Just wanted to start a thread asking if anyone here has a connection to the famous Woodstock Music Festival held on August 15-17 1969?
Only tangentially. Creedence Clearwater played at our high school Senior Ball (back before anybody ever heard of them, in 1968 - they were cheap to book), and they played Woodstock.
Also tangentially. My sister went, she was 19 then I think. At any rate, I got a lot of mileage When I turned 19 by reminding them that they let her go to Woodstock, and what I was proposing was a lot less insane 
She’s 11 yrs older, so their parenting style had apparently morphed over the years 
I was there for the entire 3 days. I missed the opening act, Richie Havens, but otherwise was on the field pretty much the entire time through Hendrix’s Star-spangled Banner on Monday morning. I was 17. I still have my tickets, which were never collected.
My dentist was there. Pretty tenuous connection, I’ll grant you.
Wow, tell us more about your experiences.
Where did you sleep?
What did you eat?
How did you get there?
Did you know how crazy it would be ahead of time?
Have you ever gone back and visited the site?
Also have you seen yourself in any posted pictures?
Knew nothing at all about Woodstock at the time, but learned later that my first date with the future Mrs. Cretin (after which evening we were pretty much inseparable*), 7:30pm PST August 15 1969, was day one of the great event.
- Still are.
I was also there for the three days. I was 18 at the time. Our tickets were not collected either, but I don’t know where they are now. I went up with my brothers and a couple friends, but we got separated at different points. I remember very clearly walking away on Monday morning – around 9 AM, I think – with just my younger brother and a nurse whom we had met, who was driving back to Manhattan for her shift at St. Vincents, and had offered to give us a ride. (We lived in New Jersey at the time.) We could hear Jimmie Hendrix playing the Star Spangled Banner as we walked away. It was kind of haunting, somehow.
Unfortunately, we did NOT camp out in front of the stage, which I deeply regret now. Instead, we sought shelter at some point (it rained a lot that weekend), and ended up in one of the huge empty (except for other concert-goers) barns (or big chicken coops?) on the property on Saturday and Sunday nights.
We were maybe 1/4 mile from the stage, and could hear everything clearly. But the acts went on around the clock, and at some point quite late on Saturday, I fell asleep. I woke up some time later to the sound of The Who playing Pinball Wizard. I LOVED The Who, and hoped against hope that that was the beginning of their set. But then they stopped playing, and, deeply disappointed, I fell back asleep.
Many years later, my son (older at the time than I was when I went to Woodstock) was reading about it on Wikipedia, and told me that Abby Hoffman interrupted the set after Pinball Wizard, and that The Who DID play more songs after that interruption. So if my memory and this account are correct, I should never have fallen back asleep. Bummer!!
So, yeah, we spent way too much time hanging out in that stupid barn and walking around. I had to go to the movie to see some of the acts that I still wish I had seen from the field in front of the stage! Sigh. But still – it was pretty neat to be there.
To answer those questions:
Where did you sleep? – Well, that’s answered. Actually, the first night I slept with one of the friends we came up with for a few hours in the car of someone who offered us shelter, as it had started raining pretty hard. (Our van was parked quite far away – at least a mile, maybe more – because by the time we got there, I think late on Friday afternoon, cars just could not get close to the site of the concert.) It was the next two nights that we slept in the barn.
What did you eat? – I actually don’t remember much about that. There were concession stands behind the (natural) ampitheater in front of the stage. I think we just bought stuff from there?
How did you get there? – Drove up in a van with my brothers and a couple other people.
Did you know how crazy it would be ahead of time? – No. I mean, it sounded like fun, but we had no clue that it would be historic. I do remember Sunday afternoon someone (Joe Cocker, or else Country Joe, I think?) reading the New York Times headlines to the crowd. That might have been my first clue. Then Monday morning, my younger brother and I spent time walking around the Village before heading home to NJ. I think maybe because our clothes were mud-splattered (it really was rainy and wet at Woodstock!) people kept stopping us and asking if we had been at Woodstock. That was fun.
Have you ever gone back and visited the site? No.
Also have you seen yourself in any posted pictures? No, although I have looked!
The music was the best part of it, of course, but other random things I remember:
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people skinny-dipping in a pond. I was tempted – it looked like fun – but was too shy to do that in front of the people I went up there with.
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police on horseback giving everyone the peace sign.
