Woodstock: Tracing The Country's Evolution From 1969 to 1999
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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman watched the definitive documentary on the original Woodstock music festival, then compared that to the decidedly different experience concert goers had 30 years later as two other documentaries covered in detail how greed and corporatization changed the entire meaning of the concert.
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Welcome to the Weekender Edition of the Muckrate Podcast.
I'm Gary D. H. Saxton.
I'm here with Nick Halsman.
I hope everybody had a fantastic week.
We're going to do something today that we've done in the past.
We've always heard compliments about it.
We've always enjoyed.
We're going to use a little bit of media, a couple of movies, a series to talk about larger context.
And Nick, you want to tell the people what we're talking about?
Well, we decided to watch both documentaries on Woodstock.
Actually, I guess there's three.
Woodstock 69, which apparently we have to call it that now, because there was a Woodstock 99, and they have to differentiate.
So, we decided let's go look at the documentaries done on both of these events to figure out how they connect to each other, and what the differences were.
I think that it's fascinating when you look at it in terms of contemporary social American history, and the cultural wars, and everything about those times are fascinating.
Yeah, so this is going to be a pretty free-ranging kind of conversation.
You know, not just necessarily talking about, like, what the media representations are, whether or not they're good movies.
I'll tell you this, the Woodstock 69 documentary is long.
It is very, very long.
I mean, I could only find the director's cut, and it's longer than we all remember it.
And it's a concert footage, really, when you really boil it down.
And, hey, it's a hell of a concert to have filmed.
It is, and I gotta say, there's like some real beautiful parts to it, but we're going to be talking about this and using this as a jumping off point to talk about a couple of things.
One, comparing and contrasting the political and social cultures of the 60s, late 60s, early 70s with the late 90s, early 2000s.
There's a lot of meat on them bones and a lot that we can learn about how America has changed and what it did.
But we're also going – personally, I have a lot to say about sort of misconceptions about the 60s and the 70s and what it was and what popular culture was and what it represented.
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So, Nick, very quickly to go ahead and sum it up.
We watched the Woodstock concert documentary, which I was able to find on Amazon.
And then we watched the new series on Netflix, which was the three parter, which broke down almost minute by minute.
the Woodstock 99 experience.
And then we both watched, I believe it was on HBO Max.
It was a one-part documentary.
I want to say it was produced by Bill Simmons.
Yeah, it was.
And we watched that.
And so if you could, what are your initial thoughts on these in terms of movies, but also messaging and what they got into?
Well, the director's cut, I want to say, does have, you know, 45 minutes of extra footage, which really, it did make it better, because we got to see even more of, like, footage of the setup of the concert, and what I like about that is you can, you know, it's mostly done with MOS, without sound, it's mostly where you're hearing concert songs in the background.
But you could see how people dressed, what they were smoking, like what they were, how they worked, you know what I mean?
Like you got a lot of detail about everyday life of the people back in 69, which I thought was really fascinating.
And so it was really a great encapsulation, but again just It served to mythologize Woodstock 69 and so we need to get into that at some point as well as the mythology versus the reality of what it was really like there.
It's propaganda!
Like straight up it is a propagandic treatment of a moment in time and we'll talk about why that is and what it's trying to do but you're absolutely right it is a loving glimpse at Woodstock 99 for sure.
Right and then obviously 99 was it was much more of a bombastic attempt to tear it all down and really just get clicks and and see but but rightfully so because I don't know maybe no one remembers but it became Lord of the Flies fiasco where they just ripped the shit down to the bone, to the structures because they were so upset with how the thing was run.
But it might not just be about the actual, you know, bathrooms and the food and all that kind of stuff.
It might have actually been a greater thing we need to talk about as far as, you know, the culture around 99 heading into that concert.
So I will say what was interesting about the footage they used in the concert is when you look at the lineup, Of who played, and then you look at the song tracks of the actual concert, they didn't give us the greatest hits of these artists.
I know!
Okay, so it is a very long documentary.
I want to say it was four hours and 44 minutes, is that correct?
Well, the director's cut is that long, so is that why you're not watching it?
Yeah, so I watched the director's cut.
Do you know what they left off there?
It's really bizarre.
They left off the Grateful Dead.
They left off the band.
Like, really kind of shocking to me.
I did not expect that.
You know, you're right.
I was almost thinking of what they left off as far as who we did see, but we did see Jerry for a second.
He did speak to the camera, but like, yeah.
And that would be Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, but Almost to the point where maybe they had contractual issues where they wouldn't let them release in the concert footage the big hits.
I can't fathom any other reason why we wouldn't have seen, you know, like Pinball Wizard, for instance, from The Who was not shown.
