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Woodstock: When We Gave Peace a Chance
On Saturday, it will be 40 years since 400,000 hippies descended on Max Yasgur's dairy farm for a concert.
Jimi Hendrix performed, as did Richie Havens, the Who, Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker, Joan Baez, Santana, and Sly and the Family Stone, among others. It was billed as three days of ``peace and music.'' It became a generational signpost: Woodstock.
Forty years later, a faint patina of absurdity attaches to those days. One watches archival footage of young people groping and grooving and getting stoned in the mud with the same faintly horrified fascination one watches young people of earlier years dancing the jitterbug or swallowing goldfish. It seems quaint -- something foolish and long ago.
And it comes as no surprise that one of former Vietnam POW John McCain's most memorable applause lines during the last presidential campaign was that he missed Woodstock because ``I was tied up at the time.'' It's a wisecrack that neatly encapsulates the culture wars -- feckless hippies turning on and tuning out versus a Navy flier doing his duty under duress for flag and country.
Which is not to buy into the inferred argument that there was no meaning in those mud-splattered days. Woodstock was the distillation of an ideal which held that avarice could be stilled, hatred could be silenced, and the disparate tribes of humanity could find reconciliation, in the chords of a song.
It was a common belief back then. It's hardly coincidental that Coca-Cola came out two years later with the iconic commercial in which a multiethnic chorus declares, ``I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.''
The idea that you could play your way to peace or harmonize your way to love did not end when the hippies left Yasgur's farm. It resurfaces every time a roster of performers gathers for some planetwide concert to heal African famine, global warming, the American farmer.
For that matter, the idea was not born on Yasgur's farm, either. History records an episode on Christmas Eve of 1914 when German soldiers faced off against entrenched French, Belgian and English troops. The Germans set tiny Christmas trees and lighted candles upon the parapets of their trenches and began singing carols. Before long, allied troops had crawled cautiously out of their holes to watch and listen. Shortly after that, they joined in the singing.
There followed an unofficial truce. Enemies sang together, played soccer, exchanged small gifts, buried their dead. For much of the week between Christmas and New Year's, music stopped the war.
But if the ideal was neither born nor died on Yasgur's farm, it nevertheless reached arguably its fullest expression there. Granted, Woodstock did not stop the war in Vietnam, even for a week. Indeed, young people left the farm, cut their hair, put on suits and ties, pantsuits and sensible shoes, and became doctors, cops, TV executives, mothers, fathers -- respectable and responsible. Four decades later, they are retirees, dandling grandchildren on arthritic knees and eligible for the senior discount at Denny's. They joined the world they famously opted out of.
But before they did, they authored what amounts to a statement of faith in the power of all us we, singing harmony and getting by with a little help from our friends. Granted, it is a statement strikingly out of key in an era where music is more often associated with product placement than division healing. More to the point, it is a statement that bespeaks hapless youth and hopeless naivete. Who among us is still young enough to think you can sing peace into being?
But 40 years ago, some of us gave it a try. Absurd? Maybe. But as generational signposts go, you could do a whole lot worse.
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26 Comments so far
Show AllHow easily the mind co ops the the experience of transcendence and trivializes it. The first red flag is " wow, now i can really be somebody and do something with this gift of grace" Oops, to late.
Tepid is as tepid does. As another wedding party gets drone flamed in the Middle East, as the armed encampment of the Detroit Ghetto escalates, The People bah about how they're to get their legal drug of choice...and Leonard Pitts reaches for another martini in South Beach...and I leave the library for a walk with the Sun and the cumulus clouded blue sky of Michigan - peace, joy, harmony.
Martin? Martin?! What was that about the intoxication of gradualism?
Gradualism is America's drug of choice.
What is forgotten is that Woodstock was conceived as a profit making venture. Tickets as well as movie and album rights were sold. Nobody involved conceived of hundreds of thousands of gate crashers, leaving the food and sanitation facilities understaffed and overrun. If it wasn't for the massive amounts of pot and acid consumed (as opposed to alcohol) this spectacle of the aquarian age would have ended in the same kind of death and violence that marked the Altamont concert less than four months later.
There is some good advice somewhere in that comment.
"They joined the world they famously opted out of."
This time, the music doesn't stop.
Mr. Pitts is a good columnist, but this piece is another example of baby boomer self-glorification. He obviously thinks very highly of himself and his generational cohort. I am tired of hearing this drivel. Let's consider some other great things the boomers gave us: the drug culture; rampant sexual promiscuity, with its attendant diseases; touchy-feely politics; victimology; the self-esteem movement that has plagued our schools; political correctness that reached ridiculous extremes; and continuous self-absorption. They have virtues, of course, but the constant self-praise papers them over.
Yes, sex is a bad thing. And the war on drugs has been such a roaring success. And the problem with schools is the self esteem movement, not chronic lack of funding. And pointing out incidences of racial and gender abuse is political correctness. And of course, political correctness is one of the biggest problems facing society today.
I'm tired of hearing this right wing judeo christian drivel.
Wait a second, Cangrande. What about environmentalism? What about good, original, impassioned rock-and-roll, which has become an endangered species? What about civil rights? If there's anything wrong with Pitts's piece is that he underestimates the power that was unleashed by that generation, a power which they unfortunately let slip from their grasp. I am referring to the wholesale, massive rejection of the pseudo-values of bourgeois consumerist-militarist society and the psychic, environmental, and physical devastation and depredations that go with it. For a brief moment there, the '60s kids were very close to exactly the sort of spiritual and political upheaval this society is so desperately in need of. And it is only because of the overwhelming commercial co-optation of their rebellion, and the barrage of negative media and government propaganda, followed by very real policies under Reagan to "roll back" whatever timid reforms had actually come of the 60s movement, that it didn't lead to more positive changes in our society. Have you never stopped to think that so many of the horrors denounced by the flower children--war, greed, the destruction of the biosphere, economic exploitation--are still with us today, exacerbated by time, precisely because their vision of things ultimately did not prevail? The things you denounce as having come from their movement are simply the products of the breakup and atomization of a vast collective phenomenon into so many (often competing and conflicting) one-issue special interests. That is, they are the results of the movement's failure, not its success.
