Barefoot in Babylon

by Bob Spitz

  1

  Bethel—the land of our forefathers, the ancient city in central Palestine where Abraham built his first altar, the name given to Jacob’s sacred stone and where the Ark of the Covenant temporarily found sanctuary. The Prophets had great plans for Bethel. It was destined to be the heartland of Judaism, the place where religious ideology flourished, unsuppressed. That is, until Jerusalem siphoned off its inspirational grandeur, and Bethel fell to the likes of heathen worshipers and pagans.

  On Tuesday, July 22, 1969, more than two thousand years after the Syrians destroyed the temple, and only seven days after the Wallkill Zoning Board of Appeals padlocked the gates of Eden, Mel Lawrence led his people back to Bethel in a manner not unlike that of his scriptural ancestors. The caravan of trucks, buses, station wagons, heavy machinery, vans, and motorcycles that journeyed from Orange County like interlocking circus elephants was unlike anything the residents of the tiny town had ever witnessed before. Crowds of befuddled villagers watched from behind half-shuttered windows; those who were braver and more receptive to the hippies’ arrival lined the sidewalks as they paraded through the center of town on their way to Yasgur’s farm. Teen-agers cheered from their curbside outposts. For them, especially, the festival staff were like conquering heroes. The local kids held both hands high in the air as peace signs were offered in a poignant, deep-felt reception, and most greetings were returned in kind by the vehicles’ smiling passengers.

  “This expression of love is a symbol of the generation,” one young bystander told a local policeman. “No guns, man, no hatred, no inhibitions. These are our brothers, and they’ve come to spread the word. Peace and love, man.”

  Mel Lawrence, beaming as he looked on from the front seat of a staff car, hugged a reporter who had joined the entourage. “This is the way we’ve always hoped it would be. Look! Everyone is smiling and happy. Once we have established the festival, we are sure that it will grow to the satisfaction of everyone. It can be an entertainment symbol for the betterment of Sullivan County and the Town of Bethel.”

  The production staff set up their facilities just behind the natural amphitheatre, utilizing the dirt access roads Max had sanctioned off Hurd Road and West Shore Road, on either side of the site. Because of the time spent on finding new land and appealing to the town officials, the actual working days left to finalize the production had been drastically reduced to twenty-four, and that was not taking into account any unforeseen difficulties. Along the way, Lawrence had picked up another hundred or so workers who would be assigned to prepare the grounds, and seventy more to assist the stage and construction crews in what would have to be a selfless, harrowing commitment to getting the job done. Bill Ward had been prematurely summoned back to the University of Miami to teach a summer session, leaving his wife, Jean, and Ron Liis behind to supervise the aesthetic preparations, and his technical expertise would be sorely missed. That left most of the guidance in the hands of inexperienced corporals who, while presumably talented, were unproven quantities. A good deal more of the construction than they had thought would have to be farmed out to independent contractors, which would ultimately inflate the budget to near bursting proportions. It was going to take a consolidated effort from everyone involved with the show to pull it off, but Lawrence had no doubt that it could and would be accomplished in time.

  His biggest worry was morale. The staff had spent the latter part of the last two weeks worrying about the festival’s uncertainty, never really knowing if all the time and effort they were investing in it would go rewarded. Several kids had packed up and left when Wallkill looked doomed. Others, sensing eventual defeat, began to brood about starting over in White Lake. Lawrence knew that bad vibes could lead to their downfall and took every precaution to prevent them from infecting his ranks. His first act upon reaching the new site was to call a meeting of the entire staff on the lawn behind the El Monaco Motel. Close to three hundred people showed up, many of whom he had never laid eyes on before, to hear Mel, standing on top of a weather-eaten picnic table, deliver an old-fashioned high school pep talk. Some of the hard-boiled construction team, who snidely referred to him as “General Eisenhower” behind his back on account of his customary use of military terms, began to chuckle when Lawrence got underway with, “All right, you guys, we’ve got to get out there and hit those fields with all we’ve got.” For the most part, however, his words were comforting and encouraging. “The most important thing to remember,” he impressed upon them, “is that, if we keep the faith, we’re gonna make it. It’s true, man. We may have been fucked over back there by those cats in Wallkill, but, among one another, we’ve always maintained pretty good karma. Those who were uptight back there in Mills’s place—the guys who tried to fuck us—well, they’ll get it in the end. Guys like that always do. We’ve got good intentions, we have the capability to put it together, and I’ll tell you I just don’t think we can miss. It depends on all of you pitching in and helping out where you’re needed. Because we’re on our way to staging the greatest rock show ever held.”

