The Magazine

Sex, Drugs, Music, Mud

Woodstock at 40.

Aug 31, 2009, Vol. 14, No. 46 • By P.J. O'ROURKE
Single Page Print Larger Text Smaller Text Alerts

The Road to Woodstock
by Michael Lang
Ecco, 320 pp., $29.99

Woodstock Revisited
50 Far Out, Groovy, Peace-Loving, Flashback-Inducing Stories From Those Who Were There
by Susan Reynolds
Adams Media, 256 pp., $12.95

Woodstock
Peace, Music & Memories
 by Brad Littleproud and Joanne Hague
Krause, 256 pp., $24.99

No social phenomenon can be completely analyzed, thoroughly critiqued, and given its full philosophical due in just one word. Except Woodstock. Altamont.

And that--except for the shaded sidebar containing the titles of the reviewed books--should be the end of this book review. However, the long weekend of August 15-17, 1969, was one of the great where-weren't-you? moments of recent history. Along with 202,177,000 other Americans, where I wasn't was at Woodstock.

Though it was not for lack of trying. I was 21 and smitten with a girl--call her Sunflower--from exotic Massapequa, Long Island. I had come by motorcycle from Ohio with the idea of Sunflower riding pillion to a "Woodstock Music and Arts Fair" which, according to a poster in a record shop back in Yellow Springs, was "An Aquarian Exposition" featuring "Three Days of Peace and Music." I pictured something on the order of a wind chime sale with evening hootenannies and maybe a surprise guest appearance by Mimi Fariña.

Sunflower, alas, chose the Sunday prior to make a feeble gesture at doing away with herself. (Such feeble gestures were more or less obligatory among fine arts major co-eds in those days. There was a bridge at an Ohio women's college from which at least one art student per semester would plunge. The drop was less than two yards into a foot-deep duck pond.)

To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber

We're Sorry,

the rest of this article is available only to subscribers.

You have two options:

Subscribing today will provide you with immediate, complete access to the current issue, as well as to all back issues on the site. Each week you will be able to read articles from the newest issue even before print copies are mailed!

Privacy Policy