by Bob Spitz
A faction of its inhabitants had been screaming for years for a permanent structure of some kind, a town hall, where they would be able to get adequate representation on issues that concerned their families and their land. Most of those in favor of such an edifice were the farmers who had the most at stake. For the past few years, they had stood by and watched while the state and county governments sanctioned new roads and shopping centers, which ate up acres of fertile land that had, at one time, been productive. Now industry had begun creeping into their neighborhood too, and it was time for the farmers to be heard or to retire, victims of that which they euphemistically called progress. They wanted not only a place where they could meet to debate these pressing issues, but also a permanent home for the growing membership of a town government that supposedly had their best interests at heart.
The Wallkill Town Hall was completed in the spring of 1966, a one-story, gray cement block-and-glass structure that resembled a mini-version of the archetypal modern high school springing up in suburban communities across the country. Its stark interiors were as unadorned as the plot of shrubless land on which it sat, painted brick walls and white room dividers creating a labyrinthian network of small offices designed for productivity—except for the general meeting hall. It reflected the lofty self-esteem of the town fathers and their aspirations to gold-plated greatness. Walls were coated in dark veneers; the folded chairs that made up its nucleus faced a raised presidium-type podium where the councilmen sat. Directly in front of the podium was another lower level of superiority reserved for those with business on the meeting’s agenda, like the UN General Assembly. That was where John and Joel sat as they awaited their turn to address the board.
After an hour’s time of preliminary business John and Joel were asked to state their business. Striking their best poses of innocence, they gave a description of the festival that sounded remarkably like the ad copy for the Orange County Fair, long a community institution. “A sort of fair, with topflight musicians and art exhibits,” was how John phrased it.
The board of appeals spent less than ten minutes picking over the scant details. As long as it was going to be held on Howard Mills’s property and they were fully covered for liability, then the board had no objections. The only provision was that no building was to be done more than seven feet above the ground. Both John and Joel rushed to assure them they would comply with that statute, never taking into consideration construction of a stage or speaker and lighting towers. If they kept their mouths shut, they were on the verge of securing the town’s blessing for their extravaganza.
“Well,” the chairman of the board sighed, “I guess there’s no problem. Pending these boys getting their insurance, we’ll say that the zoning board has no objections to what they’re planning.”
It was in the bag. Roberts and Rosenman slumped into their chairs and relaxed in victory. No board study of the proposition, no public referendum, no strings attached at all as far as their movement was concerned—all obstacles they had dreaded in advance. It seemed too good to be true.
It was.
As Joel and John began gathering their belongings to leave, one of the men on the board grew inquisitive.
“Say, son”—he pointed a wagging finger at Joel—“what kind of music you going to be putting on up here?”
The entire room’s bustling activity seemed to freeze as everyone turned his attention to the young promoter. Joel looked at his associate for some kind of support. Their faces remained impassive. He was going to have to go this one alone.
“Well”—he paused, stalling to compose his performance—“I guess the best way to describe it would be, uh, folk. Basically folk. A little swing, too, maybe. A little jazz. You know.”
No, the board member admitted, he didn’t know. And he was concerned about the town’s peaceful existence. Like a sleeping child, it was not to be disturbed.
Joel assured him that the promoters of “the fair” shared his concern. (This old codger’s going to be trouble, he thought, trying to maintain his painted smile.) “After all, Wallkill’s going to be like our home while we’re up here.”
That seemed to pacify the board member, who was nodding his head in approval. He turned to the rest of the panel, half-shrugged, and nodded again. “Okay,” the chairman agreed. “If there’s nothing further to be said, this meeting stands adjourned.”
Ten minutes after his gavel fell on the desk, Roberts and Rosenman were headed back to New York City in a funnel of cool rain and the key to the Town of Wallkill firmly clutched in the palms of their hands. It was the second time they had come away from that community triumphantly, and it was beginning to look as though they had a certain flair for engineering the smiles of fortune.
