by Bob Spitz
Mel passed a lot of time attempting to keep Max from his real tormentors: the pipelayers. Langhart had run into several problems with pipe alignment and was left no alternative but to break ground on sections of property not yet under the festival’s contractual control.
“Look,” Chris warned Mel, “whatever you do, keep Max away from the campgrounds between one and four this afternoon. We’ve gotta get that pipe in there before we run outta time.”
To avoid a confrontation, one in which Max always expressed indignation over having to play cuckold to a bunch of long-haired kids, Lawrence arranged to meet his car at the Hurd Road entrance of the site so that the director of operations could chaperone him on a tour of the concessions area or the medical complex or the performers’ kitchen—anywhere but the campgrounds. It was what Lawrence referred to as “the Yasgur two-step.”
Later on, though, after taking the prearranged excursion, Max would inevitably work his way to the campgrounds and, like Lot’s wife, he’d stiffen with rage. “Oh, my God! Do you see what they’ve done! Look—they’ve laid pipe there.”
“Gee, I had no idea, Max,” Lawrence would plead innocently, “otherwise I never woulda let it happen. How do you suppose those guys snuck up here without me seeing them? I’m stunned.”
Of course, while they were busy consoling one another, Langhart would move his crew to another off-limits section of the site that demanded his immediate attention.
This went on for several days before Max grabbed hold of Michael Lang and asked him if he’d be so kind as to accompany him on a casual walk.
“Max was a real pisser,” Michael recalled later, smiling in what could only be interpreted as admiration. “He’d point out to me where we had violated the contract or damaged a particular crop. Then, quicker than the eye could follow, he’d whip a small tablet out of his back pocket, wet the point of a pencil in his fingertips, and compute what we owed him right on the spot. He didn’t miss a trick.”
Nor was he inclined to negotiate the bill.
“Max would fight you on a deal to the nth degree,” his wife explained, “but once you settled on something and shook hands with him, that handshake meant more than a contract. If someone went back on their word with Max, he could make things very tough.”
Woodstock Ventures fared no better than the rest of Yasgur’s associates. Max kept a running tally of their transgressions, attaching a dollar figure commensurate to each one, and balanced the total against the festival’s $75,000 security deposit that he held in escrow. It was certainly an equitable arrangement, seeing as how both sides profited handsomely in their own right. The production staff obviously felt comfortable enough to move in any direction they wished in order to meet their deadline, and each time they did, Max transferred another chunk of cash into his plus column of the ledger. By the end of August, when the two parties met to divvy up the balance in the fund, neither was particularly surprised to learn they were even.
CHAPTER NINE
Aquarius Rising
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
—W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”
1
“This is the time when the jitters hit us,” Mel Lawrence told a reporter, noting that only a week remained until the festival officially opened its gates. “It always happens this way. You walk around the site taking stock of what remains to be done, and it seems as though you’re not even close. You just want to freak or run away. But we always get finished.”
Lawrence’s assuredness seemed immutable as always. And for a very good reason. In slightly less than two days since the rains had stopped, the site had slowly, and quite wonderfully, begun to sprout life.
Several A-frame structures that were to become the concession stands had been erected on the brim around the hill; a tractor-trailer had moved rows of portable toilets into place on either side of the bowl; seesaws, swings, a maze, and a latticework climber adorned a corner of the campgrounds; the performer’s pavilion approached completion; two sound towers, patterned after the giant cribs that surround oil wells, inched toward the clouds. And there, nesting in the gap of clover at the base of the hill, were the makings for the most fantastic outdoor concert stage ever built. Twenty-three yards of concrete had been poured for its foundation, the cable clamps that would later suspend the telephone-pole footings had been sunk into the floor, and an 18-foot wall of yellow scaffolding had been pieced together as a support for the gigantic rotating platform that was still a ways off. It was all reasonably encouraging.
