Young Michael Lang

But I was wrong…

I read his book, The Road to Woodstock and have been reading and studying accounts of how the Woodstock Festival went down and it’s clear he was the soul and the inspiration for not only making it happen but for also keeping it “rightous” in the full 60’s meaning of the word.

In fact, most accounts say that Woodstock 69 would not have happened without him.

There were so many problems and curveballs thrown at the promoters that the fact that it happened at all was amazing. Put that’s another post.

Michael Lang was a boy from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn who grew up in a modest middle class family. His father ran an engineering business installing heating systems. He was also an inventor and understood what it was like to take chances. As Michael recounted in his book The Road To Woodstock…

“My father always taught me to be self-reliant. That was his thing — just take care of it, no matter what. Early on he gave me a strategy for getting out of tough situations.: Take charge and keep moving; step back just enough to think clearly; and trust your instincts.”

This advice would server him well as he struggled to make Woodstock happen.

He played drums in rock bands. And was hip enough to check out pot and LSD in his early teens but also hip enough to catch some great music in Greenwich Village, like Phi Ochs, Fred Neil, Dave Van Ronk, and Bob Dylan. But he also was hip to jazz and saw some of the greats around town too. It was clear he loved the music of his generation and understood it too.

The Miami Pop Festival

After off-and-on stints at New York University, Lang ended up in the Coconut Grove section of Miami. He opened a head shop, which was not easy task in the mid 1960’s, and managed to even make some money at it.

Inspired by Monterey Pop he decided he wanted to put on the first music festival in Florida.

Somehow he managed to pull it off in a matter of weeks, and the show happened in May of 1968. Acts included John Lee Hooker, Chuck Berry, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Blue Cheer, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and the new sensation, The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

The show went off well despite weather problems (sounds familiar) and problems with the acts and the “money” people. Generally though, it is remembered as one of the better concerts from that year. It drew 80,000 people over two days.

Michael Lang’s Strength – Staying Calm

Michael Lang

In his book it’s clear from the quotes by people like Abbie Hoffman, Eddie Kramer, and the other promoters that he could handle the heat. When the situation went south he could stay cool, keep everyone else calm and get things done.

Through the debacle that was the original site in Walkill New York, to finding a new location, to putting together the organization and crews for the show, you can see in his book, that Michael was the visionary who made it happen and the one who made sure it happend on a “high” level. The proof is we are still talking about this weekend 40 years after, with not only affection, but with a gleam in our eyes. It truly was a magical weekend — thanks to Michael Lang. To learn more about the book click on this link.

• The Ultimate Collector’s Edition (3 discs total)
• The Director’s Cut version of just the movie (2 discs) – 225 minutes compared to 184 for original
• The VHS tape called The Lost Performances

In the Ultimate Collectors Edition you’ve got the Director’s Cut for the regular movie (2 discs). This comes on regular 2-disc version too. And then you’ve also got the Extras disc with a bunch more performances by the bands and lots of interviews with promoters and movie crew (and even a Hugh Hefner Playboy After Dark section). And you’ve also got the VHS tape called The Lost Performances with songs that you can’t get on any of the other DVDs.

The Woodstock Crowd

Anyway, I’ve been watching all these and it hit me. Even though some of these performances are great, it’s all the shots of the crowds that really get my attention.That’s where the real “fun” was being had and where the real story of Woodstock was happening.

And most of those shots aren’t necessarily of people watching the music although that’s what most people are there for. There’s also plenty of shots of people just hanging around, or doing yoga, or interviews with people (the one of the guy cleaning out the port-a-san is a classic), or of course the nude swimmers at the pond. These are the real stars of the movie to me.

You can tell these hippies are having fun and sharing something very special. But it’s the interviews with the townpeople and the movie crew and the organizers that are sticking in my mind.

Here’s some examples…

• The guy that jumped on stage with Canned Heat and Bob Hite totally accepted and put his arm around while he sang
• Artie Kornfield and Michael Lang (the promoters) talking about how the vision was working while they were getting rained on. In the middle of the interview a helicopter starts to drop flowers and dry clothes on the crowd. In split screen a couple undresses to make love.
• The Port-A-San man sharing how he is happy to help these kids and has his own kid at the show and one in Vietnam. I great man from the older generation. It had to open all our eyes that the older generation isn’t all bad.
• Max Yasgur addressing the crowd and saying “you’ve proven something to the world… 3 days of fund and music… and nothing but fun and music… and I God bless you for it.”

