Barefoot in Babylon

by Bob Spitz

  “What! Are you shittin’ me?” Lawrence quailed. “Kids are gonna be swimming in there. Anybody tries to drink that shit’ll probably drop in their tracks.”

  “Not really. What we can do is to modify a large swimming-pool filtering system, chock-full of wonderful chemicals from our friendly health department, and pump the tanks full from the water in the lake. It’ll be fine for drinking—probably a lot healthier than that shit they get out of their faucets in New York City. You don’t have to worry about that. I’ve already checked into it and we’re in the clear. But I think we’ve got a better shot at passing inspection if we open up a few wells. And our supply’ll probably last longer.”

  “In other words”—Lawrence appeared still to be skeptical of Langhart’s theory—“all we have to do is get Max to go along with it and we can stop worrying about water? That’s all there is to it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then what’re you waitin’ for, man? Go track down Max and don’t let him out of your sight until he says we can help ourselves to his subterranean private stock.”

  Max, to everyone’s amazement, was delighted with the idea, tipped his hat to the young staff’s ingenuity, lauded it as “an extremely resourceful solution to an overwhelming problem.” How could he oppose something so promising, especially when it was he who stood to benefit most from its success? Why, if they actually found as much water as they suspected was quietly gurgling beneath his pasture, it would transform his unsound irrigation into an automatic sprinkling system. His crops would shoot up like guided missiles. Of course they could drill for wells—as long as he was consulted first on their specific locations and the work would be done by a professional contractor.

  “There’s just one thing I can’t allow,” he said, taking Langhart aside at the dairy, “and it might hamper the outcome of your plumbing adventure. It has to do with what’s gone into the development of this place over the years. You see, I originally worked to get the land into shape myself. When we bought the farm, my son Sam and I spent a lot of time picking up all the stones that were laying in the field and reseeding it, over and over again, until all the grass you now see out there grew back. If you, all of a sudden, come in here with a dipstick and run a slot across the land, well—it’s liable to ruin the soil erosion. Every time there’s a downfall, the water will run down the hill, seep into those trenches, and I’ll have furrows all over my field. Now, if you want to arrange for a plumbing system, fine, I’ll go along with that, on the condition that all pipes are somehow kept above ground. That’s it, that’s the best I can do for you.”

  Pipes above ground—that was one of the most unusual requests that Langhart had ever heard. He wasn’t even sure it could be done that way. How were the fixtures—plastic ones, at that—supposed to remain in place with one hundred thousand kids roaming around them? Was Max serious? And, if he was, would he hold them to it later on?

  It is highly doubtful that the wily farmer expected them to follow through with such an ambitious proposal, especially after his dropping the bombshell about using unconcealed pipe. After all, most of the production staff he had dealt with up to that time had been unskilled youth under the age of twenty-five who, for the most part, had learned their trades (if one could, indeed, esteem them such) by trial and error. He couldn’t possibly have expected them to construct such an elaborate system in less than three weeks when they hadn’t a survey of the existing sedementary formations, or equipment, or a team of gifted engineers to direct the complicated process, or any idea of the type or amount of piping to purchase, or cost estimates or suppliers, or an excavating crew. The whole thing appeared quite hopeless.

  He must have been baffled then when Chris Langhart knocked on his door the next afternoon asking to be shown the places where they were permitted to drill. They had decided to go ahead with the project as a last resort in their endless quest for water. It is a known fact that Max “went diving for the oxygen tent” when, two weeks later, Langhart proudly announced to him that they had opened eight individual wells between the entrance on Hurd Road and the campgrounds—and hit gushing spring water in seven of them.

  2

  One point the producers had neglected to keep tabs on was the deplorable conditions in the overcrowded staff quarters.

