The Unforgettable Woodstock

At some point or another, people of my generation have heard about Woodstock. Many of us don’t know the full works of the festival but just the obvious fact: Woodstock was a wild concert that young people of the sixties and hippies attended and experienced events unimaginable.

The largest gathering of the counterculture was Woodstock. The hippies had gathered for “be-ins” in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, attended outdoor rock festivals, and other free music venues, but nothing could compare to the concert of August 15, 1969. Woodstock was a three day event held on a farm in rural New York. A large crowd was expected to show for several days of music, but when as many as 400,000 people flooded the area, everything went haywire. People were jumping over fences, abandoned cars filled the highway and the rain seemed endless.

Aerial View of Woodstock


But officials weren’t dealing with raging, belligerent people. The festival goers were peaceful, shared everything to anyone who needed it, were harmonious. The police even spoke well of the fans. The people had a precise objective of the festival; to be in a setting were their values prevailed. Drugs, nudity, and sex were a few highlights of the three-day festival.

The music that was heard at Woodstock could never be repeated. Some of the most famous musicians and rock bands played for the animated young crowd. The musicians had to be air-lifted in on helicopters because traffic was backed up for miles. Fans from all over the country heard, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Janis Joplin, Country Joe and the Fish, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and many others including Jimi Hendrix; who closed the festival with a psychedelic, rock version of the national anthem.


Live at Woodstock: Jimi's version of National Anthem



Woodstock is known today as one of the most peaceful large events ever, as well as, the greatest and most famous festival of all time. The conditions were tough. I think that if you weren’t a free-spirited hippie you would have been toast. For three nights the people slept on top of mud, either in a wet sleeping bag or nothing. Food was scarce and the unsanitary conditions were frightening. Yet none of this put the slightest damper on the meaning of the festival. There was a genuine atmosphere of sharing and friendship, and though they were cold and hungry, they found the hardships exhilarating.





During the event and the days after, the media was exclaiming Woodstock was a war zone. One local newspaper headlined the event as, “The Biggest Drug and Sex Orgy Since The Roman Empire.” Through the assumptions of reporters, the festival was deemed atrocious; until the people who attended spoke out. “You heard the wonder in their voices, saw it in their eyes, as they said, ‘We were all their together. It was beautiful.’” The celebrants called themselves, “The Woodstock Nation.”

Music became a lifestyle

Music for most people is an outlet and an easy way to escape through the singers lyrics. In the sixties, the hippie culture practically lived through music. They fed off their favorite musicians and followed the lifestyles that were sung by the Rock ’n’ Rollers. The hippie youth began to dance, dress, overdose, talk, and basically live just as the rockers did.

One of the most successful and influential bands was the Rolling Stones; which Time magazine called, “perverted, outrageous, violent, repulsive, ugly, incoherent, a travesty. That’s what’s good about them.” The Stones displayed a darker and negative side of mankind. Fans went crazy over this offbeat group. Mick Jagger, the lead vocalist, was one of a kind. The band would often make headlines like “Stones throw TV out of the window.”

The early Rolling Stones



In 1965 America discovered the rock group, the Grateful Dead in the Haight-Ashbury district. The band had the early support of an alleged LSD chemist known as Owsley, and under its leader Jerry Garcia, Grateful Dead developed a drug-related style called “acid rock.” In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Jerry Garcia quoted Grateful Dead band member Phil Lesh stating, "acid rock is what you listen to when you are high on acid." The group had a flock of fans known as the “Dead Heads” who gathered at the bands often free concerts. Grateful Dead is one of the most popular bands to the hippies.


Grateful Dead 1967 San Fancisco


A new form of music formed out of the psychedelic bands that played to the hippies in Haight-Ashbury known as the San Francisco Sound. Bands that were in the movement were, the Grateful Dead, the Diggers, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Santana and many more. The lyrical content of the San Francisco Sound was both intelligent and emotional. Lyrics were deliberately and often skillfully, poetic.

During the sixties two of the most famous singers emerged, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. The New York Times reported them to be, “the king and queen of gloriously self-expressive music.” The hippie counterculture went through a whirlwind of experimental drugs and rock music as they followed these musicians. On stage Jimi Hendrix played his guitar like no other instrumentalist could dream of. He would interact with it like the guitar was his lover and played rifts that seemed unimaginable. At 24 years old, Jimi was known as a rock star. He would put on shows of moaning, screaming, and heart rendering sound ending with the burning of his guitar. Also 24, Janis Joplin was the “soul belter.” From her style of dress to her style of music hippies loved her. She would stomp her feet, sway her hips, and wear jangling bracelets, funky dresses, and big floppy hats. Her voice was a bluesy one of a kind that screamed (literally) soul. These two stars began to heavily drink and use drugs and eventually their lifestyle caught up with them when they both died sixteen days apart, both were 27 years old.


Jimi and Janis