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Woodstock

By lex, on August 27th, 2009

40 years ago last week, and it’s said that if you remember it, you weren’t there.

Terry Garlock remembers it.

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August 27th, 2009 | Tags: | Category: Politics and Culture

44 comments to Woodstock

  • virgil xenophon
    August 27, 2009 at 12:39 pm

    I wasn’t there, was in Merrie Old England with the USAF watching from afar. Was simultaneously and in turn bemused, amused, and appalled–even.

    The years have not changed my assessment of the whole thing as a mindless, self-indulgent mess that would have been a disaster without aid in the form of food, water, sanitary and medical care/aid and traffic control from the very “establishment” (NOT the promoters) they were “supposedly” protesting against. No good memories for sure–my first impression is my lasting one and one that has, I believe, been borne out by history.

  • Buck
    August 27, 2009 at 12:52 pm

    The Garlock piece hit my in-box about two hours ago, and it’s a keeper.

    Like VX, I was otherwise occupied with things USAF at the time but on the other side of the world, in Wakkanai, Japan. Woodstock did make the front page of the Stars and Stripes… a photo of the massive traffic jam (IIRC).

    “The New York State Thruway’s CLOSED, maaan!”

    Great album, though.

  • xformed
    August 27, 2009 at 4:57 pm

    Not tall enough to ride that ride yet, I was in high school, on an island that was the next stop for Marines and sailors who couldn’t be patched up in country. When I had to go to the Naval Hospital, I saw those men, who were sort of busy and couldn’t make the trip to NY. There were also airmen who’s contrails I saw outbound and inbound at various times of the day on the western horizon, as the BUFFs went and returned.

    Lasting impression on me.

  • Marine RIO
    August 27, 2009 at 5:36 pm

    I’ve always found it a little bit irksome that people made a big deal about a bunch of pot smokers playing in the mud while I was flying daily combat missions out of Chu Lai.

  • fliterman
    August 27, 2009 at 6:08 pm

    Not long before I went to Vietnam, I eagerly wanted and tried to get to Max Yasgurs farm. Three of us had decided to go. But difficulties juggling the logistics, airfare and leave eventually precluded our trip.

    Had I gone, I certainly would have “remembered it” as I was not at all into drugs, and was certainly not anti-war (since I was eagerly on my way to war).

    I just wanted to go to see the incredible performers and hear the extraordinary music of the day, live and in person. We had heard of the famous Monterey Pop Festival of 1967 that introduced the Who, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, and others. Woodstock portended to be a far greater event! Word of mouth of the signing of performers ran wild, as did the excitement.

    Yes, there were hippies and drugs there. And some crazies. And many songs were anti-war – as most all songs of the day were, ever since Staff Sgt. Sadler’s ” last pro-military, Ballad of the Green Berets was released in 1966. But I suspect there were many (some) people like me at Woodstock – pro military, some going to Vietnam and some having just returned, that went for the music, if not the spectacle.

    Looking back, we three were very fortunate to not have gone, given the traffic jams, rain, mud, etc. But a small and illogical part of me still wishes that I could have been there.

    As for Terry Garlock, I salute his extreme service. However, Woodstock had nothing really to do with Vietnam, as did Vietnam not really have much to do about Woodstock. I also am sorry his bitterness is still so poignant today. While we have had some but not all, similar experiences, my memories, opinions, and outlook are quite different than his – not right or wrong, just different. That is the way of the world.

    • xformed
      August 27, 2009 at 9:00 pm

      Flit; You have excellent points. As individual events, they are disconnected. In the cultural significance, there is the lionizing of the “me-ness” of Woodstock, by the very same portion of the population (and yes, it was not all, but certainly the ones who got their faces in the media) who made a point to spit on the returning Vietnam vets, and to go on to decry them as “Baby Killers” and murders. It is actually the hippies, who upheld Woodstock as important and virtuous, while simultaneously demonstrating against the war and those who fought it. The military has not been the portion of the culture, at the time who connected the two. Lest we forget a performer named Country Joe MacDonald. Which military leader/icon of the time stood in front of a camera/mic and told us hippies stink and the military rules? None. Now, in retrospect, as a balance to the period of when it was acceptable to speak ill of those who performed the duty to their nation, there are men like the author connecting the dots, from the military side. Note the tone is “I was busy handling dangerous things” but is not ad hominum attacks on those who attended Woodstock, unlike what happened to the people in uniform.

      In that contrast, there is a message, and the bitterness is part of it, but muted, in a more temperate tone than was put towards the service members.

      Is your contention that anyone who wants to say their peace should just shut up and forget it? No, the bitterness that is unmerited is that of the hippies and war protesters, who used Woodstock as a brand name on their enterprise and they displayed plenty of bitterness back then.

      • fliterman
        August 27, 2009 at 9:41 pm

        Thanks for an interesting and thoughtful response. You also raise some very good points, even though I may disagree with some but agree with others.

