Stuff You Should Know - Woodstock: The Festival for Stardust, Golden Hippies

Episode Date: March 9, 2023

You may have heard your parents or – gasp – grandparents prattle on about how amazing the original 1969 Woodstock Festival was. It turns out that, as much as people who lived through the 60s like to talk them up, Woodstock really was that amazing.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and their process of healing. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and Chuck's with me and Jerry's here too, and that makes this Stuff You Should Know. The last time we'll ever talk about boomers. Yeah, I know this isn't your jam, but a lot of this stuff is my jam, even though I'm not a boomer. I'm very much into a lot of this music. You're a boomer in spirit. No, I'm not. God, I want to cuss at you so bad right now.

But I have been singing the Woodstock song in my head all day, which is a great song and one of those sort of rare, not that rare, but one of those things where the cover versions are just as great. Yeah, it really is a good song. I like all the versions. I mean, I don't think there's any song that's captured the essence of that generation in that era better than that song, along. Aside from, we built this city on rock and roll. Yeah, and I don't know if many people understand that it is a song written by Joni Mitchell, not Crosby Stills Nation Young. She wasn't there either. David Geffen was her manager and said, nope, you can't go. You have to be on Dick Cavett on Tuesday, and I'm worried you won't make it

back in time. Which is crazy. She would have been amazing at the concert, but they released that recorded version within a month of each other, which I never knew, just about six or seven months after or eight months after the concert. I didn't know there was another version released also that same year from a British band called Matthews Southern Comfort. Boy, they really had some bad names back then. And I just listened to it and boy, they really take all of the passion out of it in that version. And they skip, they just completely wholesale skip the coolest line, I think, in the song, which is, they just say, we are Stardust, we are golden, and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden. They don't have that lyric in the middle. We are billion-year-old carbon, which is

so hippie-dippy and amazing. Oh, I never noticed that. It's true, though. They're right. Joni Mitchell was right. They just skip it. And it's just very mellow and lame to my ears. It's like shoegaze drone. Yeah, I don't know. Apparently, that was the biggest hit out of all of them, though, which I didn't know. No way. Yeah. Maybe in England, I don't know. Oh, okay. Thumbs down for me. Yeah, same here. I haven't even heard it, but it sounds sucky. Yeah. So, we are talking about Woodstock, and I think it's one of those things. I'm probably in the majority for our age group. I've heard of it. I've got images of the film in my head. Sure. I have a general, I could rattle off probably four or five people or bands that were there that played, and it rained, and

it was muddy, and there was brown acid and all that stuff. The thing is, is when I was researching this, I was like, this really was like a really interesting event. Yeah. And it's not necessarily because it was just so culturally significant, although it turned out to be, or that it was just such a special magical cosmic moment, which I'm sure if you were there, there are a lot of people who believe that, but more that it was just an exercise in putting half a million people together outdoors over three days, throwing as much drugs as you possibly can into the mix, and then just seeing what happened, and what happened was really impressive, was very peaceful, was like really communal. It was a really, it was a cool thing. So, out of all the stuff from the

60s that all those oldsters are saying like, hey, you know, the 60s, you had to be there, kind of thing, this does seem to have some chops in that respect. It does seem to have been significant. Yeah. It was one of those moments in time, for sure. And if you believe Max Yazger, who we'll talk about quite a bit here and there, it was his farm, very famously in Bethel, New York, that hosted this concert. But when he takes the stage and speaks to the crowd, which is a very fun thing to watch on YouTube, or if you watch the whole movie, he claims, and it might have been true at the time, that it was the largest grouping of human beings ever in history in one place, up until that point. I think I've seen that in places too,

that that's entirely possible to tell you the truth. Yeah. I mean, between four and 500,000 people, that's, you didn't get crowds like that back then. No. And I mean, I can't think of one since now. Yeah. The thing that went to that sprung to mind was, I think Mecca gets pretty crowded on certain holy times. Okay. It's possible that like that's rivaled that before in the past, or even contemporarily, I don't know. But yeah, we'll put Woodstock and Mecca together. How about that? Yeah, but even you're right, though, when you think about the biggest, like, outdoor, you know, even, you know, there are no, you know, outdoor arenas that hold anything close to this. Right. But even when they say like, all right, we're going to take over this part of Central

Park or whatever, or just this area, it doesn't really like a couple of hundred to 300,000 people is like a huge, huge deal. So this is, this is four to 500,000. I mean, the biggest, hugest college football stadiums in the United States, maybe crack 100,000. And those things are just massive. Yeah. Imagine four or five of those filled the capacity all dumped into just one of them. That's just amazing. On acid. On acid. Yeah. Pretty neat. So yeah, let's start talking about this because there is a pretty cool story. I say we start at the beginning. How about that? Okay. And then pepper in some stuff. Ed helped us with this one. And he really laid a bunch out in his intro. And I think we should kind of salt and pepper it in instead. All right. Yeah. I think

I know what you mean. Okay, cool. Let's give it a shot. We do this on the fly, everyone. After all these years, we still do it the same way, just so you know, we like to go surprise. So Woodstock, and this is something Ed posed was why, you know, we're talking about the four to 500,000 people, why, what made it special, why were that many people? And one of the first kind of boring reasons is just the mere fact of where it was. It was in Bethel, New York. And that was within a six to seven to eight hour drive of New York City, Philly, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, DC, Buffalo, Boston, like within three or four hours of a lot of those. So it was just, it was located in a place where, and it was held over the course, you know, as you'll see, supposed to be three tight days,

but it veered into the morning of the fourth. But, you know, once word gets out that there's this free show happening, you could miss Friday and show up halfway there on a Saturday and still see a lot of the performers, you know. Yeah. And I don't think you would have missed a whole lot missing Friday, frankly. Hey, Richie Havens. Okay. That's it. I'll give you that one. Amazing performance. For sure. I agree. I said miss much. I didn't say miss nothing. All right. All right. So, yeah, that was a big, a big part of it. And it was in Bethel. It wasn't in Woodstock. Woodstock is like 60 miles away from Bethel. But the reason that they named it Woodstock and hung on to that name for everything they had was because Bob Dylan had put the town of Woodstock on the map.

