Woodstock memories: 50 years later

It was billed as “3 Days of Peace & Music.”

It turned into four days of nudity, narcotics, no fences and no social norms.

Woodstock was many things for many people.

It was the flower power/hippie movement’s day in the sun (or, more precisely, day rolling in the mud) and brought the counterculture to the forefront.

It was the music festival that turned up-and-coming artists like Santana and Joe Cocker into overnight sensations and made Jimi Hendrix’s version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” into an arena rock anthem.

While Central Massachusetts had its share of would-be beatniks, peaceniks, hippies, yippies, flower children, nonconformists, and naïve free spirits who made a pilgrimage to a 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York, Aug. 15-18, 1969, Worcester’s own political and social activist Abbie Hoffman made an indelible mark on Woodstock when he interrupted The Who’s performance Sunday morning (Aug. 17) to speak against the jailing of John Sinclair of the White Panther Party.

In reaction to Hoffman’s unscheduled radical rhetoric, Pete Townshend, The Who’s guitarist, unleashed an angry, profanity-laced tirade and allegedly hit the revolutionary rabble-rouser with his guitar — not for the content of Hoffman’s message, but because the anarchist violated the “sanctity of the stage.”

Hoffman, who took his own life 20 years later, is not the only person from Worcester or Central Massachusetts who has a colorful Woodstock story that is worth telling 50 years later.

Charle Marlborough of Dudley

Living in an apartment near Clark University in 1969, Charle Marlborough, who now lives in Dudley, hitchhiked with her then roommate from Worcester to Woodstock.

“We had no tickets. We really had no money, but we figured it was going to be like the Newport Jazz Festival and we'd just sneak in,” Marlborough said. “The first thing that happened was we got picked up by the state police, but they were really, really nice and they wrote us directions. ... And, of course, when we were young, we were both two good-looking chicks. They showed us the way to go, and we got many, many interesting rides.”

The two young women left Worcester in the early morning and it was dark by the time they reached the traffic jam leading to Woodstock. When they finally arrived, Marlborough and her girlfriend immediately made new friends.

“We met a couple of guys who had a beautiful tent, and we just were talking and they said, ‘You have no place to stay. You can stay with us. We've got tons of food.’ And they did. They had a barbecue. They had steaks. They had frozen stuff. So we ate wonderfully,” Marlborough said. “And, we see them injecting themselves. And, I’m an idiot. I thought they were injecting themselves because they were diabetics."

A product of a Catholic school upbringing, Marlborough said she was an innocent “Pollyanna” going to Woodstock.

“I was 18 years old. I didn’t do drugs. I didn’t drink. I was still a virgin. I hadn’t ever seen a naked man, ever," Marlborough said. "And, lo and behold, here we are, and we walked down this hill to the pond area there. And, everybody was naked. Oh, my God. At first, you didn’t know where to look. And, it’s really funny how within an hour, it was just like, no big deal.

“We got picked up by a bounty hunter ... A Puerto Rican hairdresser picked us up. He had an old Studebaker and in the middle of it he had a petrified elephant’s foot as an ashtray. There was a holy-roller black minister who picked us up. He had a purple Cadillac and he was dressed in a lavender satin suit," Marlborough said. "There was only one bad ride, four guys in a car, and we found out soon (they were) dirtball pigs. It was very scary … At one point, I said we (Marlborough and her girlfriend) both had to go take a whiz, and we just kept on going.”

Barry Parsons of Worcester

Barry Parsons was a 16-year-old Burncoat High School junior when he and three of his buddies hopped into an old Bonneville convertible headed to Woodstock.

“I got permission from my mom to go,” Parsons said. “We didn’t get there until Saturday morning. Because of the crowds and everything, we had to abandon the car on the side of the road seven miles away and walk.”

Parsons and his small entourage came equipped. They had bought their tickets in advance (which, it turned out, they didn't need).

“We all had our sleeping bags and we had our pup tents — two pup tents. We were prepared. We were all hikers. We already had all the equipment, so we said let’s take it," Parsons said. "A lot of people didn’t have tents. They had trash bags that they took out of trash barrels after dumping the trash on the ground and put it (the trash bags) over their head.”

Parsons and his friends also brought drugs, lots and lots of drugs.

“Back then, we were doing speed and acid. We had it with us. We weren’t worried about the brown acid (referring to the Woodstock crowd being warned against taking the “brown acid”). We had our own supply,” Parsons said. “Woodstock was pretty wild. It wasn’t my biggest (acid) trip. My biggest trip was (when) I thought I walked across the lake in Spencer one time. I did. I could have sworn I walked across the lake.”

While they stayed to around suppertime Sunday, Parsons said Woodstock turned out to be better for people-watching than for hearing live music.

“We were up on the hill. The music sound system wasn’t really that great. All you had was echo,” Parsons said. “But you did have a lot of people next to you. You could tell what they were doing under their little blankets. There were people walking around nude.”

While Parsons said everybody seem to have a great time and he didn’t see any trouble, he said the only major drawback at Woodstock was the toilets.

“The toilets were way down — it felt like three football fields away from where we were,” Parsons said. “They probably needed three times as many toilets than they had. And, of course, there were lines and lines to use them. And they stunk like hell.”

Deborah McDonnell of Holden

Deborah McDonnell was a 19-year-old country bumpkin and aspiring folk singer when she went to Woodstock.

