DISGRACELAND - Woodstock Pt. 1: A Disaster Movie

Episode Date: November 2, 2021

Woodstock is remembered as the generation-defining moment when the baby boomers demonstrated to the world the power of peace, love and communalism. In reality, what went down at Old Man Yasgur’s farm in August 1969 involved extortion, deaths, countless overdoses, near-mass electrocution, and a state of emergency. Not to mention a restless crowd that doubled in size seemingly every time festival producer Micheal Lang lifted his head to survey the drug-addled chaos. All he wanted was a new kind of festival—a celebration of utopian hippie idealism. Instead, for three long, lawless days, Lang got much more than he bargained for during one of the messiest moments in American music history. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram YouTube X (formerly Twitter)  Facebook Fan Group TikTokSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed, I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places.

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of our lives. Disgraceland is a production of double Elvis. The stories about Woodstock are insane. Three days of peace, love, music, and two deaths, extortion, onstage maximum rock and rule violence, too many drug overdoses to count, near mass electrocution, and a lot of dumb luck. The iconic music festival is known as the generation-defining moment when the baby boomers demonstrated to the world the power of peace, love, and communalism. But was that really what went down at old man Yazger's farm on the third weekend of August in 1969? Or were those of us who didn't attend either because we weren't yet born, were too old, too young, or too preoccupied with the responsibilities of life to just not be interested? Where we sold a vision of woodstock that was as mythical and

unrealistic as the hippie dream baby boomers have been peddling ever since the idealized notion of the vaunted 60s came to be. Woodstock, the movie, the documentary film released a year after the festival in 1970, quickly established itself as the document of record on Woodstock, the event. The movie paints a romanticized picture and has come to define the festival in our collective cultural memory perhaps more strongly than the recollections of those who are actually there, either as fans, performers, or organizers of the festival. So what actually happened at Woodstock? Was it the hippie utopia depicted in the documentary or in all actuality was the real Woodstock

more like a disaster movie? One thing's for sure. Great music was made at Woodstock. Jimmy Hendrix, The Who, Sly and the Family Stone, Santana, Richie Havens, and Joe Cocker, to name a few. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Bone Bone Dadyo MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Aquarius let the sunshine in by the fifth dimension.

And why would I play you that specific slice of moon in the seventh house cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on April 19, 1969. And that was the day Michael Lang and his Woodstock Ventures Company began running its first advertisements promoting a music festival in upstate New York. A festival that would not only define a generation, but go on to influence and shape multiple generations to come. On this, a special two-part episode, Dumb Luck, Hippocritical Hippies, the dawning of the Age of Aquarius and Woodstock, a disaster movie.

I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Right, man, everybody cool out. Put the guns down. 23-year-old first-time concert promoter Michael Lang was in the unenviable position of trying to diffuse the heavily armed gun-drawn tension between a handful of Florida's redneck cops and some blue-collar Brinks truck guards. The cops weren't listening. All four of them had their standard-issue pistols drawn and each had the unmistakable look of eagerness on their faces. They were spoiling for an old-fashioned showdown. 1968, Miami, Florida, only 35 years removed from prohibition.

The two older Brinks truck drivers, ex-cops themselves, remembered the era of bootlegging and rum running fondly. Beefs were settled easy just like this, in back rooms with bullets, no grand juries, no hero prosecutors. The Brinks guards were outnumbered but equally ready for a shootout. It was the only way. They aimed their guns right back at the redneck cops. On the line, professional pride and thousands of dollars in off-duty pay.

For the Brinks Guards, professional pride in not being held up by some closet KKK wingnuts hiding behind badges. And for the cops, off-duty pay, a lot of it. They were hired by and owed the money from the long-haired, doe-eyed 23-year-old hippie trying to squash this impending massacre. Michael Lang was experienced in little beyond bullshitting his way through life up until that point. It turned out to be the perfect skill for the moment. He told the cops there was no need to be so heavy and they were going to get paid. And the cops were a skeptical. This concert of Michael's, the Gulfstream Festival,

with a lineup that included Jimmy Hendricks, the Mothers of Invention, Chuck Berry, John Lee Hooker, and that fucking lunatic Arthur Brown was a complete and total shit show. rain it blew in hard for two of the three scheduled festival days there was no plan for the rain just cancellation kids didn't show kids didn't fork over their cash two days of financial loss for michael and his festival investors and the cops were no dummies they knew the only way they were going to get paid for their services as hired security was to head off the brink's truck at the pass i.e upon arrival to collect what there was of the festival cash from the one day gate as the brink's guards were bringing said cash to a local bank whereupon the receipts would

be tallied, and Michael and his investors would no doubt get paid first, if at all, and determine which performers and vendors were to get paid next, if any. The cops were going to take theirs off the top like politicians, before Michael could charm his way out of paying them. The cops have been putting up with and witnessing Michael's bullshit all weekend. But when the shit hit the fan, this kid shined. Michael Lang was a natural producer. He was blessed with easy charm and innate confidence and was able to smile his way through most any crisis, widening his eyes and grinning through the chaos in a manner that said to everyone around him, be cool. I got this. Where it came from, Michael didn't know. He always had it.

