The song, written by Joni Mitchell -- who wasn't there in person but somehow managed to grasp the essence of those three muggy, ineffable days in August 1969 while hunkered down in David Geffen's New York apartment watching TV -- said we had to get back to the garden. But what exactly was the garden?
In a literal sense, of course, it was Max Yasgur's bucolic dairy farm in Bethel, in upstate New York, where the Woodstock Music & Art Fair took place in a torrent of almost preternaturally inspired musicianship and gusting rains.
But for a number of those who invented Woodstock, or were present at the inception to document it, the Eden-like quality of the event had more to do with the idea of young people taking control over their lives, wresting their destinies away from the powers that were (parents, politicians, the draft board). It had to do with the still-relative newness of rock 'n' roll, the raw, naked power of an art form still striving for recognition and respect. Music, at that time, was youth's lingua franca in the way that the Internet, cellphones and video games are today, and John, Paul, Mick and Bob were as famous as, well, Biz Stone or what's-his-name who just won "American Idol."
"It was before the music business became the music industry and there was a lot more room for bands to find their feet," says Michael Lang, the promoter who masterminded the festival into being.
Mostly, Lang and others assert, the freshness and vitality of Woodstock had to do with the performers' creative energy and the generous, cooperative spirit of social harmony that prevailed over that long, muddy weekend, despite the 20 miles of stalled traffic and the bum acid trips.
"For a moment, everybody was peaceful. Everybody looked out for each other," says Baron Wolman, one of four photographers whose seminal images of Woodstock will be on display this month and in September at Duncan Miller Gallery in Los Angeles (Jim Marshall, Henry Diltz and Lisa Law are the other contributors).
Of the hundreds of images he took that weekend, Wolman says, one of his favorites shows law enforcement officials working together with the tie-dyed crowd to evacuate people needing medical help. "This was a manifestation of the coda of the '60s generation and the counterculture and people who felt it was time for a change, politically and socially," he says. "Look, it wasn't perfect. It was difficult. It was hot, it was humid, it was muddy. There wasn't enough food, there weren't enough porta-potties. Nevertheless, nevertheless. . . ."