“I grew up less than an hour from White Lake in Pennsylvania, and my dad sold feed and grain for a living, and he served all the farms around Yasgur Farm (in Bethel),” McDonnell recalled. “So he came home one evening and said, ‘They’re having some big music festival over in the country. Do you want me to get you tickets?’ And, I was like, ‘Yes, that would be cool.’ ”

Because her family lived nearby, McDonnell knew a back way in. They parked at Hector's Inn, about a mile from the site, and had an easy in, easy out.

"As far as you could see towards Monticello (which is seven miles from the site of the Woodstock Festival), it was just a stream of people in cars just crawling and people walking and bells and pot and incense," McDonnell said. "It was like walking into a dream, the smells and the sounds and the people drumming. It was just incredible.”

When they got to the site, the fences were already trampled down. It was a free concert.

As for the artists she saw, McDonnell said The Who really stood out. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were incredible. And Santana and Sly & the Family Stone were both mesmerizing.

“People were dancing naked through the crowd,” McDonnell recalled. “There were lots of drugs, pot being passed around everywhere. There was a lot of tripping (on acid). I’d never really seen that before.”

Despite enjoying the event, Woodstock became too much for McDonnell to endure, and she and her friends didn’t make it through the weekend.

“It started to rain Friday night. And all the blankets were wet, and there was like 6 inches of squishy mud everywhere, and then Saturday morning the sun came out really, really hot,” McDonnell said. “We had very little with us because we thought, OK, it’s a concert. They would be selling food there and water and drinks and everything. We didn’t take much with us. There was no food or water. They ran out of everything. And we only had a little piece of plastic. We were just not prepared. We were hungry, dirty, tired, no water, so we left in the middle of the night.”

George Tocci of Shirley, formerly of Leominster

A year after graduating from Leominster High School, 19-year-old George Tocci and a few of his friends drove to Woodstock in a Mustang convertible.

“We got there Thursday morning because we drove all night, thinking we would avoid all the traffic,” Tocci said. “And, of course, everyone was already piling in. And people were camping out in the woods. The roads were already getting heavy with traffic.”

Tocci and his friends decided to try to find a nearby hotel when the traffic came to a dead stop.

“So we were thinking that we would go back and get a hotel room in Monticello, but there were none,” Tocci said. “We wound up at one of the hotels. They let us sleep in the lobby of the hotel. There were so many people coming in. They were just coming in behind us. Nobody expected it to be like that. It was crazy.”

The next day, which was the first day of the music festival, Tocci and his friends walked 10 or so miles to the concert site.

“What I remember, everything was lined with people — both sides. There were tables set up on the side of the road on the way in with people selling pot and hashish and tie-dyed shirts,” Tocci said. “We met these people in a VW minibus and we would ride with them, going downhill. But, when we got to the bottom, the weight was too much for the bus to get back up, so we got out and walked to the top."

At Woodstock, Tocci said there were drugs everywhere.

“People were passing around joints. They were just going up and down the line and, in those days, joints weren’t like they were today. They were pretty mild. I had a few puffs here and there, and I was pretty happy,” Tocci recalled. “But, there were some messed up people there too. I saw that. They had tents set up for that, and they were trying to get people in there that were freaking out.”

Although he heard Santana and John B. Sebastian play, Tocci, who today owns the Bull Run in Shirley, remembers being smitten by a band called Sweetwater.

“They were on the first night ... Me and my buddy thought they were incredible, and then I never heard of them again,” Tocci said. “Years later, I found out that the woman in the band (singer Nansi Nevins) had a major car accident (on Dec. 8, 1969) … She ended up in a wheelchair for like the rest of her life and, of course, the band broke up. It was just horrible.”

Overall, Tocci said, Woodstock was an eye-opening experience.

“I came from Leominster. There was a bunch of hippies there, but it was still a minority thing. And then we come to a place where there was a half a million of us,” Tocci said. “There was a real feeling of community there and, especially, when it turned out well. Everybody was happy and moving along. I didn’t see any trouble.”

WPI English literature professor Joel Brattin

Although he didn’t go to Woodstock, noted "Jimi Hendrix expert” Joel Brattin is well-versed in the historic rock festival.

“Woodstock was certainly the first of the huge rock festivals,” Brattin said. “When people think of the '60s and they think of rock music, they think of Woodstock."

On the morning of Monday, Aug. 18, 1969, Hendrix stepped onto the Woodstock stage and erupted into a nearly two-hour set that concluded with a medley that featured “Voodoo Child (Slight Return),” “Purple Haze,” and a nearly four-minute solo performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

However, Brattin points out that not many actually stayed to see Hendrix’ iconic performance.

“Hendrix performed on the fourth day, and it was a Monday, and people had to get back to school or back to work and were probably sick and tired of sitting in the mud and the rain with inadequate bathroom facilities and not much food," Brattin said. "So, I think a lot of people left on Sunday night. Some people probably stayed to hear the opening notes of Hendrix so they could say, ‘Oh yeah, I heard Hendrix,’ and left before the end of the show.”

Brought into prominence greatly due to the 1970 rockumentary “Woodstock” and the subsequent soundtrack, Brattin said Hendrix was making a political statement about the Vietnam War with his electrifying performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“When Hendrix’s guitar sings ‘bombs bursting in air,’ you hear not only the bombs, but you hear the cries of agony of the people on the ground who are experiencing those bombs," Brattin said. "There’s a strong amount of political content, even if it’s nonverbal.”

Like Hendrix, Brattin said, there will never be another Woodstock.

“The times have changed. The culture’s changed. The economics have changed,” Brattin said. “As many things that went wrong with Altamont went right with Woodstock. It really was amazing that Woodstock was a festival that had so little trouble.”