Although there is a cut I found on YouTube, and unless I missed it in the middle of this four and a half hour marathon, I'm pretty sure all I heard was that from Tommy was, see me, hear me.
Right and so I'm like it was strange but like there are other alternative edits that must be out there and obviously they filmed the band and they filmed the Grateful Dead like someone needs to find that footage and like get back for the Beatles release that version with all their hits because I think that would be even a better documentary.
And since we're talking about the actual film of the thing I thought that there was actually some weird stuff that happened.
The concert itself was so well miked that it kept the crowd out.
And so you didn't really hear the interaction between the music and the crowd.
And I'll say this, and this is something that we'll sort of figure into the political conversation we'll have later.
I thought it was really interesting in a way because when you hear Woodstock, I'm one of those people that was like when I was like in college I had like the the poster that I bought at a head shop you know where I where I bought my pipes that basically was like the the Woodstock poster.
Two people hugging with the thing around them.
I had the actual logo, just the guitar fret with the dove on it.
And you know, when you say Woodstock, it has such a cultural cachet that everybody immediately thinks of, you know, Woodstock.
It's its own brand, which is why, by the way, we ended up with Woodstock 99, which we'll talk about in a little bit.
But I was actually really fascinated watching this documentary.
Because you notice a completely weird confluence of styles at a point when rock and roll is starting to shift, right?
There are a bunch of cultural, political, socioeconomic influences that are starting to make rock and roll sort of these different parts of it splinter off and sort of interact with each other.
And I thought this was actually a really well done documentary in that regard.
Like, I thought it showed all of these different artists doing completely different things that were being shoved together in a certain way, almost the way that they tried again in Woodstock 99, and it completely failed.
Well, what's fascinating is we know all these bands now, or a lot of the bands that played in 69, I think primarily because they played in 69 at this, this is their launching off period, which is kind of fascinating to figure out that they were able to pick the right bands.
Who hadn't been around too long.
Now, obviously, The Who had been around, and the big, big, big names had been around for a few years.
Not a lot of years, but a few years.
But, like, Santana had, you know, just sort of formed and was coming into their own at that point in 69.
By the way, I don't like Santana, but that performance was unbelievable.
Oh, listen, who doesn't like, you know, groove, groove based with, you know, conga bongos.
Yeah, I'm not a Santana person, but that was kind of incredible.
Now let me say this there's a there's a through line even though there's a lot of sort of different musical styles although again a lot of the musical styles were sort of in that classic rock what we call classic rock now but the through line in my mind musicianship wise was the bass playing there were so many incredible bass players in all these bands when you watch them and you get the chance and they'll do the cool the cool close-ups of their fingers whatever And drummers, too, by the way.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, it was the groove, right?
And that's what everyone was in search of by 69, because they were gonna, you know, tune in and drop out and, you know, take acid or get high.
And they wanted the groove, and that was sort of what the music wanted to reflect that.
And how do you do that?
Well, you gotta have a serious rhythm section.
And every single one of these bands.
It was amazing to me how good the bass playing really was.
And again, also the drumming.
So that really stood out to me.
And I also want to make a point.
I wrote a couple different times in my notes how well they were able to capture the sound with their system.
Which doesn't make sense to me.
In 69 Outdoors, it shouldn't have sounded as good as it did.
It really sounded amazing.
It did.
And I think, and it's a really successful film.
And again, I think it's great propaganda.
I think that this is, and you know, we always, we got to remind people there's good propaganda, bad propaganda, neutral propaganda.
This is a loving rendition of a period in time that that generation, this came out, of course, Woodstock's in 69.
I believe this movie comes out in 1970.
This is basically the marketing and remarketing of what people considered Woodstock to be.
And the idea, more or less, is that it was originally supposed to be a concert that was supposed to capitalize off of the music scene around Woodstock, New York, which included Bob Dylan, who had had this major motorcycle wreck, almost died, ended up there.
The band, of course, sort of relocated there.
And eventually it got to the point, and one of the characters we have to talk about who is involved in both of these situations is Michael Lang, who's a promoter, who I actually think, obviously the most boring part of both of these, a promoter who doesn't play music, but also unbelievably a promoter who doesn't play music, but also unbelievably fascinating.
And I think a really, really telling character in what the difference is between Woodstock 69 and Woodstock 99, which we'll talk about in a few.
And just to make that clear, he produced both of them.
He produced both of them, and there's a reason why one feels the way that it does and the other feels another way.
Originally, Woodstock was supposed to be a concert where they were going to charge admission.
They expected, you know, a few thousand people or whatever.
Eventually, it turns out that they didn't have things in place to make it a paid concert.
