Taking a trip through the Museum at Bethel Woods last Friday at the start of the 41st anniversary of Woodstock, some of those who attended the historic musical event were there with children and grand-children gazing at the many exhibits.
The multi-sensory experience includes 20 specially made films plus artifacts, quotes and photographs from the beginning of the sixties to the event itself on August 15-17, 1969.
The museum shows in multi-media projections some of the beginnings from the early 1960s. And even the late 1950s when black and white television was prolific in showing the ideal American family in such shows as “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best”.
The placidity of the fifties is briefly shown in photos and quotes when parental traditions were the norm, but gradually a subtle storm was brewing in the children who came to be known as the “Baby Boomers.”
Suddenly, the spark was ignited with the advent of rock and roll and Elvis Presley, a phenomenon in himself who sprang on the scene and sang his way into a whole new movement. Young girls screamed in their awakening as a kid from Memphis just performed natural rhythms to a new sound.
Elvis’ 45 records are on the wall including such pop paraphernalia as a summer song to the budding teens at the time by Bryan Hyland called, “She Wore an Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini.”
Each wall in the circular museum is dominated by one theme showing the evolving of a youth culture.
The war in Vietnam is shown in another film with such politicians as Kennedy, Nixon and Johson speaking loud and clear. Body bags bringing home the boys the same age as college bound students were shown in documentary as is the Chicago Riots showing police officers beating men and women with long hair who were unarmed.
Familiar stuff for those who watched it all on TV or who lived through it.
The gradual frustration, rebellion, and throwing off the old values giving way to new ways of living is depicted in the fashion, the views, and finally the action and resulting coming together in a concert which is remembered world-wide and now has a monument erected on the spot.
Wade Lawrence, Museum Director, led the News Eagle through the infusion of color and remnants, artifacts of all the familiar names explaining each area.
“Tomorrow we expect about 600 to 1,000 people even though it is our 41st year and not a big year like the 40th one. We did have a very strong summer (last year) This summer is almost as strong. People still want to be a part of it all,” he explained.
He began with the well documented history, “Allan Geary had a local cable company and sold it to Time Warner making millions. Sullivan County was not then and is still not doing well economically so he bought the Woodstock site.” he said. “He hired experts as well as locals to help build a stage adjacent to the original site of the festival and also to construct a museum which at its infancy was simply a walk-thru. However, five years later with ideas from visitors who were there and photographers, artists and musicians, the museum is a technological wonder,” Lawrence added.
Lawrence wore tye dye the day we were there, which he said, “was for the anniversary.” Too young to have attended the event, he still shows avid enthusiasm for the time.
According to statistics, about 60,000 people attend the museum each year. It hosts groups of school children to those who stood or sat and were rained on in the audience 41 years ago. “We are trying to reach everyone on some level,” he stressed.
However, the most fun is actually running into those who were part of it all. On Friday, Charles Rugoletti from Manchester, N.H. was visiting with his wife, Eva, his son, Dominic and his son’s friend. He was 22 then and said he always carried an inhaler as he was an asthmatic. “But for three days my lungs were clear,” he said, laughing. He was 60 feet from the stage and stayed there for three days hearing the set by Jimi Hendrix early Monday morning.
His biggest memory. “All of a sudden there was a box of free food being given out.
We started hanging out with a woman all in tye dye velvet who was laughing and joking with a group of kids from Texas. You know who that was? Someone explained later it was Janis. What a memory,” Rugoletti said. “I never expected that!” he exclaimed.
Peter Kaplan was another visitor who was there.
“What I remember most?” “The rain, the mud and boy, was it hot!” he said. “But, I had a great time,” he said. Kaplan was at the museum on Friday with his wife, Bunny from Long Island. A highlight at the museum is a 128 seat theatre which plays, “Woodstock, The Music.” “It is an empowering film with quotes from the singers Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Santana, Bono, Country Joe McDonald interspersing them as they looked back then and as some look today. Describing some of the acts as an actual religious experience, the music they played is expertly recorded in sound so clear, the spectator feels the time, place and music. The reverberations from the guitar strings, the drums of Santana, the clear vocals of Grace Slick pierces the theatre.
“You can’t miss this film,” Lawrence said.
The museum’s content is filled with enough detail and emotion to really make a person think about how much of an effect Woodstock had on an entire generation.
Lawrence said that the first time he viewed the film he was brought to tears.
As visitors walk through the last doorway to the gift shop, they see the words to Jodi Mitchell’s song on the wall and the words, “we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden” leap out.
Mitchell didn’t attend the concert, but she wrote the song through the feelings, experiences and emotion of those who were there.