It got him to this point. Got his parents back in Brooklyn to buy him his first car and let him skip out on college and got them to finance his first business endeavor down here in Florida. head shop owner. That was the first thing. Before this new trip, this new foray into the growing music industry as a festival producer. But the head shop didn't go so well.

More trouble with local cops. The sledgehammers came in hard through the little shop's glass, and the redneck cops wielded them mercilessly, bringing the giant hammers down and into everything inside the one-of-a-kind head shop, destroying black-light-posted walls, glass water pipes, lava lamps,

dream catchers, latest in fringe fashion, and for what? Because fuck the hippies, and fuck Michael Lang, who the fuck did this New York transplant think he was? Coming down to Dave County and opening up a head shop and doing it loudly? Michael's head shop called The Headshop was the first of its kind in Florida, and it was a big fucking deal. Its opening was an occasion, so much so that the local students organized a little happening, a live rock band and other festivities. Michael, Michael Lang, barely out of high school in Brooklyn, had settled himself 1,300 miles away into the asshole of America and become a local celebrity.

But again, from the local cop's perspective, fuck these hippies, and fuck Michael Lang. They destroyed his head shop the night of its grand opening in full view of all in attendance, and they didn't care who knew about it. They rationalized the violent destruction by claiming Michael didn't have the proper business permit to open such an establishment. Of course, he didn't. Afterward, Michael, not one to accept defeat, was determined to snatch his own little piece

of this new 60s utopia in a different way. Music festival culture was on the rise in America. Monterey Pop on the West Coast a year earlier in 1967 was a hit. The Grateful Dead were staging beautifully free musical happenings in the middle of their home city of San Francisco to fantastic results, and each year it seemed, some artist or, or another, was producing a can't miss much-talked-about performance at either the Newport Folk or

Newport Jazz Festivals, from Dylan going electric in 65 at Folk to Nina Simone mesmerizing at Jazz Fest in 67. It was now 1968. Kids were getting turned on all over and the festival scene was in large part responsible for flicking the switch. Michael couldn't sing, Michael couldn't play, Michael couldn't write, but Michael believed. He believed in the moment. He believed in the hippie idealism. He believed in his generation. And he believed that he had what it took to organize and sell a music festival.

Why not? Forget about the head shop. That was small time. There was glory in the greater good. Glory in the power of the people. Michael Lang could be the one who brought the people together through music. That's what the Gulf Stream Festival was all about. He believed in it.

So what if it didn't work? He'd live and learn. He believed in himself and used that belief to quell the simmering violence surrounding him at the moment, assuring the cops they were going to get paid right then and there, and assuring the Brinks Guards they weren't subverting their professional duty. Forget what their manifest said. Michael was the producer. He was responsible for the money and these hardworking cops needed to get paid,

especially before that hippie Jimmy Hendrix or that man act violating Chuck Berry. The Brinks guards were made to understand. The cops were made whole, and Michael Lang was about to make an entirely different scene. One where the cops weren't so heavy. One where the arts were better appreciated. One where musicians were flocking and where a young man like Michael could make something out of nothing. One where that hippie utopia dream wasn't so far out, where it was possible. That place was Woodstock, New York.

There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.

I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning stories.

I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything. and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him.

Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an act or whatever. The first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary.

I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance. Like he's about to attack me. Like making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going. And the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been. Sleepwalk.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kimman broke up with Keith Durbin. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting.

I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Mano-Majou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Michael Lang took his home turf of New York back like a hurricane. He landed on the coast, the island of Manhattan, before making his way inland upstate to Woodstock. In Manhattan, as always, he was a man on the make.

