Woodstock reconsidered

This past weekend signified the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock festival, a defining event for baby boomers that either makes us smile with nostalgia for times marked by peace, love, mud and music -- or causes us to look back with embarrassment at an era where drug-addled self-indulgence obscured a raging conflict in Southeast Asia and a growing cultural schism at home.

The nostalgic view, I suppose, is the one you get through rose-colored glasses. The latter, on the other hand, strikes me as probably a little too harsh. Two articles I've read in recent days offer some valuable perspective.

I was 16 when the festival played out over three or four days (depending on who's counting) in August 1969. It wasn't until I saw the excellent 1970 documentary, "Woodstock," that the magnitude of the event sank in. (For the record, let me say that Santana's "Soul Sacrifice" and Ten Years After's "Going Home" remain my favorite, most electrifying performances.)

"As the decades roll by, the festival seems more than ever like a fluke: a moment of muddy, disheveled, incredulous grace," Jon Pareles wrote in The New York Times ("Woodstock: A Moment of Muddy Grace.") "It was as much an endpoint as a beginning, a holiday of naïveté and dumb luck before the realities of capitalism resumed. Woodstock’s young, left-of-center crowd — nice kids, including students, artists, workers and politicos, as well as full-fledged L.S.D.-popping hippies — was quickly recognized as a potential army of consumers that mainstream merchants would not underestimate again. There was more to sell them than rolling papers and LPs."

Pareles also writes:

A cynic might see the festival as a prime example of how coddled the baby boomers were in an economy of abundance. The Woodstock crowd, which arrived with more drugs than camping supplies, got itself a free concert, and when the people responsible could no longer handle the logistics, the government bailed them out. Some people took it upon themselves to help others; many just freeloaded.

Still, Woodstock gave virtually everyone involved — ticketholders, gate crashers, musicians, doctors, the police — a sense of shared humanity and cooperation. Trying to get through the weekend, people played nice with one another, which was only sensible. Musicians performed for the biggest audience of their lives. Townspeople and the National Guard pitched in to keep people fed and healthy. No one, The New York Times reported, called the cops “pigs.”

True, true...but for another perspective on those times, consider Richard K. Kolb 's piece in the September issue of VFW magazine. We reprinted it in The Oregonian under the headline "The chasm between Woodstock and the war."

While 400,000 mostly white, affluent young people were partying at Woodstock, Kolb writes, "8,429 miles around the other side of the world, 514,000 mostly young Americans were authentically serving the country that had raised them to place society over self. The casualties they sustained over those four days [Aug. 15-19] were genuine, yet none of the elite media outlets were praising their selflessness."

While three persons died at Woodstock, 109 Americans died in 'Nam over the same period, including 35 in a single day's fighting, Kolb notes.

"So," he concludes, "when you hear talk of the glories of Woodstock -- the so-called "defining event of a generation" -- keep in mind those 109 GIs who served nobly yet are never lauded by the illustrious spokesmen for the 'Sixties Generation.' "

I don't know that the comparison is a fair one -- why not compare combat deaths with homicides or highway deaths over the same four days? But I will concede his point. Back in the day, it was hippies, not soldiers, who captured our attention.

Photo: Larry C. Morris/The New York Times