Susan Reynolds - Woodstock Revisited: 50 Far Out, Groovy, Peace-Loving, Flashback-Inducing Stories From Those Who Were There

Copyright 2009 by Susan Reynolds
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I dedicate this anthology to the 400,000500,000 people who attended Woodstock, as well as the promoters, the performers, and all the people behind the scenes. We came together in peace and harmony and showed the world that love is possible, in the worst conditionsexcessive heat, humidity, thunderstorms, and downpours, when exhausted, uncomfortable, hungry, thirsty, mud-caked, and stranded. I am grateful to you all for sharing that experience and for proving that masses of like-minded people can create a positive experience that affects the entire world. It mattered, we mattered, and it was far, far more than a huge party. That many people crammed together in lousy conditions could have turned on each other and created chaos and disaster. Instead, we endured, helped each other, and chilled. Sure, drugs were rampant, but I was there, I was drug-free the entire time, and I saw thousands and thousands just like meordinary kids in an extraordinary situation. So, to my brothers and sisters (literal and figurative), I express my camaraderie using the vernacular of the timespeace, man!

Everyone all over the world will be reading
about you tomorrow.

Announcer at Woodstock

contents

Susan Reynolds

Lisa Law

Jeremiah Horrigan

Louis Mello

John M. DeVoe

Alan Kolman

Colleen Plimpton

Michele Kadison

Sandy McKnight

Michele Hax

Philip Pisani

Francis Dumaurier

Louis S. Denaro

Rozanne Reynolds

Jeff Blumenfeld

Sandra Johnson

Bob Brown

John Northlake

Geraldine Goldberg

Michele Starkey

Jim Edwards

Yerucham Teitelbaum

Anita Lopez Winder

Scott A. Munroe

Rev. Prem Anjali, PhD

Robert Paul Blumenstein

Vinny Stefanelli

Robert Rohloff

Barbara L. Heller

Valerie Ptak LaMont

Peter McAlevey

Catherine Hiller

John Bianco with Jon Jaboolian

Brian King

Janine Fleury

Michael Sciulla

Linda W. Hamilton

Phil Vinall

R.G. Nourse

S.K. List

Pam Crowe-Weisberg

Edward D. Christensen

Bob Dickey

Barbara Greenough Acker

D. Dina Friedman

Peter Faur

Richard Gladstein

Phaedra Greenwood

Glenn Nystrup

Dixon Hearne

acknowledgments

I offer gratitude to my sister Rozanne Reynolds for letting her baby sister stayrent-freein her apartment that crazy summer of 1969, and to my brother Roy Reynolds who hitched up from Manorville, Pennsylvania to go to Woodstock and helped me feel safe in that impossibly huge crowd. Roy has been a musician since age fourteen, has a garage filled (literally) with at least 4,000 albums carefully stored on shelves, and spent years verifying which groups we saw at Woodstock and which ones we only thought we saw. (Blame it on the movie, which we must have watched a dozen times over the years.) I would also like to thank Tom Kaczmarek, who ferried us there and back and who later fathered Michele and Chris, whom we adore. I would also like to offer gratitude to my brother Jim Reynolds, who did not attend Woodstock with us, but who deserves accoladesand has always had our respectfor serving his country in Vietnam, and who also sustains a deep love for music, especially the blues.

At Adams Media, Id specifically like to thank Karen Cooper, Paula Munier, Phil Sexton, Wendy Simard, Brendan ONeill, Matt Glazer, Beth Gissinger-Rivera, and everyone else from production to sales for their enthusiasm and support. Thank you for offering us this opportunity to record our historical accounts of that remarkable event. I also sincerely thank the contributors for taking us all on this unique journey and for chronicling an important time in our nations history. I loved your stories and am proud to be shoulder-to-shoulder with you once again. And finally, as always, I thank my beloved children, Brooke Sandon Aved and Brett Allen Aved, for joining me on this incredible journey called life.

introduction

In the summer of 1969, America seemed divided, corrupted, and on the verge of disintegration. Peace demonstrations, civil rights marches, and riots had filled our streets with thousands of disgruntled souls, each seeking to break through barriers. Thanks to the draft, we had 500,000 soldiers in Vietnam, which led to a proliferation of anti-war demonstrations at colleges and universities across the countryand in Europe. An organization called Students for a Democratic Society had staged sit-in demonstrations and thereby seized control of buildings on the Columbia University campus.

In 1968, two beacons of hope and inspiration, Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, had been assassinated, leaving young Americans feeling betrayed and rebellious. After Kings death, race riots raged so violently in more than 100 cities, 65,000 National Guard troops were required to quell the disturbances. Later that same year, in Chicago, during the Democratic convention, police attacked and bloodied anti-war protestors.

Drugs were rampant, with Timothy Leary encouraging youthful legions to turn on, tune in, and drop out. The National Organization for Women was encouraging young women to burn their bras and demand their equal rights. Alas, the 1967 Summer of Love had gone so sour that Richard Nixon won the presidential election. Is it any wonder then that the Woodstock festival, touting three days of peace and music in 1969, became one of the most unique and legendary events in world history? Widely regarded as one of the greatest moments in popular music history, it was listed in Rolling Stones 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll. Because 186,000 advance tickets were sold, organizers had anticipated that approximately 200,000 people would show up, but so many came, the fences were torn down and all roads into and out of the area became log-jammedthe New York State Thruway was even closed temporarily due to extraordinary traffic.