Idealism and chaos: Woodstock and Altamont in the 1960s

Woodstock

Modern and topical interpretations of the rock an roll era, including but not limited to the culminating events which played out at Woodstock, and its less well-known cousin Altamont are varied, demonstrating the idealism that drove such events as well as the reality of the "disarray" and "chaos" that was realized by them. Though some wish to look back on the Woodstock Rock Festival and the Altamont Rock Festival, with sunny rose colored glasses while others like to see it through more realistic eyes, having to do with the fallout of the events and the cacophony of disasters associated with them, "the muddy disarray of Woodstock...and the chaos of Altamont."

Having passed the 30th anniversaries of the moon landing and Chappaquiddick, this summer also marks the same anniversary of that quintessential 1960s event known as Woodstock, the legendary confab of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll - and mud. Co-founding producer Michael Lang dubs Woodstock "a state of mind, not a locale" and there is truth to this glib turn of phrase. For three decades, the nation, even the world, has been in thrall to the Woodstock state of mind: namely, the anti-bourgeois animus of young (and old, as Boomers pass into their 50s) in the pose of the ever-snarly rebel.

Woodstock and Altamont as well as the ideals and events that drove them and created their "vibe" became a turning point and an iconic pinnacle for many in American society. The rock and roll movement became synonymous with the "hippies" and their ideals to define the whole of future culture in America;

By the late 1960s rock was widely regarded as an important musical form. Musicians such as Miles Davis and John McLaughlin and groups like Traffic or Blood, Sweat, and Tears tried to fuse rock and jazz, while such disparate artists as Leonard Bernstein and Frank Zappa attempted to connect rock and classical music. Groups featuring virtuoso guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, and Jimmy Page continued to perform variations on classic blues themes using the traditional instruments of rock 'n' roll. From 1967 onward, the rock festival was regarded as the ideal context in which to hear rock music, and thousands of fans attended. The most successful and peaceful rock festival, Woodstock, was held near Bethel, N.Y., in Aug., 1969. Later, however, a similar event, featuring the Rolling Stones, was held at Altamont, Calif., and was marked by several violent incidents caught on film, including a murder.

The excesses that were a part of the "hippie" scene, no matter how secondary they were initially to the movement created a culture of excess marked by the "sex, drugs and rock n roll," slogan. Along with many others that better fit the free love free society ideals of its founders and followers. Woodstock, in many ways marked the beginning of the end, as did the violence that peppered Altamont a few months later.

By 1970 several of rock's top performers -- Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix -- were dead from substance abuse. The dangerous, androgynous quality projected by the Rolling Stones was taken to extremes by performers such as Alice Cooper and David Bowie, who were perhaps as famous for their sexual ambiguity and outrageous behavior as for their music.

Regardless of the personal impact that the movement had on individuals, both positive, negative and neutral the period marked a change in the world, and is treated as such both concurrently and in retrospective. The foundations that built Woodstock, idelas that challenged the status quo and the very visible and almost viral way in which Woodstock was organized and played out proved to many on both sides that mass movements could culminate in both positive and negative change that might never have been possible before, short of mass revolution.

How Woodstock Changed the World

The rejection of the conservative 1950s and early 1960s was the impetus of the hippie movement a movement that in many ways was demonstrative in its straight line of development to the Woodstock rock festival. A whole generation of young people worked toward ideals and then embraced some of those ideals to an excesses that challenged the older generations and made then rethink how the world should be developed and controlled.

The sixties came together and fell apart in five short months. The end began when Charlie Manson's followers came together to carry out the Tate-La Blanca murders in Los Angeles on the nights of the ninth and tenth of August, 1969; only a week later, on the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth, the Woodstock Nation came together for the first and only time. Then, finally, the hippies came together to create Woodstock West at Altamont, California, on the ninth of December, to hear the Rolling Stones, and it all came apart. The sixties began with the Beatles and ended with the Rolling Stones. As it often happens in momentous events, this generalization holds in more than one sense. If Charlie Manson thought that the Beatles were sending him secret messages to commit murder, the Rolling Stones found out that they couldn't prevent murder. As it also happens in momentous events, these three have a symbolic quality in that they stand for the social change of the sixties that was inseparable from the music. A full appreciation of the music requires a full appreciation of how and why people "went through changes," as we said at the time. And vice versa.

The realization that individuals could be moved in a massive way to act in manners that were totally outside the control of the mainstream, and that such a movement could in fact become thought of as the "mainstream" left many in awe, as did the outgrowth of excesses that resulted. In many the development of Woodstock, its realization and massive, record growth as well as Altamont's dire violence could be seen as the full circle of a movement that embraced drugs to "free the mind" and then used them to such an excess that their actions became much more indicative a of destructive substance abuse.

