By the time we got to Woodstock, music and hope united

Event symbolized time’s optimism

By Dick Hermans
For the Poughkeepsie Journal

It was one of the most visible and influential events to emerge from the countercultural movement of the 1960s. As the media age was emerging, with its demand for sound bites on the evening news, Woodstock was a simple word quickly employed to convey a phenomenon as complex as that of another simple word of the time, Vietnam.

I drove from Baltimore. The north end of the New Jersey Turnpike was a rush hour of freaks headed to Woodstock, hair flowing and peace signs flashing.

In the summer of 1969, Woodstock was a spark that got people’s attention and broadened their awareness of an idealistic stripe in the baby boom generation. By making those seeking social change aware of the potential vastness of their constituency, Woodstock contributed mightily to the growing anti-war movement and the birth of the environmental movement on Earth Day in the spring of 1970.

500,000 flocked to site

More than 500,000 young people are estimated to have attended the Woodstock festival in mid-August, and many tens of thousands more were turned back in their attempts to attend by the impossibility of getting near the festival site after the first half-million arrived.

I arrived near White Lake at dusk, parking God knows how far from the festival. A stop at a local grocery store revealed a shop with every shelf totally bare.

The event created a wave of optimism among progressive youth that seemed almost impossible a year earlier following the assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the debacle at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Following just weeks after the first manned moon landing, Woodstock told us that anything could happen; dreams could come true.

If hundreds of thousands of like-minded people could come together for a weekend festival that celebrated our music, our lifestyle and our energy, why couldn’t all of us, millions across the country, act together to reverse America’s policy in Southeast Asia, stem the tide of pollution, end racism, recognize the rights of American Indians, advocate for the poor, find the connections between different religions? What youthful generation had ever before contemplated all of that?

After hours of walking with masses of folks already bedraggled by the late hour and the rain, I got near enough to hear Joan Baez singing off in the distance, the last act of the first night. Sleep came on muddy ground.

Culturally, the Woodstock festival reinforced the value of music to the vitality of our society. It was three days of peace, love and music. Each of those of equal importance. The power of song to inspire peace and love within and between people is a concept almost too simple to believe. The Woodstock generation understood for a moment — and from time to time ever since — that life can be as simple as that. Listen to a note or a tune and let the music open you to love and peace. If we all got it, we would all get it.

Considering the morning scene with thousands of weary souls on the very fringe of the festival crowd and no food, I decided to trudge back to the car and drive to my parents’ farm in Milan.

Some would argue that the Woodstock generation never got its act together to unify and become a political power to change American society. The moment of real optimism faded over into the next two years with the deaths of so many music icons, such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, all under 30. (Of those, only Hendrix performed at Woodstock. He performed last on Monday morning with a remaining audience of under 50,000 and gave an inspired rendition of ‘‘The Star Spangled Banner.’’)

Hope holds on still

The nascent political euphoria ended certainly with the failure of Democratic Sen. George McGovern’s presidential campaign. The music industry became so commercialized and apolitical over the following two decades that by the end of the 1980s, it was hard to imagine that popular music could ever have been a power for social change.

But the phenomenon that the Woodstock festival represented, the rebellion of youth against war, racism and traditional social mores has had many lasting impacts. Today all our congressmen are not Bob Barr, all our children are not skinheads, and, thankfully, music has regained an edge and is again making important cultural contributions.

The once-young people in the generation that sent more than a half million folks to White Lake (the festival, of course, was held 70 miles southwest of the Village of Woodstock) in mid-August of 1969 have raised their families now, have their business lives settled and may even be poised in their fully grown-up years to make a new commitment to the ideals planted in their young minds so many years ago.

One of the great questions at the beginning of the new millennium is: Will the Woodstock generation in its maturity re-energize and reunite as a force for a new wave of progressive social change? In 1969, we knew our generation would change the world.

Dick Hermans is co-owner of Oblong Books & Music in Millerton, vice president of the Pine Plains School Board and chairman of the Harlem Valley Rail Trail Association. He hosts a folk music show, Harmony Junction, Thursday nights on WKZE-FM 98.1.