KPR Presents: Woodstock, 50 Years Later

oh oh i just said oh this month marks the fiftieth anniversary of the infamous nineteen sixty nine woodstock festival and j mcintyre and today on tv are present that to the garden awards art center is hosting a series of events this month highlighting the role that woodstock plays in the american imagination fifty years later including a special photography exhibit in a new documentary professor david farber will be speaking on the woodstock in the sixties as part of the art center's events he teaches history at the university of kansas specializing in social change and counterculture thanks for coming in today dr farber good to be here with you look at a woodstock in just a minute but let's start our talk about the nineteen sixties in the broader sense i think when i say the sixties it brings to mind a

particular picture would start protests against the vietnam war hippies drugs and rock n roll but america in the early nineteen sixties was not the same as america at that and a bad decade to respect of the earlier nineteen sixties and draw that picture for us nearly nineteen sixties i think most americans today be shocked to look at pictures most americans in the early sixties look like they're straight out of the nineteen fifties is no long hair yet there's the students wearing dresses and suits and ties to go to college it is not the sixties ra imagination on the one hand on the other hand it was an arab protests but the protest was overwhelmingly coming from the civil rights movement in some ways the civil rights movement was a nineteen fifties phenomenon think of dr king in the bus boycott we think rosa parks the supreme court decision or whatever nineteen sixty february first to be specific really did foreshadow what was to come that's when a small group for young men

college kids decided to sit in the local wars in greensboro north carolina and that protests by young people led by young people organized by young people there was the ad that in some ways of the sixties of our imagination and young people with say the basic questions about the united states we mean to challenge what's the meaning of equality or should freedom day with the united states his role in the world what's capitalism good forum for whom is it could all those questions or just blossom from that very first sit in movement and figuring it sixty but by four young black people and is the idea that that was led by a young people that seems just normal to us in the states but i think that that was considered pretty revolutionary at the time you know you have to remember that politics is usually been the business of adults conventional politics i mean you have to be a certain age to be a congressman had to be a certain age to be a senator or president you have to be a certain age to vote you have to be twenty one at that point to vote so young people were not supposed to be the fighter of politics but those young black men and women

in their early night his sixties they said enough because i think they have in some senses less to lose they're willing to throw caution to the wind they're willing to get arrested and they created a kind of template a marker for courageous young people going to do in the nineteen sixties and student left follow the anti war movement followed the women's movement followed gay liberation followed one movement after another which young people played fundamental roles and then of course there was the counterculture which was the youth rebellion though the cultural tide the vietnam war and america's involvement in that feed into had the development of this movement so i think a really funny color factual question to ask is if there'd been no one vietnam with arab in the so called sixties hard to say certainly the vietnam or concentrated the minds of young people mean if you were a young man was only men are going to be eligible for the draft during the vietnam era

yet he easily thought that far away a nation that faraway war is very real to me and a very different than what happened with iraq and afghanistan we had an all volunteer army in those days people had drafted for young men and women they thought about it what does this warming is this war good is it not good though it concentrated the mind and the more young people tended to learn about the war in vietnam the more questions a hat so that between nineteen sixty five the united states essentially militarize the war in vietnam in nineteen sixty seven first tens of thousands then hundreds of thousands and i think it's there's a millions of young people began to doubt and protest and demonstrate against the war the last of the sixties in some ways the sixties we think of is in some ways born in protest to that one are least that's one piece of that and visit with director david thoreau the university of kansas he's speaking at back to the garden a series of events at the lawrence arts center this month celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of woodstock better forever you

teach at the university of kansas what role did colleges and universities play in a nineteen sixties another thing we can't forget about is that until really after world war two even middle class americans didn't go to college was really unusual i think in nineteen forty only six percent of americans had graduated college post world war two that begins to change the famous gi bill brings young men overwhelmingly in the college campuses in the nineteen forties and fifties for the first time but it is again that infamous baby boomer generation as the first in which middle class kids i kind of expected to go to college and there's some financial support to do so the federal government began to fund universities the career path for young people wanna take to make a success of themselves and the sixties kind of means that you go to universities and colleges boom this explosion in the numbers of people going to college it's you got this period life eighteen to twenty two or so in which young people are

