Thesis on "1969 Woodstock Festival"

Thesis 9 pages (4139 words) Sources: 6

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Woodstock

Modern and topical interpretations of the rock an roll era, including but not limited to the culminating events which played out at Woodstock, and its less well-known cousin Altamont are varied, demonstrating the idealism that drove such events as well as the reality of the "disarray" and "chaos" that was realized by them. Though some wish to look back on the Woodstock Rock Festival and the Altamont Rock Festival, with sunny rose colored glasses while others like to see it through more realistic eyes, having to do with the fallout of the events and the cacophony of disasters associated with them, "the muddy disarray of Woodstock...and the chaos of Altamont."

Having passed the 30th anniversaries of the moon landing and Chappaquiddick, this summer also marks the same anniversary of that quintessential 1960s event known as Woodstock, the legendary confab of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll - and mud. Co-founding producer Michael Lang dubs Woodstock "a state of mind, not a locale" and there is truth to this glib turn of phrase. For three decades, the nation, even the world, has been in thrall to the Woodstock state of mind: namely, the anti-bourgeois animus of young (and old, as Boomers pass into their 50s) in the pose of the ever-snarly rebel.

Woodstock and Altamont as well as the ideals and events that drove them and created their "vibe" became a turning point and an iconic pinnacle for many in American society. The rock and roll movement became synonymous with the "hippies" and their ideals to define the whole of future culture in America;

By the late 1960s rock was widely regarded as an important musical form. Musicians such as Miles Davis and John McLaughlin and groups like Traffic or Blood, Sweat, and Tears tried to fuse rock and jazz, while such disparate artists as Leonard Bernstein and Frank Zappa attempted to connect rock and classical music. Groups featuring virtuoso guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, and Jimmy Page continued to perform variations on classic blues themes using the traditional instruments of rock 'n' roll. From 1967 onward, the rock festival was regarded as the ideal context in which to hear rock music, and thousands of fans attended. The most successful and peaceful rock festival, Woodstock, was held near Bethel, N.Y., in Aug., 1969. Later, however, a similar event, featuring the Rolling Stones, was held at Altamont, Calif., and was marked by several violent incidents caught on film, including a murder.

The excesses that were a part of the "hippie" scene, no matter how secondary they were initially to the movement created a culture of excess marked by the "sex, drugs and rock n roll," slogan. Along with many others that better fit the free love free society ideals of its founders and followers. Woodstock, in many ways marked the beginning of the end, as did the violence that peppered Altamont a few months later.

By 1970 several of rock's top performers -- Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix -- were dead from substance abuse. The dangerous, androgynous quality projected by the Rolling Stones was taken to extremes by performers such as Alice Cooper and David Bowie, who were perhaps as famous for their sexual ambiguity and outrageous behavior as for their music.

Regardless of the personal impact that the movement had on individuals, both positive, negative and neutral the period marked a change in the world, and is treated as such both concurrently and in retrospective. The foundations that built Woodstock, idelas that challenged the status quo and the very visible and almost viral way in which Woodstock was organized and played out proved to many on both sides that mass movements could culminate in both positive and negative change that might never have been possible before, short of mass revolution.

How Woodstock Changed the World

The rejection of the conservative 1950s and early 1960s was the impetus of the hippie movement a movement that in many ways was demonstrative in its straight line of development to the Woodstock rock festival. A whole generation of young people worked toward ideals and then embraced some of those ideals to an excesses that challenged the older generations and made then rethink how the world should be developed and controlled.

The sixties came together and fell apart in five short months. The end began when Charlie Manson's followers came together to carry out the Tate-La Blanca murders in Los Angeles on the nights of the ninth and tenth of August, 1969; only a week later, on the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth, the Woodstock Nation came together for the first and only time. Then, finally, the hippies came together to create Woodstock West at Altamont, California, on the ninth of December, to hear the Rolling Stones, and it all came apart. The sixties began with the Beatles and ended with the Rolling Stones. As it often happens in momentous events, this generalization holds in more than one sense. If Charlie Manson thought that the Beatles were sending him secret messages to commit murder, the Rolling Stones found out that they couldn't prevent murder. As it also happens in momentous events, these three have a symbolic quality in that they stand for the social change of the sixties that was inseparable from the music. A full appreciation of the music requires a full appreciation of how and why people "went through changes," as we said at the time. And vice versa.

The realization that individuals could be moved in a massive way to act in manners that were totally outside the control of the mainstream, and that such a movement could in fact become thought of as the "mainstream" left many in awe, as did the outgrowth of excesses that resulted. In many the development of Woodstock, its realization and massive, record growth as well as Altamont's dire violence could be seen as the full circle of a movement that embraced drugs to "free the mind" and then used them to such an excess that their actions became much more indicative a of destructive substance abuse.

Woodstock or Altamont Define the Day

Woodstock and Altamont were both indicative of the 1960s as one represented the massive manner in which ideas and ideals could drive people to act, and eventually act poorly, near the end and in Altamont express the excesses of challenging the status quo and the demure character of the 1950s. I believe that many people assumed that nothing but good would come from the "good" ideas of the hippie movement and then were shocked to find that the influences of these ideas could spiral out of control and end in violence. In this way both events were representative of the reality of the 1960s, from beginning to end, and in a very short time frame.

Historical and Cultural Significance

The historical significance of Woodstock is that it proved to many, outsiders that the "hippie" ideals and standards could result in both good and bad behaviors and they could do so en mass, in ways that other movements simply did not have the power to do.

In this context, Woodstock seems like the biggest, if the shortest-lived, hippie ghetto. Because of the publicity at the time, and especially because of the movie, Woodstock has become a key event in the myth of the sixties, and nothing more needs to be said here about the joys and good times of those three days. What does need to be said is how it happened that Altamont followed so soon after Woodstock, and how Woodstock, Altamont, and the Tate-La Bianca murders were all related.

Challenges to the ideals left many at a loss to control the spread of the negative outgrowth of the 1960s challenge without simply seeming like conservative censors and this left those in charge of the events and society at a loss to do anything but stand aside and allow them to become what they would.

As Jonathan Eisen put it in the book on Altamont that he edited:

Altamont was nothing in itself. It was not very special except to make people realize how similar we all are to the society we have no choice but to abhor. For many it destroyed in a few moments the dichotomies our people have been making with increasing relish, and sent them back to thinking about how alike, how close and how reflective everyone is of everyone else, despite the hair, despite the acid and the music. 28 When people contrast what happened in the sixties with what happened later, they ask what has happened to "the ideals of the sixties." To ask this is to reveal oneself a prisoner of media images, television images of demonstrations and peace marches. The enduring ideals of the sixties were personal, as American ideals usually are. So what the personal ideals of the sixties accomplished was to legitimize hedonism as part of the American way of life. If the consequences of sex, drugs, and… READ MORE

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