Woodstock or Altamont Define the Day

Woodstock and Altamont were both indicative of the 1960s as one represented the massive manner in which ideas and ideals could drive people to act, and eventually act poorly, near the end and in Altamont express the excesses of challenging the status quo and the demure character of the 1950s. I believe that many people assumed that nothing but good would come from the "good" ideas of the hippie movement and then were shocked to find that the influences of these ideas could spiral out of control and end in violence. In this way both events were representative of the reality of the 1960s, from beginning to end, and in a very short time frame.

Symbolic Importance

The symbolic importance of Woodstock, cannot be dismissed as it proved, without a doubt that even the conservative children of the rural (previously unaffected) population could and would join their urban counterculture brothers when the venue had the pull and draw that Woodstock did and react and act in many of the same ways, according to their own whim and the standards of the event and the counterculture. People, came form all over the nation to join in the festivities as Woodstock, even after the event had begun, swelling the ranks to an uncontrollable or supportable hoard of individuals who needed services which were simply not available. The event even later symbolically defined who was and who was not in the scene, if you were present at Woodstock you were a bonafide member of the counter culture if you were not you not only had missed out on the most amazing thing many had ever witnessed but you were somehow an inauthentic "poser" of the counterculture. The Woodsock event came to be the mark of a real member as well as proof of the almost religious zealotries that was guised as secularization of conservative social religion.

A secularization reversed itself into resacralization. A remark by Ralph Gleason, father figure to the Flower Children, about Altamont, applies even more to Woodstock: "The gathering was religious, of course, which is no new comment." 23 We talked about morality a lot in the sixties; did we not condemn the war on moral grounds?

The demand for continued messages from the "rock" stars who were the "preachers of the event, sadly went unanswered when even these leaders proved to individually be weak for the excesses of the period.

Impact on the Region

Though the region where Woodstock was held immediately felt the impact of the event, in the form of complete lack of ability to support and sustain such crowds the lasting effect was limited, except symbolically. Many would in fact not recognize the region, where the event was held, unless they had been one of the first few to arrive on the scene, as it is a rural open plain with little or no structural changes and nothing to indicate that so many had for a few days lived out a pinnacle fantasy of convoluted excess and standard. The lasting impact for many would simply be the fact the Woodstock, NY a quite sleepy little borough in the area is now a recognized household name.

Drugs

The analogy of the reality of Woodstock to Altamont being the transcendence of the "free your mind" drug doer to that of the crazed self-destructive and socially destructive addict holds true of the whole of the period as every event, associated with te 1960s counterculture eventually turned to a parade of drugs and drug opportunism that drove many to question the ideals and standards of the period and call them much more than they were. "Sex, drugs and rock n roll" drove the idea that doing things that freed the mind and body from the confines of conservative actions and decision making was wholly good and therefore should be embraced. Yet, alternatively gave the detractors of the movement the ammunition they needed to call the movement inherently corrupt, as the drugs resulted in base and even violent actions, the sex ended in massive STD outbreaks and uncared for children and the rock n roll led to a corrupted mind incapable of making informed and real decisions about what was good and what was bad. There is no more telling of a call to action that the divide that this slogan created between the adherents to the counterculture and those who detracted from it.

The Hippies

Regardless of the bad name that the movement received, the more positive aspects of the hippie ideals, "live simply so others may simply live" should be the defining characteristics of the movement as we look back on it today. Despite the one or two bad seeds that used the movement to further and propagate destructive social behavior, the real messages of the 1960s hippie counterculture should leave a lasting idea of the good rather than the bad.

Woodstock Thirty Years Later I arrived in San Francisco at the end of the summer of love in 1967 and stayed for six months in Haight-Ashbury. We would gather in Golden Gate Park for free concerts by the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. It was there that I bought my first camera and started photographing these folks. Nearly two years later in New York, the idea of seeing old friends and meeting new ones brought me to Woodstock. When it began, no one could have known that the Woodstock Rock Festival -- a three-day celebration of community and music -- would turn into a watershed moment of American culture and a landmark of the twentieth century. Woodstock defined a generation and symbolized the differences between the World War II generation and their children. It was the largest peaceful gathering in our history, and it happened spontaneously. Woodstock grew to half a million by word of mouth alone. Most of us heard about it from like-minded friends and simply picked up our backpacks and went. We weren't concerned about where we would sleep, how we would live, or any of the other mundane details. We were drawn by the promise of the music -- the music that defined us and that still endures thirty years later.

Remembering the hippie culture, what it meant and who was a part of it is not difficult as many "hippies" still live today, some transformed other reformed and the world will likely continue to see them as influential arrangers of hope, rather than bringers of vile human nature.

