Was that musical, muddy August ’69 weekend on an upstate New York farm truly the epochal, generation-defining event we’ve all grown up hearing about? I was just a kid. I was too young for it to register — unlike the first moon landing or the New York Mets, Knicks and upstart Jets all winning national championships. But soon enough, I was listening to the Woodstock triple album and watching the landmark concert film, which helped forge my sense of what that era was about: peace, love and great music. (By the way, let’s have more of all that, please.)
Dispelling any doubt about the iconic event’s endless fascination, an Aug. 9 piece in The New York Times, titled “How to Relive Woodstock From the Comfort of Your Couch,” looked at 17 books, six movies, 12 album collections and two songs on the subject.
I requested “Taking Woodstock,” Ang Lee’s 2009 feature film, via inter-library loan. It revolves, sort of, around the guy whose parents owned the sleepy motel that festival organizers turned into a base.
Another resource on that list, published in August of this year, is John Kane’s book, “Pilgrims of Woodstock: Never-Before-Seen Photos.” The book features the previously unpublished photographs of Richard Bellak, a photojournalist who focused his camera on the audience, not the performers. The Warwick Free Public Library is sponsoring a multi-media presentation by Kane on Saturday, Oct. 19 at 5 p.m. at the Warwick Town Hall. The free event is open to all and co-sponsored by the Wendell and Athol public libraries.
”You can almost sense that Bellak is tiptoeing around these sleeping encampments,” Kane said in a CNN interview published Aug. 13. “He must not have got any sleep at all.”
Kane said Bellak, a native New Yorker, was able to capture the diversity of the crowd in a way rarely, if ever, seen. One book reviewer wrote: “You may have seen the film. You may have heard the album. But you probably have not seen or heard that much from those who attended. Pilgrims of Woodstock fills this gap in a colorful and informative way.”
One Warwickian who was there told me she arrived early and spent the entire week with the Hog Farm folks, who built trails, made food for thousands in their free kitchen, and were tasked by festival organizers with running security — they became the “Please Force.”
“We worked hard,” she said. “I was just a very young hippie, but they were the real thing.”
Another Warwickian, fresh out of high school and working on Wall Street, shared how a co-worker told her he was leaving work early to go to Woodstock and she told him, “You’ll be fired.”
He went and was fired.
Kane, an artist and educator, was researching the festival for a book when he purchased the unpublished negatives at an auction of the late photographer’s estate. In addition to Bellak’s photos, Kane’s book and presentation include excerpts of recent interviews with dozens of festival attendees. His presentation also features rare video footage.
One of Kane’s interviewees, Paul, who was 20 at that time, said: “When I tell people I attended Woodstock, they often ask who my favorite performer was. I tell them that the audience was my favorite performer. At Woodstock, we were the show.”
Interviewed late in his career, Bellak said his festival experience was “wonderful,” and if not for “two girls from Detroit,” who sheltered him in their tent, the photographic negatives would have never survived.
“It was a great moment,” he said.
Ivan Ussach is the director of the Warwick Free Public Library.