MADELEINE BRAND, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Madeleine Brand.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
Forty years ago, half a million free-wheeling, free-smoking, free-loving, music-loving hippies danced, covered in mud surrounding a stage on a farm. At least those are the images that are conjured when talk about Woodstock. But besides the mud part, how much of it is true? Karen Michel tried to find out.
KAREN MICHEL: I wasn't there. I was thousands of miles away in Barrow, Alaska. And I don't think I had a clue that just after an astronaut landed on the Moon there was Woodstock, which for three days and half a million people, was the center of the world. Artie Kornfeld was one of the organizers of the festival. For him, the torch burns bright.
Mr. ARTIE KORNFELD (Organizer, Woodstock Festival): That's still my whole trip, keeping the spirit of Woodstock alive.
MICHEL: And that doesn't mean just a good stuff.
Mr. KORNFELD: I did have a gun pulled on me by some guy who said I was a hippie fascist. And Crosby, Stills and Nash's road manager saved my life by jumping the guy.
MICHEL: But for the most part, Woodstock was an immense gathering of people who were into music, had no idea about camping - but definitely wanted to have a good time. Parry Teasdale went to the festival in Bethel, New York as a video artist. Today, he publishes a local newspaper.
Mr. PARRY TEASDALE (Publisher, The Columbia Paper): I think I look like a geezer.
MICHEL: Back in 1969, Teasdale had long hair and didn't dress in the chinos and pressed shirt he wears now.
Mr. TEASDALE: Large brown kind of Stetson cowboy hat that was punched up in the center, and big motorcycle boots and dirty jeans. And a VW bus full of old video equipment.
MICHEL: Teasdale's black and white, fuzzy videos almost look as if they're shot in a sort of slowed motion.
(Soundbite of video)
Unidentified Woman: Have you had your oats yet? Have you had (unintelligible)?
Mr. TEASDALE: No. I didn't.
Unidentified Man: Is this something for the CIA or something? Was is it?
MICHEL: He repeatedly asks the question, are you having a good time? And the kids look back, incredulous, as if saying, do you have to ask? These tapes, these documents, seem to validate the Woodstock legend of all free, all peaceful, all love.
Mr. MICHAEL LANG (Producer, Woodstock Festival): That's part of the sort of mythology of Woodstock is that it's free, it's peaceful. And I don't buy into that.
MICHEL: Surprising, considering that Michael Lang was one of the producers of the festival. Lang lives near the town of Woodstock, on a 100-acre estate he bought in 1979. It's so big that I couldn't figure out which building to go to find him. But, you know, 40 years ago, it wasn't about the money, man.
Mr. LANG: Somebody forgot to roll the ticket booths into place in time to beat the traffic. And once we focused on that, they couldn't be moved. There were no ticket booths. Most of the people who came were looking for a place to buy a ticket and you could not buy a ticket.
MICHEL: Still, the bands had to be paid. Bill Thompson managed the then-hot Jefferson Airplane.
Mr. BILL THOMPSON (Manager, Jefferson Airplane): I remember saying to Michael Lang, how are we going to get paid? And he said, oh, don't worry about it, man. Isn't this beautiful? Well, that was the worst thing he could have said to me. So I got everybody together and I said, we should just tell them we're not going to play unless we get paid. So they showed up a couple of hours later with cashier's checks for all the bands.
MICHEL: For their gig, the Airplane got $10,000. It was 6 a.m. when Grace Slick greeted the crowd.
Ms. GRACE SLICK (Singer, Jefferson Airplane): All right, friends, you have seen the heavy groups. Now you will see morning maniac music, believe me. Yeah.
Mr. THOMPSON: The band had stayed up all night. And to be honest with you, I think did just about every illegal drug known to man. So I think they were a little woozy at first. But then the "Black Beauties" kicked and "Speed." And about 20 minutes into the set, it was really an excellent set.
(Soundbite of song, "The Other Side Of This Life")
JEFFERSON AIRPLANE (BAND): (Singing) Would you like to know a secret just between you and me? I don't know where I'm going next. I don't know who I'm going to be.
MICHEL: Few people claim that the music was very good. It was the context, more than anything. Still, for Bob Solomon, who's now in the music industry in Nashville, sound was everything.
Mr. BOB SOLOMON (Owner, Woodland Studios): There was only one act that did a passable job and that was Carlos Santana.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. SOLOMON: Everybody else just was three sheets to the wind. And, I mean, they were just out of it.
MICHEL: It's a soundtrack that had a stuttering start. The equipment hadn't arrived and organizer Michael Lang needed somebody to play acoustic. He convinced Richie Havens that he was the guy.
Mr. LANG: I hounded him.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. LANG: And so, he finally agreed. That was, for me, you know, the moment between trying to this and doing it.
Mr. RICHIE HAVENS (Singer): And so, I got it there and I sing my 40 minutes. And I walked back and they said, Richie, would do four more songs. Okay, four more. So I went back, I sang four more songs. They did this to me six times. I sang two hours and 45 minutes. And every song I know…
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. HAVENS: …and the one I made up on stage. Free love freedom…
(Soundbite of song, "Freedom")
Mr. HAVENS: (Singing) Free love freedom, freedom…
Mr. HAVENS: We were safe because we were in Bethel. Bethel means the House Of God.
MICHEL: And like all houses of the Lord, the Woodstock story is largely a matter of faith. But for Woodstock organizer, Michael Lang, it was a respite from the Vietnam War, the struggle for civil rights, assassinations and Richard Nixon.
Mr. LANG: It was this moment of hope that we sort of looked in and said, oh my god, this is possible even in the darkest of time. So, I think that it holds out that hope for this wonderful experience. For us, that's what it was.
MICHEL: I guess, like everything, to believe it, you had to be there.
For NPR News, I'm Karen Michel.
Copyright © 2009 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.