• • •
Bert Cohen described his Philadelphia-based company, Concert Hall Publications, as “an advertising agency, and also a production company—an amalgamation of everything.” And, in fact, Concert Hall would and could accommodate one’s most intimate desires—for a slight percentage of the gross. Everything had its price, and Bert, a master of hyperbole, claimed he knew how to go about finding anything and where to buy it to save his customers time, trouble, and money. For a while he had existed as a middleman, buying and selling advertising space for school and underground newspapers. His ultimate dream was to convert them into an organized network of small revolutionary presses his company would control, “like Hearst and Gannett.” But, in 1967, when the festival concept caught fire, Bert smelled smoke before anyone else. He somehow wheedled his way into Miami Pop as a production designer (“the most inaccessible staging ever devised,” Mel Lawrence later reflected) and attempted to promote this new division of Concert Hall Publications with a vengeance.
Cohen, along with his “chief salesman,” Michael Foreman, had made a profession out of courting Woodstock Ventures’ bottomless bank account since its inception in mid-March. He was always in attendance when the four partners gathered, offering suggestions based upon his “gargantuan experience in the field” and joining in the rap sessions that ultimately led to defining the festival’s superstructure. One thing was for certain: Bert wanted in; it didn’t matter much to either him or Michael Foreman what Concert Hall’s role was to be. Bert saw his “rightful place in their machinery,” and he wanted a firm commitment from them in the way of money and means. “After all,” Bert boasted, “who knows more about doing festivals in this country than me and Michael? You fellas can’t do this without us.” Lang wasn’t so sure, but he wanted to hear everything that Bert could tell him about putting a show together, and allowed Cohen and Foreman to entertain the organizational meetings with tales of past escapades. Lang listened attentively and made notes.
During this time, it was decided that the group’s aim was to convey to kids across the country that their festival was to be a place to escape the burdens of conventional society. “Look, you can sell ’em on the music and be like everything else that’s gone before,” Cohen asserted. “But if you really want to do as you say—create something that resembles a nation of people helping one another and getting high on life—then you’ve got to set the mood before others set it for you. It’s got to be prevalent in your advertising; you’re gonna hafta take some of the emphasis off the music and place it on the vibes.”
Michael Foreman and Goldstein agreed that the name had to convey a sense of freedom, both of thought and of physical presence. It had to imply that kids could come to the festival to get away from being leaned on at home, could roam around the land without being confined to boundaries, could be free from all Establishment rules.
“That’s why we gotta keep the name Woodstock,” Lang insisted. “It really has a mystical feeling about it, everything that’s there in the Band’s music, y’know—country, woodsy feelings. I think all the hippies are into that. Our gig’s gotta be called Woodstock no matter where it goes down.”
“But Woodstock al
one won’t do it,” Goldstein said. “There’s a lotta people out there who won’t be turned on to the depth of the word like you, Michael. And you can’t say, ‘Fuck ’em,’ because we can turn those kids on to the whole trip by getting ’em to come in the first place, and we can’t afford to lose them.”
“I know,” Lang agreed. “I been thinking about it and we gotta have something more. Like calling it an ‘Aquarian festival.’ That’s it, man, ‘Aquarian.’” He was pleased with the effect the word had.
“You could be right,” Cohen said. “It’s got a great hook to it.”
“What does it mean?” Joel asked.
Michael chortled. “It’s all about us, man. Y’know, the age of Aquarius. Our enlightenment, the order of man and nature. It’s gotta be called an Aquarian festival.” He folded his arms in front of him.
“The Woodstock Music and Arts Fair, An Aquarian Festival—I really dig it,” Bert said admiringly.
“How about ‘An Aquarian Exposition,’” Goldstein suggested, and everyone applauded his motion.
“It’s got everything,” Bert said. “Nature, art, the counterculture, music, freedom, tripping—it’s terrific. And it’ll look great in the underground papers. It’s got no Establishment ties to it.”