Local interest intensified as word of progress spread across the county. The Times Herald Record devoted several columns a day to the young crews’ astonishing advances, marking the festival’s stride under such banners as ‘Aquarians Race Clock As Crowd Grows,” or “6,000 Festivalgoers Swarm Into Area,” or “Age of Aquarius Dawns,” accompanied by photo layouts depicting the wonderful spirit of brotherhood at work on the project. Carloads of sightseers converged on the farm to nourish their curiosity, and Monticello police reported that large numbers of youths had recently appeared in the city, most carrying backpacks and sleeping bags. The anticipation that had spun out as a result of all the publicity, both in Wallkill and now in White Lake, was unlike anything ever experienced before.
But beyond the dreamy spell the festival seemed to have cast over the country’s youth, it had also generated intense admiration from many of the local businessmen who suddenly found themselves involved with the blue-jeaned production staff. Max Bender, a respected civic leader and chairman of the Sullivan County Planning Board, was overwhelmed by the headway being made on Yasgur’s farm and urged the residents to throw their unqualified support behind the festival. “Perhaps some of the people are shortsighted and do not understand what these children are doing,” he said, in a published interview, referring to the outstanding legal suit for an injunction still pending before the State Supreme Court in Catskill. “These people are bringing recreation to the county and should be given an opportunity to express themselves. The results will be good and if successful they will bring an economic boost to the county without it costing the taxpayer a cent.” Bender’s committee was directly responsible for bringing along two Sullivan County projects designed to pump new life into the area—a five-million-dollar airport, and a six-million-dollar convention hall—but he shrugged them off as undeveloped and distant rewards. Pointing to the festival’s imminence, he declared, “We have something right now, tangible and real. Let everyone help and everyone will benefit.”
A combined force of three hundred laborers was doing everything in its power to move them closer to that very end. Max Bender stood in awe of their remarkable success. “Some of those kids probably never saw a shovel, a sledgehammer, or a pick ax. Today they are using them and building something for which they will receive little pay but great satisfaction.”
Max Yasgur voiced an almost identical amazement to his wife, although his high spirits were somewhat diluted by the current of events it took to produce such results. He thought the “kids were doing a tremendous job of erecting a stage in far less time than they should have,” but they were dragging tractors and trees and all kinds of tools across his land, tearing up alfalfa fields and crops with little concern for their value. “To them, it’s all grass,” Max complained. “But you should see what they’re doing! I can’t believe it. They’re working like beavers. I saw a huge tractor plowing across the field with a little guy perched on top controlling it, and when he came down, I saw that it was a girl! I’ve never seen kids work like this before. They’re such a pleasure to have around.”
For practical purposes, many of those crews were put on brutal, twenty-four-hour shifts to keep pace with the rest of the progression. For the stage and tower crews especially, life became one continuous rhythm of exertion from which there seemed no apparent relief. No one went
back to the hotel at night. Their meals—a piece of cold chicken or a sandwich and a piece of fruit—were brought to them in the field by one of the girls from the Diamond Horseshoe. Occasionally, they’d be allowed an hour’s rest in one of the production trailers or on the back seat of a staff car, but no one dared to take it, fearing they’d never want to return.
Endurance became a source of one’s pride. Most everyone knew that if they could hold together for another week, they’d come damn close to being ready for Friday afternoon’s show. Bill Abruzzi had arranged to give daily Vitamin B12 shots to the stage crew, which, he claimed, would accelerate their metabolic rate and, hopefully, keep everyone on his feet just that much longer. Most of the men, however, found the effect wore off in a matter of hours and made them even more sluggish than before. The ultimate remedy came directly from the top: Those who needed an extra lift were slipped tabs of acid or speed to keep them going. “Get it on at all costs” remained Michael’s tireless motto. After five months of climbing over the enemy, exhaustion could not be permitted to stand in his way.
