Woodstock ’69 — Still Feelin’ The Love

Woodstock On Vinyl, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 2009, all photos © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

 
 
For last week’s 40th anniversary of Woodstock, I spent a few hours in the studio listening to a vintage copy of the original 3-set Woodstock album on vinyl. Then Liz and I met up with a fellow group of geocachers at the Lake Harriet Band Shell for a potluck and the live music of Woodstock Re-Rocked.

Providence conspired in our favor. Liz’s “parking angels” were in full swing when we drove into the only spot left in the jammed lot next to the band shell. The wind shifted and ferocious bundles of black storm clouds heading straight for us diverted west. We opened our portable lawn chairs, slipped a few flowers in our hair, and rocked out to Santana, Crosby Stills, Nash & Young, Canned Heat, and Jimi Hendrix.

Liz wore patchouli and a tie dye T-shirt. The air temperature was a cool 72 degrees and at dusk we wrapped up in blankets. The Music in the Parks concert event coordinator broke out in her version of Janis Joplin’s Mercedes Benz right before the outdoor screening of an expanded edition of Woodstock. Released on June 9, 2009 in Blu-Ray and DVD, the remastered 40th Anniversary Edition of the film features 19 new performances, adding two extra hours of rare footage.

 

The Woodstock concert was billed as An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music. The Woodstock “dove” symbol was originally drawn as a catbird.

Here are a few other fun facts that were read aloud at Lake Harriet before the film rolled. (I jotted them down in one of my new pocket notebooks):

 

• people who abandoned their cars walked an average of 15 miles to the stage
• 250,000 people never made it to Woodstock that day
• 17 miles of bumper to bumper traffic piled up
• $18 was the 3-day price of admission
• 18 doctors saw 6000 patients with 50 additional doctors flown in from NYC
• only 33 people were arrested for drug charges
• there were 15 cauldrons of rice-raisin combo made by Lisa Law and the Hog Farm
• 60 public telephones
• a lone 80 foot stage
• 150 volunteer cops, 346 NYC policemen who volunteered
• 450 unfenced cows
• 600 portable toilets
• 1300 lbs of food ferried in by emergency copters
• cost was $50,000 to use Yasgur’s farm
• 315,000 feet of film was shot, 120 hours straight through
• 1/2 million long distance calls made first day of festival
• 1/2 million franks eaten the first day

 

In 1996, the movie Woodstock was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” I was too young to attend the concert. But the year I entered high school, the movie Woodstock was released and 400,000 ripples from Max Yasgur’s 600 acre dairy farm could be heard echoing through the halls of Red Land. We are still celebrating the music 40 years later.

Yet I have to be honest — after almost 45 minutes of long, drawn out guitar riffs from the Grateful Dead, Canned Heat, and Creedence Clearwater Revival, we left before the screening ended. It was already 11:30 p.m. and Liz had to work early the next morning. Maybe I’m getting too old to make it through two extra hours of Woodstock. Still, when we drove by the shadow of the Lake Creature on our way home, we felt peaceful and full from the experience, a Summer night of music in the park with Woodstock fans, old and young.

 
 

 
 

I’m looking forward to Ang Lee’s new film Taking Woodstock scheduled to be released August 28th. The movie is based on the memoirs and memories of Elliot Tiber. In 1969, Tiber was an interior designer in Greenwich Village. That June he’d been at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in the Village, when patrons fought back against police brutality, touching off the modern Gay Rights movement.

Elliot Tiber felt empowered by Stonewall but still staked to the family business – a run-down Catskills motel called the El Monaco. He moved back to save the motel and became instrumental to Woodstock by offering a permit and connecting Michael Lang of Woodstock Ventures with Max Yasgur, gestures that would mark his place in Woodstock history.

I want to wrap up with my favorite piece of nostalgia about the concert. The iconic cover of Woodstock was shot by photographer Burk Uzzle, a Life magazine alumnus and a member of the elite Magnum photo agency (Uzzle also shot the funerals of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy). During a year of great violence, the 1969 photo exudes a sense of peace.