  The executive staff members from the downtown production office—Chip Monck, John Morris, Chris Langhart, Steve Cohen, Jim Mitchell, and their special assistants—were hustled up to Bethel and assigned rooms at the El Monaco. They would eventually be moved to a separate staff house complete with private chef, along with Michael Lang, on the other side of town, but from here on in, their presence would be required on the site, and they’d be expected to oversee their respective areas of production. Mitchell had rented several trailers—for security, lighting/sound, medical, provisioning/promoters, and staging—which would be circled behind the stage, and from where the festival’s direction would be coordinated before and during the show. Only Lawrence’s field location was different, Mitchell having positioned Mel’s command trailer on the hill facing the stage.

  Peering over the grassy knoll above the amphitheatre, one could see the full panorama of festival grounds, sense the breadth of the landscape, grasp the designless pitch of earth, all of which foretold the project’s striking proportions. The task that lay before them was enormous. Six hundred acres of raw farmland called for refinement in three weeks’ time, not to mention the precise implementation of life-sustaining services for one hundred thousand people a day. And even if that was miraculously accomplished, who guaranteed that the independent affiliate committees—those looking after publicity, tickets, concessions, and security—would live up to their obligations? Michael Lang? Hardly. Although Mel firmly believed that Lang was the motivating spirit behind the festival, he knew that Michael was busily basking in the national spotlight and cultivating a standing for himself in the exclusive rock music industry. That’s cool, he thought. It was Michael’s prerogative as the festival’s creator. But there were so many unanswered questions left up to him. From what source would they be able to tap purified water? It was an old problem still in need of solving. Where would they park twenty thousand cars? How did they expect to man the gates? Who was arranging to meet the artists, check them into the hotels and get them to the show in time for their performances? What happens if they run low on food? These were only a few of the questions that clouded Lawrence’s perspective and slowly, but surely, began to chip away at his once stable endurance.

  • • •

  All that night and throughout most of the next morning, a weary Mel Lawrence worked, uninterruptedly, on revising his timetable. Appropriating a corner table in the desolate El Monaco bar as an office, he met individually with the members of his executive staff to review their progress and to chart a chronological course that would enable each of them to complete his or her particular phase of production by August 14.

  The budget, which he had discussed earlier with Michael Lang, he told each man was no longer relevant. Money was no object. It was to be used—liberally, if they must—as a catalyst for getting things accomplished in a shorter period of time. “Find out what it costs someone to put
their people on overtime, and tell them, if that’s what it takes, that we’ll be more than happy to pay for it. The important thing is to get it done.” Payment was to be made to suppliers and contractors by company check—half up front and the balance upon receipt of a bill immediately after the festival was over. If anyone hesitated about the method of compensation, an executive was authorized to have the office issue a substantial retainer to provide that person or firm with the necessary impetus. Money was the most convincing lever at their disposal. “With all due respect to our suppliers, you’ll see how quickly a little cash will pry open a locked door,” Lawrence slyly advised an aid.

  Most of his staff, he found, had their departments well in hand. By the time they moved their work from Sixth Avenue to White Lake, all that was left was for crews to be appointed to put things in their proper place.