When he moved there, it was like his little hideaway mountain, I guess, retreat in the 60s. And it just kind of became like a cool countercultural town. So, the name itself Woodstock like meant a lot to the people who actually went to the Woodstock Festival in 1969. Yeah. And before people start screaming at you and me, especially, it was famously where the band lived, one of my favorite, if not my favorite group from that era. And this is where Dylan and the band recorded the basement tapes outside of or in the basement of Big Pink, the house that they rented. And I finally made my trip to Woodstock last year for a show at Levon's Barn, which I might have mentioned at some point in one of our episodes.

But that town is still holding on to that and not in a bad way. It's still like embodies, I should say, that feeling and that artsy community. And it's just, it's this magical place. I went in the dead of winter and there was hardly anyone there. And me and my buddy, Justin, he, you know, just, just like walked around Woodstock. A lot of the stuff was closed in the winter, but it just had this feeling there that is undeniable around Woodstock and Bethel and Socrates where our buddy Joe Garden lives, by the way. Oh, I didn't know that. Shout out Joe Garden. Yeah, we went to Joe's house. He's, it's all right there together. It's a beautiful, beautiful country. So, okay, so there's where the name comes from, even though the whole thing was

it held in, in Woodstock. And it was already kind of following in a tradition that was fairly new at the time. Like we think of music festivals, you're like, you can, like any day of the week, you can find a music festival somewhere in the United States, right? Yeah, for sure. It was actually still pretty new when Woodstock was held. The jazz festivals of the 50s and really starting the early 60s were the ones that established festivals, right? Because everybody knows, even the greatest jazz performers can't draw a huge crowd, so you have to put a bunch of them together, hence jazz festivals, right? Yeah, yeah, they were sort of the foundation. And I think the big, the big one that kind of put these kind of festivals on the map, the first one was

the Monterey Pop Festival, right? In 67. And I would argue that it sort of went away after the ultimate debacle with the murder at the Rolling Stones concert. And I think kind of, I'd have to look it up. I'm sure there were some festivals here and there, but I think Perry Farrell and Lollapalooza brought it back. I think it was down for a couple of decades. You're absolutely right. I can't think of anything in between that was significant. There might have been something, but definitely, like Lollapalooza is what really kickstarted the modern era of the festival. And like you said, now they're, they're just all over the place all the time. Yeah. And I should say there were plenty of like jazz festivals. There was New Orleans Jazz Fest kept going on, didn't

really care about Perry Farrell and his aspirations. But yes, for the pop culture, it was definitely Lollapalooza. I couldn't agree more. Yeah. Yeah. Boy, I'm glad you said that about jazz fest. I would have gotten smoked in the emails. Yeah, for sure. So the festival craze was like at peak, the first wave of it, I should say, when Woodstock came, which was another thing that kind of helped make it such a legendary thing. And the whole thing was founded by two guys, Artie Cornfield and Michael Lang, two guys put on Woodstock and they did it with the backing of two kids, one of which came from a very, very wealthy family, a pharmaceutical dynasty, John Roberts and his friend, Joel Rosenman. They bankrolled this thing and they actually were looking for interesting countercultural

investments so much so that they actually advertised in the New York Times that they had a bunch of money and they were looking for interesting investments. And yeah, it turned out Artie Cornfield and Michael Lang already knew Roberts and Rosenman and they had built like a recording studio together. And that kind of gave blossom to this whole Woodstock idea. Initially, it was going to be a one night benefit concert in Woodstock with Dylan as the headliner. That's Bob Dylan, for those of you who aren't in the know like me. And it was going to pay for a music studio that they were going to build in Woodstock. That was the first idea of Woodstock. And then all of a sudden they're like, well, who else could we have? And who else could we have? And all of a sudden,

the music festival became way more important than the music studio that it was originally intended to help build. Yeah, absolutely. And then once they had this idea, they started searching around for a place and they tried Woodstock, I think probably first, because like you said, the cultural significance. Then they moved on to Joe Garden's house in Socrates. And then Joe Garden said, get off my lawn. And they're like, all right, not this place, I guess. Was it quite big enough? Although Joe's house is great. It's like a little museum, as you can imagine. I've seen pictures. And then Wall Kill, which is nearby as well. And they all smartly were like, no, we can't host something this big. Have you ever been out here? It is, you're out in the middle of

farmland and forest. And we can't hold a concert here. Yeah. And this is when a gentleman named Max Yazger, who was portrayed by Eugene Levy in the movie. What was the movie? Was it? Oh, you're serious? Oh, yeah, yeah, it was. I thought you could say he portrayed him in the documentary. No, not finding Woodstock, but something Woodstock or Woodstock or Hoy. I think that was the name of it. But when you look at Max Yazger, he looks a lot like Eugene Levy. So it was great casting. But he was a guy that was a farmer. I think like a dairy farmer had about 600, 700 head of cattle and was the largest dairy farmer in the county. And he was not some hippie sympathizer. He, by all accounts, was kind of the opposite of that was what you

might think he would be as a farmer in upstate New York, which is very straight laced, very Republican. But apparently, he also kind of liked to thumb his nose at the man a little bit. And when the locals started himming and hawing about having a concert in Bethel, he was like, screw you guys, you can have it at my farm. Right. He was back in the 2000 aughts, what you would have called the libertarian. Yeah, probably so. So he also was one of those people, I get the impression he knew Spunk when he saw it and he liked it. Yeah, I think you're probably right.