From the mid 60s to the late 60s, there was an awakening just like the one happening today. So many parallels between then and now it's scary.
Back then we got so many people jumping on the bandwagon just because it was the cool thing to do, but never had their heart in the right place. Revolutionary music was replaced by commercially created crap (The Monkeys made for TV band) and "Greed is Good" thinking.
We were NOT looking over the edge like we are today! At least the youth must see that we ARE facing a conflict of dwindling resources and overpopulation.
I hope this drives everybody to take our condition more seriously this time. It was easy to sell us trinkets last time, hope the information age helps us learn from the mistakes of the past.
Right on NMBill. Like, I really dig what you're saying, man. I think you're tracking it. This time around it's less abstract, more immediate.
I think the solution is contained in the lyrics to the song Woodstock: "We got to get ourselves back to the garden". Groovy.
I was there and I was tripping my brains out. It was great. 1/2 million people in squalid conditions and it remained peaceful. The truth is a lot of those "hippies" became "Jesus Freaks" a few years later. You know where they are today? right? Those brain dead supporters of the religious right with tears in there eyes, screaming KILL THE FUCKING DARKIES! And those who became professionals turned out to be a bunch of sell outs. It's these same assholes who are running the banks and the insurance companies etc... Woodstock was a dream that soon morphed into a nightmare. I for one would do it all again if I had the chance.
Hey! Where's my shrink?
Parenthood. That's what causes it. Pop out a sprog (or be party to it), and suddenly the world is a dangerous and confusing place.
http://www.users.bigpond.com/pmurray
http://www.paulmurray.id.au/ageofworms
Boomer-bashing is a popular new sport, apparently based on some of Murdoch's toxic memes. For another view of that period, check out today's article entitled "Under the Hood."
It wasn't all about trippin' and groovin' and gettin' teeny-boppers out of their granny dresses, ya know...
Well Leonard, you sure kicked over the hornets nest with this one! I sense inter generational hostility, maybe your martini offends the wine and cheese set.
I was in college in Boston but missed the memo about Woodstock.
Friends that were actually there remember filth, awful weather, really bad drugs, no great truths but great music by some of the best.
Oh FAR OUT man.
Go ahead. Make fun of our only chance for survival. Hope you don't lose your sense of humor in the next few years.
Leonard Pitts writes about "feckless hippies turning on and turning out vs a Navy flier doing his duty under duress for flag and country." As supposedly worthless and irresponsible as the hippies were [which is the definition of the word feckless], at least those attending the Woodstock festival could not be accused of dropping bombs on people who never threatened anyone in these United States. It should be pointed out to Len that doing one's duty should not always be viewed as something admirable while the soldiers who took part in the GI rebellion back then [and also now] are the true heroes of this country as opposed to a John McCain whose actions, despite what he and the mainstream media have put forth, can be looked upon as being loathsome and truly despicable.
Reread Pitts' article. He is essentially saying similar things as you.
rfloh
I think that Pitts may have been saying that that was the perception of how the media and the public perceived those who had been at Woodstock and that of McCain. So if my view of what Pitts had written is erroneous then my comment can be seen as being a criticism of the commonly held views of both parties involved.
rfloh
It turns out that we both may have been wrong about what Pitts thinks about McCain. In an earlier column that he had written this year, Pitts said of McCain and other veterans that "It strikes me as viscerally wrong... to trivialize, demean or diminish, particularly for political gain, a man's service and sacrifice on behalf of his country."
http://m.dailycamera.com/news/2008/Jul/07/american-civility-goes-02/
As a Vietnam veteran, I am not proud of what I did to those people. Despite Pitts' belief, I see no reason why McCain, a Navy pilot who bombed and killed innocent civilians, should be exempt from being criticized for what he did in Vietnam.
Half-assed milque-toast piece, saying nothing.
Woodstock was an initial manifestation of a "seed idea."
This idea will certainly take some time to grow, but grow it must,
For as Martin Luther King said....
We will either learn to live together as brothers [and sisters]
or
"we will perish as fools."
I believe singing our way to peace stands a better chance of success than fighting our way to peace. I'm 67 and more disappointed than naive.
I am turning 65. Disappointed, too.
I was an active revolutionary in the 60s--so had no time for mob-ins like Woodstock.
But I can say this: my Native ancestors were forbidden to sing their ceremonial songs--so there might be something to your belief.
If you would present what John McCain's fellow POWs have said about him and has come out in CounterPunch no less, you would be much better equipped to knock down his hot air. I wasn't personally at Woodstock, but I wish I had been. On the other hand, the some of the street drug use past a certain point help prevent many from acting in concert with others to bring about needed change in this country at that time. Those who got so carried away by street drugs and dropping out weren't the ones so often out in the street pushing for real change for the better on the Vietnam War and so many other issues. That's just the real deal. Contemplating one's navel so heavily doesn't yield much change at all really. Read what Martin Luther King Jr said about the counter culture in his book "The Trumpet of Conscience." Dr King was right on the mark.
He saw these people as simply being alienated, but not much able to achieve much real change, and his highest praise was for those who were much more politically active and seeking to reform or even revolutionize US politics.
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