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 Stone, Nash and Naylor were just a handful of the more than
450,000 people who attended, or performed at, Woodstock in 1969,
and each has a different story to tell as the music festival
that defined an era marks its 50th anniversary this week.
Here are highlights of some of them:
Jason Stone was 17 and had a summer job as a camp counselor in
upstate New York when he and a friend decided to take off,
without permission, and hitch a ride to the festival.
"We didn't have a tent, we didn't have any equipment, we didn't
have anything but the clothes on our back. A few dollars in our
pocket," he recalled.
They ran into someone they know, and shared a small tent, where
they were offered some watermelon.
"Little did I know that this watermelon was injected at some
time before we got there with LSD, and that we were about to
experience something pretty intense," Stone said.
Stone lost his job at the summer camp, but the festival had
given him a taste for the music business. After many years
working at concert promoters Live Nation he now has his own
company which helps arrange concerts at the original Woodstock
festival site in Bethel Woods, New York.
"I knew after Woodstock that (after) the experience I had there,
I wanted to be in the music business and wanted to be part of
what Woodstock was," he said.
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Woodstock marked only the second live public performance by folk
rock band Crosby, Stills and Nash, who opened their set with
their acoustic, close harmony hit single "Suite: Judy Blue
Eyes."
Nash remembers flying into Woodstock by helicopter after dark.
"Thousands and thousands of people. Rain. Mud. Candles. People.
Murmuring. Sound. It was unbelievable," he said.
"The size of something like Woodstock - things get very hazy.
They get very hazy if you're straight. They get incredibly hazy
if you were high. And that's what we were so I have very few
memories of interaction backstage," Nash added.
While waiting to perform, the band was less concerned about the
vast audience than the reaction of their peers and "all of the
people we loved standing on the side of the stage wondering
whether this new band, Crosby, Stills and Nash, could do what
their record was. How are they gonna do this live, you know?"
----
William Ellsworth was a 20-year-old volunteer mounted police
officer on his first big detail.
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"Nobody gave us a hard time, really. Nobody was antagonistic or
anything like that. It wasn't a hostile crowd by any means. They
were there for the music, and whatever else was there," Ellsworth
said.
Woodstock was notable for widespread drug use by performers and
fans, although only about 100 arrests were made and there were no
reported incidents of violence.
"I think common sense prevailed, basically. There wasn't much you
could do. I saw some people smoking weed, marijuana and stuff.
But... there was nobody to turn them over to, anyway. So, it would
have just been a piece of paper and 'see ya'," said Ellsworth.
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Jocko Marcellino was a singer, drummer and songwriter for the
fledgling band Sha Na Na when Jimi Hendrix helped get them onto the
Woodstock bill. As the hours passed, Sha Na Na kept getting bumped
before Hendrix insisted they take the stage as the penultimate act.
"Looking out at the crowd, by then it would look like a refugee
camp... and we were exhausted because we were out there all weekend
and we finally got on.
"Woodstock was all about all of these people cooperating and getting
through that weekend together... It was a universe of its own and it
will never be repeated again," Marcellino said.
"We got paid $350. The check bounced."
----
Robin Naylor turned 15 a week before Woodstock and went with two of
her sisters, without telling their strict father.
She remembers marveling at how Janice Joplin could sing, drink and
smoke a cigarette at the same time.
"I am thinking how much more smoke was coming out as she's singing
"Piece of My Heart Baby" and her face was completely gray. She was
amazing, but I was looking (and) I was thinking her face is gray,"
she said.
Elsewhere, Naylor's sister slipped in the mud and down into a
makeshift privy, ruining her prized moccasin boots.
"She had fallen into a hole where people had been using it because
there were no... right? So it is all over her... She was so proud of
her moccasin boots. She was crying," Naylor said.
"You forgot that you were cold, hungry and wet... My sister Patty
said, 'Don't eat anything, don't drink anything' because there were
a lot of things going around and we were young kids.
"People were swimming naked. Oh my god! I saw my first naked man at
Woodstock. Oh wow! Yeah. I was horrified."
(Reporting by Kevin Ferguson, Editing by Jill Serjeant and Rosalba
O'Brien)
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