  While members of the top guard were busy congratulating one another on evading the legal ax and hastily revising mechanical layouts that had been custom built for Mills Heights, clusters of hired hands had voiced disenchantment with their living arrangements. Rooms at the Red Top were jammed to capacity. When the festival had taken over the tiny motel, they found that it was ideally equipped to handle seventy kids on staff and could probably accommodate another ten or twenty latecomers as the situation called for it. But the crew had multiplied beyond anyone’s expectations and, with the recent arrival of the Hog Farm advance crew and another eighty members of the commune expected on the August 7 charter from New Mexico, the grievances were ripening with indignation.

  As many as 140 hippies congregated around the Red Top kitchen at mealtimes, many with special requests on how their food should be prepared or with confidential tips on how the cooks could improve upon their bland recipes. “It was a zoo,” attests Carol Green, who planned most of the menus. “Everyone was a certified expert, but no one was willing to put on an apron and help out—except the owner of the motel, an Italian man named Jimmy, who insisted on seasoning everything we ate with oregano.”

  Housing was even more aggravating, a new-wave rendition of musical chairs, with losers in the free-for-alls having to spend the nights curled up on a couch or in a sleeping bag on the living room floor. And when friends or lovers showed up for the night and wound up staying a week, inconvenience became an absurdity even peace and love couldn’t rectify.

  Mel Lawrence was swamped with more important matters that demanded his immediate attention and, subsequently, turned over the housing hunt to his assistant, Penny Stallings. “Find any place you can,” he instructed her, “it doesn’t matter what it looks like as long as it’ll hold 150 of our people comfortably. Only for God’s sake, do it before I have a mutiny on my hands.”

  For two days, Penny drove around the Bethel–White Lake area investigating the local inns, many of which turned out to be yeshivas and Hasidic retreats and had to be disqualified for dietary reasons. She finally found a deserted, Prohibition-era hotel called the Diamond Horseshoe, a few miles down the road from Max’s, which she entered by crawling through an opened window on the bottom floor. It reminded her of something out of the Twilight Zone. The interior looked as though people had been there that very morning and just got up and left. Scraps of food had been left on plates in the kitchen, personal articles were strewn around the spacious living room floor, the bathrooms were a mess. But with some creative repair work (and a healthy imagination), the place had a lot of possibilities.

  “It’s not real pretty to look at,” she reported to Lawrence, “but it’s huge. We can pack a couple hundred people into there if we have to. I counted about a hundred bedrooms, but I’m sure it’s bigger than that.” She had located the caretaker, a creaky, old man who resided in a cottage adjacent to the main building, who eagerly escorted her on a tour of the vast premises.

  The Diamond Horseshoe, Penny discovered, belonged to a New York dentist who had bought the run-down hotel with the belief that, one day, legalized gambling would rescue the Catskills from its present desolate state. Until that time, which looked a long, long way off, he rented it out “at disgustingly reasonable rates” to any group that expressed interest.

  It must have been exquisite in its day, she imagined, as they strolled around the grounds. Actually, the Diamond Horseshoe was several buildings that were situated on a campus of rolling lawns and thick-girthed weeping willows. The hotel itself sported a roomy reception area that opened onto the living room. The wallpaper was hanging down in strips and large sections of th
e floor were missing, but it was nothing a little touching up wouldn’t fix. There were two dining rooms that would easily seat their staff, and a filthy kitchen with all its utilities intact. But the pièce de résistance was the arcade directly behind the inn. The backyard was defined by an Olympic-sized swimming pool surrounded by multicolored cabanas and a bar. The bar, which became the center of all evening activity, was completely stocked with liquor and had an old-fashioned, neon Wurlitzer jukebox that blared hits of the past. It was simply wonderful, and conveniently close to the site.

  “I’ll bet this place costs a fortune to rent,” Penny backed off.

  “Not really. But there are a few terms we have to agree to before I let you young kids in here.” They included a thorough spring cleaning of the hotel and an overhauling of the dilapidated facilities—a deal Penny was quick to accept.

  Under the direction of Chris Langhart and several instructors from the New York University theatre department, a team of hippies rigorously swept through the old building, replacing decayed sections of galvanized piping that had been allowed to freeze by the previous tenants and filling gaping holes in the wall, floor, and ceiling. Where furniture was missing arms and legs, makeshift appendages were inserted. Pillows and cushions were sewn together, bookcases were dusted, tabletops were refinished. Floors were scrubbed, and dried food was chipped off the pots and pans until the inside of the hotel was livable.

