Woodstock '89
Back in the mud at Max Yasgur's farm
08/13/1989
BETHEL, N.Y. -- At Max Yasgur's farm, it is raining and 500,000 people are answering Country Joe McDonald's call to "Give me an F" as the original Woodstock soundtrack plays on a boombox.
About 150 cars and vans clustered yesterday on the land along Hurd Road and Happy Avenue in Bethel where the Woodstock Music & Art Fair happened 2 4years ago this week.
There are a few hot dog stands and souvenir tables in one corner of the field, but this is a gathering of people who've come to remember, and people who got here 20 years late.
"My friend and I played kazoo and percussion and got the rain chant started 20 years ago," said David Naukie, 36, of Huntington, N.Y., who had been meditating under a transparent plastic tarp.
"After Woodstock, I became a Tibetan Buddhist. I'm a poet working on a novel and a maintenance man and I had to be here," he said through the plastic.
Below him on the slope where a half-million festival-goers once cheered the likes of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, a softball game goes on. Children and dogs mingle with bikers and longhairs in a tent city with a breathtaking view of the green rolling hills of the Catskills. Many say they plan to stay despite the rain and Max's famous mud. Max Yasgur died in 1978. The farm is now owned by Louis Nicky and June Gelish.
In the afternoon, Michael Lang, the man who thought up and produced the festival, arrived with Lee Blumer, a staffer then, who now works with him in Better Music, representing such entertainers as Joe Cocker.
They were surrounded by people thanking them for putting on the festival 20 years ago. A man slipped his original festival tickets out of their frame and asked Lang to autograph them.
Asked how it felt to be here now, Lang said, "It feels older."
As Lang and Blumer approached the Woodstock Monument - a sculpture bearing a list of performers and the logo of a bird perched on a guitar neck - two men appeared behind them. One was whacking a pair of bongo drums, the other waving a green Buddha incense burner.
"We are spreading the peace and love," they said in unison. "Long may it wave."
The vans are nicer now, although a maroon and cream, split-windshield, vintage VW bus with eyelid side windows would take the prize for best van in show.
Under a tarp stretched from a van roof, two long-haired men play guitars. A tattooed man wearing a black beret teases a boy of about 9 about his Mohawk haircut.
Here and there middle-aged people stand silently alone, staring, trying to remember where they were then.
Bob Elliott, 50, stands by a campfire and eulogizes 1969. "Woodstock is the only thing in my whole life I really enjoyed," says Elliott, who works in a grocery store in Dalesville, Pa.
Al Fumognari, 34, of Bethel, has come back every day for two weeks.
"I still get a chill through me, " he said. "This happened because a lot of people believed in those things - helping each other, sharing, making it better together."
Bob Andrus, 22, from Colorado Springs, Colo., wears a headband and carries a bright, fluorescent-striped crutch to support a broken ankle.
"I'm here because my mother, who passed away two years ago, was here in '69, and growing up I've learned her ways," he said.
A young man and woman wearing tie-died T-shirts and shorts are under a canvas hoping to catch a whiff of a time they're sad they missed.
"I believe in peace," said Donna DiGiovanni, 24, of Jeffersonville, N.Y. "That's what these people were about. We give them a lot of respect. They're mellow. They're cool now."
"My generation couldn't put this on," said Sean Roth, 19, of York, Pa. "The music is all heavy-metal love ballads, with no purpose except to make money. The Woodstock people showed there were other ways to deal with things."
Patrick Laidman's sister got married in Westchester, N.Y., on Woodstock weekend, he said, and people couldn't get through the traffic to her wedding. He came here from Thornway, N.Y., because "still remembering is nice."
Sgt. James McNutt of the Sullivan County Sheriff's Department was handling traffic outside the field.
"We figure as soon as the rain stops, watch out. They'll be pouring in here. The real anniversary isn't till Wednesday," he said, "And then they'll be coming to the Imperial."
The Imperial Hotel, a giant Catskill resort in nearby Swan Lake, is hosting Woodstock Remembered, a three-day concert featuring some original Woodstock performers. A three-day ticket costs $75. In 1969 three-day tickets cost $18, but so many people showed up that Woodstock turned out to be free.
"Twenty years ago, I spent 30 hours on that hill," McNutt said.
"You want to know the truth? I had a great time. The people were nice."
