Barefoot in Babylon

by Bob Spitz

  “Right on!” someone called back.

  It was at that moment Rikki Sanderson knew they’d pull through.

  • • •

  Roberts and Rosenman had been sitting on the lawn outside the security office when the first flashes of lightning pierced the sky. Blind impulse moved them to laugh. After all, wasn’t it John who, only minutes before, had joked that the only calamity that hadn’t beset them was a thunderstorm. There hadn’t been a cloud in the sky at the time. And now—this! It was the crudest joke of all.

  John’s face lost all of its expression as they squeezed through the office door. “It’s going to rain. All those people . . . what are we going to do? Oh my God!”

  The four of them—Roberts, Rosenman, Lee Mackler, and John Fabbri—pressed up against the window while the storm flooded Lake Street. The trees blew backwards as strong gusts of wind slapped high-tension wires through the air like flimsy kite-tails. “I didn’t read anything about a hurricane in this area,” Lee remarked.

  “It’s the tail end of Hurricane Michael,” Fabbri said with a straight face. “Somebody ought to declare it a disaster area.”

  “Somebody already has,” Joel said.

  “The stage isn’t covered, is it?” Roberts asked Lee.

  “Well—yes and no. Some of it has a roof overhead.”

  “The part with the electrical instruments?”

  “Yes”—she thought about it for a few seconds—“and no. It depends on how you look at it. Let’s put it this way: if you’re asking me if the stage has a place where one can go to stay out of the rain, the answer is yes; if you’re asking me whether or not it’s possible for that person to keep dry, the answer is no.”

  “Either way, we lose.” John put his head in his hand.

  “Not exactly,” Joel reminded him. “Remember that rain insurance policy we took out with Lloyds? Well, I think it’s going to pay us off for this little inconvenience. If I remember correctly, this is considered peak time, and during peak time Lloyds is on the hot seat instead of us. I never thought I’d get the chance to say this, but, John m’boy, we’re going to be coming into a little money.”

  “Great,” Roberts mumbled with little apparent interest. “We’ll need every cent we can get our hands on to pay back all of our debts.”

  • • •

  As suddenly as the rain had started, it stopped. The storm had lasted for a period of not longer than twenty minutes before pulling back over the campgrounds and then vanishing in what actually appeared to be a purple haze.

  Michael Lang had spent part of that time on the phone arranging for a special gift to be delivered to the Woodstock Nation. When the sun reappeared, so too did a plane he had hired to spray flower petals across the beleagured site. “Michael’s magic dust,” Ticia called it. It was an enchanting moment—the calm after the storm. Now, all Michael had to do was to figure out a way to make Jimi Hendrix materialize in White Lake and his mission would be nearly completed. The man who put Outer Space on the map was holed up in Woodstock, freaked by the crowd reports, and as of 4:00 Sunday afternoon, he remained adamant about cancelling his appearance.

  • • •

  While it looked as though the weather was prepared to come to terms with Sunday’s presentation, the rain had certainly taken its toll on the site. The lush, emerald field that had stood there only four days before was a solid body of mud held together by a mucilage of garbage and human excrement. What remained of the concession stands could hardly be described as more than a few wooden planks nailed together with shreds of canvas clinging to their horizontal beams like the moth-eaten cloak of a lost civilization. Flies and gnats battled overhead to determine which insect would be awarded territorial rights once the humans moved on.

  The stage, which had slid a total of six inches downhill, was temporarily restrained by Jay Drevers and a crew of stagehands who drove stakes into the downhill side of the mud plates “to slow it down.” Drevers insisted that the foundation had jarred loose in the mud and was not strong enough to hold the various bands, their equipment, and people who “happened along to hang out.” Above and beyond that, the weight of the audience pushing against the front had caused that portion of the bandstand to tip forward ever so slightly. It was a first-rate hazard. When he was asked what it would take to reduce the stress and the risk of further downhill movement of the stage, Drevers answered, “The elimination of the combined weight of nine million friends should do it.” Someone took his advice seriously. To reduce needless traffic, the steps were torn off the side of the stage. Everyone who wished to go topside was forced to take the elevator, and that meant first passing the scrutiny of an ornery carpenter named Leo whose lionlike disposition was not to be tested.

  Mel Lawrence had convinced a helicopter pilot that it was safe to fly him from the Howard Johnson’s in Newburgh back to the site. He got there just in time to inspect the damage done to the stage and to chat with Michael Lang about the incredible durability of the crew.

  Michael stopped him halfway through a testimonial to the Hog Farm and muttered, “Don’t look now, man, but here comes Max, and he looks blown-out.”

  “Oh shit! Not now of all times. I just know he’s gonna lay into me about his field or cows or alfalfa, and I don’t have the time. I’ve got too many other things on my mind.”

  Lawrence pivoted around to confront the farmer head-on and stopped dead in his tracks. Max looked awful. His stubbly face was ashen and his eyes bulged out of their fleshy sockets like two soft plums. Unbeknownst to his young associates, Max had spent all of Saturday night in his office with his son, Sam, and another man from the dairy, armed with rifles in anticipation of a motorcycle-gang raid. An anonymous call had tipped him off to their arrival and they decided to surprise the bikers. Max had been on and off oxygen ever since and was exhausted.