suddenly among their own peers there at this institution that's rebuilt unquestioning received knowledge that combination to is what helps make the nineteen sixties the sixties thoughts which our attention from the decade to woodstock in particular how did this rural area in the catskill mountains come to host woodstock and how did that and then go from being just a concert to being at the concert of the decade was that has become a kind of symbol for one of the great rebellions of that era and it's important to differentiate what we've been talking about the political protests of the year with the cultural belly that took place really in the last half of the nineteen sixties and well into the seventies far more people for themselves as members of a car culture that kosher rebellion they never protested against the war or picketing or stood up protest law tobacco coaches even bigger than these movements movements within talking about and i think a couple are smart young promoters

in new york saw an opportunity to do something interesting with their cultural billion they would have a festival music vessel they hope to bring me the biggest names in rock n roll to woodstock new york indiana course they didn't actually go to woodstock the vessels closer to death only worth about forty miles or so away from the original woodstock site the name of the company that was called what's tech company that has the name comes from peru woodstock festival and a festival i think if i'd imaginations of the promoters probably of the musicians and probably of those young people thought hey this is classified over we can see some great acts became something bigger than that go further talking about would second so i want to jump back to something you just said and that's the counterculture itself how would you define the counterculture in a way that is broader than say participation in an anti war demonstrations or um or sit ins or are that connectivity

so of course the car culture is not like club membership ticket you didn't have to pay dues was sort of self identified and does something to say well all of protestors demonstrators they did see themselves as a kind of political counter establishment kind of counterculture but they go on a young people just tied up in youth culture sort of edge their way into being a participant in the counterculture and to tell you the truth i think there was one real ticket to the counterculture was drugs so in the early nineteen sixties essentially next and no respectable middle class kids smoked marijuana even by the mid sixties it was very rare but woodstock take place in nineteen sixty nine and that's when things began detect marijuana in illegal drugs everywhere in the united states you could go to jail for ten years for being caught with two marijuana cigarettes to joints so to smoke dope to smoke weed major part of a criminal underground you're part of our culture and course there

are drugs lsd a drug that really exploded in the nineteen sixties that hadn't existed until the nineteen forties was another one of those kind of tickets to another place and those hard to expose illegal substances i think where a piece of what made the common cold turkey more risky enterprise than simply cheering on the beatles at shea stadium in the early nineteen sixties i mean there's a venn diagram between mainstream youth culture and the car culture of some people i went back and forth day trippers they recall the counterculture was a more committed approach to really challenging the status quo but was sexuality what was pleasure what was mom's medicine just supposed to contain what did that didn't tie so there will re thinking of the everyday ways in which people experienced there cultural and social lives so sex and drugs rock n roll yeah there's a real fly in woodstock became a kind of embodiment of that sex and drugs and rock n roll why think the drugs took off in the nineteen sixties in a

way that they hadn't in say the nineteen fifties or nineteen forties here it is a really tough question is so wide it suddenly drug use illegal drug use exploded the late nineteen sixties some ways it was just a con a continuum again it's really weird to think about but in a nineteen fifties drought remember the numbers right there are forty million prescriptions for amphetamines in the united states about legal your doctor would give you amphetamines housewives are overwhelmingly giving prescriptions for also recent depressants barbiturates of different kinds of alley a man another thing so the drug use was really widely accepted in the nineteen fifties it was done through medical authorities could to mrs robinson exactly right valley of the dolls the famous bestselling novel by health problems about young women in various appeals courts alcoholism was widespread in the united states people smoke cigarettes like crazy basically almost everybody smokes cigarettes soap doesn't it when those young people think this like or mama then you're allowed to get drunk you take nicotine twenty thirty times a

day moms have to come sleep in a way her prescription pills there's been charge up with amphetamines some drug use cut a funny thing to think of this should apply but the weird thing was mama they can get a prescription for the doctor but she bought some marijuana from the guy on the corner and then he could go to jail or you could go to jail the car culture comes out of that kind of that rupture between what's good consumption with bed consumption and sex is another big piece of that but that's for another story maybe now that's when the story talk to me about how sex figured into best selling sexuality is is the other half of that equation so again if you if you look at the university of kansas in the early nineteen sixties i think we're going to be shocked at the ways in which these eighteen and twenty year old she's the phrase girls were treated girls had ruled perennials i recall it being a dorm at a certain hour you could have a boy on the