The first thing Michael Lang needed to make was money. He had a group he was managing, train, and they were awful. Didn't matter. They were hip, like him. Michael wormed his way in the Capitol Records and somehow found the perfect mark. Artie Cornfeld, Capital's East Coast Director of Contemporary Music. Artie was a bit older than Michael. He came up through the Brill Building System, penning songs for the Churrells and the Angels,

co-writing a cut with Jan Barry, who would later go on to comprise one half of Jan and Dean, and Jan later introduced Artie to genius songwriter Beachboy Brian Wilson. Yet despite this impressive experience, Artie Cornfeld, by the time the late 60s rolled around, was decidedly unhip. And he was working a plum gig at the music industry's most unhip label Capital Records. Capital had the Beatles in America on their label, but as far as music industry hipsters were concerned, capital was Lamesville, empowered by the steady-selling blandness of the four freshmen and the Letterman.

Artie may have been unhip, but he made a practice of keeping his ear to the ground for the next big thing. Then one day, his secretary buzzed the kid with the next big thing into his office. It was Michael Lang, the tie-died cherubs spewing Max hippie-dippy bullshit about how Artie just had to sign the band he managed to train. Artie listened to the band's demo. It was totally lacking in anything resembling talent, but Michael had something. What it was, Artie Cornfeld didn't know. but he wanted in on it. He needed it. He was flailing and disinterested in his gig at Capitol. Michael offered a view into the future. On a hunch that was conflicted at best,

Artie agreed to have Capital bankroll the development of training cut Michael a check for $10,000. Michael had his money and his mark. A friendship was struck. Michael had other ideas out of sight. Artie was all years. Michael casually took up some grass right there in Artie's office and passed the joint across the desk to his new rabbi. Artie, freaked out by this highly unprofessional move, tried not to appear uptight, grabbed the joint, and puffed on it like it was part of his daily routine. It wasn't. Michael had his talents in the executive. He leaned back in the chair across from Artie's desk and proceeded to delight the uptight music executive with stories from his recent foray into the music business in Florida. Tales of smugglers and thieves, sledgehammer slamming

cops and Jimmy Hendricks on acid and Chuck Barry on fire, speedways and rednecks, Mexican standoffs with Brinks truck drivers, enclosedeted KKK members, real outlaws, and the result, experience. It was a heavy scene. Michael had a better idea. He'd relocated away from Florida, away from Manhattan, upstate to Woodstock, New York. Artie'd never heard of it. Artie's stoned face said one thing. Tell me more. Bob Dylan was living up there, so it was his band, the band, Tim Hardin, too. More musicians were making their way. It was a bucolic retreat for rock royalty, a return to nature. Woodstock's wooded natural environment made for a natural escape from the city just 100 miles south. It was only a matter of time before the entirety of the East

Coast rock elite found their way there. Michael wanted to make it real. Formalize it. Make a real retreat. An actual place, a venue, a lodge, a resort, a fucking utopian paradise, man. where top-notch talent could steal away from the pressures of the industry to chill. Naturally, music would be made. Perhaps there was a way to capture that music and to then capitalize on the recordings. Artie took the bait immediately. He was perfectly positioned in his position at Capital to help. He'd steer talent, capital and non-capital.

Artie had connections. He knew Brian Wilson for fuck's sake. Michael just nodded and smiled. Far out. Sure, okay, man, if you say so. The best cons lead their marks to water. They don't force them to drink. And now, Artie was lapping it up, like a drunk sailor on leave,

siphoning confidence men swill from Michael Lang's saloon. If they were going to make this Woodstock retreat thing work, they'd need real money. Artie couldn't cover the cost of investing in a retreat with a state-of-the-art recording facility. Capital could, but they'd fuck it up. Dig it. Artie knew of these dudes in Midtown. They were squares, but they were young. And lay this one on for size, man.

They were actually advertising how much bread they had in the New York fucking. Times right there in print. Check it out. Michael's smile grew wider when Artie showed him the classified item from the paper of record. And there it was, in print. Michael could hardly believe it. Young men with unlimited capital. These two trust fund squares were so desperate to get in on the 60s counterculture vibes that Michael Lang so effortlessly oozed in that Artie Cornfield so desperately wanted to draft off of that they were incredibly soliciting in public. Ideas that they could capitalize. It was the truth, Ritey assured Michael. They'd already done it with some other lucky fools who convinced the two young squares to invest in their music studio, and it worked. They

created Media Sound Studios, and at the time, it was one of the most successful professional recording studios in Manhattan. Artie knew a guy, a lawyer. The lawyer knew the two other guys, the squares with the money, and their names were John Roberts and Joel Rosamond. Artie got his guy, the lawyer, to arrange a meeting between Roberts and Rosamond with Michael and Artie. Roberts and Rosamond were not impressed. Essentially, Michael and Artie's idea was for another music studio. What did they need another music studio for? They already had media sound and it was a success.

