Barefoot in Babylon

by Bob Spitz

  As their eyes adjusted to the night they could see what looked like miles of endless plain that rose in a conical hillside overlooking a plateau of level ground. It seemed like an ideal place for kids to spread blankets and watch a concert without crowding one another. There was some wooded area, though not foliage enough to satisfy Michael, and from what they could determine in the dark, a reasonable means of access that could be improved upon by their own crews. In time, anything could be amended by money and machinery. The only disconcerting features were two turquoise water towers that surged from the earth like massive, hulking missiles on each side of the site. Joel was certain that Michael and Artie would view them as monuments to the Establishment. But while they did pose certain cosmetic drawbacks, they also solved a major headache for the promoters: where to get enough water to satisfy both the living requirements of fifty thousand people a day and the local health ordinances. Mills told them that the larger tower, built in 1963, held 1,500,000 gallons, and the small one, built as recently as 1967, could accommodate 600,000 gallons when filled to capacity. They supplied the entire township with water; however, he assured them that they would be able to tap the tanks for their function if they agreed to pay the standard county rates for water.

  It was barely fifteen minutes later when the Cadillac had gone full circle and returned to the entrance of the Mills residence. By that time, although John and Joel, independently, were considering making Mills an offer to rent the land, neither did. Instead, they told him that his property was the best place they had seen so far, but the decision to make a binding offer for it—or even to discuss price—had to be the unanimous decision of all four partners. Mr. Lang and Mr. Kornfeld, they said, would make appointments in the very near future to see the field and, after they all had had ample time to consult on its feasibility, they’d get back to him. Then they thanked Howard Mills, Jr., for his time and, for the forty-minute ride back to the city, traded ecstatic prophesies about what was to be their newfound home for the festival.

  • • •

  Neither John nor Joel could contain his excitement over their discovery, but when they arrived back at their apartment, they couldn’t locate either Michael or Artie. The news waited until the next morning when John reached Michael who shared his enthusiasm, with the reservation that he would have to see the place for himself.

  Michael drove up the next afternoon in a white Porsche the company had leased for him as part of their corporate agreement.

  After a routine stroll over the barren grounds and a friendly chat with Howard Mills, he returned to the city in time for an informal meeting with Roberts and Rosenman. His attitude was less than joyful.

  “It’s not where it’s at, man,” he announced softly, passing verdict on their efforts. “I’m really bummed out about it too. Here I got all excited about this site of yours and it turns out to be a fuckin’ hole. I mean, nothin’, man. It’s just a big pit.”

  John and Joel automatically assumed that a large part of Michael’s attitude could be attributed to the fact that it was they who had run across the site and not he or Artie. But after talking to him about it, they learned that Michael’s objections indeed had to do with the fact that Mills’s land was going to be converted into an industrial site, and that plain offended him. It “wasn’t laid-back enough, wasn’t rustic.”

  They had, however, been prepared for just such a reaction and launched into an explanation about how they were up against the wall as far as property was concerned.

  “We’re runnin’ outta time, man,” John countered, appealing to Michael’s sense of immediacy. “We can’t afford to be choosy anymore—not if we expect to get this thing moving by the end of the summer. You’re the cat who said we gotta start things happening no matter what or it wouldn’t go down at all. And, anyway, we can make this place in Wallkill work for us.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Joel, jumping quickly to his partner’s side. “It’s not as bad as it looks. It’s real damn big. Why, I’ll bet we could get over a hundred thousand people a day onto that land if we needed to. More! The terrain is suitable for a show. There’s a natural place to put the stage so that everyone can see, the roads are pretty good, and Mills is gettin’ ready to unload the place so we can do whatever the hell we want to it and not worry about destroying any property. Hell, I think it’s a gift, Michael. We oughta grab it while we can.”

  “I agree with Joel, man,” John said.

  Michael hesitated, weighing their judgment against his own concept of what the show was supposed to represent. “I don’t know,” he said glumly.