And on the Extras disc there are so many juicy tidbits like…

• Chip Monck got to be MC because Michael Lang forgot to book anyone. He was notified at 7:00 AM on Friday. Chip was actually in charge of the lights so he had no prior MC experience really. All this time I thought he was a professional announcer.
• The story of how the “brown acid” announcement happened. And how he did his best to soften the tone so it wouldn’t promote bad trips.
• How as the traffic congestion got worse and worse the promoters had to find more and more helicopters to get performers and supplies to the site.
• How big of a negative effect the rain on Saturday had on the logistics and equipment for the festival… but somehow the crowd and the bands and the organizers rose above it.
• Martin Scorsce’s comments about how the experience of the Woodstock music effected all of his subsequent movies. He was a lowly “assistant director” to Michael Wadleigh the film’s “creator.”

Yes, the crowd and the people were the real stars of Woodstock.

“For me, Woodstock was a test of whether people of our generation really believed in one another and the world we were struggling to create. How would we do when we were in charge? Could we live as the peaceful community we envisioned? I’d hoped we could.”

Now that may sound a bit overblown but I think each of us who attended Woodstock were searching for something. Yes, many of us called ourselves “hippies” or “freaks” but deep down all we wanted was to be different than our parents. We looked at them and the world they had created and, rightly or wrongly, we didn’t like what we saw. We REALLY wanted to do better.

We saw in our parent’s world an overwhelming materialism that put the focus on things that weren’t important to us… and didn’t really work for them.

They had put the whole world at risk with their violent views of the “enemy” who at that time was the Russians. But to us as the “boomer” generation we hoped and believed there had to be a better way. Maybe we were just being naive but we had to try and find a new approach.

That’s why the hippie message of love and peace and kindness appealed to us. Sure many of the so called freaks were just acting out a role that they didn’t really feel. But others truly believed in the message and tried to make those values of peace, love, and kindness real.

And yes drugs did play a part. Pot and particularly LSD had shown us another view of reality, another state of mind.  Our minds had truly been opened up. And part of the appeal of that new state of mind was it was soooo different than the reality we saw around us. It showed us that life was much more than rushing to work, buying stuff, drinking alcohol and going to church on Sunday. In fact, drugs main impact was it showed us that you could be blissfully happy without any of what our parents thought was important.

Woodstock was important to so many of us because it helped us see that we weren’t alone in our feelings. When we saw the crowd and felt the sharing and kindness that was all around us, we knew we were on to something. It was real. There really was hope. The importance of Woodstock was it convinced us that maybe we could do it. We could live a life that was nothing like our parent’s.

The question was, could we really change the world? For that one brief weekend Woodstock convinced us that anything was possible and we knew we could.

Well I had some good friends who said they were going to Woodstock but I never was able to hook up with them and get a ride. So somehow I convinced my parents that I could get there on my own (actually I’m not sure what excuse I used because that doesn’t sound like something my parents would fall for). I told them I’d just hook up with my friends when I got there. I figured they’d be easy to find. Sure Rick.

Plus I didn’t have any tickets. It was a last minute decision so I figured I’d just get them when I got there… or something. Typical teenage thinking.

Anyway, I stuck out my thumb and hitchhiked from just south of Boston (Avon), across the Mass Pike, and then headed south when I got to Interstate 87 (I think). Actually I don’t remember how I got there. I didn’t really have directions and someone else was driving anyways. And honestly I don’t remember much about the ride there. Hmm… not sure why.

Of course hitchhiking was common back then. Everyone did it and if you wanted to go long distances it was a great way to travel. I hitchhiked back from California and back and forth to Florida several times around that time. Mostly by myself by the way. Seems funny to think about that now. We just put a lot of faith in our fellow man back then. Or we were just naive. But we didn’t care and Woodstock proved our faith was right.

Too bad our kids will never be able to experience that freedom and adventure that hitchiking offered. I sure get to meet some cool people when I was hitchhiking.

Anyway, after many hours and lots of walking, I finally got there on Friday evening (did I say after a lot of walking). I was all by myself and soon realized after seeing the crowd that I was going to have a hard time finding my friends. So what I was going to make 450,000 new ones.

I guess the first think I noticed was that all the fences were down and no one was taking tickets so it was going to be a free concert. Now that was cool! Great way to start my weekend.

So I trugged in the rest of the way to the check things out.

I got there just in time to catch a little of Arlo Guthrie’s show. The energy was high and so was most of the crowd.

But I was getting tired after a long day of hitchhiking so I settled into my sleeping bag and took a little rest as Joan Baez was doing her set at around 1:30 in the morning. Nice music to chill out and relax on… and fall asleep.

Next… I’ll tell you what happened on Day 2 of Woodstock.