The couple in the famous photograph, Nick Ercoline and Bobbi Kelly, are still together (here’s what they look like now). They had dated for only 10 weeks when their photo was taken by Uzzle (unknown to them until the Woodstock album came out). Nick and Bobbi, now 60 years old, married two summers after Woodstock and are going strong.

To me, that’s what Woodstock was really about.

The love.

 

 

Woodstock At The Lake Harriet Band Shell, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 2009, all photos © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

 
 

Resources:

• Burk Uzzle Biography at Laurence Miller Gallery
• Video of photographer Burk Uzzle – Woodstock Photographer: “I Had a Very Violent Decade” – Burk Uzzle discusses iconic Woodstock photograph on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams (original photo in background)
• A Woodstock Moment – 40 Years Later at the Smithsonian – the story of Nick & Bobbi Ercoline (with photos)
• Woodstock concert’s undercover lovers, Nick and Bobbi Ercoline, 40 years after summer of love at NY Daily News – Music (2009 photos of couple)
• History of Max Yasgur’s Farm
• Photographer Burk Uzzle — Woodstock: 40th Anniversary
• Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock at Film in Focus
• Woodstock 69 Festival & Concert Homepage
• Back to Woodstock on Dateline NBC – Story, photos, video of Lisa Law (of the Hog Farm who was there with her baby daughter and helped to feed Woodstock) and an interview with Elliot Tiber

 

-posted on red Ravine, Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

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“Assassin’s Bullet Kills Kennedy” – Where Were You?

Assassin’s Bullet Kills Kennedy, vintage newspaper found last summer in a box of old family photographs, November 23rd, 1963, The Augusta Chronicle — South’s Oldest Newspaper — Est. 1785, Augusta, Georgia, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

It’s the anniversary week of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Could it possibly be that 45 years have passed? Last summer, when rummaging through family photographs at my uncle’s, I happened upon a vintage newspaper that headlined Saturday Morning, November 23rd, 1963, the day after the Kennedy shooting. The handwriting of some member of my family was in the top left corner — “killed Friday morning.”

The Kennedy assassination rattled me as a child. I wrote about it a few years ago, and discovered Bryan Woolley’s Dallas Times Herald account of the facts from the morning of November 22nd, 1963. It was strange to be holding a yellowed newspaper from that day, one that had circulated through the town where I was born. There were front page interviews, reactions of everyday people walking down Broad Street.

Where were you the day Kennedy was shot?

Though I was young, I clearly remember the headline photograph of LBJ, Lady Bird and Jackie. It wasn’t until later I would learn it was taken aboard Air Force One by White House photographer, Cecil Stoughton, at the swearing in of Lyndon B. Johnson. Stoughton was close to the Kennedys and rode in the fifth car in the motorcade. He heard the shots that fatally wounded JFK; he was at Parkland Hospital when Kennedy died.

 

The Augusta Chronicle Caption — Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as President in the cabin of the presidential plane as Mrs. John F. Kennedy stands at his side. Federal Judge Sarah T. Hughes administers the oath. Background, Jack Valenti, administrative assistant to Johnson, Albert Thomas, D-Tex; Mrs. Johnson and Rep. Jack Brooks, D-Tex. This photo was made by Capt. Cecil Stoughton, official White House photographer, who was the only camera-man allowed to record the ceremony.

Out of the 12,000 negatives Stoughton shot during the Kennedy years, none would be as important as these – he was the only photographer allowed aboard Air Force One that day. And his were the only shots that proved Johnson had actually been sworn in. According to Stoughton’s son, “He took about 20 pictures but the first one almost didn’t happen because his Hasselblad, the Rolls-Royce of cameras, malfunctioned.” A photographer’s nightmare.