  Steve Cohen and Chip Monck had completed the stage and lighting designs, and most of the supplies for both structures had been ordered. They had been waiting until the new site was confirmed before letting the truckers know where to deliver the hardware. Construction, they implied, would get underway as early as the next morning. Neither man voiced concern over what Lawrence thought was an insufficient amount of time to execute it.

  Unbeknownst to Lawrence, Cohen had turned over his stack of blueprints for the stage, the performers’ pavilion, and the lighting and sound towers to his twenty-one-year-old assistant, Jay Drevers, who was late of the Filmore East junior staff. Aside from being part of the auxiliary crew at the Philadelphia Folk Festival and a technician in Miami, Drevers had no prior experience directing such an assignment. The monumental job of interpreting Cohen’s architectural diagrams, enlisting the support of a work force, and physically putting together the wood-and-steel framework was, nonetheless, dropped suddenly and quite recklessly into the youngster’s lap.

  Cohen chose instead to while away his afternoons in an air-conditioned trailer parked to the left of the staging area. He had become smitten with his own swollen sense of importance and was closing in on his aspirations of traveling in fast, celebrated company. There was talk of his joining up with Crosby, Stills and Nash when the festival was over, his going into partnership with Chip Monck, who was already well connected in the galaxy of rock stars. Whatever the reason may have been, Cohen made it clear that the title bestowed upon him by Michael Lang, that of stage manager, required him to organize activities on the stage during the festival—and nothing more. He would be available to consult on the various designs he had prepared, but otherwise, Drevers was the boss.

  Monck was a bit of a high-flyer himself, content to lie back and relax while assistants worked diligently to preserve his sterling reputation. “Chip’s knack for making himself look good was uncanny,” according to one of his Woodstock co-workers. “That cool, offhand charm, phony smile, his ability to kiss someone on the cheek while reaching down to find their Achilles’ heel was such clever deception, so well contrived, that he could have made a good impression on Dale Carnegie. But the truth is that he is a schmoozer, a professional mingler. He knew what to do, and when to do it—and everyone wanted him there to do it to them first.”

  That Chip Monck’s burnished good looks and smooth personality had the power to create such jealousy among his associates was an old song vocalized by many amongst the rock elite. Others were put off by him. People like John Morris found themselves always having to compete for attention whenever Monck was on the scene, and even Wes Pomeroy remarked that he “would not trust that guy to walk across the street with my daughter.”

  What these same people chose not to debate, however, was Chip Monck’s superb work with theatrical lighting, his ability to translate a rock group’s tired antics into a scintillating performance with the mere overlapping of colored gels and follow-spots. He knew where each successive beat of music came, was friendly with most of the groups, got high with their managers, entertained their roadies with stories of his experiences on tour, was always prepared for a show, and kept his play-on-words nickname in front of the audience’s eyes as if he were a performing artist himself. More importantly, Monck had excellent relationships with reliable concert suppliers from coast to coast. If it meant snaring a particularly hard to get mixing board or lighting console, or rounding up a last-minute gang of operators tuned into his graphically dramatic style, Chip would have them in a concert hall on a moment’s notice. A promoter was more apt to put up with his Joe Cool swagger to insure getting professional and spectacular effects than to settle for second best.

  Chip certainly hadn’t disappointed Mel Lawrence. When the two men conferred over beers at the El Monaco, Monck reported that he had already located fifteen supertroopers to handle the long shots and had enough incandescent lighting coming to flood a small Eastern European country. “It’s gonna bring half those little hippie chicks to orgasm,” he joked, confident that if he had to show results, he probably could. The plan was to hang banks of colored beams on huge wooden trusses lodged into the sides of the stage. Two telephone-pole crossbeams would sit on top of the trusses, onto which additional lights would be hinged, practically tripling the luminous output of any normal show. Using a good balance of this apparatus, the spotlights would throw shafts of stark white light from four scattered locations in the audience, and the colored effects would flash from the sides and from directly overhead of the performers. It was a brazen concept, one that could be attempted only because of the money available to rent the glut of equipment. It was certainly worth the try, Monck reasoned, and if they pulled it off, it would be one aspect of the festival that would be talked about and imitated for years to come.