floor of her dormitory they were all these regulations knew all about one thing controlling women's sexuality and the boys didn't have those roles that he had this hypocrisy i'm some of the early student protests here at the receipt kansas were not about the war in vietnam there about arrivals there were about was called student responsibility sure that young people eighteen twenty even twenty two right be allowed to control their own bodies and their own lives the steam responsibility movement took off her tay you will before the free speech movement took off the shores of california berkeley something there's a lot of questions about like everything else who gets to make up the rules and it helps the fact that in try to get your a nineteen sixty one suddenly there was a contraceptive pill available that could take away some of the terror and it was terror if you're a middle class kid you get pregnant or your life could be relieved to know that was a way to cut a finesse some of those fears how cops about sexuality

to technology social pressure both young men and women feeling the need to express themselves as individuals are not be restricted as if they were still children all combines to make sex another one of these arenas in which fundamental questions are being asked so that kind of sexual expression but sometimes god the sexual revolution will be another piece of this that combined youth culture color cultural border land between what respectable and what's not again i'm visited after david farber he teaches history at the university of kansas he'll be one of the featured speakers at back to the garden which the lawrence arts center is hosting this month in conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of woodstock mr farber there are a lot of concerts and before woodstock there were lots of concerts after woodstock what made that concert different i think it's true that we tend to think of woodstock this may be the first and the greatest

mainly the only just concert of its time of course not at all the case i'm a couple years earlier that been the monterey pop festival in southern california there's been a huge hit and many great acts many of the same ones who show up a woodstock were there but there was a difference between many of the vessels that went before woodstock and woodstock itself the vessels that came before woodstock overwhelmingly were well that are there to make money they're there to promote x they were kind of a handshake deal between record producers record company as an impresario was and things were pretty state and straightforwardly set chairs a new list of the music and we cheered and went on schedule great music was often played but woodstock was a different one an order of magnitude more people showed up it would stop so when the concert promoters started it would stop trying to make this thing happen they told the people responsible for progress said oh yeah well maybe thirty thousand well gosh they would maybe fifty thousand would come out be awesome

well of course over four hundred thousand ten times as many as half a million people began to start a concert they're promoted for money and the tickets if memory serves eighteen dollars in advance buzz a lot now because a lot of money back then how to box but what happened at woodstock the festival was all about a hundred and eighty thousand or so people didn't pay for those tickets in advance other people just started showing up and they started showing up not and thousands are tens of thousands are putting hundreds of thousands and it just kind of blew down the fences that were pretty casual fences around the festival and to me became a free festival a free festival four hundred fifty thousand or so young people who they're not just for four hours of entertainment but for what turned out to be from friday late afternoon all weighed in monday as act after act kmart so kind of became more or less a free festival

there was no place really to camp they didn't stay in hotels they just sort of sprawled out on the grounds there's also the punch bowl festival outside and suddenly you had an event a kind of being of the store it's not just a commercial professionally organized festival were people paid cain went to what have become i kind of use right of celebration occurred and i think there are three to ten a woodstock one is that for a fifty thousand people went there and then there was a movie made about the event and so then not for fifty thousand but millions of people sort of vicariously experienced this dream a half day festival and then of course it just sort of rippled through the popular culture of our time so even today we're talking about woodstock so without became more than just one more place with professional musicians play for money in front of this pink spectators it was a

phenomenon tell me some of that your favorite stories from woodstock part of the allure of woodstock i think is that it also had a couple minutes barton at that defies it in the kind of normal concert performance really go in and everything's lined up as it supposedly will one there was a kind of immature our production to the guy in charge michael lang young guy in his twenties trying to pull off an amazing event but our ally money at just wasn't that well organized so there was no easy entrance into the festival the result famously is a newer turnpike is just jammed for miles with people which may get even musicians had a hard time getting him out of the festival so the great story very funny story source shown in the movie is the opening act was supposed to be a fairly popular white pop group they can literally get there

so that i'm supposed to come i think the second or third a guy named richie havens can cool comes out of the world great singer thom singer songwriter kind of guy he gets upon the stage not in your use post it nobody's sure he does is that and as such as bosley thirty forty five minutes to forty five minutes to look him or like do more keep going he plays for like an hour after these like i don't have any more songs at every song i have been around these plaintive tune in his guitar and they're like no man you just it play it and how his hair he pulls out this song freedom and out of the scene in the movie because i'm free freely just keep singing the song it's incredible voice is incredible guitar plays great guitar players and it was odd odd enough and it's electrifying and plant was the split song was possibly that long was mostly the opening act but i think it set everything in emotion as is black