From Bryan Woolley’s account of the facts, here’s exactly what happened in those few moments that changed Cecil Stoughton’s life, and the world:

Judge Hughes boarded the plane at 2:35 and was handed a      
small white card with the oath scrawled on it. Capt. Cecil        
Stoughton, an Army Signal Corps photographer, tried to arrange    
the crowd in the cramped stateroom so that he could take a        
picture of the ceremony. “We’ll wait for Mrs. Kennedy,” Johnson   
said. “I want her here.”                                          
                                                                  
     Mrs. Kennedy came out of the bedroom still wearing the       
blood-soaked pink suit. Johnson pressed her hand and said, “This  
is the saddest moment of my life.” The photographer placed her on 
Johnson’s left, Lady Bird on his right. Judge Hughes, the first   
woman to administer the presidential oath, was shaking.           
                                                                  
     “What about a Bible?” asked one of the witnesses. Someone    
remembered that President Kennedy had kept a Bible in the bedroom 
and went to get it.                                               
                                                                  
     “I do solemnly swear…”                                     
                                                                  
     The oath lasted 28 seconds. At 2:38 p.m., Lyndon B. Johnson  
became the 36th President of the United States. The big jet’s     
engines already were screaming. “Now, let’s get airborne,” he     
said. 

LBJ & Jackie Kennedy, JFK In Augusta Chronicle – “Little People Numbed,” Lee Harvey Oswald, shots of vintage copy of The Augusta Chronicle, November 23rd, 1963, Augusta, Georgia, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

The Augusta Chronicle Caption — Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested in Dallas and charged Friday night with the murder of President Kennedy. Oswald was captured in a downtown Dallas theater after an alert cashier notified police a suspicious looking man had entered the theater shortly after the shooting. Oswald attempted to shoot his captors inside the theater but his pistol misfired. Four years ago Oswald said he was applying for Russian citizenship. His wife is Russian.

Stoughton had an amazing collection of photographs and memorabilia. He appeared on Public Television’s Antiques Roadshow in June 2007 where they estimated his collection at $75,000. Cecil Stoughton died a few weeks ago, on Monday, November 3rd, 2008. By some odd twist of fate, a pre-scheduled, taped segment of his 2007 Antiques Roadshow episode was rebroadcast that Monday night, about an hour after he died.

World Feels Shot’s Impact, vintage copy of The Augusta Chronicle — South’s Oldest Newspaper — Est. 1785, November 23rd, 1963, Augusta, Georgia, all photos © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

There is one last thing that struck me about The Augusta Chronicle account. Above the headline World Feels Shot’s Impact is a smaller headline — Little People Numbed. It reminded me of our recent presidential elections in this country, how the whole world was watching — and how it was the little people — everywoman, everyman — who really made the difference.

The Augusta Chronicle  – World Feels Shot’s Impact
Saturday, November 23rd, 2008

Word of President Kennedy’s assassination struck the world’s capitals with shattering impact, leaving heads of state and the man in the street stunned and grief-stricken. While messages of condolence poured into the White House from presidents, premiers and crowned heads, the little people of many lands reacted with numbed disbelief.

Pubs in London and cafes in Paris fell silent, as the news came over radio and television.

In Moscow, a Russian girl walked weeping along the street. At U.N. headquarters in New York, delegates of 111 nations bowed their heads in a moment of silence.

In Buenos Aires, newspapers sounded sirens reserved for news of the utmost gravity.

Britain’s Prime Minister Douglas-Home sent condolences and Sir Winston Churchill branded the slaying a monstrous act.

“The loss to the United States and to the world is incalculable,” Sir Winston declared. “Those who come after Mr. Kennedy must strive the more to achieve the ideals of world peace and happiness and dignity to which his presidency was dedicated.”

-posted on red Ravine, Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

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The 1960’s — What Was America Reading?

BookMark, Minneapolis Central Library, downtown Minneapolis, through the rain, August 2007, opened May 2006, architecture by the design team of Cesar Pelli & Associates, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Time for another decade of bestselling books. At the end of the 1960’s, gas was 39¢ a gallon, a 1962 Jaguar XKE would set you back $4,500, and James Bond in Goldfinger grossed $23 million at the box office. Twiggy was big (I just saw her flash by the TV screen last night on America’s Top Model), along with hiphuggers, bellbottoms, collarless Nehru jackets, and cashmere turtlenecks.