        Allow me to digest your thoughts and respond later, giving your kind reply more appropriate and due consideration.

        flit

        • xformed
          August 28, 2009 at 6:30 am

          BTW, I loved most all of the music and recall clearly taking Marla to the movie (way out there on Guam) and that…well, let’s just say it was cool for a guy just entering the world of dating…and Joe Cocker sux.

      • Zane
        August 27, 2009 at 9:55 pm

        FWIW, Country Joe was prior Navy. Later, he repeatedly apologized for the anti-military things he had said during that time.

        • xformed
          August 28, 2009 at 7:24 am

          Ah, the world of blogging…we’re all part of each other’s “scan” of the environment. Thanks, Zane for that great bit of history.

  • 11B40
    August 27, 2009 at 8:44 pm

    Greetings:

    I used to tell people that I was at Woodstock West. We were just as dirty, ill-clothed and ill-fed but the drugs were a lot better and the toys were awesome.

  • Zane
    August 27, 2009 at 10:00 pm

    I was there, sort of. 7 years old, in the back of the Ford Falcon station wagon, Dad PCSing from Offutt AFB in Omaha, NEB to Goose Bay, Labrador, trying to get somewhere… on the New York Thruway.

    • JoeC
      August 28, 2009 at 6:35 am

      I (vaguely) remember that, as a passenger in my parents car, stuck in traffic in New York, and my dad muttering about some concert going on. I think I was 15 at the time still pretty much teenage self centered and could have cared less about hippies and Vietnam. Cars, girls, electronics, girls, camping, girls, and did I mention girls? was pretty much my existence (in my mind). My neighbor had been a corpsman with a marine group at some place called Khe Sanh the previous year and was my closest link to anything called Vietnam. So do I remember Woodstock? No. But I bought a lot of the music.

  • virgil xenophon
    August 27, 2009 at 10:20 pm

    Speaking of Country Joe, what is also not widely known is that Jimmy Hendricks considered himself a conservative verging on a Republican who was a strong supporter of the war and not afraid to voice his opinion on the matter. The MSM conveniently obscured that fact then as they still do now.

  • Byron
    August 28, 2009 at 4:53 am

    All the other crap wouldn’t have interested me, but the music? Oh good gravy, the music…CSNY, Santana, CCR…I might have been deaf by the time I left, but it would have been worth it.

    And at the age of 18, I was against the war…but only because we weren’t trying to win it. I could not then or now stand for someone disrepecting those who wore the uniform and did their damndest to do their duty. I’ll never be half the man they were, and I can live with that. I’m just a civilian that never answered the call..and dammit, I should have.

  • Dust
    August 28, 2009 at 5:43 am

    I recall seeing the news about the event but I remember more vividly a Mike Royko (R.I.P.) column of a few years back that he wrote where he quoted some guy who was there and I remember that quote almost verbatim, “The only significant thing that happened at Woodstock was I got the Clap”.

    • virgil xenophon
      August 28, 2009 at 6:42 am

      Dust/

      Mike Royko was a pistol wasn’t he? Growing up in downstate Illinois I grew up reading Mike every Sunday in the Chicago Tribune (“the Trib”.) After a young lifetime of reading the guy I felt like I knew Chicago as if I’d lived there–he really had his finger on the pulse of the city. (Several who comment here are actually from “Chicagoland” and I’m fairly certain they’d second that point.) He was one of the last of the “old school” reporters/columnists–you know, the kind who kept a bottle in the lower right side desk drawer–hated cant and hiprocracy, and was a blue-collar drink-with-the-cops-and-firemen kind of guy from the word go even as he was as intellectual as any Harvard professor. I really miss that guy…

      • AW1 Tim
        August 28, 2009 at 3:11 pm

        I miss Royko as well. The man could write and keep you interested, even when you disagreed with him. I used to read his column up here in syndication.

    • virgil xenophon
      August 28, 2009 at 6:42 am

      Dust/

      Mike Royko was a pistol wasn’t he? Growing up in downstate Illinois I grew up reading Mike every Sunday in the Chicago Tribune (“the Trib”.) After a young lifetime of reading the guy I felt like I knew Chicago as if I’d lived there–he really had his finger on the pulse of the city. (Several who comment here are actually from “Chicagoland” and I’m fairly certain they’d second that point.) He was one of the last of the “old school” reporters/columnists–you know, the kind who kept a bottle in the lower right side desk drawer–hated cant and hiprocracy, and was a blue-collar drink-with-the-cops-and-firemen kind of guy from the word go even as he was as intellectual as any Harvard professor. I really miss that guy…

      • xformed
        August 28, 2009 at 7:25 am

        But then…you repeat yourself…:)

        • virgil xenophon
          August 28, 2009 at 8:06 am

          xformed/

          What do you expect from a guy in the early stages of Alzheimer’s? :)

          (My wife says ALL my military and ex-military friends MUST have Alzheimer’s–we just keep repeating the same old war stories over and over, AND OVER. :) )

      • jpr
        August 28, 2009 at 9:51 am

        I do second that. My parents always read Royko. My dad being from Chicago and the same age had easily identified with him. Royko did his thing long before journalists bacame paranoid of ticking off advertisers and corporate parents.