So he really took a shine to cornfield in Lang. I think I've been calling him cornfield. That's okay. I don't know if you noticed or not. But I meant cornfield in Lang. And so he helped them get this push through because they were, like you said, turned down at town after town after town in the area. And so Yazger finally kind of got Bethel to, well, at least with his support, Bethel was a little more accommodating, a little more allowable. But the way that these guys got this incredibly huge music festival push through city councils, got permits and all that stuff, was by lying, lying, lying. They agreed to anything that the city councils asked for,

including they agreed to hire 150 off-duty police officers. I don't think they ended up hiring one. They said that they expected 50,000. They expected actually 200,000, the 400 to 500,000 caught even them by surprise. But they were still expecting about four times more than they told the Bethel City Council they were. And they just basically said whatever they wanted to, whatever they thought they wanted to hear. And finally, like you said with Yazger's help, they got it. They got it pushed through and they had a home. The problem is they had a home now for this festival just five weeks before the advertised date. That's right. And I think it's a great cliffhanger. So we'll come back in a moment and see if the Woodstock concert even happened.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullock and I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring and mind blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do

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My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, The Story of MySpace, I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it, the users. Because what happened in the MySpace era would have sweeping implications for all the platforms to follow. Listen to Main Accounts, The Story of MySpace on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Did it go down? I don't know. You tell me. Did they fake that concert film like The Moon Landing? Let's ask Eugene Levy. No, the concert went down. And like you said, they only had five weeks. And that presents a lot of problems logistically, obviously, even though they weren't setting up chairs and things like that. People might say,

just build a stage out in the middle of the field and it's taken care of. But there's so much more that goes into something like this, like food and water and bathrooms and medical infrastructure and stuff like that. Plus, I mean, if you see the footage from the documentary, there were legit like lighting rigs and sound rigs. It wasn't just some like a bunch of plywood and two by fours that they put up. It was a legit concert venue that they made out of nothing. Yeah. I mean, it was a money making venture. I mean, these guys were sort of hippy-dippy music fans, but they were out to make a buck. I think the original price was six bucks for a ticket, 18 for the weekend, which they didn't even give them a break on a weekend pass. It should have

been 15 for all three years, personally. And there were a lot of like, they booked a lot of big acts, but a lot of big acts at the time, like Woodstock is kind of famous sometimes for who didn't play. The Beatles very famously did not play Woodstock. Led Zeppelin is mentioned in this article, but I would argue they, I mean, their first album was only four or five months old at this point. Zeppelin? Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, I'm sure it was a big record, but they were trying to book like these whales, you know? Right. The doors didn't play, Dylan didn't play, but they were able to book as the headliners, generally speaking, even though the times were pushed because everything was late. So like the headliners ended up playing sometimes at like

five in the morning or like with Jimmy Hendrix, you know, after the sun came up on the Monday. But the who and Jefferson Airplane and Hendrix are generally sort of thought of as the biggest names there. Yeah, at the time. And the thing is, is like when you look back at Woodstock's lineup, you're like, man, it was just huge act after huge act. The reason why it seems that way now is because of Woodstock. Like a lot of these performers were not huge at the time, but they became huge. Even the who, they credit the Woodstock performance for giving them like a huge boost, basically taking them from rock stars to rock superstar, like arena rock stars, basically, in just a few months. So it's easy to kind of take for granted that all of these were big acts,

but they definitely weren't. And a lot of them got paid relatively peanuts, you know, like there were a lot of bands that took $5,000 or less to play at Woodstock. And at the time they didn't, when they agreed, they had no idea that it was going to be this thing. It just turned out to be a really good move for all of them. Yeah, it was Santana's first, I don't know if it was their first ever performance, but it was their first big show like before their album was even out. And I think they were included because legendary rock promoter Bill Graham said, hey, if you want the Grateful Dead, if you want Credence, who I watched the documentary on Credence not too long ago, they were the biggest band in the world the day after the Beatles broke up. Oh, really? Like

they were number two. And then the Beatles broke up. And I was like, really credence? Like I like Credence. But but then you go when you see the story, like they were huge and they had like 20 hits, you know, they were a big, big band. So anyway, well, hold on, before you move on, I had a similar experience. I saw like, I think Lifetime or somebody produced like a three or four part Janet Jackson documentary that's really good. Oh, yeah. And like it gets across, she's if she wasn't one of the Jacksons, right, she would be bigger than like Madonna and Celine Dion rolled together. Like for that era, she was enormous. And yet that's how big a shadow her brother cast, right, that she no matter how huge she was, she was, you know, Michael Jackson's

little sister. Yeah, but it's not like the number of hits she had. And she's just like way bigger than I realized. And I mean, everybody knows Janet Jackson, but I just had no idea like the success that she actually did have. Yeah, I'll have to check that out. I like Janet Jackson. It's good. It's definitely worth watching it. It moves pretty fast too. It doesn't drag. No, not a lot of filler. So yeah, what was I saying, CCR and Bill Graham said, if you want CCR, you want the dead, then you got to take this new band that I'm in representing called Santana and a very young Carlos Santana, not Neil Sean from Journey yet. He was, he joined Santana as a 15 year old right after the Woodstock performance. Well, but because I was curious,