  “Look, I think we should take an option on it,” Joel offered. “That way, at least the place is ours if we decide we want it. We put up a few hundred bucks, and if we don’t take it, we don’t get hurt real badly. But that way it won’t get pulled out from under us either. If you don’t like it, you can keep looking for another place. Find something better, and we’ll take it. An option’s not a lotta bread.”

  By mid-afternoon, as Joel and John continued to rationalize some of the land’s lesser qualities, pinpointing to him how they might overcome each disadvantage, Michael began feeling comfortable with the notion that it could be restructured to suit them. By day’s end, Lang had agreed with them that taking an option on the Mills land would be their most logical alternative to having no land.

  “Gimme some time to warm to it,” he acquiesced. “I got a lotta thinkin’ to do about it. I guess you guys are right about it. We got nothin’ to lose but a little scratch if it doesn’t work out. And”—he flashed his patented closed-mouth grin—“it’s your dough.”

  3

  During the eight weeks or so since the partners had first conceived of the festival, an air of playfulness swept through the Woodstock headquarters (which had temporarily been given a mobile home in Miles Lourie’s suite at 250 West Fifty-seventh Street). The informal, carefree attitude of summer was instituted as office policy, and the activities of “doing” and “dreaming” overlapped with the business of the working day. Roberts, Rosenman, Lang, and Kornfeld would gather there every morning at about eleven o’clock. Together with a few “secretaries” they had hired and several assistants who were thrilled to be a part of all the excitement, they began sculpting the festival’s skeletal substructure as casually as one assembles the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

  Every so often when he was between clients, Miles Lourie would poke his head into the cubbyhole he had allocated for their use and inquire how the plans were going. “Far fucking out!” was the usual response from one of the myriad volunteers who passed through on a strange current of drug-induced euphoria and inflated importance.

  Occasionally, Miles took some time out to join in the conviviality; Record Company Monopoly became a favorite office game wherein Artie would own Capitol Records, Michael would be dealt RCA, Miles would begin with Columbia, and they would vie to outsmart (and outfuck) each other in putting lucrative deals for artists on their respective rosters until the winner emerged holding all their artists as one massive rock conglomerate.

  John and Joel were not immune to the attractiveness of this relaxed, alien atmosphere. The three-piece Brooks Brothers suits, the cardigan sweaters, the ties and monogrammed dress shirts were replaced by jeans, leather vests, wide-lapelled flowered shirts, and beads; in a daring display of independence, John and Joel allowed their hair to creep over their ears and their language to extend beyond their cultivated Ivy League puffery.

  Joel seemed to adapt to this new lifestyle more quickly and easily than John, often “grooving” to strains of acid rock and related psychedelia preached by bands like the Airplane, Joe Cocker, the Who, and Cream. But it was John who was turned on by the feminine hippie mystique—that vacant, far-away look and dreamy smile offered often and unselfishly by lissome young women in soft, frayed jeans and threadbare T-shirts. Their casual lifestyle was so unlike anything he had ever experienced before that he le
ft himself wide open for the sucker punch. His desires did not go unattended, either; the office soon overflowed with eager young assistants shuffling through in moccasins or bare feet. All of them saw to it that the stereo amplifiers continuously thumped hard rock, the ventilation wafted complementary fragrances of Acapulco Gold and strawberry incense, and their generation’s credo of Peace and Love (emphasis on Love) was observed at all times. All things considered, the atmosphere was more conducive to turning on than to turning out a high degree of constructive work.

  During this time, Michael Lang had been anything but idle. While the land search and other corporate structuring had been underway, Michael had inched farther and farther away from his responsibilities to Train, leaving Artie to fend off their increasing demands for more faithful career management. Many of the band’s members were already beginning to suspect that they were being used to finance their manager’s outside interests. But Michael was working on a power play whereby he and Artie would be able to unload the group and not be held responsible by Capitol Records. It would take a little time to complete, but it would free him to pursue his ultimate concern: The Woodstock Festival. Meanwhile, he began compiling an organization staff from past associations so that when the time came to begin work at the site, they would be ready to move into action.

