Peace, love and slam dancing – the rise and fall of Woodstock

Violence. Fires. Limp Bizkit.

It’s a recipe for disaster if there ever was one.

Sounds more like a nightmare, right?

Wrong. It was Woodstock 1999.

Far removed from the idyllic attitude of the original 1969 festival, its most recent incarnation still makes us wonder: What went wrong?

Looking back 40 years, the original Woodstock was breaking new ground.

While the multi-day festival concept was nothing new, the plan for Woodstock was wide-eyed in scope yet unclear in its execution.

Knowing the large venue and pull of the star-laden line-up would bring in a crowd, the organizers could have never imagined that their “Three Days of Peace and Music” would go down as one of the most significant events in music history.

Tearing down fences, sleeping in tents and sharing food made the event a communal one. Attendees peacefully defied the festival’s initial capitalistic intentions and came together as one, while some of the decade’s most notable musicians provided the soundtrack to the over-arching message.

It was a fitting farewell to the outspoken, peace-loving spirit of the ’60s generation.
Fast-forward a few years, and the attempts at recreating the epic festival have fallen short every time. With two smaller concerts in 1979 and 1989 that barely made a blip on the radar, the door was open for promoters to finally revive the Woodstock legacy.
While Woodstock ’94 brought in a larger crowd, its message of “Two More Days of Peace and Music” were drowned out by theatrics and literal mudslinging, as Green Day’s performance led to a crowd-to-stage mud fight that became one of the only lasting memories of the event.

And then came Woodstock 1999. As the 30th anniversary of the original festival, hopes were high for a successful event.

Once again, it all fell through.

Ticket costs were through the roof, vendors extorted the crowd with inflated food prices and the crowd became aggressive.

Anger led to violence, which led to crowd-induced fires and looting. Sadly enough, four rapes were reported in the aftermath.

Any sentiments of the original festival were lost among the littered landscape, encapsulating everything that was wrong with the new generation.

Looking at these attempts to recreate that special weekend in 1969, it’s a curious case that it could never be done.

It’s not that the festival format has died. In fact, with such successful annual musical festivals like Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo and Pitchfork, it’s almost baffling that Woodstock has failed every time since the original.

Perhaps it’s the name – does it carry a curse?

Or is it history merely telling us that this larger-than-life event really can’t be revived?
While it’s wonderful to reflect on that 1969 event that so beautifully captured the vibrant spirit of the era, maybe once and for all, we need to let it be and remember it for what it was.

Rather than selfishly try to recreate the moment for our own generation, let’s take what we can and finally make some original noise of our own.