  “Holy shit,” Lawrence whispered, “this thing’s gonna kill Max. We’ve gotta figure out some way to cheer him up. I’ve got an idea, Michael. Whaddya say we get Max up on stage to say a few words to the kids? That ought to cool him out.”

  Michael grinned. “It’s a great idea, man. Do it.”

  But they had misread Yasgur’s expression, which, as he came closer to them, became more apparent.

  “Fuckin’ Max is in heaven, man,” Lawrence giggled. “Take a look at that shit-eating grin. He’s really diggin’ this.”

  And, indeed, Max was. “This is incredible! I don’t know what to say, boys. The kids are so nice and polite. I never thought this could happen.” Max twirled 360 degrees, overcome by sheer emotion.

  Mel pumped his hand and held it while they looked into each other’s eyes. “Max, why don’t you go onstage and tell the people how you feel? I think it’ll be real good for the festival for them to know that you’re behind them and that they’re welcome on your land.”

  Yasgur was apprehensive about going before so many people, but after some gentle prodding by Michael and Mel, he allowed Chip and Mel to escort him up in the elevator to say a few words.

  The stagehands had just about swept all the water off the stage. As a result of the downpour, they had to pierce the canvas roof in order to avoid its caving in from the weight. Max waited patiently on the side, out of their way, obviously fascinated by the crew’s industriousness and the spectacle of his hillside.

  When they were finished, Chip put an arm around Max’s shoulder and guided him to the front of the stage.

  “This is the man whose farm we’re on—Mr. Max Yasgur,” Chip said, stepping back to start the applause.

  Max leaned into the mike and spoke to his guests with heartfelt sincerity. “I’m a farmer,” he said. “I don’t know how to speak to twenty people at one time let alone a crowd like this. This is the largest group of people ever assembled in one place, but I think you people have proven something to the world—that a half a million kids can get together and have three da
ys of fun and music and have nothing but fun and music!” The tears welled up in his eyes as he shouted over the applause, “And I God-bless you for it!”

  • • •

  Penny Stallings had been having trouble getting back into her production trailer all afternoon. Every time she put her foot on the metal steps, Penny was thrown off by a charge of electricity that shot through her body and sent her sprawling on the wet ground. She finally pulled the master electrician aside, and he informed her the main terminal for the site was nearby the trailer. “We’re keeping an eye on it, especially with this wet ground. I don’t want to frighten you, but with all those kids climbing over the scaffolding . . . well, I’d hate to think what’d happen if one of those towers fell over into the wires.”

  The situation grew progressively worse. By 6:00 Sunday night, the dirt that covered one of the main feeder cables to the stage had washed away, and the crowd’s constant tramping over it had worn out part of the rubber insulation. It was no longer simply a matter of exercising caution; the situation had exploded into a full-blown emergency, and the electrician called security for his orders on how to handle it.

  Fabbri took the call, and then immediately summoned Roberts and Rosenman to a conference in the back office. “He says that with all those kids being drenched and packed together the way they are—if the insulation goes, we’re going to have a mass electrocution.” They had a choice, he said. They could continue to feed the stage on the same line and pray that the kids wouldn’t remove what was left of the rubber tubing or they could cancel the remainder of the show. “It’s not what I’d consider to be an ideal spot for us to be in,” Fabbri said solemnly.

  “What does the electrician want us to do?” Joel asked.

  Fabbri looked at his feet. “He wants us to shut down for a while.”

  “That’s impossible! We can’t do that,” Roberts pitched in. “It’ll be mayhem, for sure. A half million freaked-out rabid kids running around with nothing to do will just about finish us off.”

  “Well, somebody’s got to make a decision before those kids do it for us,” Fabbri said. “Its up to you—whatever you decide.”

  The three men sat painfully still in the back office, each one examining his own conscience, not daring to look at his two associates for fear of backing down from a decision. A few minutes went by unnoticed. Every so often Roberts whimpered, but no one said a word. The silence was ultimately broken by Joel Rosenman who jumped up and dialed the phone. Without faltering, he ordered the electrician to keep the music running continuously and to investigate methods of rerouting the power to protected cables. He saw by Fabbri’s face that the policeman disagreed with his decision; John Roberts was catatonic. “I want you to work on a switchover without losing one minute of music. And please give us a call as soon as you know anything further.”

  In the front room, Lee Mackler took a call from John Morris, who had been consulted by the electrician before security became involved in the life-or-death option.

  “Fuck it—we’re gonna turn the power off,” Morris said. “If we don’t, we’re gonna have French-fried musicians on that stage. It’ll be one big disaster.” Lee could detect in his voice that Morris was overcome with grief. “You gotta see it to believe it. All of the wires are exposed. It’s drizzling again. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people are at stake. For God’s sake—turn the fuckin’ power off!”