r and b folk scene you're gospel singer guy who just lights up the stage and there were perfectly emblematic phrase to say not once not over of freedom three dr besser at the core this car cultures and is at the core a woodstock site the slogan that young people can seize as alice has a great opening move that's totally spontaneous unexpected yeah and then you got to go right to the head and there's a one again everybody knows a story but it's a guinness discuss funny by nineteen sixty nine there is this phenomenal guitar player who'd been over in england for a while american do name jimi hendrix and jimi hendrix west and may be the hottest act in all of music it better than the rolling stones at this point everybody was the year jimi hendrix and divide was opposite iraq was successful and he says i want to be the final act all of the you know the headline i should be the headliner or like okay jamie well the headline or in this case maybe you apply saturday

night mlb a good time is it now the headline always plays last huge star with the least known guys you move to the top like but that you knew it'll be really late sunday night if the headline what gore's areas there's always rain storms and lightning bolts in the festival as delayed and delayed and jimi hendrix doesn't get on stage until monday morning when officials was to be completely over and his only like thirty thousand people left i mean it's it's been up three of days have long day's out when the modern in the rain and this is like a theater is that when he gets up there and of course he plays like there's five three thousand people there and he does that incredibly famous mind blowing is the right word rendition of the star spangled banner which again becomes can amble of this critique of the united states showed no stage commissioner thing about bedtime is a kind of

incredible patriotic owed to the united states is both at the same time and there is richie havens starts with freedom jimi hendrix ends the show with this wild a letter cassatt version of the star spangled banner to black men speaking to overwhelmingly white audience at that point you know what's the link i'd been visiting with dr david farber is the royalty roberts distinguished professor of history at the university of kansas professor barbara will be speaking on woodstock and the sixties on august twenty six at seven pm at the lawrence arts center we'll have more about their exhibit back to the garden will also hear from kansas who were part of the counterculture scene right here in lawrence that's coming up escape your present continues right after this

from the university of kansas we are kansas public radio we're nine he won five lawrence and nine he won three oscar johnson city support katie are present on kansas public radio comes from the mta each theater to crown center presenting in the heights by lin manuel miranda in the heights is that culturally diverse hip hop musical from the creator of hamilton and in the heights three september first at the n th theater at crown center whether you're passionate for unbiased in depth news of beautiful music are fascinating conversations you can feed your passion right here with a pr show your support for kansas public radio and the programs that feed your mind and news that matters i give now at kansas public radio dot org slash support and thanks we

miss it we are an entire day we are present we're heading back to the garden i'm j mcintyre this summer is the fiftieth anniversary of the woodstock three days music piece and live in upstate new york we're celebrating with a sneak peek at a new exhibit at the lawrence arts center first kansas had its own bit of counterculture going on in nineteen

sixty nine and the early nineteen seventies kansas public radio and the watkins museum of history collected oral histories from kansans at their free state free spirits exhibit last year we're going to hear excerpts from those interviews featuring lawrence residents rob chestnut randy warren john and ana rips joanne thing though and this from dan especially of topeka we had an organization formed mostly at the methodist and center tom are enormous a campus pastor the organization's institutional racism research council we had a series of four public meetings but in particular i'd like to talk about a sport how one sunday in march of nineteen sixty nine when we had a sit in at the holiday inn to protest the fact that the manager did not hire a black people so tom ray arnett myself and a white man who was married to a black woman all three of those were hauled in to this very building to talk with

the city manager buford watson who was very upset with this having the nerve to have a sit in and he was complaining about working class citizens in lawrence kan we're upset about us he was complaining about the fact that he had to hire a lot of police officers on overtime basically what we did was went into the holiday inn at about ten o'clock in the morning in order coffee and had conversation and the good people came out of their church's after church to discover that we were in the restaurant and they walked out the police were standing outside watching this and finally the manager told us to leave and so we left and nothing happened i didn't notice anything but there was a lot of consternation and i just remember sitting in history watson's office very fine man who's very concerned very dedicated to his profession each year to sell royally