I was like, did Neil Sean actually play at Woodstock? Because I knew he was a teenager. I guess he's a founding member of Journey, you're saying? Well, yeah, Neil Sean from Journey was first in Santana as a 15 year old. I did not know that. Well, actually, to tell you the truth, I didn't know who Neil Sean was in a minute or less ago. Excuse me, I'm a little for Clint. No, I've just got a little chest congestion. So yeah, same here. Is it the allergies getting you? It is. I've been, I haven't felt bad at all. But anyway, okay. So yeah, Neil Sean, founding member of Journey, was in Santana as a 15 year old alongside Greg Rowley. Also, he was Journey's first piano player

and singer before Steve Barry. I had no idea that there was such a deep Santana Journey connection. I know. How about that? Pretty cool. All right. So back to the timeline. They are, or I should have said back to the garden, they have about five weeks to pull this thing together. And they had to make some tough choices. Like when the construction supervisor comes up and says, you got a choice, we can finish the stage or we can build fencing and make sure these tickets get sold and people don't get in. And I think the writing was on the wall. A, they definitely said, all right, well, we've got to have a stage, of course, like a completed stage. And also, like, there's already kids camping out here while you're building the stage. Like this thing is,

they knew what was coming, I think, to a certain degree. But Ed makes a pretty good point that it must have dawned on them. There's no point in putting up really good fencing for a venue that doesn't have a stage, right? So they really had no choice whatsoever. They still tried to put up some fencing because, like you said, it's a money making venture. But it was just so totally inadequate that when they looked over, so this is like midweek when the construction supervisor comes over and says, do you want fencing or a stage? And there's already, from what I saw in some places, 50,000 people camped out in the area where they're building the stage already. This is what they told Bethel was the total. And this Wednesday, and there's already 50,000 people

camped out for the show that starts on Friday. Yeah, they had nowhere to be. So those guys, very, very, very wisely, Cornfield and Lang, they very wisely said, there's nothing we can do. We're just going to announce that this is a free concert from now on. And that did a few things. It just turned this into like a, if it wasn't a hippie fest before, it's just totally now. Yeah, sure. Because it's a free concert featuring some of the, some really huge acts. And then secondly, I think by not putting up really good fences, they prevented gate crashing, like actual real gate crashing, which I think would have cast a really different vibe over the whole festival. Because if you enter a festival, if the first thing you do when

you come into a festival is break the law or steal, essentially, you're stealing the ticket price. That just kind of puts a spin on your experience from that moment on. No one really had that experience at Woodstock because the guys said, fine, it's free. And it prevented that. And I think that that helped really lay the groundwork for the vibe that was, you know, that grew at that festival. Yeah, you can't complain about inadequate water and food supplies when you have crashed a free concert. Very good point. Although people would do that today, but they didn't back then. For sure. So after they announced it though, Chuck, they were like, it went from like a pretty big concert. Remember, they were expecting a couple hundred thousand, which is huge, to at

least double that. Because word spread really quickly. And people just started coming from all those cities within a seven hour drive. And people were driving there. That's really the only way to get there, aside from a helicopter and very few hippies at the time had helicopters that they could fly themselves. So everybody was driving their car, probably 10 hippies to a car. And those cars started to pile up, not like on top of one another, but right around one another. And people just started realizing like, we're not going to go any further. This is where the line to get in begins is where our car is now. So everybody just left their cars and started walking miles in some cases to the farm, to where the stage was. And they were like,

we'll come get our car in a couple of days. Yeah, absolutely. That's the right thing to do. They could hear Richie Havens in the distance. They're like, screw this, I'm walking. They ran out of, by the time Saturday rolls around, they had run out of food. They had run out of medical supplies. The whole, you know, all the towns around really chipped in the National Guard, the U.S. Army, people donated food. They donated eggs and water and Max Yazger donated milk and yogurt. And the local towns people made sandwiches to send along and 10,000 of them. Yeah, like everyone really chipped in to make sure that something bad didn't happen. And to their credit, like nothing really bad did happen. No, I mean, can you imagine half a million people all getting

hangry at the same time? That would be bad. And there was another group that chipped in to the hog farm. Here comes your buddy. I'm so excited. So the hog farm was a hippie commune. I don't remember what state it was in. I think maybe Arizona, but they had established themselves as really great at providing security and services at music festivals, hippie music festivals. And one of the reasons why they were so good at it was because they were led by none other than possibly the greatest hippie of all time, Wavy Gravy. That was his group, was the hog farm. And I got to tell you, I did not see him coming. And when I saw him, I was awesome. And I have even more love for him now. I just liked him before because of his name, but it turns out he was a

pretty awesome dude. Oh, he was great. Yeah. So the hog farm, when they were providing security services at festivals, they called themselves the police force. And I think it has a kind of a double meaning, like they're pleasing the people that they're having to deal with. But at the same time, they were exceedingly polite. Their method, when there was a problem or there's static or something like that, they would intervene, but they wouldn't physically intervene. They would just kind of come up and be like, Hey, let's move on over this way. And they were very polite in in breaking up problems, preventing like contagions from spreading throughout the crowd by just completely deescalating whatever, whatever was going on, whether it was maybe a fight that was

about to break out to somebody who was on a bad trip because they took too much brown acid. Yeah. And there was a, there was a sort of you scratch my back, I'll scratch your back ethos to the whole thing. So if you had it, we're having a bad trip and someone helped you out from the hog farm and talked you through this experience, then they were like, All right, now you go help someone out. Or if we helped feed you, why don't you help feed and like kind of take a shift. And so the crowd, you know, responded in kind. And that's what kept it. I think Ed says like not a single fight broke out. I'm sure that probably wasn't true. But there's some people who swear that. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I'm cynical, but