It became a free concert, and because it became a free concert, it became an exercise in utopian building.
It was the idea that a bunch of people could show up in one place, particularly during a turbulent time, Vietnam War, social unrest, political divisions.
The idea was that hundreds of thousands of people could show up in one place.
They could treat each other well.
It wasn't going to be about profit.
They could eat.
There wouldn't be a breakdown of society.
There wouldn't be a bunch of crimes.
Basically, they would be able to live outside the purview of what we would call traditional society, and they would be able to maintain it over the course of three days.
And there were crimes committed at Woodstock.
There were terrible things that happened at Woodstock.
But for the most part, they carried out the utopian exercise.
They did it.
It's the fact that they were able to do that, and Woodstock 99 wasn't able to do that, that tells us something shifted in terms of what this experiment was, or what it was intended So I think that that's a really great encapsulation of how we got to this point because like the fact of the matter is of course now three people died in Woodstock in 69.
Uh, it was a heroin overdose.
Somebody got run over when they were in their sleeping bag.
Like, that's just as tragic as can be.
And then somebody had a heart attack, I think.
Almost unrelated.
So, um, so, you know, obviously there were some issues here.
And a lot of the issues that we did see in 99 also existed the same, for the same way.
In a way that you probably should have been mad, even more mad in 99, because they had gone through it once before, and they should have been better prepared.
And they tried.
But, um, I think, like, one of the things that really struck me about watching the 69 documentary was that you had For the most part, these people came and they sat down and they fucking listened to the music.
They were there because of the music.
They wanted to actually hear it.
Sometimes they'd get up a little bit and they'd clap and they'd move around and dance and they had some of that montage of dancing, but for so much of this footage, when we see the crowd, they're just sitting there and they're listening.
And that just struck me because we don't often see that now I suppose maybe like you go to a classical concert or something like that but they were there for the music and even if they didn't know necessarily each of those different bands there was a through line there in terms of the the styles that like they could all
You know, it wasn't so radically different like when you talk about what happened in 99 and in such radical jumps between genres that could cause anybody to feel a sense of Schizophrenia almost from that this was a this was about the music and I think that ends up being it's really less so about any coin of the corporatization or You know are trying to make monetization of this of the concert itself.
I think that played a big part into why It achieved the myth that it did So, real fast, because I have a larger point that I want to make here, but I want to ask you, Nick, if you had to say, from Woodstock 99, the concert film, what would you say was the best performance that you saw and the worst performance?
Oh my goodness.
From 99?
No, 69.
Oh, from 69.
Okay, well, let's see.
The best performance, I mean, I even remember, like, the Who, You know, it was just really rocking it, you know, really brought it.
Even though, like, see me, feel me, they went way too long.
It goes on and on way too long.
Well, they kept going through the chorus.
I mean, they circled back.
Yeah.
Now, by the way, do you know Abby Hoffman jumped on stage in the middle of that?
Yep.
Now, I found that later, but I didn't see that in the director's cut, which is interesting.
They don't have any videos, probably.
Well, there's a reason why Abbie Hoffman isn't in there.
And you'll notice that some of the 60s counterculture figures are present, including, you know, Wavy Gravy.
Wavy Gravy comes up and is talking about the free kitchen, which is important.
Nobody paid for their food.
It was communal food.
There's a reason why Abbie Hoffman didn't show up there.
Abbie Hoffman, of course, is the revolutionary figure of the 1960s, who more or less was part of a movement that was calling for, you know, how do I put this, more revolutionary measures.
And by the time we get to 1970, we're starting to move away from the idea of the revolutionary moment that Woodstock represented, or could have represented, And sort of that idea of like overthrowing these institutions and instead Woodstock becomes a vibe fest.
You were able to get together, use a bunch of drugs, have a bunch of sex, hang out with people, have a good time, as opposed to it being some sort of a revolutionary moment.
Yeah, fair enough.
I mean, moving away a little bit from the political aspect of it, just being a happening that's about other things.
And maybe they weren't rolling.
Who knows?
Like, you know, they had the audio, but not the video.
So who's number one?
You know, Joe Cocker could very well be on there as well.
I agree.
And again, what strikes me is how the quality of the sound, how they're able to get his voice and get the music and even just the mixing of it was fantastic for what a live show.
I've heard plenty of live recordings from like the 70s that were terrible and this is before that and they were able to do it so I think Joe Cocker has to be up on top of there.
I mean Joe Baez comes out with a fucking just her guitar and her singing And her vibrato, and it was like, that was powerful in this huge audience, and she could just project out into that and fill up that space, too.
You know, caught my mind, but I might have to go with, like, Joe Cocker, perhaps, who might be the most powerful of all the people I saw.
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