of Woodstock
Fifty years ago, fresh out of the caps and gowns we wore for our high school graduation, and with our college acceptance letters securely filed away, my best friend Phil and I got in my parents’ 1968 Ford Galaxy and set out for the adventure of our lifetimes. In a few hours, we arrived at my aunt and uncle’s summer home in White Lake, New York, a two-mile walk from the field on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm where we’d spend 18 hours a day — from Friday, Aug. 15, through the early morning of Monday, Aug. 18 — enduring a pounding sun and intense heat and humidity through noontime, bouts of thunderous, torrential rain, bone-chilling nights and squalid mud and muck, all for the privilege of participating in one of the 20th century’s landmark moments.
For us, and some 400,000 others who were there, Woodstock was an unforgettable, magnificent milestone that may not have convinced us to drop everything and settle there permanently, like Texan Duke Devlin, who came and never left, but that did stay with us to this day, and whose influence on us shows no signs of letting up.
Bethel or Bust As the golden anniversary approached, despite highly publicized plans by Michael Lang, the producer of the original festival, to hold a musical extravaganza called “Woodstock 50” in Watkins Glen, New York, Phil and I never wavered. For us it was always Bethel or bust; there was simply no separating the heart, soul and spirit of Woodstock from the exquisitely perfect field in Bethel, New York, where those iconic “Three Days of Peace and Music” washed over us like baptismal water.
Michael Lang learned that the hard way. Plans for his event at Watkins Glen went awry, and then he found a fallback site all the way down in Columbia, Maryland. That venture was cancelled on July 31, after a series of snafus snuffed out Lang’s plans for good. Less than two weeks later, Phil had flown from LA and I had hopped an Amtrak train from Manhattan to Philadelphia, where our reunion would kick off. After taking a nostalgic drive to visit our childhood homes in Levittown, Pennsylvania, we were soon packed and ready to get “back to the Garden.”
How Would We Feel, 50 Years Later? The question that dogged us both was, what would we find there 50 years later? Although we’d returned multiple times for previous anniversaries and always felt the magic, we had not been back since, well, the turn of the 21st century. We knew that in 2016, a complex called Bethel Woods had been constructed on the site consisting of a Woodstock museum, amphitheater and performing arts pavilion. Would the keepers of the sacred site have “paved Paradise and put up a parking lot,” to borrow Joni Mitchell’s line? Would they have destroyed the site’s inexplicable, spiritual essence, or would the place still possess the power to transport us back to that pivotal three-day period that marked the portal between our adolescence and adulthood? We wouldn’t know until we got there.
With 30-plus years of intense professional life fresh behind us and our transition to later life recently underway, we got into a rented 2019 Toyota Camry and headed north. It took us five hours to travel 50 years.
Hallelujah! When we arrived at the now manicured and carefully managed Bethel Woods, we found the historic, bowl-shaped field carpeted in healthy, green grass dotted with onlookers. Those who had not been there 50 years ago strained to grasp what it had been like. Those who had been there seemed to be groping with all their might to grasp a precious handful of Woodstock stardust from the air. I was one of them.
Phil distinguished himself as a knowledgeable, engaging and popular Woodstock guide. Armed with not only his first-hand experience, but from having researched the subject every which way over an extended period, he held his listeners in thrall, recounting the route we walked to the field, the places we sat amid the throng on different days and bands that stood out for us as highlights.
The museum was better than we could have imaged. Devoted not just to Woodstock, but to capturing the historic and cultural essence of the ’60s, it featured artifacts of the festival like the psychedelic, rainbow-colored bus that carried a contingent of hippies across the country to the festival; exhibits of the logos and artwork that lured rock music lovers and alternative lifestyle adherents from all directions; an assortment of videos covering various aspects of the event, its planning and divergent perspectives on it from pro and con neighbors and officials; and a minute-by-minute schedule of who played when.
Showtime The 50th anniversary performances spread out over four evenings, from Thursday through Sunday. The local paper said a hundred thousand people were expected overall. On the first evening, Arlo Guthrie played a wonderful set that I enjoyed more than the one he did 50 years ago. It was followed by a four-hour showing of an updated version of the classic Woodstock movie by Michael Wadleigh. Phil and I watched it under a clear and starry nighttime sky.
The performances on Day 2 featured Blood, Sweat & Tears (minus the desperately needed David Clayton Thomas) and the musical virtuoso Edgar Winter, both of whom played at Woodstock 1, and the cartoonish Ringo Starr and his All Starr Band, who did not.
A Costly Misstep Saturday, Day 3, was marred for Phil and me by the type of accident that we and most others managed to avoid the last time around. Among the countless restrictions enforced by the well-meaning but sometimes overbearing safety and security forces was the prohibition of Frisbees.
For Phil and me, who made a rousing Frisbee rally one of the staples of our reunion visits to the field, this could not stand. However, neither could Phil after attempting a courageous, leaping catch of one of my throws — on a slope in front of where the stage once stood, no less. He landed awkwardly, landing hard on his right shoulder after taking a tumble. He broke his collar bone and had to be taken by ambulance to the Catskill Regional Medical Center, where he was fitted with a high-tech, Velcro sling. But no worries. We were back in our seats for Santana’s sold-out 50th anniversary set, which was a phenomenal performance, punctuated by the simultaneous showing of clips from his famous, career-launching 1969 Woodstock set on screens while he played in sync below. (The Doobie Brothers, who suffered from the lack of Michael McDonald as much as Blood, Sweat & Tears missed Clayton Thomas, opened for Santana.)
The last night featured Grace Potter, a mistress of many rock genres but mastress of none; the redoubtable Tedeschi Trucks Band; and John Fogerty, whom I’d forgotten had such an extensive list of hits, and who more than impressed me by having the boundless energy to perform so many of them with such enthusiasm at 74.
Full Circle, Fresh Insight A fascinating phenomenon struck me in the course of the four days Phil and I were together in Bethel. At times I was almost painfully aware of how far apart our lives and experiences had diverged starting from the moment we left that shambolic field 50 years ago. At times I felt the tension and strain of so much separation and disparate influence: living on different coasts, and later living on different continents (I worked as an expat in Switzerland from 2001 through 2016); different professions (education for Phil, corporate communications for me); political views that put us on opposite sides of the center-left (me) and progressive left (Phil) divide; marriages that joined us intimately and inseparably with partners other than each other. And yet, at other times — particularly when we were taking in the performances and commenting to one another on the brilliance of the musicianship or the origins of the songs being played), I felt like no time had passed at all and we were joined once again, like the Siamese twins people saw us as in our youth.
In the end, I believe it was Woodstock that bonded us as brothers for life. From that experience, we entered the rest of our lives with core values that remain with us to this day. For both of us, there’s what seems to be the universal lesson of Woodstock: that in spite of treacherous conditions, and maybe even because of them, people can be at least civil and maybe even kind and generous to one another; for Phil, it’s also a reverence for the perseverance and endurance we needed to get through that experience. For me, it’s the skepticism about authority, the predisposition against rules that hinder me without offering an offsetting benefit, a reverence for honesty, integrity and principle.
Coming full circle after the 50th anniversary, I’m convinced that life is amazing and totally unpredictable. Relationships are complicated and follow a winding rather than direct path. When I helped Phil through check-in for his flight back to LA, he hugged me hard and told me I was his brother. I felt the same. I guess that’s the way it will be until they spread our ashes, whenever and wherever that may be.