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the fact that there were frequent announcements from the stage asking so-and-so to meet their friend so-in-so at a specific place, as “he has your insulin!” At one point I turned to my younger brother (who is diabetic), and said “wow, there are a lot of diabetics up here, and why aren’t they holding on to their own medicine?!” He gave me a look and said, “Merejane, they’re not really talking about insulin, they’re talking about weed!” Duh.
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After dark on Friday night, when we were in front of the stage, Melanie was performing, and asked people to light their matches. It was very dark, so seeing all those lit matchbooks held up and waving back and forth in time to the music was very cool.
Not me, I was too young; but a dear friend of mine was there backstage with CSNY, she was Neil Young’s girlfriend.
My brother and a few buddies from Fort Dix headed out to it, but broke down before they got half-way.
Too late to edit, but I meant “Jimi” not “Jimmie” Hendrix. (I knew that didn’t look right!)
I also remember that we knew at some point – maybe Sunday, from the news reports we were hearing? – that the crowd was huge. The word was that the number of people made Woodstock the size of a city, but that there were no incidents of fighting – no violence. I remember we all felt very proud of ourselves for that!
I bought a Woodstock vinyl LP album in the early 80’s, and played it on my record player many times. Okay, so that is quite tangential.
I was there for the entire weekend. I was 23, and went there with three others in a VW Beetle, from Columbus Ohio. My memories are not nearly as coherent as Merejane’s, but I kinda remember the barn she stayed in. I may have been in there once, just to get out of the rain. We had absolutely no idea that we were attending a “historic” event, and didn’t anticipate the size of the crowd or the impact of the experience in general. Or the various odors. Wish I’d paid more attention to things.
One thing I do remember: going into a van, to get out of the rain, and experiencing my first multiple-person sex. Meanwhile, the music continued as if nothing were happening.
Just out in the middle of the field. I might have had a blanket or a sheet. But I didn’t sleep at night, since there was music going on. I probably dozed a bit during the mornings before the music started and when it wasn’t raining.
Being an idiot kid, I thought fruit would be healthy. I brought a backpack of plums and peaches I think. People shared food in the crowd. At one point I wandered back to booths in the back of the crowd and got some food from The Hog Farm. They gave me a bowl of some kind of granola thing that they called Hog Hash.
I took a bus from New York City with two friends from high school. The bus got stopped by crowds probably a few miles from the site and we walked from there. I got separated from them in short order and was on my own for the rest of the time. On the Monday after, I’m sure I must have taken a bus back.
My mother knew I had gone, but not my grandmother. When they were watching news reports on TV, my grandmother kept exclaiming “How could parents let their children go to such a thing!”, much to my mother’s mortification. She didn’t let on I was there.
No idea. We were flabbergasted when we came to the top end of the field and saw hundreds of thousands of people.
No.
I tell people jokingly that I’m on the cover of the album but I was about two-thirds of the way back and invisible in the crowd.
Some people told me they were heading to the concert but the radio was warning people away so they didnt make it. Whats interesting though is they were asking if people had experience treating drug related illness to please come to such and such place and they would helicopter them in.
I recall an announcement from the stage saying that we were the second largest city in New York State at that point. I also remember all the announcements about not taking the brown acid. And the helicopters coming in.
Some of my favorite memories:
Sly and the Family Stone’s set that got had the whole field up and dancing in the middle of the night.
Crosby Stills and Nash, who were tiny blue-lit figures on the stage from my viewpoint.
The audience lighting cigarette lighters and matches during Melanie’s set, like thousands of glittering stars, which inspired her “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)” hit.
The Who’s performance of Tommy.
Of course, Hendrix’s performance. Since he insisted on going on last, his set started in the early morning. Since most of the crowd had left by then, I was able to move down close to the stage and was within a few dozen yards.
My first toke. During a rain delay I took shelter with a bunch of other people under a plastic sheet. They were passing a joint and I took a couple of hits. I didn’t get high though.
The entire field being a shambles of mud and trash as I picked my way through after Hendrix’s performance to try to find my way home.
My wife’s best friend (63) was at all three of the official Woodstocks. She got in serious trouble for the first one.
My tangential connection is I’ve been to the site once and to Bethel Woods, the concert venue on the other side of the hill. The hillside seems smaller without all the people.
My aunt (one of my mom’s younger sisters) was there; she was a college student at the time. She doesn’t talk much about it, but this is a good reminder to me that I should see if I can encourage her to tell me more about it, as her health is failing now.
Don’t be surprised if she, like me, doesn’t remember much from that long ago. Most of my memories are disconnected “snapshots.”