A High-Tech Museum and Arts Center Stands as Homage to the Muddy Mecca of the ’60s Counterculture
The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts pays homage to Woodstock.
Editor’s note: This story appears in our September 2009 issue.
By Edie Tolchin
When the zoning board of Walkill, N.Y., banned Michael Lang, John Roberts, Joel Rosenman and Artie Kornfeld from holding an outdoor concert, the four 20-somethings improvised.
With less than a month before the big show, they turned to alfalfa farmer Max Yasgur and asked if he’d let them use his 600 acres in Bethel, N.Y.
He said “yes.” The world, and history, said “wow.”
From Aug. 15-18, 1969, Yasgur’s farm served as the muddy setting for Woodstock, the three-day concert initially planned for 50,000. Ultimately, nearly half a million flower children flocked to the world’s largest rock n’ roll event – the high-water mark of the ’60s peace-and-love movement.
That the concert even took place was a minor logistical miracle. Two weeks before the event, Lang and his Woodstock Ventures had sold 180,000 tickets. Yet they had not booked all the acts.
Jimi jams at Woodstock '69.
Fans, freaks and standard bearers of the counter culture, including Rolling Stone, helped spread the word – this long before the advent of MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. In the end, some 32 acts took the stage, including The Band, Richie Havens, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Santana, John Sebastian and the Grateful Dead.
“Said, I’m going down to Yasgur’s Farm, gonna join in a rock and roll band. Got to get back to the land and set my soul free.”
Billed as “An Aquarian Exposition” and “Three Days of Peace and Music,” the weekend of August humidity, intermittent thunderstorms, abundant mud, aromatic weed, sparse food and hippies running out of money provided a challenge for the throngs.
One kid died when a tractor moving garbage accidentally ran over him, at least one other died from a heroin overdose. But all reports indicated that there was no violence – a blissful, three-day assembly of peace, love and music amid outdoor adversities.
“By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong. And everywhere was a song and a celebration…”
Flash forward 40 years to the same location.
The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts now serves as a permanent tribute to the 1969 festival, a $100 million outdoor performing arts center and museum.
The center itself is largely courtesy of Alan Gerry, the wealthy philanthropist, founder and former CEO of Cablevision Industries Inc. He created the Gerry Foundation after he merged CVI with Time Warner Cable in 1996. The mission of the Gerry Foundation was to revitalize Sullivan County, N.Y., and stimulate economic activity; specifically with the conception of the not-for-profit Bethel Woods on the hallowed grounds of the original Woodstock 1969.
Just enter the grounds and you catch the vibes of the “Summer of Love,” with plush lawns and greenery throughout the nearly 2,000 acres. Opened in 2006, the New York Philharmonic performed the resurrected venue’s first concert on July 1 that year.
Your first stop should include a visit to the site’s museum, which opened in 2008 with more than 10,000 square feet of permanent exhibit space, a special exhibit gallery downstairs, an events gallery seating 350 (where, at press time Richie Havens was set to perform the song Freedom on Aug. 14, as part of Woodstock’s 40th anniversary celebration) and a gift shop.
Within the museum there are a total of 20 different films, multimedia exhibit displays, and six “interactives,” all fed via fiber optics to a central room.
Exhibits include a Sixties Timeline featuring the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, the Space Race and the planning of Woodstock. The “Festival Experience” is an immersive exhibit in a 3-story room, with four screens, nine projectors, theatrical lighting and 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound.
“The technical challenge,” says museum director Wade Lawrence, “was to take three projectors and blend them together into one, seamless panoramic view.”
Make sure to “ride” the flower-power converted bus, where you can watch a film of some of the scenes from the original concert.
“The developers had to figure out how to project a film on a school bus,” adds Lawrence. “By rear projection on the windshield.”
Amid the tie-dyed t-shirts and peace symbol key chains at the gift shop, you also can make your own custom posters – including dropping in your face in the original Woodstock crowd.
After some retail therapy along, enter into the expansive lobby and head downstairs. Here, aside from the lavish restrooms, you find the Special Exhibits gallery, with ever-changing memorabilia. During our visit, we saw the original guitar used by Pete Townshend of The Who, and one of the original Woodstock posters.
A merry prankster's SUV.
The big draw was the Orange County Choppers’ commemorative Woodstock-themed motorcycle in the style of Sixties bikes. Soon to be housed at the gallery is “Give Peace A Chance: John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Bed-In for Peace,” featuring photos and stories of Lennon and Ono’s legendary stay at Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel in 1969.
You are now ready for a concert in the outdoor Pavilion Stage or the Terrace Stage. The Terrace Stage is a 1,000-seat outdoor venue, for more intimate concerts, such as Eileen Ivers last year. The Pavilion Stage seats 15,000 (4,500 seats, and space for an additional 10,500 people on a naturally-sloping lawn – with unique backdrops of the original concert site, and the green Sullivan County landscape).
Since its debut in 2006, the Pavilion has hosted Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Tony Bennett, Chicago and Cindy Lauper. The lineup for 2009 included Peter, Paul & Mary, Bob Dylan (who opted out of the 1969 gig reportedly because he was disgusted with hippies hanging out in front of his house), Willie Nelson, and for the 40th Anniversary on Aug. 15 – “The Heroes of Woodstock” – with members of the original concert such as Levon Helm (of The Band), Big Brother and the Holding Company and Canned Heat.
In the fall, there’s the Harvest Festival, held most Sundays in September and October, with a farmers market, pony rides, arts and crafts workshops, corn and hay mazes and live music.
Duke Devlin, 67, is site interpreter for the Bethel Woods complex. He attended the original concert in 1969 and claims he never left.
The bearded, jovial, mucho-tattooed gentleman holds court at the outdoor Monument, and provides tours for celebs and others on his golf cart. The Monument, built in 1984 by Wayne Saward from 5.5 tons of cast iron and concrete, is a stone’s throw from the 1969 concert stage, down the hill from the Museum and Pavilion, and is a must-see for photo-ops before concert sunsets.
Asked to reflect on the contrast between Woodstock 1969 and the modern Bethel Woods era, Devlin smiled.
“Back then we dropped acid,” he said. “And now we drop antacid.”
“We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year-old carbon.
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden…”
Spend the day at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts:
Location: Hurd Road, Bethel, NY (about 10 miles off of Route 17, exit 104, along
Route 17B West).
Web: www.bethelwoodscenter.org
General Info: Phone 866.781.2922
E-mail: [email protected]
Museum Admission: Adults (18 & up) $13
Senior (65 & up) $11
Youth (8 – 17) $9
Children (3 – 7) $4
Child 2 years and under, free with adult
Logistics: Allow at least two hours for a Museum visit. If you are attending an evening concert, the website indicates, “Museums tickets will be sold each day until 1.5 hours before closing time on regular open days and until 1 hour before concert start time on typical concert days. Please call ahead to verify museum hours on concert days.” Make sure to check the Concerts link on the Bethel Woods website for updated events.