  The system of lights, which he diagramed for Lawrence on a napkin, could not be bolted into place until, of course, the stage was built. Chip, meanwhile, agreed to prepare the intercoms that allowed his operators to hear his instructions from their remote locations and would help out with the installation of power until they were ready to dress the stage.

  It was Monck’s formal requisition of electrical power, in fact, that distressed another colleague on the Woodstock project—so much so that it had touched off a serious question as to the practicality of such a boldly devised lighting experiment. Chris Langhart had spent several days analyzing a topographical survey of Yasgur’s land in an attempt to approximate the electrical and mechanical improvements they’d have to make on it before the show began. The most drastic nonentity was utilities. There was no plumbing on the site, no electricity, and, except for a few phone company accessories on the other side of Hurd Road, no communications equipment. The implications of that study, as Langhart told an associate, were “fantastic.” They were going to have to find some way of running power to every reach of land. It probably meant setting up a few portable generators in the woods behind the stage and extending the cables to the outlying areas; however, that in itself could take the better part of a week and could only happen if they found someone who could engineer it.

  Every division supervisor had submitted his specifications early for electricity, but they had been contingent upon the Mills Heights resources, a pillar of modern technology compared to the provincial state of Max’s undeveloped hillside. In Wallkill, they had relied upon the close proximity of power lines to bail them out of a dilemma, but that was no longer possible. Virtually every plan now had to be reworked to conform to their present aboriginal situation. Energy would have to be conserved, or a method would have to be devised whereby power could be brought in quickly and efficiently.

  Langhart, therefore, considered Chip’s spectacle of lights an extravagance and, if need be, expendable. He’d have more than enough luminescence from the follow-spotlights without jeopardizing a power overload. If there was time, they’d make every attempt to accommodate him, but Langhart was making no guarantees.

  Chris was more concerned with how they were going to put an entire plumbing system into operation in just three weeks’ time. Just before th
ey left Wallkill, he had devised a plan whereby four emergency water storage tanks, each a refillable fiberglass unit capable of holding up to 10,000 gallons, would be firmly implanted in sand beds at the top of the hill facing the stage. Then, fitting together several miles of plastic piping and elbow joints, crews would dig trenches across the site into which these channels would be laid and water could be brought from the tanks to almost anywhere it was needed. Goldstein had finally come to terms with two water transporting firms, one in Goshen and one in Schenectady, whose 5,800-gallon milk trucks were to make continuous trips between a reservoir and the site to replenish their source of supply.

  There were, however, extenuating factors in the plan that did not sit well with Langhart. Chris had been in possession of a carrier table left over from the days when he installed the air-conditioning at the Filmore East. The carrier table was a handy plumber’s device that helped to calculate the volume of water able to force its way through any variably sized pipes—taking into account the effects of temperature, pressure, and friction—in a certain amount of time. With it, he could assess the amount of water that would be necessary to keep several hundred spigots functional at the same moment without experiencing too great a loss of pressure. From his initial calculations, however, he deduced that it was not the pressure they ought to be concerned about, but rather the depletion of water. Water would be consumed at such a rapid rate that the tanks would have to be refilled nearly every other hour. And simple arithmetic told him that was impossible without a healthy fleet of trucks capable of transporting greater capacities of liquid.

  “If I’ve figured correctly, we’ve got a number of ways outta this,” he told Lawrence, unrolling a rudimentary relief map of the landscape. He pointed to a blue-tinted circle next to the amphitheatre. “This lake is a godsend. It usually signifies a wellspring, something beneath it acting as a source. If what I know of fundamental geology holds any weight, then there’s sure to be enormous deposits of spring water seventy or eighty feet under the entire site. All we have to do is to get Max’s permission to go after it, bring a rigger in, and begin drilling. We should hit water right away. If I’m wrong, then we can draw it off the lake.”