  The first person he hired was a man whom he had worked with at the Miami Pop Festival, named Stanley Goldstein. Goldstein was a bearlike young man who had just turned thirty, hypnotically articulate, and tenacious. He had thick black curly hair that seemed to continue around his head and to melt in a brillowy Smith Brothers–type beard. A former sound engineer at Criteria Recording Studios in Miami, Goldstein was passing through New York on his way to a similar job in Los Angeles, hoping to avert the long-distance move by convincing A&R Studios in New York to take him on.

  Michael needed Goldstein’s assistance desperately, for while Stanley could no doubt aid in the technical planning of the festival, his hidden talent was in locating resources—human resources—and, right now, qualified people were considered by Lang to be as good as gold. Rumor had it that, given a football stadium filled to capacity, Goldstein could pick out the two men or women there who were capable of fulfilling a specific need and somehow convince them to drop everything else and to work for his cause.

  Through Goldstein’s estranged wife, Lang traced him to a small, tumbledown hotel on Forty-ninth Street west of Broadway. He caught him just as Goldstein was preparing to leave for the Coast the next day. But not if Michael had his way.

  What ensued was a conversation between two grand masters of persuasion, neither willing to compromise. Michael, however, was at his most convincing as he descriptively bore into Stanley’s softest spot with promises of high times and prosperity.

  “Listen, man,” Michael said at last, “we’ll get this thing out of the way in a flash and the studio’s yours. The whole thing’ll be a trip, anyway. We’re gonna get Dylan and the Band and Hendrix and the Beatles and just about everybody—and for three days we’re gonna throw the biggest fuckin’ party this world’s ever seen.”

  “Okay,” Stanley said nonchalantly.

  “You’ll do it?”

  “Um-hmm. When do I start?”

  “Uh—tomorrow, man. How’s tomorrow?” Michael asked in a flutter, trying to conceal his excitement.

  “You’re on. I’ll see you at your office first thing in the morning.”

  • • •

  Goldstein and Lang met the next day in a vacant office in the Capitol Records complex on Sixth Avenue, which Artie had placed at Michael’s disposal. It was a dingy New York morning, callous and impersonal, the kind that often betrays the city’s brittle, subliminal self.

  Michael went into more detail than he had over the phone about his plans for the festival, explaining Roberts and Rosenman’s “unfashionable” presence in the promoters’ clique as “concessions we hadda make to get the bread away from ’em,” and citing the studio retreat as their ultimate goal. But it was clear to Goldstein from the first breath that the retreat was and would always be secondary, if not to be completely forgotten. Michael’s grand design would be no ordinary festival, at least not a repeat performance of the Miami fiasco, and, for lack of a better offer, he wanted to be a part of it.

  They discussed the festival for more than two hours, outlining several concepts and projecting some rather spectacular “supposes.” Suppose they did actually attract fifty thousand people a day for three days; suppose it was more; suppose Dylan, the Band, and the Who did sign to play at Woodstock; suppose they got the Beatles. Suppose they got lucky and actually pulled this thing off without a hitch, changing a lot of people’s minds about hippies and rock music; suppose it became an annual event. Suppose they made a million bucks—think of all the power it would give them. Suppose . . . they were lapsing into a hallucination over the infinite possibilities this venture could create for them, a natural high.