and that i remember quite well did it make a difference in terms of the holiday and policies yes they did change and in fact that afternoon the manager told us one of them serve meals for the wrestler that it did change he said the change was a very quiet thing from my point of view and then we went on but as they were expecting a lot of violence or something in the thing happened we walked out when all those at another and then i might want to talk about occurred the day that abbie hoffman came to carry you an ugly was april the ninth nineteen seventy oh my gosh the plans were apparently that we vaguely radicals were going to go up the hill meet at potter's like and try should strong whole well i don't know about that but then i had a pair stilts and my feet were eight feet off the ground i had that's anti school and

so i walked on stilts and there are about two thousand people standing around and i was having such a good time walking on stilts i would act like those attacking people may run like kids away from me screaming and giggling and then i got close to the potters lake and everyone was yelling jump jump jump in and i jump into the lake and then everyone went oh they just walked home but what was fascinating was mike pappas was there from cbs news and he had been told that we were on heroin while time just like a medicine or berkeley you wait and see and he was so disappointed he said they're just some dumb flow jump into like that and so that's what he got after come here all the way from chicago we called a dead duck boots just people that were trying to go back to land after a lot of efforts on our part after graduation key to try to figure out how to change the world you know and for the better and acknowledges the crazy hippie stuff that that was

that was old hat it was like not worth anything or change education change change the m humidity of the face of america in their foreign policy and all that kind of stuff so we were busy busy busy bees you're idealistic very very idealistic and i'm very much into education and it's spreading it rather than just look at a crazy lifestyle and i'd gotten our permission to education real radical education and try to radicalize young people so when you say you were about an educational and radical education what you mean by that one of the things we do in the house and it was under the auspices of the ucla think that universally christian movement you define cult client your book launch and we would for weekends we would take to get into younger in or whatever and we would take them into

kansas city and we have a bunch of programs were trying to expose them to yeah the black community and the racial situation going on they're protesting getting involved or protesting or something of that safeway stores that time but i should get these guys in fall and basically we were kind of as one guy told us it sounds like boot camp for the revolution of what we're doing we're in trying to counteract the lives of the early you know most of the people you know i was like you only you know twenty years old a lot of people are going on the century like eighteen nineteen or younger but that's kind of what we were involved in it was great it was very it was heady times lot of changes took place you know just a rally in within me personally a lot of turmoil course in all that you know updated but that

it was there was a sense of actual hope i think freedom and the okra sweet that we're in is a revolution at my job was detailing cars the inside a car's my buddy his job was detailing outside of cars the scars of a bright neon we showed up one morning and there was this beautiful one term ford like nineteen forty nine pickup truck and head hart krishna bills on it and it was like totally get out and i was in that role because i love trucks so on look in this truck over to buy this truck you know we show up at seven in the morning and as in the owner goes yup a pay cash for these guys robbery so they want to sell a song lookin this truck over looking underneath of it and underneath in the rails are these blue shirts buttoned pearl snap shirts and in every pocket with this ice wells of hashish so as a eighteen year old with my buddy it's like look what i found

and earliest cause from reagan in on something that was going on at the time so we took the shirts stashed away thinking whoa whoa you know gold mine in about sometime in the afternoon these guys show up looking for a jew fine eating are trapped inside and then didn't find a thing in the whole time we are and you know these guys are long hair debate they were interesting so we shine that on saw the truck and we became the most popular guys in tampa that was my summer experience so consequently when i started school i enrolled late didn't take any classes i needed i lasted a semester but i hung around town hung out the motorcycle guys cause of murderous motorcycles and work in tehran in a morgue miles motorcycle shop in sight

of a film that i don't walk around it was so well time i was maybe a little bit of a way of girl and that was ok did you sense appetite imitate you were part of a countercultural you were rejecting absolutely i get my father i arrived i say hello to finance the patrol when i was in the army and it didn't do anything for me ok well don't you know i really did it when i was in college i already kind of started down this graduate from college in nineteen seventy two slavery started down this down this half of being a certainty what about media what that meant to me was that and honestly there was a group of people that i could hang with that accepted me because the sorority girls and some of the other properties like i wasn't one of

them so i didn't have our clicker a group and this group everybody was just because the requests did you feel like at that time they you could make a difference this do you realize that the mickey mouse club tommy every day when i was a kid i was one of the leaders of the twenty first century and nine but i drank that cooling i was little but i had two older siblings who were that affect my brother graduate more time sixty nine and my sister and seventy one so a lot of their friends were really caught up in that time but i grew up just south of the field house on twentieth street and probably my most visited memory was there in the time after the fire up at the end you know the union when there was a lot of you know curfews and stuff and of course we lived about two blocks from the armory there on twenty

