"Yeah, I was there"
by, Maxwell Silverspoon
All the nostalgic articles in the Associated Press this weekend really bring me back. Ah, forty years flew by. Woodstock. The best weekend of my life.
I still remember the day my buddies said: “Let’s go to the garden.”
I was all: “Awesome.”
Jimmy slim, Slippery Richie, Captain Mike boners and I packed up a few lids of ganja, a saltshaker of coke, some doses and a bunch of roofies and hit the road. Don’t touch my bag if you please, Mr. Boner’s dad.
We smoked about 60 joints on the way to Woodstock from Oneida. We listened to a tape of Jefferson Starship like 100 times. Oh, wait, tape decks didn't exist at the time. We must’ve been so stoned.
When we got close, a huge traffic jam prevented us from entering Yasger’s Farm. I saw Arlo Guthrie and he said, “New York State Thruway is closed. Can you dig?”
He smoked us down and disappeared with a gypsy into the huge mass of stationary cars.
Eventually, I spotted a sign that read: “Free helicopter rides.” Rick left his car in the road and we followed the arrows to the whirly bird. A white dude with an afro waved us toward the helicopter. We threw our bags on board and set off toward Yaeger’s Farm.
As the chopper hovered over the concert site, Boners remarked: “We must be half a million strong down there.”
We looked over in the corner of the helicopter and this fat walrus-like fellow was scribbling something in his notepad. When I made eye contact with him, he asked us if we had any heroin. I was like, “Nah, man. That’s a beat trip. I’ve seen the needle and the damage done.”
The whirly bird landed between some dirty white trailer and a bunch of girls wearing flowers in their hair and beads over their bare tits. As soon as the helicopter blades stopped rotating, I heard this bald black dude with a beard singing the word “freedom” over and over again. Thinking about it reminds me of just how free we were at the time.
I really felt a sense of freedom and entitlement in the air throughout that weekend. It was an awesome vibe. We felt so free that you could literally do anything you wanted short of rape and murder. Of course, a sense of free love had infiltrated everyone’s psyche, so getting laid was easy, except for really ugly dudes and fat chicks. Some greasy older dudes with gnarled faces, beards and dirty feet managed to score a lot of tang, though.
I met my future wife at that show. We called her “Mountain Grill” because I was tripping balls and her face turned into a mountain.
My friend Arthur Schneiderman perfectly exemplified our freedom. He lacked the money to buy a car and failed to score a ride to the festival, so he stole a horse from a nearby farm and rode it down the freeway to the festival. The cops were like: “We can’t bust him. He’s just too free.” That’s how fucking free we were.
Anyway, that black dude’s set shook me to the core, not just because of the power of the words. I had never seen a black person live before. I saw, like, five of them that weekend: Sly Stone, Jimi Hendricks, the people in Sly Stone’s band and some guy at the burger stand. They seemed free, too.
We settled down on this hill and lit up a few fatties, taking in the sounds of Canned Tuna. At the time, that dude with glasses, Matt Valentine or something, still sang for the band. His falsetto put us at ease. When he soulfully sang: “Goin’ up the country. Where do you want to go?” It hit me: We were already in the country, man. Far fucking out.
During the set, this girl, Lindsay, came up to me and said: “Could I get in on this sesh?” I told her: “Sure.” She travelled to Woodstock from a commune in California or something. Later, we did it in front of everyone. I think she gave me crabs but seven other girls, one super sweet-looking dude and Arthur’s horse were also culprits in that mishap. Whatever. It ruled.
After I let my free love flow all over the place, some gnarly blond drunk chick started wailing on stage about taking her heart. Heavy, heavy stuff. Time to drop acid. Boner opened up our duffel bag and slowly turned pale. “I must’ve lost the acid,” he said. “I thought I loaded it into these squirt guns.”
“Fuck,” we all said simultaneously.
About an hour later, we started looking for doses and some freak got on the microphone and started announcing all kinds of shit about medicine and lost children. Somewhere in his babble, he mentioned the brown acid. I think he said it was half-off or free or something because everyone was trying to give it away. Someone ended up giving us a sheet of it for free.
We ate two…enty hits apiece and settled down on top of the hill for the Fantastic String Band’s set. Suddenly, it kicked in and the Irish dude on stage turned into a nymph and the rest of the band turned into fairies. It sounded like a music box, as they started singing about the Lord of the Rings or fucking in space or something.
I peaked when that mustached dude started babbling about an onion or painting or something. Everything totally melted and I saw a gorilla. He told me to kick my way through the jello mold of reality with my cowboy boots. I don’t remember much after that. I think some guys had a circle jerk on me.
The next morning, we realized that we forgot to bring food. Some fat, round-nosed dude with rosy cheeks squealed in a high voice onstage. He said something about breakfast in bed. Some people called the pig fuckers handed out nuts and berries. It tasted like gravel.
Joe Crocker ate some of the gravel, too. You could tell when he started singing that the music in his throat affected his vocals. He bellowed, “Waa-na-nee-wha-nah-nah.” And the backup band sang, “Have a little help from my friends.” I think they improvised it.
It started to rain and the place turned into a giant waterpark. People slid down the hill and screwed in the mud. One guy speared a pig, put it on a spit and just started roasting it right there. This point marked the freest part of the whole concert.
The fuzz started cracking down after that. I saw some dude get stuck on the fence while trying gain entry to the concert and two pigs grabbed his arms, picked him up and put him on the other side of the fence. “Fucking pigs,” I yelled.
At that point, we were protesting the war in Vietnam and pigs reminded us of the ideals that made us assemble as one in the first place: an unrealistic, utopian view of the world, an overwhelming sense of entitlement and unlimited resources provided by our rich liberal parents. Coppers bummed me out. Sure, they allowed us to smoke dope, publicly fornicate and spit on them without arresting or beating us. But their presence still felt creepy.
Speaking of ‘Nam, I like to think that Woodstock helped stop the war, although the troops left Vietnam five years after the festival. I mean, we smoked so much weed that the smoke probably drifted over to the Pentagon and everyone mellowed out. It also sent a message: Go out and get laid, man. If all the fat cats just got laid, we wouldn’t feel the need to start wars.
On the third day, we realized that we ran out of drugs. Also, the women folk started spreading a rumor that we all had crabs. We decided to hop on a helicopter after Jimi Hendricks ended the set with the National Anthem, a fitting ending to the perfect weekend of freedom.
The helicopter left Woodstock right before Limp Bizkit played and everyone started breaking things, making Indians cry and raping each other.
But I’ll never forget the parts of that weekend that I remember and the movie ruled, too. I still think about it from behind my desk at Goldman-Sachs.
Guest contributor Maxwell Silverspoon has written for Mother Jones, Family Circle and Forbes.
Footage from Woodstock