But still, as successful as the young entrepreneurs were, Roberts was 23 and Rosamond 26, they were not skilled in the art of saying no. They'd come to their money the old-fashioned way. They were born into it. In Rosamond's case, his uncle hooked him up with his successful law firm right out of Yale. For Roberts, the inheritance was very literal. He had come into millions from his grandfather's pharmaceutical fortune at the age of eight. And as such, the two possessed none of the merciless instincts necessary to hang on to their money.

Merciless instincts that experienced businessmen developed at a younger age while making their fortunes on their own, while they had less to lose. Roberts and Rosamond had a lot to lose. Frustrated with the drudgery of the law job, Rosamond had quit to join Roberts in a business venture as investors. In what, they had no clue. They were brand new at it. Their New York Times classified ad was basically an invitation to creative collaborators. And despite their best intentions, their inexperience would lead both of them to being easily loosened from their purse strings. Nevertheless, fools,

they weren't. Despite not saying no to a business venture, neither was particularly inspired by. They instead asked Michael and Artie to produce a budget in a P&L for their idea. Michael Lang, who'd barely graduated from high school and dropped out of NYU, told the Yale law and UPenn graduates he'd have a full budget back to them in a couple days. They didn't believe him, and it wouldn't be the first time. Still, two days later, Michael Lang appeared with numbers, and they told a fantastic story, one of untold riches from the creation of his utopian woodstock musicians retreat. Again, Roberts and Rosamond could hardly believe it, but one line item in Michael's budget caught their eye. mention in the budget of a press party, a party to announce the opening of their retreat,

a party that the biggest, most impressive musicians on the planet would perform to put Woodstock on the map and to lure in other musicians from beyond the East Coast, musicians from all over the world. They'd, of course, have the locals Bob Dylan and the band perform Tim Harden, too. Artie pledged to put in his best effort to convince Dylan's friend, International Folk Popstar Donovan, to fly over from the UK to perform as well. Now this, this party, this was something Roberts and Rosamondon could get behind. Forget about an uninspiring music studio, a music festival. Now that was something they could get into.

Monterey Pop was a hit, and Newport Folk, despite being small, brought in 20 grand a day. Michael sensed their shift in interest and did what his instincts told him. He followed his gut. Sure, the festival could be the thing. The thing could be anything as far as Michael was. concerned as long as there was a thing and that he was situated well to profit from it. Roberts and Rosamond could finance a festival, and they were all in agreement. It was about the festival in Woodstock now, not the retreat.

Michael Lang went in for the kill. He briefly shed his hippie dreamer facade and revealed his true self, piping up to his new partners that there was no time to waste. They needed a new budget, a new plan, a lineup, a location, a staff, and quick start. He told them emphatically, quote, It's important we get rolling as soon as possible. This thing will sneak up on us before we know it, and timing's going to be real crucial of pulling it off

before anyone else moves in on our action. Every fucker in creation is going to want a piece for himself, and we're going to be prepared to steam roll over. Woodstock was officially in the work. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid,

And Rule 2, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care.

So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of family secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle.

Each week, we dive head first into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything, and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else? that you can do rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance.

Like he's about to attack me. Like making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been sleepwalking. David O'Yellow-O. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham.

So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Durbin. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Madarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena, monjeu. Camilla Morone.

Kenny Silver and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From the beginning, finding and keeping a location to hold a festival to accommodate what Michael expected to be 100,000 concertgoers comfortably with clear sight lines and easy access from the highway was an issue. They settled on Walkill, 40 miles south of Woodstock, a small agricultural town where they leased a farm for their new company Woodstock Ventures. The farm wasn't ideal, but it would make for an okay outdoor concert venue. When Roberts and Rosamond first gave the zoning board the soft sell on their quote-unquote folk festival, things seemed golden. But as soon as their advance team, 20 hippies and growing arrived on site and began major landscaping and construction projects, war was on with the locals. The phone and the barn they were using as an office rang constantly with death threats. We don't want you

filthy pigs and wallkill. If you don't clear out, you're going to die. At a heated hours-long town meetings, the crowds from the community shouted threats and insults. The zoning board railroaded the festival with impossible ordinances, and the hippies were all but run out of town with pitchforks. With one month to spare, before the show they were advertising was to happen on August 8th, 9th, and 10th of 1969, they now needed another location. Unbelievably, they found one in Bethel, New York. 40 miles from Woodstock in a slightly different direction. Maxiasker's dairy farm by the hamlet of White Lake. Max was a pillar of the community, well known all over the area,