I don't know. 500,000 people you can have your eyeballs on everything all at once. No, for sure. I'm with you. But it's one of those, that's a part of the myth that I'm happy to just keep going. Okay. Not a single fight broke out. Not one. It's documented fact. And you mentioned the brown acid. That was a very sort of legendary announcement made by a guy, believe it or not, whose name was his real name was Chipmunk. Well, that was his nickname was Chip. Well, I know, but that was his name. Like, well, that's what people call them. Sure. What I'm saying is it wasn't like his name was Chipmunk. I'm not saying his parents named him

that, but do you know his real name? I think it was Edward. But his last name was M-O-N-C-K. And people just called him Chip. I'm pretty sure he had four names. And I'm pretty sure the first one was Edward. Edward Munk? Which is way, way less cool than Chipmunk. Like I said, his name was Chipmunk, which is very fun, despite you trying to kill that fun. I'm sorry. And he was the de facto MC. He was the lighting designer. He ended up winning like Tony Awards and stuff. Yeah, I saw that. And came up with the lighting system. And one of the, I'm not sure which of the co-producers said it, but one of them said, hey, we don't have anyone to do this job. So you're going to MC this

thing, if you will. So throughout the Woodstock documentary, which was released in March of 1970 from director Michael Wadley, a great, great documentary, won the Academy Award. There are many announcements from Chipmunk that are very, he just had this sort of droll, like he wasn't a professional MC. He wasn't like ladies, he wasn't Michael Buffer out there. But his very famous Don't Take the Brown Acid announcement is really funny. You know, he said, take it with however many grains of salt you wish. But we suggest that you stay away from that. The brown acid, of course, it's your own trip. So be my guest, but please be advised, there is a warning on that one. Yeah. And like that, that definitely helps set the tone too. Like everything was calm,

including when he was like, there's a lightning storm coming and we're all in the middle of a field. So if you're on one of those lightning rigs watching the show, please come down kind of thing. Or we're out of food. There was a lot of stuff that really could have gone differently if he hadn't been the cool dude that he was very calm and collected, which is that it's just another little fortuitous thing, you know, that that just happened that everything kind of came together. There's one other thing I wanted to mention. You said everybody's kind of coming together and you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours kind of thing. There was a ton of volunteerism there, where a lot of the people who were attending it also ended up volunteering for all sorts of

different stuff. And one of the things that was really important was they had planned the medical staff to cover 200,000 people and they now had double that. And like the guy who was like the chief physician for the whole thing was really worried. And so as word kind of spread that like they didn't have that many people to take care of everyone. And the roads were impassable. So the best you could hope for was an airlift via helicopter. People who were MDs and RNs who were there to see the show ended up coming and volunteering with the medical staff. And just to pitch in, it was just that kind of spirit. I just love those little stories. And there's a million of them around this festival. How about that? At this concert? Sure. You mentioned the

rainstorm. The rain came through Sunday and it did thin the crowd a little bit. A lot of people by that point were like, all right, this is sort of the last straw. We've had our fun. We saw Richie Havens. We saw Sean Anna. I would have loved to see Sean Anna. We'll talk about that in a minute. But maybe we should go home. So the crowd thinned a little bit, but a lot of people stayed. And that's when, you know, if you've seen the famous footage of naked hippies taking mud baths, that was from Sunday on. And a lot of them stayed. And that acid was still going strong. And who needs clothes at that point, right? I can imagine. Sure. Square. Right. So, so yeah, that was a big deal too. But they just kind of ran with that with the

rain and everything. But as all this going on, there's food that they've run out of, and that's now being trucked in, 797 bad trips that were bad enough to go seek attention at the medical. That's all. Yeah, astoundingly. And only I think 30, I read a Journal of Emergency Medical Services article that I found linked to from a Grunge article on Woodstock. And it was basically a rundown of that. And they said 797, and only I think 20 or 30 of them couldn't be talked down and had to be injected with Valium. That was their, that was the final, the final countdown. Because they would, if you just wouldn't stop raving about how nuts you were right then, they would shoot you up with Valium. Interesting. Yeah. So, while all this is going on, everybody's

like having just a great time. There's plenty of bands playing. We haven't really talked too much about the bands. There were a ton of people that played, everybody from Janice Joplin to Jimi Hendrix to Melanie, never heard of her before, but she was one of the folk singers that played on Friday. There's just a ton of different people. She did that song in Boogie Nights, that you probably heard. Which one? Boogie Nights? No, the one, I got a brand new Barrow Roller Skates. Oh, sure, sure. Yeah, that's a great song. I think that was Melanie. Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah, love Melanie. I love that song at least. But there's just a bunch of different people. And you know, I don't want to say all of them did really well. That's just not true. Some of them

did terribly. And some of them turned in some good enough performances. But some had like some real breakout performances too. Yeah, I mean, Richie Havens was one of them. He opened the show. If you've never seen Richie Havens before or heard him, just go watch the Woodstock Performance. It is a lesson in like soulful performance. I don't think he was supposed to open the show, but he was the only one there. And they didn't have other people to follow him. So they just said keep playing. In his memory, he played for like over two hours. But I think it was really about an hour or so. But he kind of set a tone. And again, like you said, this just serendipitous experience one after the other. I think Richie Havens opening that show really, I don't know

who was supposed to open. I don't, I never saw either. I just saw that he was not expecting to and they're like, you're literally the only performer here. Can you please open the show? So he did what he could and he just kept playing until somebody else showed up. I'm not sure who came on after him. But he really, yeah, he put that first tent peg in and it was a doozy. Joan Baez was another. They made a conscious choice as organizers of the event to not, and of course it was going to be political with the hippie contingent and Vietnam and everything. But they didn't invite politicians to speak or have a political tent set up, which is something that you would have at like a lot of these festivals. Yes. But Joan Baez, of course,

is going to bring the awareness, no matter where she just, she uses awareness everywhere she goes. Right. So did Richie Havens too, for sure. I think probably almost everybody on Friday had some sort of anti-war, anti-draft message going, you know. Yeah. A lot of folky stuff on Friday. Like you said, Santana, this wasn't his first show, obviously, but this was, this show came out before his first album ever was released, right? Yeah. And he says that he took some mescaline that Jerry Garcia from The Grateful Dead had given him. It was acid, yeah. Was it acid? I've seen both, for sure. I watched an interview with him today. Oh, he said acid. Okay, cool. Yeah.