  That left the recreational area. A construction crew cleaned out the inside of the swimming pool, added several coats of rust-resistant paint to its cracked surface, changed the filtering system, and filled it with water. By the end of the week they had made noticeable headway. The Diamond Horseshoe was, by no means, returned to its pristine stateliness, nor could it be considered luxurious, but it was ready for occupation, and by Tuesday, July 29, with duffel bags and suitcases piled high in its reception area, 165 members of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair’s production staff had agreed to call it home.

  • • •

  The wayfaring members of the festival troupe were not the only ones who found themselves in need of sending out change-of-address cards. It was decided, soon after the move to White Lake, that someone had better come up with an inventive way of cuing the general public in on the Aquarian Exposition’s new location before too much time elapsed. Their well-publicized censure by the Wallkill town fathers was likely to touch off an epidemic of refunds that could be abated with the proper handling of the situation. Word had to be sent to the underground that Woodstock Lives.

  The day after the crew dumped their gear into the Diamond Horseshoe lobby, the promoters called a meeting of their public relations advisers at Paul Marshall’s office. It was the first time in over a month that the estranged partners—Lang and Kornfeld/Roberts and Rosenman—appeared under the same roof together. Hardly a homecoming—they sat on opposite sides of the room, barely on speaking terms as a result of professional differences. Regardless of the ostensible friction that permeated the meeting, wisely neither side exchanged an uncivilized word.

  The first and most important order of business was how to communicate their survival to the public. On the advice of their publicists, they opted to place an ad in every newspaper they could, to impart: (1) why they were moving the site (a woeful tale of social injustice they hoped would evoke sympathy from the underground media); (2) the festival’s new location; (3) that the three-day coupons now in the hands of ticket holders were still legal tender in White Lake; and (4) that the new site was twice as large as their former abode and, therefore, twice as beautiful.

  Arnold Skolnick, who had designed the original posters, was invited to sit in on the meeting. He came up with a backhanded ad that ran in newspapers and magazines for a solid week. Across the top of the notice, in bold type, was the official proclamation: TO INSURE THREE DAYS OF PEACE & MUSIC, WE’VE LEFT WALLKILL AND ARE NOW IN WHITE LAKE, N.Y. Beneath that, Skolnick had drawn a cartoon featuring two hillbillies, one “fashionably” attired in a “Get Out Of Wallkill” T-shirt, and both armed with shotguns. The ornery characters just happened to bear uncanny resemblances to Howard Mills, Jr., and Jack Schlosser, although, the promoters claimed, that hadn’t been their intention.

  “Certain people of Wallkill decided to try to run us out of town before we even got there,” the copy began, quite innocently. “They were afraid. Of what, we don’t know. We’re not even sure that they know. But anyway, to avoid a hassle, we moved our festival site. . . . After all, the whole idea of a festival is to bring you three days of peace and music. Not three days of dirty looks and cold shoulders.”

  Skolnick also unveiled a mock-up of a new poster, one featuring the dove and guitar logo against a red background. Unlike the flashy art deco placard that had been used to announce the Wallkill event, this one was an unelaborate, straightforward account of the various modes of entertainment scheduled for the fair, as well as an up-to-the-minute listing of the groups slated to perform. Jim Mitchell said he could have them printed and plastered in every head shop, record store, drive-in restaurant, and army-navy store within hours of delivery.

  Marshall instructed Lang to get on the telephone and call every manager and rock artist he’d been dealing with, letting them know that the new site was only thirty miles north of Wallkill and that it would be as convenient to reach. “Act as though it’s a minor point, spout the virtues of Max’s farm, even imply that their dressing rooms will be more commodious—anything. But just before you’re ready to hang up, let them know that you’ll be sending out a rider to the contract affirming the new location.” Woodstock Ventures would have to receive written acceptance of all performers’ compliance to appear in White Lake, he said, otherwise a group could legally back out of their contractual obligation. He did not anticipate this becoming a problem; however, it did put the festival at somewhat of a disadvantage, and he warned Michael that he could expect a few of the managers to ask for “incentives.” If adjustments in fees had to be made, they were in agreement to do so as long as they were reasonable.

