Man I don't know where I was in 99 to miss this. What an absolute dumpster fire - no pun intended. This is what happens when old dudes who have know clue as to what crowds these bands will draw in are in charge of the lineup. AND don't let them bring anything in - make them pay Disney World food and drink prices for 3 days. Bottom line it was always about the almighty dollar back in their pockets - not peace and love. Trainwreck is the polite title. I guess S#!t Show was already taken. Very interesting mini (3) series if you haven't already seen it.
It was originally titled Clusterf@#$. I was 41 in 1999 when it happened and had no recollection of it. Watching it pissed me off.
https://www.the-sun.com/news/3496163/dark-side-woodstock-69-deaths-drugs/ Out of three people who died at the festival, two of them were killed by drug overdoses - believed to be heroin. And the third was Raymond Mizsak, 17, who was crushed to death while asleep in his sleeping bag by a tractor. Cops were called at 9am on the Saturday of the festival and discovered the grim scene. The tractor driver said he had tried to clear the area twice of people as they attempted to move through and clean up the mountains of rubbish. "The first we noticed anything was when a person yelled at us. I saw the victim and yelled to get a doctor and ambulance," the 29-year-old said. And it is believed over the course of the festival there were 742 overdoses over the course of the long weekend. Local hospitals had been placed on alert, with doctors and nurses flown in from nearby cities to deal with the influx of hippies. Many of the festival goers suffered terrifying hallucinations from "bad trips" - and specialists were on site to try and calm these people down so they didn't hurt themselves, or anyone else. And in one disturbing report, a fan suffering one of these episodes climbed to the top of an 80 foot scaffold and threw himself off. He broke his back - and had to be airlifted to hospital. Grotesquely, the most common injuries at the festival were sliced open feet as hippies strolled barefoot across a sea of trash. Dr. William Abruzzi, known as the "Rock Doc", who oversaw the medical response to the site, reported his team treated 836 cases of slashed open soles and toes. It is estimated some 3,000 people had to receive medical care over the course of the weekend - with hospitals filled to capacity along with eight on site triage tents supported by the Red Cross and Civil Defense. And with some many people on site, the festival's infrastructure quickly began to cave in as they started to run out of food and water and sanitation deteriorated. Farmers complained about roving hippy gangs stripping their fields bare of produce as the fans sought to make do. Festivalgoers who arrived planning to get food on site found things immediately sold out - and what was left was hiked to extortionate prices. Enterprising locals managed to bring water to the site, but then sold it back the hippies at prices of around $1 per cup - around $8 in today's money. One group of fans even burned down one of the food stands as they were so furious over the price gouging amid the shortages. And as the rain came down, things got worse as the organisers feared the main stage was a death trap. Joel Rosenman revealed in 2009 that he received a call from one of the on site electricians that scuffing feet of the fans had worn down one of the main cables feeding the site. "He paused for a moment, and I couldn’t believe that he was searching for the words that he came up with," Rosenman told NPR. "But he came up with ‘mass electrocution." With a potential disaster on the cards, the organisers thankfully managed to reroute power without electrocuting the thousands of people gathered in the swampy mud. They had not wanted to shut down the power even for a few minutes, as they feared the large crowd may descend into riots should there be an even momentary break in the music.
The Sun? Overblown. I went to the Texas International Pop Festival, we called it the Dallas Pop Festival, with a girl and a bunch of friends 2 weeks after Woodstock. A very large number of the same groups who played there had played at Woodstock. As many as 150,000 people came to enjoy the 3 days and nights. The biggest "fuss" consisted of a few complaints about folks skinny dipping in the lake by the campground. I ran into a few who had come from Woodstock. All they did was rave about how incredible the experience was, despite the logistical nightmare.
You and I are the same age then. That's what kind of shocked me. I was old enough to be paying attention to the news and yet I don't recall this being anything but a non-event. Problem #1 - You don't want the Korn, Limp Bizkit, ICP crowd. No offense because 90% of them will be ok but it's that 10% that is going to be trouble. And Fred (it's not my fault) Durst - really? Problem #2 - You need full time staff to constantly and continually clean porta potties when you have 250k people using them. Problem #3 - You may not want to lose money like Michael Lang supposedly did in the original but you sold the food and drink rights to the highest bidder with no stipulations. They in turn wanted to not only get their money back from their outrageous bid but they too wanted to make as much money as possible off the crowd. When you confiscate their food and water coming in, you can't jack the prices on them so that they can exist for 3 days. Problem #4 - The initial thought of handing fire to a crowd that large was probably questionable at best. Continuing with your idea after seeing the whole scene deteriorate on day 2 was reckless at best. I think security would have been ok if you again had the right crowd. I understand not wanting to have pistol packing security. But that crowd...smh...you old dudes should have listened to that 22 year old/
The lack of accountability was terrible. And as you wrote, the candle idea was ridiculously bad. And the "oh well, 250000 people, only 4 rapes, that's expected in a crowd that large" insinuation was asinine.
The promoters only cared about money and fame. Greed and the obvious fact that they have always lived in a bubble is the ultimate cause of the trainwreck. Yeah when he said that I was thinking you wouldn't blow it off if that were your daughter. But he was the ultimate spin doctor. The whole series touched a nerve with me.
I'm surprised how many of the resident geezers missed this story back in 1999. It was all over Inside Edition for weeks.
The thing about this doc and Woodstock in general is the fact that the original Woodstock was also a sh$tshow but there's just a ton of nostalgia about it over time. It was a different era, and the music was much more mellow so the crowd was in a different mental state, but anyone who thinks the conditions were so much better is fooling themselves. The city and the other organizers were utterly stupid to give Michael Lang any sort of leadership role. Coachella and Bonnaroo really deserve some serious credit for continually putting together a top notch campground type of festival at the scale they do. Even then I camped out for all three days at Coachella years ago (the year Tool, and Massive Attack were there) and it was still pretty miserable even as well put together as the event was, and as great as the weather is there. Camping with 100,000 other people is always going to be a trainwreck... but still was and is going to be one of the best experiences of your life. With festivals you get what you pay for, and there's no shame in letting corporate sponsors fund decent infrastructure so people can actually have a decent time even if they do have to pay for 4 dollar bottles of water.
The original Woodstock was a generational, amazing concert series. But from an event planning perspective, it was an absolute trainwreck. There wasn't enough food, toilets, and the rain turned it into a sewage filled mud bucket. A guy was run over by a bulldozer because he was basically sleeping in muddy trash. Also, we all know the 60s were supposed to be about doing some drugs, but there were tons of people that didn't take drugs, but were drugged. It was an amazing trainwreck, but a trainwreck nonetheless.
I remember ordering it on PPV and honestly enjoying a lot of the performances. And occasional frontal nudity. And fire.