People were buzzing about Foster Grants, Duncan yo-yo’s, new math, Dolby noise reduction, macrame, K-Mart, the Twist, the Chicago 8, draft dodgers, Teflon, and St. Louis’s Gateway arch, the world’s tallest monument.

The American 60’s were turbulent, violent, optimistic, free loving, and slow moving. If it was your generation you were either hip, jock, rock, or nerd. If it wasn’t, well, it lives on in the mythology that surrounds it.

The 60’s were big enough to hold Capote, Sontag, Kesey, Plath, Robbins, Baldwin, Ginsberg, Puzo, Hailey, Vonnegut, Nin, Miller, Didion, and Vidal. You can tell a lot about a person by the books they read. You can also tell a lot about a culture. In the 1960’s, for better or worse, here’s what America was reading.

1 9 6 0 ‘ s – B E S T S E L L E R S

F I C T I O N

1. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone
2. Franney and Zooey, J. D. Salinger
3. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
4. The Winter of Our Discontent, John Steinbeck
5. The Reivers, William Faulkner
6. Dearly Beloved, Anne Morrow Lindbergh
7. The Shoes of the Fisherman, Morris L. West
8. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour–An Introduction, J. D. Salinger
9. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John Le Carré
10. Up the Down Staircase, Bel Kaufman
11. The Man with the Golden Gun, Ian Fleming
12. Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann
13. All in the Family, Edwin O’Connor
14. The Adventurers, Harold Robbins
15. The Confessions of Nat Turner, William Styron
16. The Chosen, Chaim Potok
17. The Exhibitionist, Henry Sutton
18. Airport, Arthur Hailey
19. The Salzburg Connection, Helen MacInnes
20. The Tower of Babel, Morris L. West
21. Preserve and Protect, Allen Drury
22. Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth
23. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
24. The Andromeda Strain, Michael Crichton
25. Naked Came the Stranger, Penelope Ashe
26. The House on the Strand, Daphne du Maurier
27. The Love Machine, Jacqueline Susann
28. Myra Breckinridge, Gore Vidal
29. Christy, Catherine Marshall
30. The Pretenders, Gwen Davis

 

           Minneapolis Central Library, looking straight up, through the rain,
Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 2007, opened May 2006, architecture
by the design team of Cesar Pelli & Associates, photo © 2007 by
QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

1 9 6 0 ‘ s – B E S T S E L L E R S

N O N F I C T I O N

1. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer
2. The Conscience of a Conservative, Barry Goldwater
3. I Kid You Not, Jack Paar
4. Between You, Me and the Gatepost, Pat Boone
5. Better Homes and Gardens Sewing Book
6. Calories Don’t Count, Dr. Herman Taller
7. Sex and the Single Girl, Helen Gurley Brown
8. Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck
9. The Joy of Cooking: New Edition, Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker
10. Security Is a Thumb and a Blanket, Charles M. Schulz
11. I Owe Russia $1200, Bob Hope
12. Profiles in Courage: Memorial Edition, John F. Kennedy
13. In His Own Write, John Lennon
14. Reminiscences, General Douglas MacArthur
15. A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
16. A Day in the Life of President Kennedy, Jim Bishop
17. How To Be a Jewish Mother, Dan Greenburg
18. A Gift of Prophecy, Ruth Montgomery
19. A Thousand Days, Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
20. The Making of the President, 1964, Theodore H. White
21. How to Avoid Probate, Norman F. Dacey
22. In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
23. Phyllis Diller’s Housekeeping Hints, Phyllis Diller
24. Misery Is a Blind Date, Johnny Carson
25. Death of a President, William Manchester
26. Edgar Cayce–The Sleeping Prophet, Jess Stearn
27. The Weight Watcher’s Cook Book, Jean Nidetch
28. The Peter Principle, Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull
29. My Life and Prophecies, Jeane Dixon with René Noorberger
30. Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs, Linda Goodman

 

 

-posted on red Ravine, Thursday, August 30th, 2007

-Resources:  1960’s Bestsellers List at Cader Books, Writer’s Dream Tools, and The Friends of the Minneapolis Public Library

-related to posts: The 1950’s — What Was America Reading?, The 1970’s —  What Was America Reading?

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