• • •
To build the stage, it took every ounce of determination left in the battered crew—a tinker from San Francisco, two teen-agers from Georgia (who, aside from having recently sat in the audience at a southern festival, had no practical experience whatsoever), and a pair of bikers from the town of Woodstock. Their foreman, an elderly Italian man whose scaffolding company had supplied them with raw materials, was of the opinion that they were all wasting their time by running themselves ragged. They’d never finish—he knew from experience. He subsequently retreated to the sidelines where he idly watched their “folly” as if it were some form of psychedelic entertainment.
Jay Drevers was in charge of the hapless platoon. Drevers related well to the men. A patient, team-spirited individual, he found it unnecessary to display patronizing fits of temper in order to bring about results. Instead, he approached the challenge with logic and self-restraint, expressed a reasonable amount of faith in its outcome, and unconsciously traded on his enthusiasm to motivate the rest of the crew.
By the middle of the second week in August, they had progressed favorably to a point whereby they were ready to put the deck on top of the stage’s stiltlike foundation. The foreman, who had taken to sunning himself during the afternoons, was so stunned by their accomplishment that even he was moved to rejoin the group in their come-from-behind drive toward the finish gate. It was a long shot, he conceded, but he no longer bet against their success.
They started by laying narrow planks of wood across the upended scaffolding until it resembled a ballroom-size parquet floor with legs. Then, two layers of plywood were positioned on top of it and the whole wooden sandwich was fastened together with hundreds of sixpenny nails so that it remained rigidly in place.
The five roof trusses were built out of enormous pieces of wood weighing over 800 pounds each. These were to be held in place above the bandstand by a palisade of telephone poles and were to be used to support both the lights and the strips of canvas-covering for the stage.
The telephone poles were bolted into place early that Monday morning before the festival. Upon closer examination, most of them were found to be either split or rotten, but it was already too late to do anything about it. So, rather than scrapping the project, it was decided they would make due with what they had and hope for the best. To attach guy wires consisting of half-inch aircraft cable from the top of the poles to the cement footings, two stagehands crawled inside 55-gallon steel drums and were hoisted 300 feet into the air by a gigantic crane. The crane held the boys steady in midair while they leaned out of the capsule and yanked the wire through and around a metal cap on top of the poles before tossing it back down to a man on the ground. It was a foolhardy and risky way to secure their stage supports, but it finished that particular phase of the construction in less than six hours, a full day ahead of schedule.
• • •
A curious mix of ex-merchant marines and hippies who called themselves the Bastard Sons (as a result of always being served last at mealtimes) assembled a cavalcade of ten lightweight concession stands in the section of woods between the Hog Farm and the backstage area. Born out of Michael’s concept of The Nation, the Aquarian Crafts Bazaar was to be the most exquisite head shop ever amassed in one location, where the Woodstock Generation could parade before an open mall of peddlers invited there to hawk their wares. Beads, handsewn moccasins, posters, T-shirts, water pipes, ceramics, belt buckles, drug-related accessories, and head bands—anything identified with the counterculture was there for the asking, and at prices low enough to conform to the hippie’s economic doctrine of spare change.
A coalition of radical underground newspapers, as well as a political leftist outfit called the Up-Against-The-Wall Motherfuckers, had reserved one of the booths adjoining the bazaar to promote “the inevitable revolution.” Durable platforms were buttressed into a rear wall of their stand that would amply support the weight of mimeograph machines and stacks of paper. Another horizontal ledge in the front formed the display counter where up-to-the-minute festival editions, philosophical pamphlets, and Marxist propaganda were to be given away free to their sympathizers.
Using a miscellany of hand tools, the Bastard Sons pruned the area immediately around the stands and notched comely paths through the rest of the thicket, which they padded with wood chips shipped in from Texas. The trails, shaded hideaways where one could conceivably come to escape the frenzy of crowds and hard rock, were marked by arrow-shaped signs pointing to Groovy Way, High Way, Gentle Path, and Easy Street. The remaining Christmas lights were strung across the stands and through the treetops, and footlights were blanketed beneath umbrellas of reconstructed pine cones.