Everyone was in accord. Over the course of the next few get-togethers, Cohen presented the group with ideas for ticket distribution at a network of head shops and record stores. John and Joel, it was decided, would handle ticketing, and Goldstein knew someone who worked at the Fillmore East’s box office who was willing to give them a hand. The only things to be worked out in that respect were prices for the show and how many tickets to order.
“We’ve gotta be careful not to give anyone the idea we’re rippin’ em off,” Lang pointed out.
“Right on,” Artie agreed.
“Well, you’ve got to set a fair price, one that’s going to turn a profit at the gate and yet won’t offend the hippies,” Cohen said instructively. “It’s not a tough thing to do.”
“But can we do it by offering a combination of prices depending on the amount of days they attend?” Joel asked. “I mean, it’s to our advantage to offer them a discount for taking a multiple-day ticket because they remain on the premises and are paying more up front.”
“You mean, like givin’ ’em a break for stayin’ longer?” Lang asked.
“Sure. And also for buying a ticket beforehand and not at the gate. It’ll save us a lot of time and trouble to get their money in advance.”
Cohen tossed in another point. “It’ll also lower the risk of gate-crashing.” It was the first time anyone had ever brought that up, and it had a startling effect on the boys. “Look,” he said, “I’m not gonna paint you a pretty picture of a stampede, but that’s just about what’s gone down at other festivals. A buncha kids start pushing at the gates, and before you know it, you’ve got a ton of kids running over the wall and it’s a free-for-all. You’re not gonna try to stop ’em by force, because then you’d have a fuckin’ riot on your hands. So you take a beating. Joel’s got the right idea. You encourage ’em with everything you’ve got to buy an advance ticket, even if it means giving up a couple bucks in the end.”
“But we can’t hit ’em with the hard sell, man. Everyone’ll be comin’ down on us for that,” Michael protested. “It’s gotta be low key.”
Before that session was over, it was decided that the price of the show would be $7 for a one-day ticket, $13 for any combination of two days, and $18 for the package of three days and camping. Tickets would be printed in a variety of colors relative to the day of the show and a code of crescents and stars was to be imprinted behind the ticket legend to make the counterfeiting of tickets a virtual impossibility. Once they were ordered and printed, Cohen would organize the hippie outlets and John and Joel would work out a method by which to handle mail orders.
Pretty soon, Lang found it nearly impossible to exclude Concert Hall from the upper echelon of the festival team. Cohen had ingratiated himself into their plans, and yet there was something discomforting about his presence. It was pushy and irritating, like the hard-sell pitch of a garment center salesman, and since Lang had gotten just about all he could out of Cohen, there was little to justify his always being around. Eventually Lang decided that it would be more constructive to his purposes to give Cohen and his gang something trivial to do rather than to have him hanging around complaining all the time. So they struck a deal for Concert Hall to put together a festival program book and, possibly later, to buy air time to advertise the festival on the underground radio stations and in its press. The trouble was, Bert contended, all that was a long time off. He wanted some action to keep him busy now, and he was making it extremely difficult for Lang to say “no.”
Michael finally figured out a way to sidetrack Cohen until he was ready for him (or until Cohen just went away and disappeared). Woodstock Ventures had found office space in a building on Fifty-seventh Street, a few blocks from Miles Lourie’s office. If Bert wished to make a bid, they would entertain his firm’s designing the new offices. Bert more than wished; he refused to allow them to offer the opportunity to an “outsider.” After all, he asked, weren’t they all family?
The offices were located on the fourth floor of a narrow building facing south so that one could observe the continuous stream of beautiful people flowing through the revolving doors at Henri Bendel’s all afternoon long. The entire floor was laid out so that after getting past the reception area, all private offices extended off a central corridor like vertebrae attached to a spinal cord. John and Joel immediately staked their claim to the front room with the floor-to-ceiling picture window; Artie chose the very dark back of the floor; Michael displayed little or no interest in selecting his space. “How about it?” Joel had asked him one evening when they were evaluating the layout. “Which room do you want?” But Michael only replied, “I’m cool, man. Don’t worry about me. I kinda roam free.”