who had read in the papers about the festival being run out of Walkell and thought it was a shame. But best of all, he had the perfect land, way better than the Walkill site, sloping fields and meadows that rolled down into a natural amphitheater to where they could set up the stage with a picture-perfect lake in the background. Prior to the setting on Yasku's farm for what was being called Woodstock Music and Arts Fair and Aquarian Exposition three days of peace and music, Michael Lang had staffed up. He brought in professionals from the burgeoning live touring rock concert industry

to head up operations, lighting, sound, security, medical, what amounted to a large paid staff and a small army of volunteers, and they all followed Michael's lead. Michael Lang, the now 24-year-old failed festival producer, failed rock manager, failed head shop owner, was in charge of what was being planned to be one of the biggest attended three-day rock concerts of all time. Michael's confidence led the way, as did his edict of peace and love. This was to be a new kind of festival, one that reinforced Michael's belief in his generation's

hippootopia, one that made good on the promise of the summer of love, one that was about communalism, not commercialism. A notion that Michael's business partners and backers of the Woodstock Aquarius, exposition were not made aware of at the onset of their joint venture. To them, and understandably so, because it was their money, commercialism was the point. And from Michael, making money was once a sincere motivation as well, but as the date of the festival neared and cost skyrocketed approaching $3 million, $600% over the originally planned for a $500,000 total budget that Michael originally sold as investors on, it was glory that now consumed Michael. Making money was increasingly proving to

be impossible, despite advanced ticket sales. There were just too many challenges, too many holes that continually sprung prior to the show. Holes that needed to be plugged and could only be plugged by Roberts and Rossman's Michael's investors cash. There was the cost of the artist. Talent fees on the whole were massive. They'd already booked Jimmy Hendrix at an absurd fee for the time of $18,000. The Who were somehow duped into taking less than Hendricks for $12,500. $7,500. Janice Joplin was signed on to make $7,500, as was the band. The Grateful Dead made a mere $2,500. Crosby Still's Nash and Young, 5,000, Ravi Shankar, 4,500. And of course, there were fees for relative unknowns, Joe Cocker, at $1,375 in Santana at a mere $750. And the headaches

didn't stop with the talent. There were new headaches and new costs associated with each crisis du jour leading up to the festival. There was a stage to build from scratch. sound and light towers to construct. They needed to secure the perimeter of Yasker's 600-acre farm with a fence, the size and scope of which made for a massive near impossible undertaking. In the end, a patchwork of flimsy chain link was constructed. And there was the matter of concessions. How were they going to feed all the concert goers and who was going to feed them? Somehow it was decided that this task should be outsourced to a group known as the hog farm. Headed by a former beat poet and

follower of Ken Kesey's Mary Pranksters Hugh Romney, The hog farm was an off-the-grid commune in traveling psychedelic performance art group. They were the farthest out of far out, completely unemployable. Not that they wanted jobs, but with specific skills. Provision of food, but also not aggressive security, medical care, and most of all, how to deal with overdoses and bad acid trips. For Michael Lang's purposes, they were perfect. But their anti-capitalist lifestyle didn't prevent them from having expenses.

Far from it. At Romney's first meeting with Woodstock Ventures, he negotiated $8 grand in pay for the hog farm, and the buses and charter plane necessary to get the hardcore hippies from their New Mexico land to Woodstock alone would triple that bill. The hog farm weren't the only ones who had their hands out. So too did the notorious Abby Hoffman. In 1969, Abby Hoffman was a raging bull of the anti-establishment new left, an avowed anti-capitalist. He was a master media prankster and Thorne in the mainstream side,

but he was most infamous as one of the Chicago 7, constantly mocking the judge in the court at his blockbuster trial over the riot at the Democratic National Convention in 1968, making him an enemy to conventional Americans everywhere. But to the counterculture, Abby Hoffman was a hero, and his word mattered. Michael Lang needed Abby Hoffman. Hoffman got press in the same underground papers that Lang needed to promote Woodstock, the radical papers that called businessmen, including concert promoters,

capitalist pigs, the Boston, Avatar, the Berkeley barb, the New York rat. Their readers were part of Michael's audience, but it was going to be a tough sell, just based on the fact that Michael was selling anything, and the papers would have knives drawn. But the good graces of Abby Hoffman would go a long way to legitimize a Woodstock with the counterculture. And now Abby Hoffman was predictably looking for one thing. A handout. Michael Lang answered the phone at the Woodstock offices in downtown New York. He immediately recognized the voice on the other end of the line.