There was still a great deal of work to be done on the main concession stands above the amphitheatre. Food For Love was due in there Tuesday afternoon to set up the kitchens, but Monday night, the Bastard Sons were still hammering away at their cumbersome birchwood frameworks.
The food stands were objects of art in their own right. Long lines of colored braided rope were knotted at the tops of the center poles to form a crown and wound down around the supporting posts like a hundred serpentine rainbows. Indian tapestries had been interwoven with swatches of mirror cloth to spawn exotic thatched roofs and were highlighted underneath by soft, yellow fluorescent panels. And colorful banners—advertising which stands sold hot dogs, soft drinks, French fries, ice cream, corn-on-the-cob, watermelon, or tacos—flapped from the pyramidal masts.
The interiors still remained to be furnished. Griddles had to be assembled, refrigeration appliances needed to be connected to generators, kettles for boiling corn had to be installed, and running water had yet to be tapped in from a nearby well.
Peter Goodrich frantically accosted members of other crews and begged them to lend a hand in the concession area. Manpower, though, was worth its weight in gold and at an unmatched premium. There was just too much still to be done elsewhere for production supervisors to relinquish their hold on crew members, and by Tuesday night, that extremely vital area of production had collapsed into utter pandemonium.
2
The developments from here on in moved very rapidly. By the end of the first week in August, it became apparent that the portion of West Shore Road that ran behind the stage was going to fill up with people as soon as the gates were opened. That meant the rock groups would not be able to reach the stage from the performers’ pavilion and their assigned trailers without first wading through a mob of overzealous fans. The fence separating the two areas was unsturdy and, therefore, meaningless to the security of the performers. An alternative line of access had to be worked out to bypass the road completely.
On Sunday, August 10, Chris Langhart, assisted by a corps of technical people he knew from summer theatres in Syracuse, began constructing a footbridge over the road. Borrowing machinery and raw materials from th
e stage crew, they frivolously based their calculations for weight and size on whatever information was available to them. “It’s got to be strong enough so that Janis Joplin can be followed across the bridge by a horde of roadies with everybody jumping up and down in time to the music,” Langhart told his co-workers, who looked at him as though he were on a bad trip. Accuracy, they assumed, was not going to be an essential element in the building of their overpass. “No, I’m serious,” he said. “Hey, John,” Langhart called to John Morris who was on his way toward the stage from a production trailer, “what’s the weight of the average roadie?”
It was also on the tenth that Howard Hirsch and Peter Leeds arrived at Yasgur’s farm to begin setting up the exhibition of amateur artists along the festival’s northwestern perimeter. All of the show’s entries were to be hung on the fence and trees just beyond the campgrounds. The Indian artists, whose prime interest was to make an enormous profit from the sale of their handicrafts, elected to remain independent of the others. Langhart had built them a special pavilion on the way to the concession area—a setting more apropos for the type of fast-paced hustle they had in mind.
The next day, August 11, Langhart flagged down Joel Rosenman as the promoter wheeled his way around the stage on a quick tour of the site. It had become an unspoken pact between the two young men that whenever a particularly large expense loomed in the foreseeable distance, either Rosenman or John Roberts would be notified about it beforehand, lest Michael be given another go at the corporate bank account. This time, Langhart’s emergency had to do with their most plentiful source of water—the large pond on the fringe of Max’s farm; Max did not own it.
The pond belonged to an association of owners whose only visible proxy was William Filippini, an Italian farmer whose chicken farm was within shouting distance of the festival site. Filippini, Joel found, was like the rest of the farmers they had encountered since setting out. He claimed to be one of “the little people” who were always being taken advantage of by city slickers, expressed a good deal of resentment over the hippies’ presence in his community, and speculated aloud how much it was worth to Woodstock Ventures for the right to trespass on his property.