So, and that makes a little more sense too. But anyway, Jerry Garcia dosed Carlos Santana with Carlos Santana's willingness before the show because Santana thought he had like plenty of hours before he needed to go on. So he's like, sure, I'll just trip first and then go on afterward. And just like everyone else at Woodstock, he was shoved out on stage long before he had planned to go out there or else everyone else went on way after the time that they had planned to go out there. The schedule just went out the window. Exactly. So he ended up going and playing his show while he was peeking and he turned into really great performance. It was great. I mean, he, you know, you can see interviews with him, like of old Carlos Santana talking about his experience

and talking about how the neck was like moving in his hands like a snake. And he just, he said, I kept saying to myself, like, slow down, man, slow down. And but then he's like, or am I playing, you know, the perfect speed. And you can see the rest of the, and I think the rest of the group was on acid too. And they were just, they were crushing it. It was amazing. Yeah, pretty amazing. Who's the picture? Doc? Who's Oh, Doc Ellis? Doc Ellis, yeah. Yeah. Who did not crush it, according to their fans. And this is who knows, I'm sure there's some dead fans that love this performance. But I think it's widely known within the dead community that the Woodstock performance by the Grateful Dead was not their best. Don't know what that means. Oh, oh, it was,

it was like for the Grateful Dead, it was terribly loose. They played a 50 minute version of Love Light. Oh, good Lord. Love Light is such a terrible song anyway. And one of the big problems with the Grateful Dead is that they always extended that stupid song way too long. A 50 minute version of Love Light, right? I don't know about any of this. So there's, there's 10, I beseech you to go just listen to a regular Love Light and then imagine 50 minutes of it. And then apparently there's 10 minutes of them just basically standing around talking in the middle of that 50 minute Love Light. It was just really, it was bad. It was not a good, good performance. And in their defense, there, a rainstorm had just blown through and the stage was hot, electrically speaking.

Yeah, that may have been high. Yeah, that was part of it. I don't think that was all of it. So I think what I'm reading for you is what could have been a 90 second fix ended up being 10 minutes? Basically, yeah. And I think that I have the impression that they, like they were playing Love Light still while they were standing around talking to one another too. It was, It just couldn't stop. Yeah. And I saw the set list and it looked like it had, it had the, the, it was possible it could have been something really great, but I get the impression that they just weren't, weren't in the right mindset right then. I always forget that you had a little dead spell. Yeah. I mean, you never like followed them around or anything like that, did you?

No, they were gone. I remember I had a chance to see their last show at the Omni. One of my friends had just gotten into him. It was like, dude, you got to go. Come on, let's go. And I was like, I'll just catch them next time. That was the famous thing of mine. And they did that with Stevie Ray Vaughn, Pink Floyd, a lot of people. Yeah. I was just like, I'll just catch them next time. So I've learned now to just be like, okay, yeah, I'll go. That's why you will travel to go see air supply. Man, that's so good. You're not going to take that chance. No way. You might run out of air. No, they have a full supply. Oh, okay. So the dead's performance supposedly not so great. No. CCR did play and apparently is a really good set. But John Fogarty, he's a pretty cranky guy,

or at least was back then. And I think he kept shouting out that they were the second biggest band in the world. No one believed him. Everyone said, CCR really? All right. And he would not release or he wouldn't sign the release to make it into the Woodstock film. And the dead was not in the Woodstock film, I don't think either, right? No, the lighting was not good for some reason, I guess, because of the lightning and rain that it just blown through. I'm not sure why, but yeah, I saw that it was so bad that they couldn't use the footage. Yeah. So a lot of people who are familiar with Woodstock through the film may be surprised that CCR and the Grateful Dead performed or Cranky Neil Young, who Crosby Sills Nash and Young very famously played their second ever show

together. They played one show the night before in Chicago. And this was show number two, and Neil Young didn't want to sign the release for the film. So I guess they just cut around him. Yeah, would be my guess. I have a little brief dead anecdote from recently, actually, if you want to hear it. Should we take a break and hear it right after? No, I think it's a pre-break. Okay, all right, let's hear it. So I actually downloaded a Dix-Pix, like where it's a live show that I think one of their soundboard guys like picked over the years and was like, this one's so good, we're going to release it as an album. Okay. So anyway, I downloaded it from iTunes and I was, I went to go listen to it and I was about to press play and I was like,

I don't really want to listen to the Grateful Dead again, but I do want my money back. So I went to the whole trouble of contacting Apple to ask for a refund on it and it said, why? And I really wanted to make sure that they gave me my money back. So I said, my friend told me this is a drug band and I don't want to hear that. Oh my gosh. And they gave me my money back. What year was this? Like this year or 2022. Are you serious? Yeah, it was just a few months ago. That's amazing. Yeah, thanks. I'm sorry I let you know that they're a drug band. I'm sorry I ruined that for you. No, we can take a break. All right, boy, that was great. I'm going to ruin it on that. We'll be right back. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told

you, Hey, let's start a coup. Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the US and fascism. I'm Ben Bullock and I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring and mind blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do we just have to do the ads? From my heart podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup.

Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Dr. Romany and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. Narcissists are everywhere and their toxic behavior and words can cause serious harm to your mental health. In our first season, we heard from Eileen Charlotte, who was love bombed by the Tinder swindler. The worst part is that he can only be guilty for stealing the money from me, but he cannot be guilty for the mental part he did. And that's even way worse than the money you took. But I am here to help. As a licensed psychologist and survivor of narcissistic abuse myself, I know how to identify the narcissist in your life. Each week, you will hear stories

from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and the process of their healing from these relationships. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet, which up until then had been kind of like a nerdy space, feel like a nightclub, and also slightly dangerous. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. Rupert Murdoch lost lots and lots of money on MySpace because it turned out it was actually not a good business. My name is Joanne McNeill. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, The Story of MySpace, I'm revisiting the early days of social

media through the people who lived it, the users. Because what happened in the MySpace era would have sweeping implications for all the platforms to follow. Listen to Main Accounts, The Story of MySpace, on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. We should mention The Who probably. They were one of the bigger bands, but like you said, this vaulted them from theaters to arenas. After that movie came out. But The Who were kind of cranky there, because there was no green room. They were used to better treatment. The monitors were crap, apparently, even though supposedly the sound system is designed by a man named Bill Hanley was great. But the on-stage monitors

weren't good, so Roger Daltrey couldn't hear himself, and he feels like he was off-key. And so they were just like not having it. I think Keith Moon and John Nint was so purposefully took LSD in a station wagon with some girls. But Daltrey and Townsend accidentally took LSD, Townsend from Coffee, and Roger Daltrey from some tea that was spiked. So by the time they got up there, they were not happy. They were pushed to like a 5 a.m. slot. And when Abby Hoffman jumps up on stage to, you know, God bless Abby Hoffman, but admittedly, it was quite a buzzkill when you hear the audio from this to interrupt a Who show, to talk about freeing his friend and activist John Sinclair for cannabis possession. Pete Townsend wasn't having

it, and he moved him forcibly out of the way with his guitar, very famously. Yeah, supposedly injured Abby Hoffman, but Roger Daltrey's like none of that didn't happen. And so did Pete Townsend. But I loved it. They were surly, kind of, which is not how most of the other bands were. But I can't really blame them. You said that there was no green room and they had to wait backstage. I read that they had to wait backstage for 14 hours. Yeah, it was a drag. Anybody would be surly at that point, you know? But they had a really cool thing that happened just kind of serendipitously. Their set got pushed so far back that they were playing the end of it as the sun was rising. And it's really neat in the documentary to see that, you know? That's true. Yeah, so they

lucked out. I mentioned Shanana. Yeah. If you've ever seen that Woodstock movie, one of the great performances is from the 50s throwback doo-wop group that became famous as for their TV show in the 70s. But you would think it would be antithetical to these hippy-dippy late 60s kids out there. But it was that perfect like nostalgia bomb for them. Like, this is the music they either heard when they were kids or their parents' music. And it was a lot of fun. Yeah. And Shanana was like, they were a club act and they ended up becoming like Shanana because of that Woodstock appearance. But you said that it was nostalgic. I guess the cornfield in Lang tried to get Roy Rogers to sign on. What? Yeah, he was going to be the last act and just play Happy Trails. Oh, that's fun. And the

whole thing and Roy Rogers was like, I'm not doing that. Get off my lawn. So we got Van Halen to sing Happy Trails. Oh yeah, I forgot they sang that. David Lee Roth is cool. That's the pull quote. Can we make that our little Instagram thing? Sure. And then of course, Jimi Hendrix, we would be remiss not to mention the Monday morning. Most people are gone performance by the band of Gypsies. Like, not just Monday morning. Monday morning commute time. Yeah. Like the last time for an acid-fueled rock concert. Yeah. And then that's where you get the very famous Star Spangled Banner performance. The reason why he played that is because it was in his contract that he performed last and that all those delays just bumped him to Monday morning.

And what's cool is so many people had cleared out that if you see pictures of him playing, I'm not sure if it's in the documentary or not. People are just hanging around like the stage. Like fans are just like hanging on the speakers and sitting around watching him like that closely. It just became that loose. Yeah, it was sort of the effect of like, I don't know if you've ever worked in restaurants, but when you put on your music after the restaurant is closed and everyone's kind of milling about drinking and like cleaning up, that was Jimmy Hendrix in the band of Gypsies. It's crazy. It is crazy. So the Lang Cornfield Roberts and Rosemann, apparently Lang and Cornfield were like, guys, we need more money, more money, more money, like a bunch of times.

And Roberts and Rosemann actually went back to their families and were like, this is a sure thing. Just give us some more money. And they ended up sinking 1.8 million into the whole thing, which I saw was about $17 million in today's money, which is still not bad considering a concert with half a million people. But they were almost entirely in the red for that. Like they made basically no money whatsoever. They just lost at $1.8 million. And they owed it to Roberts and Rosemann and their families. And apparently Lang and Cornfield finally paid off the debt in the early 80s. And it was largely because of the documentary movie and the album that was released. Yeah, the documentary made a lot of money, like 30 million plus. And I think

that doesn't even count home video and streaming releases and stuff like that since. But like I said, Michael Wildley won the Academy Award for that. And a very young Marty Scorsese was, I think, one of seven editors. And I think he was there shooting as well, if I'm not mistaken. And his legendary film editor, Thelma Schoenmacher, or is it, I don't know if it's Schoenmacher or Schoenmacher? Both. Okay. One of the all time great film editors, she was one of them as well. And that movie boosted a lot of careers for people that ended up and I think ended up in the film. And I think a lot of people who didn't sign over their rights or refused to have their footage use probably ended up regretting that. Yep. And there's nothing sweeter than thinking of Neil