How to Remember Woodstock

Bringing many together, most out of hand of any social intention, to listen to music and live as they chose to live, if only for a day or two is how Woodstock should be remembered. It is an infectious event that pervades social and cultural standards of the day and should to some degree be divorced from bad actions and attitudes that might have sprung from it.

From all over the country we made our way to the tiny town of Bethel (there was no place for the festival in Woodstock proper). Fortunately, a local farmer named Max Yasgur offered his land to the organizers, giving the event a home. Woodstock literally stopped traffic. For the only time in its history, the New York State Thruway was closed down by sheer volume. Undaunted, hippies simply left their cars on what was the best-paved parking lot around and walked the rest of the way to the site. The performers had to be helicoptered in; there was no other way in or out. Although tickets were sold, the endless stream of people arriving gave the organizers no choice but to let them in free of charge -- and it became a free festival. This was very much in keeping with the ethos of the participants: share everything, experience life, and "don't sweat the small stuff. "Music was at the heart of Woodstock. An endless roster of the best in the business performed day and night. Music was the common bond that transcended professional status, religion, education, and region. It brought us together as a community ready to change the world. Though often characterized by the slogan "make love, not war," Woodstock wasn't an overt demonstration. There weren't any posters or rallies; it all came out through the music. Hundreds of thousands of draft-age people were facing a war that seemed it would never end. The festival gave them hope. Young people from small towns could see that there were half a million others just like them who were facing the same thing. Although people watching from the outside thought it was the beginning of an era, it was in fact the end. Those of us who had lived through the summer of love kept hearing about an "end of summer" event in the East. We all wanted to be there. Woodstock was to mark the culmination of that era and the end of a decade. Since 1969, there have been attempts to re-create the spirit of Woodstock, but the defining spontaneity of that free festival remains elusive.

An elusive event that helped again to bring the messages of the counterculture to light of everyday people should be the legacy of Woodstock, as well as a reminder of what happens when planning is completely outstripped by reality.

Conclusion

In a retrospective of the nation's response to the Rock Era and many of the socially charged issues and events of the day that lead to demonstrative changes in educational policy and at least one fallible but influential education research document, titled a Nation at Risk, mention of Woodstock and Altamont are included in the monumental social events of the era, that might have influenced educational decline.

It is instructive to examine what the nation was experiencing during the 10 years of falling test scores from 1965 to 1975. Just one year before the decline began, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, and 1965 opened with the Watts riots in Los Angeles. Urban violence then spread across the nation. The decade also brought us the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, Students for a Democratic Society, the Free Speech Movement, the Summer of Love, Woodstock, Altamont, Ken Kesey and his LSD-laced band of Merry Pranksters, the Kent State atrocities, and the 1968 Chicago Police Riot. Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy, and Malcolm X were all assassinated. The nation became obsessed with and depressed by first the war in Vietnam and then Watergate. "Recreational drugs" -- pot, acid, speed, Quaaludes, amyl nitrate -- had become popular. If you remember the Sixties, the saying goes, you weren't there. Popular books included such anti-Establishment tracts as the Making of a Counter Culture, the Greening of America, and the Pursuit of Loneliness. Books critical of schools included Death at an Early Age, the Way it Spozed to Be, 36 Children, Free Schools, Deschooling Society, the Death of School, How Children Fail, the Student as Nigger, Teaching as a Subversive Activity, and, most influential, Charles Silberman's 1970 tome, Crisis in the Classroom. Under these conditions of social upheaval, centered in the schools and universities, it would have been a miracle if test scores had not fallen.

Challenges to the status quo sprang to action in a counter rejection to the counterculture rejection of the 1950s conservative era. The cyclical nature of how time and culture travel through periods of strict adherence to cultural norms and then a stretching of those norms is the lesson needing to be learned from the 1960s excesses. No matter how conservative we become, we will likely be answered by a rejection of this conservation with an equal or greater rejection of it.

After Woodstock and its violent twin, Altamont, historian Todd Gitlin, keeper of the '60s flame, wondered "whether the youth culture would leave anything behind but a market." He seemed to despair that the idealism he and his ilk had embraced would devolve into something so crass as uncomplicated commercialism - which did happen. But it is much more than what Mr. Gitlin seemed to expect. What you might call the Woodstock state of mind created a commercial colossus, fed by and fueling an obsession with youth and unresolved rebellion. And that is no ordinary market.

The market of the Woodstock era, and its outgrowth from today is clearly not devoid of any of the ultimate messages of the counterculture, not the least of which is the need to seek balance between the good and bad and ideals and realities and to "live simply so others may simply live."

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