first iowa so myself and a couple of kids of course we were not just be out after seven or a caucus night we sneak up there and watched all the people write in and then all the trucks fan out who were gone up on campus you know during that time so it you know i think it was really interesting cause we were too young to realize how intense it was but then i also knew because my brother was eligible for the draft sitting in the letter with him in a bunch of his buddies and and he was very lucky senses draft number was three fifty nine which we found out there in the lottery but so i was a big relief but of course he had friends that ended up either having to get drafted or going into you know different reserves or whatever to china to try to get away from the draft so it was an interesting time my sister there was a lot of unrest mr tye at that time sort of filtered down from the

university so you know in some ways it was really exciting and really interesting but also scary at the same time remember when i had that woke me up and told me that the unions bernie do know we didn't see it they couldn't possibly be somebody in our borough but we know that what the heck and i was so upset and fbi said no i can't even think about that i should not have helped but i didn't i was just like so horrifying did you feel worried about the sense of unrest on campus oh well it doesn't offer while i don't think there's enough when we when we had that that whole year then there's kent state and then there was the unrest here because so upset about the war that we joined a group that broke the other way into the connected to this field i'm still around and bring to field and held hands and would let the rights you guys paraded for this jason wesco who was my great uncle's best friend a hot nevertheless that that

it just it was just so much is going on a week when so concerned about the war and racism and those are the two things are a particular concern about and one is that everything that law think they they tried to cross prosecuted and cancer west go i wrote him a letter identify myself and apologizing because it looks so to stir the stresses his last time you and i said you know my my uncle's had learned and believe me for this too but and we got nothing personal to you it's nothing personal to him is to say we were reading the names of the dead are reading the names of the kansas students had died consumers just didn't have that in vietnam and begging them not to go not telling them they were pretty baby killers are like that i never saw that and i saw that was ever was always like we love you don't go and if you're back god bless them put in that we could do you know but yep both is turkic people not be upset enough about the social issues and then the reaction that we got then realize that well or can ask and forget it was gorgeous to defer or super

skinny or scare people the graphics part is what really drew me to the counterculture part of the world at that time i just draw stuff from my friends come up with modern stone and go that's really cool here take it so you know i'd do jay hauck t shirts but you'd be holding a joint so the wing would be upended have a joint good jr i could sell in topeka all day long so there's a bit about parole going on there but you get to go somewhere that teacher until i can understand the yonan copyright infringement issues but when you look back on that period mckenna memories do you have or how would you characterize that period of your life a reckless carefree that determined you know with the goal of hey you know what we're going to do it i won an architect i didn't make it through arctic school i loved to draw a sword became a carpenter and thought i could you know grow be a small crop farmer in

and live healthily and live off the grid and live in a teepee for a couple years which we did and you know and all that came about from from that late sixties early seventies experience here in town because when i we would visit people with his people who lived an alternative lifestyle since it ok i can do this i can hang with the us and so we just in rapid creek known world at that time so reckless we were like consider it but reckless not harmful not violent carefree and reckless we're revisiting a free state free spirits lawrence counterculture in the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies kansas public radio collect an oral histories at this watkins museum of them last year we've just heard from dennis partially of topeka and from lawrence wright says that randy warren donna read john wray and joe and sing go i'm kate mcintyre you can hear a longer

versions of these interviews at our website kansas public radio dot org look under news slash k pr presents this month marks the fiftieth anniversary of the nineteen sixty nine woodstock festival the lawrence arts center is celebrating the occasion with back to the garden a series of events including a special exhibit of photographs from woodstock then oliver has is the exhibit's director at the ones art center and curator of back to the garden then it's always great to see you could be or how did you become interested in woodstock well i think i've always held of fascination them probably a love of music of that era and i think he you know the woodstock festival served as the crowning moment of a live music from that era there are other music festivals that happening on the monterrey pop festival in california was just a couple years earlier and miami pop festival festivals were becoming more and more

accessible in and really changed the landscape of of live performance in the nineteen sixties and so would stalk him partially by accident became the assertive is the poster child for music festivals and the ripple of of that festival we know there are many other spinoffs the world attempted to know altamont out california was just too half months after woodstock and i was a total disaster i think the successor the compelling thing about woodstock is that none of it should've worked you know that many people coming together was primed to be a disaster with every factor involved with you know transportation and whether it was kind of a mess us via the festival certainly my my initial interest in a war or the musicians that pre dissipated an

