40 years later, Woodstock's impact still being felt

By Rosemary Ford
rford@eagletribune.com

August 09, 2009 12:58 am

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In 1969, Beth Barwick's blonde hair was down to her waist. The 18-year-old made her own clothes and spent that August getting ready for her first year at New York University. 

But earlier that summer, she'd heard about this great weekend-long concert called the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in Bethel, N.Y., featuring some of her favorite bands, like Jefferson Airplane and Joan Baez. She bought an advance ticket, paying $20 for it at a local grocery store (the equivalent of more than $70 today).

"That was a lot of money back then," Barwick said.

Her parents didn't really want her and her older brother to go to the outdoor show, but felt better about it when they heard she would be part of a group of 16 kids headed there.

The teenagers' plan was to head up to Woodstock and meet up at the show. Barwick road up from her home near Poughkeepsie, N.Y., with her brother and six friends in a station wagon filled with a tent, sleeping bags and other supplies.

Though they arrived early on Friday, traffic was already insane. They abandoned their car three miles away by the side of the road, hauled the tents and sleeping bags up to the concert, and set up shop behind the stage. Their friends never made it to the show — by the time they started driving, most of the roads had already been shut down.

At the time, Barwick remembers thinking how cool it was that so many people her age headed to this central spot. But looking back, she thinks about how her parents must have felt as they watched the news at home.

"Now I think about my poor parents. What were they thinking?" said Barwick, now the mother of a 19-year-old.

Lasting legacy

At the time, Barwick knew she was at a special event, but she had no idea that she had a front-row seat to history in the making.

"I had no inkling how legendary this would be," she said. "The love and the peace and the whole atmosphere of the '60s and early '70s — we were trying to save the country, save the world."

Forty years later, Woodstock's iconic status hasn't diminished. The name of the show — taken from a small town located about 70 miles from the venue — is synonymous with the youth movement of the 1960s. It was the culmination of the peace movement, the questioning of authority, and a generation's quest for freedom and equality.

"I was very proud back then," Barwick said. "I really thought one person could make a difference. We did make a difference, but not the difference we thought we could."

Today, there is even a museum to commemorate the experience.

"Society changed in 1969," said Wade Lawrence, director of the Museum at Bethel Woods, which has events planned for this weekend's 40th anniversary and the rest of the year. "I think it's good to celebrate it."

University of Massachusetts associate professor Chad Montrie, who teaches a course on the '60s in the school's History Department, said few understood the importance of Woodstock at the time. It became a touchstone for social, political and musical history. The generation questioned values and how they lived their lives alongside a very politically charged type of rock 'n' roll.

"These things have an influence on how we think of ourselves today," Montrie said. "What happens today is grounded in what happened in the past."

It is, perhaps, the most legendary concert of all time, and just part of the reason is because of the assembly of acts — like Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, Santana and Jimi Hendrix — that played from Friday evening, Aug. 15, to early Monday morning, Aug. 18.¬�

Until this festival, different types of music were segregated, Boston University professor Victor Coelho said. Folk fans weren't listening to Santana, Hendrix fans weren't listening to Baez, Sha Na Na fans weren't the same as fans of The Who, and so on.

"All these genres came together with Woodstock," said Coelho, the associate provost for undergraduate education and a music professor at the university's College of Fine Arts. "It shaped music history."

Reunion concerts in 1994 and 1999 didn't capture the magic of that moment in time. They attracted crowds, but the feelings of peace and love were gone. The 1999 concert ended in mayhem and destruction, with concertgoers setting fires and destroying property.

A wonderful accident

Woodstock itself was somewhat accidental. It began as a profit-making venture that went awry, in what many would consider a wonderful way.

Organizers told the people of Bethel they expected 50,000 at the show. They didn't want to tell the tiny town they had in fact sold 180,000 tickets in advance.

Crowds showed up early and they showed up in force. Fences and ticket booths seemed to make no difference, as the crowd that would become nearly a half million strong began to arrive.

Food and toilets were in short supply. Unofficial vendors sold everything from T-shirts to knick-knacks for a few bucks. Rain covered everything in mud, but, according to Barwick, never really dampened anyone's spirits.¬�

"It was a warm rain," Barwick recalled. "It was amazing. Everybody was having a good time and didn't bother anyone else."

She remembers strangers sharing whatever they had, especially when it came to food. This was a marked difference from the later Woodstock incarnations, where personal pizzas cost $12 each, and bottled water $4.

"If people had fruit and stuff, they would pass it around," Barwick said.

Coelho described the 1969 atmosphere as "a microcosm of a commune."

Barwick's group had pitched a tent near Woodstock's legendary stream and pond. She also remembers a lot of skinny dipping.¬�

The crowd continued to grow as the concert went on. Her friends tried to come, but gave up because of the traffic. Her boyfriend at the time was there, but she never found him.

"I actually thought I would hook up with my boyfriend there," she said. "It was amazing at how many kids there were."

Lawrence said one of the legacies of Woodstock is civic engagement.

"The feeling that anything is possible if you believe in it," he said. "That we can change the world."

'It's part of our lives'

Woodstock was ahead of its time in many ways, including the successful movie about the show, edited by a young Martin Scorsese. The movie and albums about Woodstock that followed the festival allowed people to re-live that weekend in a way they weren't able to with most shows of the time, spreading the concert's impact beyond the thousands who attended.

"It's part of our lives. I can't imagine going back," Montrie said.

The legend of Woodstock still manages to inspire. Lawrence said many young people come to his museum and leave with a yearning for that time and its ideals of peace, love and equality.

But so far, no one has been able to replicate either the atmosphere or the significance of that kind of concert. Many wonder if such a thing is even possible.

"That was unique," Barwick said.

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