Were you at Woodstock?

[Bob from Brooklyn]

I thought Woodstock '94 looked pretty good. '99 not so much.

[RP]

Originally Posted by Murphy Slaw

No.

Looks like it was a wet, sweaty, muddy, stinky mess.

Kind of sorry I missed it...

It was and I know that because I was there....

[dirkronk]

Never even got close in '69. I was 19 and working in the only summer job I could find (Arby's!) in Waco as I prepped to abandon Baylor to move to Austin and UT for my sophomore year. Even if I'd known a way to get up to Woodstock, the time and money required to do so would have thrown a monkey wrench in these other, more important plans. As it was, I had to devote so much savings to 1st-and-last-month's rent in Austin that I was forced to give up the Martin D-28 I'd had on layaway all year. No Brazilian rosewood for me...boo hoo. No trip to upstate New York either.

Dirk

[Chickee]

I was on the other side of the tree line at Camp Shane that rainy, rainy weekend.

My camp friend Glenn Sample and I sat in the communications hut listening to rock and roll albums while the helicopters shuttling the acts, flying just above the trees, back and fourth for four days. The hut had a microphone that broadcast throughout the 100+ acre camp, with a turntable connected to the sound system. The camp was originally part of the borscht belt bungalow colonies that were all over the Catskills after the Second World War.

I was twelve years old that summer, just slightly too young to understand the history being made that weekend. But I wasn’t too young to understand how historic it was watching Neil Armstrong walk on the surface of the moon the month before..

[fretfile100]

I did not attend because I had no way to get there and I didn’t know many of the artists playing. The movie was just fine for me and there was a box set floating around for $800 that contained most of the performances. I listened to the CSNY performance on radio and later learned that their soundtrack had been dubbed in later.

[H165]

No.... but I'm among the few guitar players my age that will admit it. I was 20 - summer between my soph and junior college years. Working for peanuts at a local mountain camp. No $, and no way to get there....and that's assuming I'd heard of it at all (which I hadn't).

My friend Lloyd held the ice cream sales concession contract for Woodstock. Leased a refrigerated semi, jammed it full of ice cream, and headed for the festival. Never got there. Traffic stopped him. He eventually ran out of fuel for the refrigeration system right there sitting on the road, and gave away all of his remaining product to his fellow traffic jammers and on-foot festival-goers just before it started to melt. He's never stopped laughing about it....a highlight of his whole life.

[BoxCar_Joe]

My sister's boyfriend was there and made it on the album cover.
Haven't seen him since '69. I'll bet he's still bragging about it.

[Bob from Brooklyn]

Speaking of the cover, the couple that are prominently displayed on the cover are still together!

https://time.com/5644827/woodstock-photo-couple/

[lowrider]

I was there Friday and part of Saturday, and right now I'm sitting in my house in the mountains just west of the Town of Woodstock. Four of us, two boys and two girls went up very early Friday and although traffic slowed down a lot, we never had to stop. In fact, we stopped at a store in White Lake for sodas and chips.

We set up our tents right by a nice pond, just before you got to the concert site. We were hanging out there when we heard Havens start up the show. We saw a lot of the early performers. Then the rain hit and we went back to the tents. After dark, the rain ended and the music started again so we went back again but it was much more crowded. At some point, we went back to the tent to sleep.

In the morning our nice little site was full of tents, and we had found out that if we got the car and drove past the stage and under the performer's bridge, we could go down to a little town. We did and had breakfast in a normal little county restaurant. We went back, it was pouring and the girls had had enough. We got everything in the car, and went back to the little town, then back to Rt 17, and rolled on back past camping hippies all the way down to Mahwah. Some of those people camping by the side of the road were 50 miles away from the stage, but to them, they were at Woodstock!

In 94, I was building this house. We had come up on Thursday to beat all the festival traffic. They had been warning everyone about all the security and they had off-site parking as far away as Newburgh with busses to the site. It was all broadcast on Radio Woodstock and I was listening while I worked. At the end of the day on Friday, my wife and I decided to just drive over and see how close we could get. We drove right up.
The fences were torn down, and the gates were gone. I found a place to park the truck by the side of the road, and we went in a cruised around for a while.

It was actually best just listening while I was working on the house. It was a great weekend, I got a lot of work done, and listened to a lot of great music!

[Glennwillow]

No, I was working a summer job to pay for my last year of college. My parents would have never let me go to such an event anyway. Woodstock is the kind of event I would rather watch on a movie or TV screen than to have actually been there.

- Glenn

[Mbroady]

Been to the location many times but not during the festivities.

[roberts]

Of course I was there! Even bought the 3-day ticket for like $15. I held onto that ticket for many years before it disappeared to place where all important memorabilia goes. Having been to a couple Philly Folk Festivals I was anticipating something close to that, maybe a little bigger, and made plans with friends to meet up "to the left of the stage." We pulled off 17 about 5 miles from the stage and I lugged my Guild D-40 in a really heavy case the rest of the way. My most vivid memory was Friday night after nightfall, watching all the helicopters and small planes circling above, and realizing I was trapped in the middle of an inescapable mass of humanity should something go wrong from above. Total paranoia!

While Friday night was drenching, Saturday was a pristine, crystal blue upstate NY August day. Everyone talks about the rain but I remember the worst sunburn of my life. While Credence was doing Green River Sat. night we looked at each other and called it an event. Even though everyone I really came to see was due up, there was only so much music I could respond to. That and I was totally starving.

Whatever you came for it was all there. The music was real, drugs real, Aquarian dawning I guess real for the hard core, and the historical significance definitely real as you took it all in.

[Borderdon]

Nope, but went to the movie (1970 I think ?)

[Bob from Brooklyn]

Originally Posted by roberts

Of course I was there! ...

Great story! Thanks!

[sayheyjeff]

Was hoping to go as I was headed from England to Syracuse U as a freshman. My neighbor and friend from across the street went and typical of him even at that age, took notes or wrote a journal of his experience. He recently gave it to the Woodstock Museum and it is there under glass. I settled for the Isle of Wight. Was there in ‘68 and ‘69. Would have loved to be at Woodstock.

Jeff