He was dreading this moment. It was Abby Hoffman. He said, Du Lang, Du Lang, motherfucker. Hello, Michael inquired? You know who this is? Michael, I think I do, yes. You're the man I've been gunning for.

You got any idea what I want? Plenty of him or else. Michael almost laughed out loud at the dime historic comic mill and antics of the one and only Abby Hoffman, but Michael Lang was too smart to do that. He knew that despite his ridiculousness, that Abby Hoffman was not to be taken lightly. Michael asked Hoffman why he should give him money, and Hoffman told him it was for the privilege of being able to hold his festival hassle-free. Michael and his partners stood to make millions, and Hoffman in the new left needed a profit off of said millions. Call it the hippie black hand,

call it mob political economics, call it charity, call it the cost of doing business, call it whatever the hell you wanted. At the end, it was what it was. Extortioned by a so-called anti-capitalist who is now demanding $50,000 in cash immediately or else. Come showtime, Hoffman and his band of radical new leftists would spike the Woodstock Festival's water supply with acid. What a guy. What a credit to society. Peace of shit. Hoffman told Michael it was high time he started contributing to the cause, i.e. him and his overdue legal bills from the Chicago 7th tribe. But Abby Hoffman wasn't a cold-hearted businessman. When Michael bucked at the cost,

Hoffman told him he could get in on the hippie installment plan, pay month to month. Michael Lang told Abby Hoffman he pay him 10 grand and throw in some free tickets. Abby Hoffman took the offer and the extortion of Woodstock was complete. Michael Lang took it in stride. Roberts, Michael's main financier, the man who ultimately paid Abby Hoffman, took it as a sign of more ominous things to come.

This couldn't be happening. Get them out. John Roberts didn't understand why there were 35,000 kids without tickets inside the festival grounds one day before the concert had even begun. If the kids weren't forced to leave and then at showtime to re-enter, with the tickets they'd either already purchased, which very few had, or to buy tickets at the gate, if this very elementary part of the concert planning couldn't be executed,

then tens of thousands of dollars would be lost. At a time when it had become increasingly clear that he and Rosamund were going to lose their shirts financially. It needed every penny they could get to stave off bankruptcy. But Michael told Roberts the kids weren't going anywhere. Michael told Roberts to relax. Michael told Roberts to get in on the groove that was going round, to stop being so uptight that everything would work out.

And they were about to launch something that money couldn't buy, a movement. But that wasn't good enough for John Roberts. Movements didn't pay the bills, unless you're Abby Hoffman or part of the extortionist radical left. And one day, their money problems would be solved. The festival was going to be a hit. They were expecting 250,000 people now.

Word was out, all over the country. There was a happening going on in upstate New York. Hendricks, Janice, the Dead, the band, Dylan was rumored to be making a surprise appearance. Sly and the Family Stone, Jefferson Airplane. It was all happening, man. Get there. Universal love, nature. Can you dig it? Lay back and groove.

It was going to be all right. Michael Lang and his original partner, Artie Cornfeld, had long since dismissed the notion of profiting from ticket sales. In their bones, they felt like that was now a lost cause. Their current expenses were too great to overcome. They, of course, didn't share this with their other partners, their investors. They instead turned their eyes to ancillary ways of deriving cash from what was to be a successful festival, from the sale of the film rights and soundtrack, which were up to this point hastily and naively being negotiated. The documentary director Michael Wadley was interested in willing to leave all the profits to Woodstock Ventures if they covered the film's budget. But tired of being hosed

on costs everywhere else, Roberts refused. Wadley covered his own budget for his own big chunk of the distribution rights. By the time Wadley and his dozens of film crew descended on site, including a young, relatively unknown Martin Scorsese on the second unit camera crew and in the editing room, it was clear the film rights would be worth major money, but it was too late to renegotiate the deal. Michael had his own plan to make money, though, via what was. We're would be a robust drug trade at the festival. His aim was to utilize an old Florida connection to monopolize the sale of drugs at the concert by flooding the market with product and thus ensuring a massive windfall of cash. However, his and his Florida partner's drugs were intercepted

off the coast by the National Guard and the scheme never came to be. A freer trading of illicit substances quickly took root at the festival, mainly grass, acid, and heroin. Michael's partner, Artie Cornfeld, ever since planning for the festival had begun, used his new anti-establishment endeavor as the excuse he needed to go way off the established path with psychedelic experimentation, virtually making himself useless to Michael. Artie was unrecognizable from the executive Michael had met in his buttoned-up Capitol Records Office. These days, Artie was on another planet. And at Woodstock, on that final day of planning, that day before the show officially started,

Neither Artie Cornfeld or Michael Lang or anyone else for that matter needed to go far to score. In the woods adjoining the festival grounds, a black market came together quickly, an O'Natural Hippie Narcotics Bazaar where one could leisurely stroll and compare prices on grass, dope, and LSD. Enterprising drug dealers even had signs. The drugstore read one. Pharmacy now open read another, and we will not be undersold. The signs were painted in hippie day glow paint and propped up against trees.

