MOV:Bad Acid (the woodstock generation)  by Gary Maynes

   Wall Street Journal August 18, 1989

   We stand in awe of the Woodstock generation's ability to be
unceasingly fascinated by the subject of itself. One would have thought
that the saturation coverage at the time would have been enough. But
every five years, Woodstock-goers, so many of whom have become writers
for elite media organs, wheel out their gilded memories and pet
observations.

   It's even more remarkable that other generations are willing to give
the boomers all this attention. The elder generations helped create the
excesses of the '60s by indulging the teenagers of that era. Somehow,
grown-ups believed wisdom adhered to youth, and that it was necessary
to "get in touch with the young." Life and Look magazines opened their
pages. The New York Times was somber and celebratory, calling Woodstock
a "Phenomenon of Innocence". This obeisance encouraged all that talk
about revolution, the Age of Aquarius and yuppiedom.

   Today, the younger generation seems also to have become vicarious
flower children. Woodstock nostalgia seems strongest among those who
are 14. MTV, which caters to early adolescents, has been going bananas
with "Woodstock Minutes" and the like. An audience of teenage boys
naturally likes the idea of running around with naked women and doing
LSD while listening to Jimi Hendrix and The Who. Woodstock also offers
a forum for vague rebelliousness. That's perfect for today's teens,
many of whom would like to be radical, though they do not have any
definite politics.

   Today's renegades should remember that Woodstock was about drugs,
and without drugs, it wasn't much fun. They should also know that all
the talk about freedom and individuality at Woodstock was a lie. There
a rigid dress code(jeans, no short hair). There was a rigid vocabulary
code. There was a rigid thought code. There was considerable peer
pressure to be part of the drug scene. Those who didn't do drugs often
were afraid to admit it(As the world's only anti-drug hippie, I can say
amen -- :GM:) There was intense peer pressure, especially on women, to
be promiscuous. A remark in a recent Woodstock column by the New York
Post's Pete Hamill captures the attitude toward women. He is describing
what a wonderful time his male buddies had : "They joined together and
bathed nude in Mr. Filippini's pond. They shared food and joints and
girlfriends."(Hamill is quite a guy. Here's another of his quotes: "[TV
preachers] are respected citizens; presidents take their calls; lesser
politicians and network executives fear them; the tax laws make them
rich. But they specialize in one thing -- the peddling of fear. Fear of
'secular humanism', communism, big government, labor unions,
liberalism, other Americans, all mixed up with fear of the Lord and
Satan. We know their true enemies: reason, intelligence, pluralism"
:GM:)

   This year's cliche about Woodstock is that the kids came to
Woodstock as renegades and left as a market. Rock is now commercial.
Rebellion is an advertising gimmick. The heroes of Woodstock now ride
the nostalgia circuit. As Wavy Gravy put it, "Woodstock was created for
wallets". Mainstream commercial culture has assimilated the
counterculture. But mainstream culture had to meet it halfway.

   What mainstream culture absorbed, at least during the '70s, was a
whiff of Woodstock's utopianism, the idea that you could have drugs as
well as wisdom, promiscuity as well as relationships, organization
without structure, prosperity without economic competition. There a
spiritual greed in the desire to have all these things; the older name
for it is hedonism.

   The Woodstock radical couldn't have been expected to realize that
hedonism can damage the social fabric. Their elders should have told
them. Those whom they would have listened to did not, and the social
fabric WAS damaged. It is impossible to link definitively the
counterculture to today's social pathologies. But the late '60s and
early '70s brought a number of terrible trends that now haunt us. Drug
abuse rose dramatically. The divorce rate went up. Promiscuity rose.
Men felt less compelled to take responsibility for the children they
helped create. Schools became more disorderly. The universities became
refuges for frustrated radicals. The poverty rate, which had been
dropping, went up.

   Today, most Woodstock veterans acknowledge the hedonism was
excessive. But today's nostalgic treatments are still largely
self-aggrandizing. Many celebrate Woodstock as the Last Good Time. It
would be more appropriate if there were a hint of shame, if not over
the damage done to the idea of individual responsibility, at least over
the deaths that resulted in part from the countercultural lifestyle.

   Twenty-seven acts played at Woodstock. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix,
Tim Hardin, Kieth Moon and Paul Butterfield subsequently died from drug
overdoses. Bob Hite from Canned Heat later died of a drug-related heart
attack and Ron McKernan of the Grateful Dead died of a liver ailment.
Richard Manuel of The Band and Abbie Hoffman were suicides. Felix
Pappalardi of Mountain was shot by his wife.

   It wasn't only the famous who died. We were stuck by a message in
the current issue of Life by Pat Ruel Malone, a secretary in Monroe, NY
: "I am writing this in memory of my dear brother, James M. Berra, who
went to Woodstock with three friends. James died at the age of 26, on
February 11, 1978, from a drug overdose. Two others also died of drug
overdoses. Only one person of the four survives."

   Not everyone was thrilled. Perhaps what we think about Woodstock is
a mirage. A letter to the editor reads as follows:

   Curiously, Martha Bayles seems to have developed her impressions of
the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival and the people who attended from
the very media whose romantic reminiscences she deplores in her
article, "Unliberating Memories". As one who attended the three-day
event, I was offended by her cynical characterizations of the
festival-goers as into romanticism, socialism and transcendence and
find that her analysis only serves to further distort the already
distorted collective memories of Woodstock.

   Along with most of those in attendence, I went for the music. I
purchased tickets well in advance, only to find they weren't collected.
There was nothing romantic about abandoning one's car and hiking to the
festival site, but with the complete lack of planning by festival
organizers, there was no other choice. The only nudity I saw was in the
film version issued by Warner Brothers in the 1970s. I brought plenty
of food and was appalled when food drops were made by the National
Guard . I couldn't wait to escape the mud, the heat and the garbage. In
fact, none of the people with whom I went to Woodstock, nor any I have
met since are nostalgic for this festival or ever thought for a moment
that the Woodstockian's "nation", as Ms. Bayles describes it, "was a
viable alternative to 'the system'...". When the festival was over, we
all returned to our jobs on Monday, glad to be home. In fact, even the
music wasn't that good.

   Gary Maynes Arlington, VA
