Every Woodstock festival has been poorly organised. The original one in 1969 was lucky to be deemed a success. The rain was so severe that the PA system failed, and the stage started to sink. Every performance was delayed and at the last minute, the organisers made the festival free because there wasn’t enough staff to check every ticket and the poorly constructed fence was failing to stay up.
Celebrating 25 years of the original, Woodstock 1994 was a better attempt, but the organisers had to sell out to corporations, which being part of the Woodstock generation is affectively selling your soul. People again managed to break through the fencing and saw the festival for free. This one had more rain than the first one if that’s possible, and every band’s set seemed to end up in a mud-flinging fight. The consensus was everyone had a good time other than the weather.
Five years later to celebrate 30 years of the original Woodstock the organisers, remember these are the same organisers who did a poor job of the other two festivals, decided to hold another edition due to the success of the last one, hoping to have the same peace and love vibes that previous two had provided. Long story short it didn’t. It became even more of a disaster than the other two put together. This week The Beat Marches On to 22nd July 1999, The start of the disastrous Woodstock 1999.
Before I get into the nitty-gritty I would just like to say as a warning the article does cover some gruesome subjects.
For this festival, the organisers wanted to make sure that no one could sneak in for free like the other two. The plan was to find a venue secure enough so they didn’t have to worry about that problem. Also, they were thinking about putting on the festival where the ground was solid in case the rain that plagued the other two iterations couldn’t play havoc with this festival.
The venue that the festival organisers chose was a weird one considering what the concept of Woodstock is. A decommissioned air force base in Rome, New York was chosen as the venue. It’s around 100 miles away from the original Woodstock site and, as a former airbase, had a solid concrete wall around the site and lots of asphalt on the ground from the runways so no mud to cause problems.
The locals of Rome were excited for the festival to be held in their sleepy town, as it would help their economy which had been faltering since the closing of the air base in 1995. Little did they know of the chaos that would happen as the weekend would go on.
The anger from the fans started from the outset, when upon entry security would confiscate any food or drinks they were bringing into the venue. Although there were water fountains available reports from fans who were there stated that the queues were long or the fountains were not functioning properly. It was a really hot weekend much like the weather we are suffering in the UK this week. There were vendors selling water but for $4 ($7 today or £5.80 for us Brits) for a standard-size bottle, the same price as a beer, and personal pizzas priced at $12, you can see why fans were angry.
The ticketing had been a mess too. The organisers capped it at 250,000 attendance, but there were a lot of fake tickets going around that security (or as they were called the peace patrol) were confiscating 50 fake passes an hour. Although officially the festival didn’t sell out the estimated number of attendees was around 400,000, the same as in 1969.
The layout of the festival consisted of two main stages called East and West, which were separated by a 1.5km runway. Temperatures reached between 30-35 degrees centigrade and no cover infuriated fans more.
Friday
It seemed that all was forgotten by the next day when the music started. Most of the first day’s performances were good and no incidents were reported for the most part. MTV was showing parts of the festival and reporting live on the scene. ‘The Godfather of Soul’ himself James Brown kicked off the festival. There were also blistering sets from DMX and Live.
Then towards the end of the night, things were getting boisterous. Every female that was on someone’s shoulders or was on stage were subjected to a chant of ‘Show your tits’. Crowd-surfing women were getting groped as they were surfing. During the Offspring’s set lead singer, Dexter Holland pleaded with the crowd ‘Just because a girl wants to go crowd-surfing, that doesn’t give a guy a right to molest them’ Unfortunately there was worse to come as the evening wore on.
From the outset, KoRn had an awesome performance. It was deemed one of the highlights of the festival by critics and the audience. However, it wasn’t until the end of the festival that the truth of what happened during their set emerged. A group of men in the mosh pit were grabbing crowd-surfing women, pulling them down and gang-raping them. It’s unsure how many but it’s definitely more than one. By the end of the festival four women officially reported sexual abuse to the police. Only one person was charged, a former prison officer.
Disgruntled festival goers were now seeing no one collecting rubbish and bins overflowing. The bins weren’t the only thing overflowing as halfway through the day the portable toilets and showers were teeming with patron’s excrements onto the little grass area. On the amass of videos on YouTube you see some fans sliding around in the mud, that wasn’t just mud, that was the port-a-potties overflow.
One performance was brought to the attention that day by Insane Clown Posse or ICP. They threw yoga balls with a $100 bill taped to them to give back to the crowd as they knew how expensive it was. When the hundreds ran out ICP gave $500 bills strapped to bigger balls. The media described it as a riot, but it was over-dramatized. It probably wasn’t the greatest idea to throw money into the crowd like that but, the thought was there.