On April 17, Michael and Joel cosigned a check in the amount of $10,000 over to Concert Hall Publications to begin construction on the interiors of Woodstock Ventures’ new offices. Bert Cohen was ecstatic. Pulling John Roberts aside after an inspection of the premises, he exclaimed, “It’ll be great. Just beautiful! I’m going to create a total environment for you.”
Something in the back of John’s mind did not quite take to Cohen’s terminology: total environment. “Are you sure we need something that drastic for day-to-day working space, man?”
“John, baby—you’re in a new-wave business,” he said, “dealing with hip capitalism. Your joint’s gotta adapt, create its own environment. You’ll have artists and other non-Establishment types popping in to hang out, and it’s important that they feel at home and see that you’re not stereotyped as straight guys.” Cohen made it sound as though they were lepers. “Wait’ll you see what I have in store for you. You’ll freak!”
• • •
That same day, another check was drawn on the Woodstock Ventures account, this one made out to Alexander Tapooz for $4,500 as a deposit on the property for the Woodstock retreat. Michael was adamant about “grabbing it ’fore some other dude whips it out from underneath us,” and Artie categorically supported him. “It’s our lifeline, baby, the future. We don’t score that property and this whole festival gig goes up in smoke. Poof!” He snapped his fingers. Lang nodded his accord.
Roberts and Rosenman exchanged glances of alarm. Was it all that tenuous? The Mills property, their $400-a-week salaries, the contracts with Mel Lawrence and Stan Goldstein, the new offices, the $10,000 advance to Bert Cohen, the dozen or so other expenditures they had made since forming the company—did Michael and Artie take their investment that lightly? Poof? Did it all hinge on the retreat? John mentally totaled his investment and figured they had spent roughly $67,000 to date on the festival with, at least, an equal amount promised in future assignments. He blanched at his pa
rtners’ indifference to their monetary commitment. Their motives were becoming better defined, in John’s estimation, as time passed.
He had good reason for alarm. The money being used to underwrite their commerce, while John’s in name, was not exactly his in the eyes of the bank that had advanced it into his personal account. It was true that his inheritance had been more than substantial—it could probably float two or three festivals—but, at his parents’ discretion some years before, a stipulation had been inserted into the trust providing that he could not put his hands on the full amount until he turned thirty-five. The rest was in a time-released account that made portions of it available to him at three intervals over a fifteen-year period.
The money he had used since he turned twenty-one was merely interest that had accumulated on the trust fund, and that had been petered away by indiscriminate stock transactions, high living, and other intemperances. Little, if anything, was left of it. The next transfer of funds would not occur until his twenty-fifth birthday, and that was nearly a year away.
It had become clear to John Roberts some years before that if he was to enjoy independence in the financial world, he would have to devise a way of getting his hands on the major source of his inheritance. Three million dollars could perpetuate a lifetime of ventures. He tried everything, even going so far as to ask his father to alter the terms of the trust, but with no success. Then, in early 1969, Billy Roberts approached his brother with a roundabout route to their riches. It was all very aboveboard, Billy assured him. As it turned out, Billy had found an elderly gentleman officer of the National Bank of North America who, in return for a high rate of interest and reasonable guarantees, would provide the Roberts brothers with an enormous line of credit against their future inheritance. The bank, a staid Wall Street investment house, recognized their destined wealth as tangible assets and decided that their reputations and family background were enough security for reciprocity. Anyway, the boys had agreed to sign an agreement that constituted the bank’s holding a lien against their trust funds for all outstanding debts. When the trusts became free and clear, the bank could legally attach their debts to the trusts as straight collateral. There was relatively little risk on the bank’s part. And John would be given unrestricted access to his fortune.
