The Woodstock Festival

The rain had been coming down for a long time now, but it seemed safe, and the stage crew put on a record. Creedence Clearwater's "Born on the Bayou" went soaring out of the great sound system and over the enormous crowd and suddenly the Battle of the Bands of the night before had turned into American Bandstand. Three hundred thousand people jumped up cut of the mud and started to dance. Bopping their bodies and shaking their hair to the beat, hopping over and into the new puddles of garbage and mud.

The crush of more than a quarter of a million people sitting down had been some sight, but this was almost more than anyone could believe. Frisbees began to sail out of the crowd toward the stage and the sound men jumped forward to throw them back. Then a football, then oranges, sandwiches, whatever was close at hand and friendly to throw at other people.

Country Joe and the Fish had been scheduled to go on next and Barry Melton cornered the head man and announced that the band wanted to play. "You can't play now, you'll all get electrocuted!" "We wanna play, man, we wanna play now, we don't need electricity." "They want to play," said one staffer to another. "You tell them they can't. Not me." The Fish played. In pouring down rain, good old never-say-die-and-never-down Country Joe and the Fish got up and pantomimed their music for the crowd that had turned them on. Barry grabbed a mike with no cord and Mark Kapner hoisted his little ukelele and Joe handled the footballs that kept bouncing onto the stage. Greg Dewey, their new drummer, brought out his kit and sat down and pounded out a loud, fast, dancing drum solo that kept the audience moving and grooving. It was certainly the only drum solo I've ever dug, and by the time three or four others had joined Dewey on his cymbals he was into it all the way, a musician making music for the people out front.

A tall fellow jumped on stage and began to dance across the boards while everyone cheered. Then he flashed and pulled off his pants and danced naked in the rain, grinning wildly, holding out his arms in a big gesture of welcome. Someone passed a bottle of champagne into the audience and then all the food that could be found on stage, and the Fish kept on playing and Joe kept on smiling. They reminded me of the brave rodeo clowns that run into the pit when a rider's hurt and the bull's ready to trample him. They came through. But nobody was scared.

The Last Traffic Jam

Friday was the first day of the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair, now moved to White Lake near Bethel, N. Y., a hundred miles from New York City and fifty miles from Woodstock proper. The intrepid Rolling Stone crew thought it would be bright to beat the traffic, so we left the city early in the morning and headed up. When we got to Monticello, a little town eight miles from the festival, the traffic had been light. Then we hit it. Eight miles of two-lane road jammed with thousands of cars that barely moved. Engines boiling over, people collapsed on the side of the road, everyone smiling in a common bewilderment.

Automotive casualties looked like the skeletons of horses that died on the Oregon Trail. People began to improvise, driving on soft shoulders until they hit the few thousand who'd thought of the same thing, then stopping again. Finally the two lanes were transformed into four and still nothing moved. Fat, bulbous vacationers (for this was Jewishland, the Catskills, laden with chopped liver and bad comedians) stared at the cars and the freaks and the nice kids, their stomachs sticking out into the road. It was a combination of Weekend and Goodbye Columbus. Here we were, trying to get to the land of Hendrix and the Grateful Dead, all the while under the beady eyes of Montovani fans.