It was a bridge too far, even for Michael. The festival's producer had the signs removed, but security allowed the dealers to stay. There was no fending off the dealers. There were just too many of them. It was better to keep them centrally located and somewhat under control. Michael emerged from the pharmacy in the forest. It was late.

August 14, 1969, the night before the big show, all this planning was well worth it. Michael could feel it. And there'd never be anything like this attempted before. for. The buzz on the street was immense. The underground press had done their job, anointing the festival with the hipness it required. The mainstream press had done its job, swirling up a constant drumbeat of action around the event in the weeks and days leading up to the show. Kids all over the country were well aware of what was about to go down in Woodstock

on that third weekend in August of 1969. And they were coming. Michael could feel it. Hell, they'd already arrived. There were already 35,000 kids here. The night before the show, we'd, began, and there they were, scattered on sleeping bags and makeshift campsites all over Max Yasker's farm, betting down for the night in anticipation of what was to be one of the biggest and most consequential events of their lives, and he, Michael Lag, built this for them. When all was said and done, who knew what the possibilities would be? For him, for his generation, maybe revolution was possible, or at the very least a reprioritization of values.

But maybe this was the way to do it. spontaneous community, not commercialism. And maybe he, Michael Lang, was just the guy to lead this flock. It was heavy to think about. Michael hit his pillow that night before the show with adrenaline and hope surging through him. Tomorrow will be a day unlike any other. When he awoke, he was greeted by the one thing of festival producer dreads. The constant beat of chaos.

The crowd of 35,000 and nearly doubled to 65,000. The phones and the production trailers rang off the hook. State cops were choking traffic out on Route 17, issuing indiscriminate stops and searches for drug seizures. And seized drugs, they did. 150 arrests for LSD, marijuana, heroin, amphetamines, and other suspicious substances. Pipes, bongs, bowls, syringes, spoons, raps,

all manner of drug paraphernalia was caused for arrest. Two troopers stationed themselves like vengeful Roman guards at the beginning of the main road going into the festival site and poached joint-toking hippies into cuffs and off to the station. It further stalled traffic. Another local police captain, so concerned with the illicit flow of drugs into the festival site from the caravan of hippies, had his officers literally dig a trench across one of the main dirt access ways.

It took less than two hours for all traffic to stop, not to a crawl, to a standstill. Concert-goers simply abandoned their cars, grabbed their camping gear, and hoft it to Yasker's farm. There was no denying them. Most were young, most were respectful, but because of the sheer number of them, local wear and tear was unavoidable as the peace and love generation paraded through the small towns surrounding Yasker's farm by the thousands. They trance through yards, urinated in public, past reef around the open. Some small town locals reacted in horror. Others, however, opened their arms and treated the young men and women with long hair and strange-smelling cigarettes with the respect they would their own children.

It was a scene, unlike anything anyone anywhere had ever witnessed. Back at the festival grounds, quickly 65,000 became 85,000. The production team anticipated a need to triple the order for first aid supplies if they could even get them on site in time. The concert goers were going to have to rely on cold mush and other concoctions from the hog farm's free kitchen for food. Such was the lack of traditional food supplies and concessions in the face of what was turning out to be a much bigger crowd than anticipated.

As the problems mounted, word trickled in that there was easily another hundred thousand kids on foot hoffing it to the concert, with realistic expectations of 250,000 more arriving on the second day. Good news for the festival organizers, but not really. The private police force, Michael's head of security had hired, was now demanding more pay, in effect, extorting festival organizers at the last minute knowing full well that their financial demands would be met because what was Michael Lang going to do? Not police, a quarter million drugged out hippies? Fuck it. Pay them whatever they want. The extortion is. cops were in. Michael heard the violence of the Rolling Stone single from last summer,

street-fighting man in his head and made the call. The call he didn't want to make. For his own heavies, his own rock-and-roll SS, black-shirted thugs, heavily armed hippie Gestapo, there to patrol indiscriminately, inconspicuous, police, the police. And they were not cheap. Roberts and Rosamund saw bankruptcy court on the horizon. Michael saw more and more kids streaming into the site from over the hill. And the meager chain-link fence surrounding Yasco's farm was no match for the encroaching mass. It was easily discarded. Kids flooded the site without paying for tickets, and there was no way of ejecting them

and collecting their money. Doing so would most certainly have led to a riot. It was only one thing to do it. Declare the show. A free festival. Roberts and Rosamund, Michael's investors, were sunk. There was nothing they could do. Michael was right.

