The biggest, baddest and most legendary music fest of all was Woodstock, a venture "created for wallets . . . designed to make bucks. And then the universe took over and did a little dance."
So quipped Wavy Gravy, performance artist and front man for the famed Hog Farm commune, which gently policed and fed the festival. Woodstock pilgrims - anywhere from 300,000 to "half a million strong," depending on who's counting - clogged the New York State Thruway and turned the cow pastures of Sullivan County, N.Y., into an instant city on Aug. 15-18, 1969. They suffered rain and famine of almost biblical proportions - enough for then-New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller to declare the site a disaster area. Yet, through it all, festivalgoers never lost their sense of cool or their kindliness toward one another.
The Woodstock festival wasn't just the lead story for a day or two. Captured first note to last by sound engineer Eddie Kramer, and visually (pristine fields to muddy mess) by a camera crew led by Michael Wadleigh, the epic event would soar to legendary stature, dwarfing that other historic '69 summer happening, man's first walk on the moon.
Even those in attendance came to rely on Wadleigh's pointedly political, three-hour film document - first released in theaters in March 1970 - to define what the newly anointed "Woodstock Nation" was all about. "Most of what I know of the festival, I saw in the movie," said Joel Rosenman, one of the event's four producers, who was stuck in an office all weekend, dealing with "life and death" issues.