  • xformed
    August 28, 2009 at 6:28 am

    OT: Cool video interview with a WWII Marine/later USAF/ANG pilot…funny and informative.

    • virgil xenophon
      August 28, 2009 at 8:15 am

      Xformed/

      Thanks, neat vid. Was the “old” loosey goosey Air Force alright–When I was growing up S & H Green Stamps were ubiquitous–Mom collected them like crazy. Note the old TAC-SAC issues which were REALLY alive during his days. His Air Force was just dying out when I came in. Lots of Sr Capts, Majors, and LtCols I flew with were of his generation and attitude–all that was rapidly going the way of the Dodo Bird even as I came in and was almost completely vanished by time I left.

      • virgil xenophon
        August 28, 2009 at 12:35 pm

        Xformed/

        Forgot to mention: About the old B-50 Tankers he flew–the prop & jet combos–they could refuel 3 ac at a time. I’ve got a photo of 3 F-100cs (they used probe & drogue, last AF bird to do so, IIRC) from the Wing my cousin commanded (322nd Ftr-Day Group) back circa 55-56 being refueled
        simultaneously from 2 wing-tip mounts and the tail installation as well.

  • Mike M.
    August 28, 2009 at 7:52 am

    I wasn’t there. And don’t remember it, either. I was five.

    Which is a story in itself. The Brat Boom decade group is more clueless than most about the fact that there are people considerably younger then they are – who view the world through a very different frame of reference.

  • Kris, in New England
    August 28, 2009 at 7:57 am

    I’m too young to remember it but I do remember my parents’ take on it – disgusting hippies. Dirty messy drug-addled idiots. IIRC, my dad even went so far as to say that the military should turn their considerable attentions to that field. Or something like that.

    • Snake Eater
      August 28, 2009 at 11:56 am

      Kris, If I recall correctly…and I always do…your Pops was most likely thinking of a variant of a phrase common at the time among the great mass of unwashed RVN baby killers like me that went…now cover your ears…
      ” NUC THE THE F*CKING HIPPIES”…Best

      • Kris, in New England
        August 28, 2009 at 12:11 pm

        Snake – Oh I remembered it fully and you’ve got it about 100% right. I was just trying to be polite…not that you aren’t. ICSFTH

        My dad would have loved this group here at Lex’s place. So many like minds speaking with humor and respect.

  • mojo
    August 28, 2009 at 2:51 pm

    “Get the hell off my lawn, you damn hippies!”
    – Old Man Yazgur

  • cas
    August 28, 2009 at 3:33 pm

    I remember that weekend, summer of ’69, and my friends and I were nine years old, getting into trouble and hangin’ out in a blistering hot NYC summer. We never thought to “go upstate” but afterwards, we sure loved the music.
    And after that, in a later time, Iran and the Ayatollah Khomeini took hostages, and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. I guess I joined the USAF to help win the Cold War…or something.

  • xairboss
    August 28, 2009 at 6:04 pm

    IIRC, I was deployed on USS America in the GOT and more worried about getting a night’s sleep without the waist catapult, which ran right next to my rack, going off and waking me up. Well, at least we had an illegal full size refridgerator of cold beer in the room to keep us happy.

  • Zane
    August 29, 2009 at 2:03 am

    One, I miss Royko, too.

    Two, Jimi Hendrix actually was airborne, 101st IIRC, during his two years of draft service, 1960-62 or thereabouts. Going to Benning brought him to the south, and when he got out he started playing on the chitlin circuit, and the rest is history or something. But it’s spooky when the “conservative” of the bunch is the biggest stoner of them all, too. Compare Steve Miller, who saw all the drugs at Monterey and just walked away.

  • virgil xenophon
    August 29, 2009 at 12:01 pm

    Zane. Tim/

    Aside from “All Along the Watchtower” (My personal fave) the one single bit of lyric I like best out of Hendixs’ body of work comes from “Crosstown Traffic” : “….just lookin’ at the tire tracks across your back–I can see you’ve had YOUR fun!”

    Or, as one of my favorite new “alternate” bands “Cage the Elephant”
    says in the title of their hit single: “Ain’t
    No Rest for the Wicked.” LOL!! ( and their a bunch of Kentucky boys from Bowling Green, too.)

    • SpazSinbad
      August 29, 2009 at 12:45 pm

      ‘Watchtower’ Hendrix style is better than Dylan original for sure. Always puzzled by Jimi’s ‘Star Spangled Banner’ virtuoso rendition at Woodstock until on Dick Cavett Show TV interview (seen in a doco years later here) Jimi explained that he was not being irreverent at all (as some had falsely claimed). Purple Haze me, Foxy Lady, I got Manic Depression Voodoo Child, Hey Joe Fire away.

  • virgil xenophon
    August 29, 2009 at 12:03 pm

    * “they’re” viz their, geeze
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