  After Skolnick and the publicity people had departed, someone brought up the film deal and asked Artie how negotiations were going. At Stan Goldstein’s behest, Kornfeld had consulted with the principals at Cannon Films, the producers of Joe and other low-budget features. They were willing to put up $500,000 for the rights, pay the full production costs, and split the profits down the middle. Michael had also referred him to the Maysles Brothers, whose credits included Monterey Pop and New York Meets the Beatles. But Artie thought there were bigger fish to be had—especially if he could offer both the film and record rights in a package to a multimedia conglomerate capable of promoting such a commodity. He was particularly interested in some kind of partnership arrangement with Warner Brothers, although, at present, the Hollywood dynasty was doubtful that a documentary film about rock music had any commercial potential. “You make the picture, and we’ll be happy to take a look at it,” they had told him, but Marshall encouraged his clients to have a distributor in tow before they began hiring and trying to support a film crew.

  Artie, ever the optimist, assured them he was “on top of it,” that making a film deal for Woodstock was “a cinch,” and that something more conclusive would be forthcoming from him in a day or two.

  “I certainly hope so,” Roberts said, “but I’ve got a feeling we’re in for a knockdown, drag-out struggle.”

  “You worry too much, baby. Hang loose.”

  But they had been left hanging for too long a period of time, Roberts thought. It was time he and Joel tightened the reins, possibly even took over Artie’s responsibilities. He’d give it a little more time and see what happened. It couldn’t get any worse.

  • • •

  The Town of Bethel was also keeping a vigilant eye on the proceedings in White Lake, not really knowing what to expect from the denizens of Max Yasgur’s farm.

  By July 24, Supervisor Amatucci reported
getting about twenty phone calls from outraged residents, but, in his scrupulous estimation, it didn’t seem like an organized campaign, nor had there been any threats of “legal entanglement.” Town Attorney Schadt had also been confronted by some members of the community wondering why a public hearing had not been held, but he told them that “there is nothing in the Bethel Town Law I could find that requires one.” His office would not disapprove of the festival’s presence in the town since no putative ordinance had been violated.

  That, however, was not grounds enough to curb a handful of cranky residents from turning the festival’s “apparent bed of roses,” as the Times Herald Record defined it, “into a briar patch.” By Saturday, July 26, a committee, composed of a dairy farmer named Louis Komancheck whose land adjoined the Yasgur spread, two members of the local appeals board, Burton Lemon, the town historian, and an “interested” party of taxpayers (who had the decency not to adopt the label concerned citizens), began circulating petitions that opposed the festival, citing it as a “public nuisance, a health menace, and conductive [sic] to traffic congestion creating fire and health hazards.”

  “Our roads are dangerous at their best,” came the committee’s unvarnished appeal. “They are narrow, there is no parking. How can we handle 150,000 people?” It was, in the most absolute sense, a reasonable, uncorrupted qualm that deserved an answer from their tormentors. “We are contacting state officials, including our assemblyman. The attitude of the town administration is that there is no opposition.”

  So, Monday morning, bright and early, it began once again, like a recurring nightmare. The protesters, fearful of being ignored, mounted a new offensive to drive their point home (and, as one restless bystander so inelegantly affirmed, “the hippies back to where they came from”). During a meeting at the town hall, at which Michael Lang was called on to present an all-inclusive draft of the festival’s intentions to New York State Health Department officials as well as representatives from the state police and the county sheriff’s office, an angry crowd stormed the conference. Their purpose, as one retired schoolteacher told a reporter, was to disrupt the session, and, thereby, to prevent the authorities from issuing their respective lawful consents to the promoters. Instead, they were invited inside the supervisor’s chambers to participate in the discussions.