WEEKEND COLUMNISTS In the beginning, FT readers may be interested to hear, it was supposed to be a sitcom about financial investment. Joel Rosenman and John Roberts wanted to write about “two stupid guys with too much money” who want to become venture capitalists. The comedy would come from the hare-brained schemes they backed – only the writers couldn’t think of anything sufficiently audacious and bizarre to capture a television audience’s imagination.
So they placed an ad in the financial press, trawling for inspiration: “Young man with unlimited capital seeks interesting and legitimate business proposals.” They received about 100 ideas, one of which caught their eye. It was from two men who wanted to build a recording studio at Woodstock, near New York. One of them, Michael Lang, “was wearing blue jeans and had a lot of hair”, Rosenman recalls. “A lot of hair. And he was wearing not a T-shirt but a vest – and a lot of fringe from the vest.”
A promising comedic outline. But the hairy Lang talked the talk. The meeting became improbably fruitful. The studio project gradually evolved into a plan to stage a live concert. The two comedy writers liked the sound of it so much they actually became venture capitalists. And in August 1969, almost exactly 40 years ago, the concert came to pass. Three days of psychotropic mayhem that would, according to popular mythology, define the aspirations of a beautiful and well-meaning generation.
I like this beginning of the Woodstock story because it places money – rather than peace, love, drugs, hippies, idealism, music or mud – at its core. It is common to talk of the festival as the end of an era, but it was equally the beginning of one. Beneath all those exhortations to change the world came a message loud and clear: this counterculture business was a mighty lucrative affair.
Here is Rosenman again, quoted in a lavish new book Woodstock Experience, which includes an original ticket from the festival. He is recalling the tricky opening day, when the organisers began to lose control of their cash flow.
“We had a pretty conservative banker who was not used to lending to rock ’n’ roll festivals. Next to his desk was a fish tank containing a piranha and another tank containing goldfish, and as he put a goldfish into the piranha’s tank, he’d say, ‘Everybody repays their loans here at the National Bank of North America.’”
It is another unforgettable vignette to bear in mind in the coming days, when all around will be talking of harmonious vibes. Not to be too cynical: Michael Lang and the rest barely knew what they were letting themselves in for when they planned the festival. But they were sharp cookies too. In the film of the festival, Lang is asked by an earnest reporter just what it is that musicians have to offer such a large crowd of young people. “Music,” he replies sardonically before roaring off on his motorbike.
So how about the music? Most of it was not terribly good, to be honest. The sound wasn’t great, it rained, and there were a lot of drugs around. Many of the musicians’ recollections in Woodstock Experience are a little opaque. Those performers that were compos mentis were let down by their less scrupulous fellow band members. Then there were those who didn’t make it at all: Joni Mitchell’s manager decided that an appearance on the influential Dick Cavett Show was more important for the singer’s prospects.
The festival’s peaceful air was impressive to behold: no major incidents (just a couple of deaths and a couple of births – neat!) and an atmosphere of trippy geniality, no small matter in a crowd of half a million. But then context is everything: Woodstock took place in the shadow of tumultuous events: the Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations and the événements of the previous year, and, just days before the festival started, the Manson murders. Woodstock was not the culmination of the hippy dream; it was its death rattle.
So what are we left with, culturally speaking? One outstanding musical event: Jimi Hendrix’s “Star-Spangled Banner”, popular culture’s “Guernica” moment, when a creative genius fractured his art form into ugly fragments to speak directly to his own time. But don’t get carried away by the supposed communality of that moment: because of rain delays, Hendrix appeared on Monday morning, when most of the crowd had gone home or were struggling to get to their parked cars. They had jobs to go to, after all.
Of course times have changed. Imagine today’s promoters posting what is my favourite crowd announcement from Woodstock: “The brown acid is bad but not poisonous. If you feel like experimenting, only take half a tab.” But those promoters have learned a thing or two in the intervening years. This month, the Michael Lang Organisation is planning a 40th anniversary concert at Woodstock. It will make a lot of money, and a lot of people very happy. The piranhas are swimming with the goldfish: the true legacy of Woodstock.
peter.aspden@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/aspden
‘Woodstock Experience’ is published by Genesis Publications, £395