There was no way of turning back. the crowd. Any attempt at doing so would lead to more chaos and perhaps even violence, which would make the unwinnable financial situation they were in catastrophic. It's cool, Michael told them. It's all happening. You're about to be part of history. Don't be so uptight. Of course, Roberts and Rosamond didn't see it that way, but there was nothing they could do. So they did what the rest of their team was doing at that moment before the festival began, braced themselves for the next crisis, for the next fire that needed putting out. It came in the form. of a telephone call.

With hours before Showtime and 175,000 kids now dutifully waiting to be entertained on Maxiasker's farm, with traffic completely stopped for miles around them, and with hundreds of thousands more making their way toward them, with scant medical supplies, compromised security, a small armed hippie Gestapo, a new-age food supply in the form of hog farm mush, and with words spreading like wildfire, not only throughout New York State, but all over the country, that something of a mammoth potentially dangerous proportions was happening in upstate, the governor's office called. Nelson Rockefeller State aide informed the Woodstock Ventures employee, who answered the phone in the command trailer, that the state had officially declared the Woodstock Festival site in Bethel

and surrounding White Lake area, a state of emergency. The governor had activated the National Guard and was prepared to move the troops into the site on word from festival organizers, who, on the other end the line were flabbergasted, shocked. For all the chaos that it quickly engulfed them, it was relative peace all things considered. Richie Havens had been forced on stage to open the show and was delivering, enrapturing the crowd of now nearly 200,000 with nothing but his acoustic guitar, his big voice, his heavy heart and his tremendous soul, stomping his way through an improvised vision of utopia that alchemized the hearts and minds of thousands into one, if only for a brief moment. Regardless, the moment was real and the moment had an effect. Despite the reports the

governor's office was getting from the surrounding area, here at the festival, cool, things were out of sight. No need to send in the fucking National Guard, man. And the governor's office thought otherwise it ignored the hippie-dippy-dippy mumbo-jumbo from the other end of the line. Technocratically speaking, just what were festival organizers' plans to help the Guard airlift all those kids out of there? Airlift them out of here. No one needed to go anywhere. Everything was cool. Didn't they get it? This was a new day, a new way. Kids were grooving on each other.

Peace and love were going to carry the day. There was no violence, no chaos, no need to send in the guard, and no need to worry. Except there was a need to worry. Outside the Festival Command Center trailer, after the governor's aid had been assured no government assistance was needed, after the call had ended. A festival worker bounded toward the stage to do something she didn't think possible just five minutes earlier. Enjoy yourself.

taken the scene, listen to some music. The programming lineup was completely disrupted due to the fact that the arrival of artists was totally thrown off by the surrounding traffic jam. Artists were being helicoptered in, and Richie Havens only went on first because somebody saw him chilling out backstage with a guitar and forced him up there before the crowd got restless. Word was Sweetwater was going on next. The festival worker was excited to see Sweetwater perform, but she'd forgotten her smokes.

she headed back to the trailer to grab them. When she got to the trailer's metal steps and placed her foot on the first step, she was jolted back onto the ground, shocked. She tried again, another electric shock. She smartly gave up on trying to fight her way through electrocution for a pack of cigarettes. She flagged down the festival's master electrician

to let him know about the problem, some sort of charge being picked up by the metal steps. We're keeping an eye on it, she was informed. The electrician was aware of the problem. Seems there was a natural wear to the main electric feeder cable running just below the festival grounds. Every now and then a light surge escaped and an annoying but ultimately unharmful current transferred above ground, in this case, to the trailer's metal steps. The electrician told her there was nothing to worry about so long as the ground stayed dry.

If the ground were to get wet, swampy, muddy, and that master cable was to fray any further underground, well, the potential for serious destruction was possible. But that was a lot of what-ifs. Sure, it was a lot to worry about, but like most things at Woodstock, it was all being held together on a little wing, a hippie prayer, and the power of Michael Lang's infectious confidence. Hey, could be worse, the electrician said. At least it's not going to rain.

I'm Jake Brennan, and this episode of Disgraceland is to be continued. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at Disgracelampod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership.

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