  “Take it easy, John,” Rosenman said, grabbing the phone out of Lee’s hand. “We’re handling it. I’ve talked to an electrician and the odds are heavily in our favor—otherwise I wouldn’t have made such a quick decision. Whatever you do, don’t tell anybody what’s going on or else we’ll have a panic that’ll be harder to control than the electricity. Sit tight. I’ll call you back.”

  Joel hung up the phone and slumped against the wall. Lee suggested that he call Wes for advice, and after some deliberation, Joel tracked down the chief of security on the mobile phone. Pomeroy told Joel that he felt he had done the right thing. Wes was having a difficult time at the festival and had receded from a role of major importance in executive decision-making to that of an aged figurehead whose time was past. Pomeroy had spent most of Friday and Saturday following up complaints by Max’s neighbors about hippies trespassing on the property. The final blow to his professional ego had come early Sunday morning when he took a call from Max’s wife placing the entire blame for the festival on Wes’s shoulders.

  “Pomeroy, this is all your fault,” she accused him, “everything that’s gone on here. It wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for you. And if anything happens to Max because of it—I’ll hold you responsible!”

  Wes lay down to catch a few hours’ sleep after taking the disturbing call, and, according to a close associate, “he never woke up. He watched something that he worked so long and hard on be torn apart by incompetence and emotion, and he didn’t know how to deal with it. Wes was a man to whom honor came above everything else. He could deal with honorable people better than anybody else on the face of the earth, but he was defenseless against deceit. The cops’ treachery did him in. And he just couldn’t compete with Mrs. Yasgur’s love for her husband; he didn’t even want to try.”

  Joel found his partner in the same position he had left him in in the back room before taking Morris’s call. Roberts was taking it harder than even he thought possible, but it was understandable nonetheless. For three days John had sat by helplessly as his inheritance was snuffed out, writing bad check on top of bad check to keep the festival afloat. He’d have to account for the money sooner or later, and Roberts intended to cover each piece of paper personally endorsed by him over the weekend. He had to; his family reputation was at stake. But this—the possible mass electrocution of anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000. He couldn’t cope with it.

  “What’s going on here?” John stared up at his partner, in a state of shock. “What does this mean to our lives—that we could make such a callous decision?”

  Joel tried to find the words to answer him, but could not.

  “What can we possibly do in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours? If we survive it! And then where do we go from here? God, Joel, I don’t understand this thing at all.”

  The two of them decided that whatever course of action they took in the next two days, it was going to have a lot to do with the quality and nature of the rest of their lives. They wouldn’t spare any expense or effort to see that the power lines were switched safely, and they would do everything within their ability to pay their creditors and preserve their reputations.

  “You mean—if we make it,” Joel said.

  “If we make it,” John conceded.

  Years later Roberts would remember that precise moment and the philosophy he chose to embrace. “I think I had very clearly decided at that time, as a concept, that if thousands and thousands of people were electrocuted, I was going to find a reasonably swift and painless way to take care of myself. It wasn’t a suicide pact of any kind, but it was something that I knew I would never be able to live with.”

  An hour passed, then another, and finally the electrician was on the phone saying that the transfer had been made without a hitch. The stage had all the power it would need for the next two weeks, and the frayed cables had been uprooted. Joel collapsed in his chair. John slumped across his desk and sobbed tearlessly. The operation had been a success.

  • • •

  While Roberts and Rosenman were huddled in the back office pondering the outcome of their decision, another fate had been determined. Bert Cohen had arrived with the program books. The tractor-trailer had finally gotten through the traffic and he was ready to unload them on a table by the main gate.

  His truck had rolled into Sullivan County at 4:42 P.M. Sunday afternoon paying the winner of the pool $37.50.

  Country Joe and the Fish had demanded to take to the stage during the energy crisis despite warnings
from the stagehands that the “electrifying” performance they intended to put on might be just exactly that. It was raining, he said, and there were “these problems.”

  Barry Melton, lead guitarist for the Fish, overruled the stagehand’s objections. “We wanna play, man. We wanna play now. We don’t need electricity.” And they proved the impossible. In front of a crowd that spanned six hundred acres of open farmland, where a distance of ten feet was considered to be well out of earshot, Country Joe and The Fish pantomimed their set with acoustic instruments and nonelectric microphones—and the crowd got off on it! Joe McDonald dashed into the performers’ pavilion in the middle of the group’s show and returned carrying six-packs of beer, a few bottles of champagne, and oranges, all of which were tossed from the stage into the crowd. A male dancer from the audience was yanked up on stage by an electrician where he proceeded to strip naked and wiggle back and forth across the bandstand in time to the music. It was a perfectly resilient display of impromptu showmanship that held the audience’s rapt attention while the rest of the crew insulated the stage. The Fish (and Country Joe McDonald for the second time during the weekend) rescued the day.

  “They reminded one of the brave rodeo clowns that run into the pit when a rider’s hurt and the bull’s ready to trample him,” a writer from Rolling Stone interpreted the Fish’s heroics. “They came through.”