  Michael wanted Goldstein to get moving on technical matters immediately so that he could devote all his time to getting the talent together; at present, Lang was trying to land contracts with a few of the top recording acts, to “give the festival an air of authenticity” in the public’s eyes and to create excitement within the record industry. He hadn’t had much initial luck. Stan’s presence in the organization would undoubtedly relieve Michael of related pressures and allow him to concentrate on the program. They agreed on a salary, a system whereby Stan would get a substantial cash advance and be reimbursed for his expenses, and a list of priorities demanding his immediate attention. Lighting, sound, and communal facilities were top priority. After Stan had had enough time to investigate them and develop a prospectus on how to put them into practice, they would meet again and decide how to facilitate the electrical layout. Michael assured him that he had a free hand when it came to getting the best of everything and backed it up with the three words that would become Lang’s vocal trademark over the course of that summer: “Money’s no object.” Whether or not it was the emphasis or throwaway casualness with which he uttered the phrase, no one ever questioned Lang’s solvency. Money flowed more freely than rain. By the end of August, that comparison would be considered ironic.

  Goldstein went straight back to his midtown residence and began making a series of routine investigative calls regarding lighting. It soon became apparent to him that, for all his effort, he was not receiving any return messages. The hotel switchboard, he found, was run with about as much care as was afforded the establishment’s maintenance. So he worked out a deal with hotel management whereby he could run their main switchboard and make his calls at the same time, thus assuring that incoming calls concerning festival business would reach him.

  Principally, Goldstein contacted General Electric, Westinghouse, and Sylvania, all with main offices in the New York area, to discern what lighting levels were required to illuminate seven hundred acres of land. Very early on in his conversations, he had to make the delineation between stage lighting, which is aimed at a very specific target and requires its luminosity to be extremely aesthetic as well, and area lighting, whose purpose it would be to keep a crowd from falling down on the rocks while, hopefully, still retaining some of the intrinsic beauty of the surroundings. This part of his task was comparable to planning the lighting for a small village, including not only the purchasing of sufficient bulbs and lamps, but requiring that he map out above- and below-ground wiring between the lights and the master circuit. Goldstein also determined that it was essential that he develop a pattern of electrical “buzz words” before meeting with electric company representatives, in order for him to establish his credibility and to get a more comprehensive understanding of the information from those conversations. To accomplish that, he spent two days in the New York Public Library reading as much trade literature as was available and digging around in the archives for blueprints or specific guidelines used to stage other large-scale ve
ntures. The files on the latter were, for all intents and purposes, nonexistent.

  That led Stanley to calling on and researching places in the news that had just been, or were currently being, lit. Utilizing the first of his requests for expense money, he flew to Canada to get a firsthand look at the Montreal Expo, which was in the process of being completed. It provided him with a preliminary perspective on just what it was going to take to outfit the festival grounds; but none of the exposition’s plans were made accessible to him. The concept, however, steered him toward a similar, more cordial group of impresarios located in a familiar neck of the woods. Upon returning to New York, Goldstein telephoned the people who had contracted lighting for the New York World’s Fair, and they were sympathetic. In fact, they immediately discerned from his starched pitch that Stanley had absolutely no idea what he was talking about and helped draw up a rudimentary plan to put him on the right track. That, coupled with the information he received about pole lighting from the electric conglomerates and what Stan referred to as his “backup rationale,” established a prospectus for lighting the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival that he knew would suffice until an electrical engineer was called in to implement the design. After consulting with Lang and whoever else had to approve the budget, it would only be a matter of a firm coming in with the best bid.

  Next, Goldstein attempted to tackle sound. In this matter, Lang’s demands had been explicit. He had advised Stanley that if they were to be successful this time and wanted to do a second festival sometime in the future, it meant keeping the groups happy. One way of doing that would be to utilize the best sound system available today. “Let ’em see that we know what we’re doing,” Michael told him. “No fuckups with sound, man. It doesn’t matter what it costs to do it—just get the best cat in the business to handle the gig.” It was not as easy as it sounded. There were few specialists who knew how to mike rock music effectively, and fewer whose equipment was diversified enough to amplify seven hundred acres. Looking ahead, Goldstein determined that they would most likely go over budget in order to put in an adequate sound system. In fact, it might take their putting somebody in business and supplying that person with equipment and personnel.