outcome no doubt i've always had a love of the music from that time and just remind us who are some of the musicians that played at woodstock well joe cocker was was new to the scene and he's really made a big splash in town was the same same thing crosby stills nash and young were there and that was their second performance together was was that they all have been in different bands leading up to that but that's kind of a fascinating tidbit you know the pop stars of the dade grateful dead jefferson airplane jimi hendrix janis joplin i knew that you had just completed tommy which is probably their most famous or well known problem and they played that in its entirety at the festival and then folk musicians says you know joan baez and richie havens john sebastian that none of them had memorable

performances though they admit the self admittedly you know they they they balls serve owned up to that i'm i think though that one band that gets the credit for really knock on the socks off with sly and the family stone you know who played it i think two or three o'clock in the morning something like yeah so those are some of the bands that were bended and musical won all night did they stop at some point like ok guys gets inflamed yeah there were some bricks and they built a stage it was supposed to rotate seated set up one band while the other one's planning and then just turn the thing around like a lazy susan kind of the situation never worked so that slowed everything down and so there were these long gaps between between bands and they had weather issues and how the role there were many technical difficulties that sort of kept compounding which delayed everything and that's why you end up with jimi hendrix play on monday morning and everybody's gone i'm visiting with ben alvarez he's the exhibits

director at the lawrence arts center to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary of wood start the arts center is hosting a month of activities and events including a special exhibit of photographs taken a woodstock then tell me about the photographers you're featuring in back to the garden sure it's only a photographer's can run the gamut of fatah or c ruth who were used to the professionals of the day you build a bridge was a photographer for life magazine in and then you have somebody on the other end ten and jason rae who was eighteen or nineteen at the time the hands in adaptation some really great photographs other photographers in the next you know are the first chief photographer for rolling stone magazine baron wolman is is a big part of his show henry diltz is a guy who has taken so many famous photographs and album covers they're out on a one to get started on that but he was the only photographer who

was actually paid by the organizers the organizers to to be their home so you know how we went on those eight really been in researching and looking and thinking that you know i start to serve gathering as many images is it that more than possible to to exhibit arm and then start to whittle away and at it you know most of the time is spent on editing things out and editing could be like i don't need five crowd shots or five shots of this particular situation you know one tells the story just find so that kind of editing but there is also like who can actually do it and who's who's actually interested in exhibiting there were in kansas you know it's not always that cut and dry so i've experienced that a little bit in and you know really approaching each photographer individually and telling them what the idea about the project was why it's important to the community and both locally and and i think

the nationally i think it's an interesting topic two there are interesting topics to be explored and their photographs would be sort of the core of that so i had to be a bit of the salesman when it comes to you know approaching in an artist's to participate and visited then offers he's the exhibits director at the lawrence arts center and curator back to the garden photography exhibit opening august ninth and running through september fourteenth then you just were talking about describing some of the photographs could you describe some of the ones that we'll be seeing you for awesome images in with you today i tried with with this project really focusing on the audience's experience the attendees are people who we're stuck in traffic for hours if not days to try to get it to the site and the story of the site itself you know they had to move because of permit issues

and things like that i mean that's the the boots on the ground story of just getting the thing to take places is crazy i am but so many images of people trying to get in and you know you see just cars parked like a parking lot on the side of the interstate heading up to bethel new york people sitting on top of cars that are slowly slowly creeping up creeping down the road people are men army the locals say are sitting in their yard watching these hippies they'll hit the parade come by them to the spectacle of the the mass gathering as is definitely a pervasive with with something like this i am another thing you know that i've noticed that i didn't really think about him in approaching this this project was i can now sort of detect like just looking at a picture doing a quick google search or something i can see i can probably tell you

what day of the festival and maybe what time based on how muddy people are have certain powers that have been carved out by foot traffic over the course of a few days now i'm you know cause i think it was really the second day of the festival but it started raining i really didn't stop and so that's just as mud everywhere in answer to a great town to everything but certainly that the spectacle of a crowd of that size never happened before it's never really happened since i guess that it hasn't hasn't happened quite in that way and there's a few shots of but some of the performers that that were there for the activists will come and in some of the aftermath hi henry diltz has a couple of great photographs he was there for two weeks leading up to it and stay behind to photograph he was like i said he was the one that was hired he's got a great shot of this folding chair

