The greatest festival of the 60s: ‘peace and love’ of Woodstock

Woodstock became one of the most famous festivals in history and stayed in the memories of thousands of people as a life-changing event. But what really was going on at Woodstock and were those days of peace and love? Let’s check out.

Woodstock was contunued for 3 days in the summer of 1969. At first, the organisers wanted to set the event in another place, but locals were hesitant. 6 weeks before the festival, the organisers finally found the right location, and it was the dairy farm.

Before the festival there were a lot of logistical problems. The location of the festival was far from cities, so people had to come there by their own transport. As a result, there were enormous traffic jams which stretched for 20 miles, so many people slept in their cars and waited for hours. A logical decision would have been to abandon cars and walk to the festival, which many people chose to do and walked 11 miles to get to the event. Later this traffic jam was called one of the top 10 traffic jams in history.

When the festival had started, it turned out that there were many more people who wanted to attend the event. The organisers planned to meet 50 000 people, but in fact, a half of a million of them came. The organisers also sold a lot of tickets, but the majority of the crowd just found entry for free through the fence.

Certainly, this festival is well-known not only for the traffic jams, but for the best artists of all times, who performed there for three days: Santana, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, The Who, Jefferson Airplane and many others. One of the musicians who opened the festival was Richie Havens, and he played his session around 7 times. Why? Because the crowd liked his music and didn’t let him leave. They asked him to continue playing, so he did.

Woodstock promoted peace and love, and the vibe there was harmonic and peaceful. People helped each other and shared their food and blankets, hanged out and sang songs with their favourite musicians. At the same time, it was a crowded event and not all things worked well. Many people claimed later that the positive vibe was a result of psychodelics abuse. That’s probably right, because there were a lot of drugs at Woodstock, especially LSD. People dance half naked, have sex and use drugs, and in general it was chaos of intoxicated people.

Also, there were a lot of problems with organising the event: when the rain started the next day, there was simply no place for shelter. Some people got angry because of that, others perceived it as a gift from God and continued to dance under the rain. There were huge lines of toilets and with time they overflowed, turning the territory into a disgusting place. The rain turned the other part of the territory into a sea of mud.

There was luck with food, and some shops even started to sell it for unreasonably high prices. This fact made people angry and two of the food tents were burned out. Also, some food was laced with LSD and people got sick from it. And the most concerning fact is that three people die at the festival: two of them from drug overdose, and one human was crashed into a tractor while sleeping.

Unquestionably, it was a historical event. Many people who were there in the 60s are still alive today and they keep the warmest memories of Woodstock in their minds. For some of them this festival became an event which fundamentally changed their lives. Many people met at the festival and became couples who are still together today. No one modern event has this vibe of harmony and peace, so we can admit that Woodstock can count as a true hippie ‘love and peace’ world, even though it existed only for three days.