Young regretting one of his surly decisions, you know? No, I love Neil Young in his surliness. So one thing that came out of Woodstock was that it became a bit of a brand as seen in like some revivals that were made or attempts. I think there was Woodstock 94. There's definitely Woodstock 99. And then there's going to be a Woodstock 50 in 2019, but it got scuttled. Right. Because of the disaster of the last Woodstock, I think. Yes. But there's one thing I want to say, we talked a lot about people pitching in, volunteering, all that stuff. On Monday morning, after Jimi Hendrix finished playing, almost everybody left. But about 8,000 participants, fans, people who came to Woodstock, they stayed behind to help clean up. And this place was

trashed when they started. And apparently they did such a good job that archaeologists who excavate the site are routinely frustrated at finding basically nothing. Because the 8,000 volunteers who stayed behind to clean up did such a good job at it. That's pretty great. You know, no disasters. I think there were two deaths. And it seems like neither one were because of the thing. I think the one reported overdose was later found or believed not to be an overdose and was a heart thing. Yeah. The other one was very sad. Well, yeah, that was a straight up tragedy. The kid was asleep in the field and got run over by a tractor. Yeah, Raymond Mizak. There was no alcohol or drugs found in his system either. He was there with his older sister,

who probably still feels guilty about it. The other guy who died was Richard Beiler. And it's like, man, that's a real bummer. Still not bad for half a million people. And I saw it compared to Buffalo, New York, which at the time had a population of about the same as the number of people who came to the Woodstock Festival. And over that same weekend, that same period of time, Buffalo, New York registered 40 deaths. There are only two at Woodstock. And I can tell you, Buffalo, New York wasn't entirely on acid over that weekend either. Well, but there were a lot of olds, if you factor in age. Sure. That's true. Wait, no, yeah, that skews it the other way. Still. I know. It's a good stuff. It's a wash. There was always the rumors of

the Woodstock baby, too. And in fact, at one point in my life, I thought that would have been a fun movie to write. And I think I worked on it for a little while, someone that finds out that they were the Woodstock baby. But there was not a baby born in the crowd at Woodstock, like the legend has it. I think someone was airlifted and had a baby and then one was in a car, maybe? Yes, on the way there. Yeah. So no true Woodstock baby, but that still would be a good movie, I think. So what did the protagonists in your script feel? Was there like they had problems with being the Woodstock baby? Well, yeah, I mean, I think the obvious thing to do was make them like... Alex P. Keaton type? Yeah, and Alex P. Keaton type. And then what he turns

into like Martin Moll at the end? They find free love in the end, of course. You could write that thing. It writes itself. Martin Moll's the quintessential hippie. That's right. As was Maxi Asger, which is not true. He did not get flipped movie style into being a hippie, but he did get sued by his neighbor, at least one neighbor. I think the organizers and the guys who funded the thing ended up suing one another. There were various lawsuits over the years, but Maxi Asger ended up selling his farm, moving to Florida and died there like a year after he moved. But he addressed the crowd at one point and it's really a really great clip. This kind of conservative farm guy got up in front of 400,000 people plus and said... Wait, wait. Can you do

it as Eugene Levy? No. But he said, you know, he said, I'm not used to addressing 20 people, much less this many. And it's about a minute and a half, but the one takeaway is he said, I think you people have proven something to the world. The important thing that you prove into the world is that a half a million kids can get together and have three days of fun and music and have nothing but fun and music. And God bless you for it. Very nice. Pretty good stuff. And happy trails to you. He said, I hear not one fight broke out. And the Chinmuk's name is just a nickname. Look, I'm just glad we didn't get into another argument like we did in the... What was the episode we did? We're like... Oh, I don't know. Recently? Yeah. Yeah. Remember, I was like saying

something. You were like, yes, I'm saying the same thing. And... Oh, yeah. What was it? That was really recently. That made it not even be released yet. No, I don't think it has. Okay. That was a fun one. All right. Well, you got anything else about Woodstock, man? I got nothing else. Good one. I mean, it's the briefest of overviews for such a big topic, but I think that thing was pretty good. Agreed. Since Chuck thinks this episode was pretty good, everybody, that means, of course, it's time for a listener mail. This was just something I thought was great. Hey, Josh and Chuck, I recently introduced stuff you should know to my seven-year-old son, John. He loves you guys, says, even adopted some of your phrases, regularly telling me not to yuck his heel. A few weeks ago,

during some of your somewhat off-topic banter, he asked me if you guys were married. And I said, no, you know, they talk about their wives all the time. And he paused and looked confused. And he said, no, I meant to each other. And he said, I laughed and said, no. And the next morning, while listening to the show, he said, daddy, are you sure those guys aren't married? And he is convinced that because you guys get along so well, you must be married to each other. That means Tom and his wife must have a good marriage. Sure. Now he asked me that every time we listen, which is funny. So keep up the good work. We love the content of the show and your on-air chemistry, even if you weren't married to each other. And that is Tom from Baltimore and his seven-year-old

son, John. So, hey, John, we're not married. Hey, John. If I were gay, you could do a lot worse. Thanks, man. And I would often think about having your beard rub against my chin once in a while. You're like, I prefer my guys a little more fit. But no, I like something to really kind of grab on to when I'm hugging and kissing. All right. Well, we could have a good time then. Hey, John, thank you for creating this weird conversation. But thank you for writing. And that was one of the most adorable listener mails I've heard in recent memory. And thank you very much for listening. If you want to be like John and Tom, you said two, right? Yep. And write in to us. You can do it via email at stuffpodcast.ihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production

of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet feel like a nightclub.

And it was the first major social media company to collapse. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, the story of MySpace. I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it. Listen to Main Accounts, the story of MySpace, on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I am Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. This season, we dive deeper into highlighting red flags and spotting a narcissist before they spot you. Each week, you'll hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and their process of healing. Listen to Navigating

Narcissism on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.