that he had been sitting and buddy got off that sharon folding chairs in the foreground and you can see the stage off in the distance as before anyone shows up in several days before beautiful alfalfa field than rolling hills you know upstate new york beautiful and then he's got that same chair at the end of the festival kind of in the same position where i look like a bomb had gone off you know it was just not a blade of grass to be seen as a mud pit and you know trash everywhere they like their of their metaphors and all of these things that i had and i i hope that with some of the surrounding programs that that are in support of the of the photographs that summer sky she's get raised in and discussions can happen because i think there's a lot to be said about that event and peeling back fifty years of of history what we learned when we not learned and how his youth culture dealt with

today's at any different than then i think those things are interesting you just mentioned some of the other advanced that are taking place in connection with the festival talk to me about some of those events and activities and what you're hoping to tap into that is more than just photographs so we have two films we have talks i am present asians you know i think that the the main draw for though the woodstock the nineteen sixty nine woodstock festival was the music they have a lineup that had never been built like that before and so it was that part of why all those people showed up so the music that we have a concert on august thirty first is called songs of hope and despair to town and its local musicians and it's it's a it's a it's sort of an echo of of music of that period you know in popular music had evolved so much by nineteen sixty nine that

there were songs on the radio about civil unrest and tensions in in in our society and i am that was in that was a new thing to be heard on the radio so the musicians are approaching and it's not it's not really they're pushing it or thinking of of bat that tenor it's not a tribute show you know were just gonna play joe cocker so awesome is that there is a really great documentary that airs on pbs on august the six that you can see at the lawrence arts center on august the six which is two days before the show opens to the public debt ceiling the pbs of the tissues and scolds three days that that defined a generation and it's at a brand new documentary about the woodstock festival so that'll be great i think maybe one of the highlights of the programming will

be to the photographers will be here there were due to a name pearson turn on this twenty second henry diltz baron wolman will both be here and order to talk about woodstock and we're also going to talk about m e of their careers as photojournalist and in music and the things that they've seen guaranteed riveting stories and that and really some firsthand insights as to what happens you know in that in new york in nineteen sixty nine so we'll be here on august twenty second i'm using it then offers to see exhibits director at the lawrence arts center and curator of the back to the garden photography exhibit opens august ninth and runs through september fourteenth then do you have any favorite woodstock stories yeah i was talking to is the widow of bill up bridge to his life magazine photographer and he is his photographed many famous things throughout throughout history one story

that that she was telling me i'm life magazine was uninterested uncovering woodstock as a leading up to to the weekend and so he had really pushed he thought it was going to be a big deal in part they should really do it and so somehow it gets the management to sign off and so he ends up getting at in the other photographer john dominance both life magazine photographers and probably a writer in there as well i get life magazine too give them a trailer that then gets part somebody the guy who delivered the trailer just like plaza down right behind the stage and all the guys who are like running to the evangelist again part that they're in the truck driver left me while they are their camper was right right near the sweet a spot than done oh and they also asked the life magazine give them a little motorcycle motorcycles that they could you know run around the other grounds but

like six hundred acres out there a way so that a motorcycle they've got a home nobody else has this out there in the middle of you know the mass crowd and earth they were pretty pretty proud of themselves that they were able to pull that off by partially by accident but they are they have the initiative to just go and say put that put their camper it there and then nobody could move it slows get that was of funny sort of photography story baron wolman there's a rolling stone photographer he finally gets it takes him much longer to get on site then he'd hit a projected but that's true for everybody it already photograph so many of the musicians he wasn't so interested in that it was you know the spectacle of that many people had not been witnessed before so he takes a few photographs for tickets on sight he goes up he's gotten all access pass it goes up there on the stage and

kicks off a few photographs in and then just wandered off into the crowd and that's pretty much where he spent the rest of his time you know getting some some pretty interesting shots of what was happening here whether it was people cooking food are people camping there people having a freaking out whatever it is you know for some some interesting shots there i'd been visiting with ben overs he's the exhibits director at the lawrence arts center and curator back to the garden photographs from woodstock and so much more back to the garden opens august ninth and runs through september fourteenth you can find out more on their website lawrence arts center and j mcintyre katie our present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas this is

bill in those days