Saturday
The atmosphere on Saturday was intense. The crowd were already angry and worn down from the unforgiving heat and lack of basic facilities. There was next to no shade on the airbase. Then Kid Rock arrived on stage and enticed the crowd. He was the second act of the day and riled up the audience towards the end of his set by getting them to chuck all the empty bottles in his direction. The barrage of bottles from the crowd was one of the first indications that the crowd was getting angry and there could be trouble.
Following Kid Rock, Wycliff Jean was the next performer to grace the crowd. The former Fugee didn’t do anything to rile up the crowd but paid tribute to one of the original Woodstock and probably most famous acts Jimi Hendrix, by playing the Star-Spangled Banner and then trying (and failing) to set fire to his guitar.
The next few acts seemed to simmer down the crowd, other than Dave Matthews who was sandwiched in between Counting Crows and Alanis Morissette, mentioning an ‘Abundance of titties’ he noticed throughout his set, the crowd looked to be enjoying themselves and settled down. The next performer will change all that.
Limp Bizkit was one of the biggest bands in the world at this point. They had a two-album run of ‘Significant Other’ and ‘Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavoured Water’ that dominated the charts. So, when their set started everyone wanted to see it. They were going to leave their mark on the festival too.
It’s unfair to blame Limp Bizkit for the rage that occurred throughout their set. They added fuel to an already started fire, but the media wanted an easy out to blame for the festival’s downfall and listening to the band does tend to bring out the worst in people. When they performed the song ‘Break Stuff’ arguably their best song too, fans took it upon themselves to take the plywood off the support walls and use them to crowd surf on. Lead singer Fred Durst even took to it on himself to surf on some plywood. The organisers did try to speak to Durst to calm down the crowd but he told them no.
The organisers hoped the next acts would help calm down the crowd, however, the next acts were two of the most aggressive bands of the time, Rage Against the Machine and Metallica. It was going to be a ruckus night.
The Saturday night didn’t get too hectic after the Limp Bizkit set, sure they were aggressive bands, but they were legendary at this point. It felt like the crowd respected them.
When it got to the dance tent after the main stages finished, that was a different story. During Fatboy Slim’s DJ set a delivery truck was stolen and driven through the tent. The set was stopped so they could get the truck out safely, but inside worse damage was done than on the outside. A number of thugs had abused a young defenseless girl.
Sunday
The day started quite calmly, Willie Nelson started the performances and the East stage included acts from the likes of Elvis Costello and Jewel. Creed, who was almost as popular as Limp Bizkit were the day before, brought Robbie Krieger of the Doors to get the essence of the original 1969 festival. However, it is quite well known that The Doors didn’t play at the original festival. They turned it down.
During the day on Sunday, there was an anti-gun group, that wanted to do a vigil in the evening in remembrance of the Columbine school massacre a few months before. The headliners were the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the vigil was due to be held during their performance of ‘Under the Bridge’ this turned into a big mistake.
During the performance of the song, the vigil was beautiful. Seeing a couple of hundred thousand fans holding up candles was a sight to see. During the rest of the set, the fans started using the candles to light the empty water bottles from the overflowing bins, fires started everywhere across the main stage. The Chili Peppers came back on stage for their encore and compared what they saw to a scene from Apocalypse Now. One of the encore songs was another tribute to Jimi Hendrix by performing his popular song ‘Fire’ which at the moment probably wasn’t the best idea. Lead singer Anthony Kiedis talked about the performance in his memoirs ‘Scar Tissue’ which he claimed was a personal request from Hendrix’s sister, rather than encouraging the crowd.
The music had finished and then the riots started. People started dancing around the bonfires like a dark arts ritual. The fans reached the ends of their tethers. It was time to fight back. They destroyed the sound booth and P.A systems. They grabbed any plywood that was left from the previous day’s Bizkit surfing and added it to the fires. Some now were reaching ten metres high.
They attacked cash machines and vendor booths, which the vendors had long abandoned, and they gave out all the water and food from them in protest of all the high prices. What was left of the security walls had Profitstock graffitied on them. Woodstock had now become Altamont.
It took several hours to stop the riots but by the early hours of Monday morning before everything had calmed down. One paramedic claimed that the whole festival is one of the worst disasters he had ever seen. He had also volunteered to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. In all, there were 44 arrests for the damage.
Aftermath/Blame Game
After all the mayhem, the organisers declared the festival a success! Ignoring the fact that there were multiple cases of sexual abuse, two deaths due to the heat and multiple injuries such as broken bones and heatstroke. A success despite the venue becoming trashed and described as a bombsite due to the incredibly high price of food and drinks. A success despite the undermanned and undertrained security, sorry peace patrol, half of which quit as soon as they entered the venue.
The weather did play a part in the disaster but the decision of putting the festival on asphalt, taking everyone’s water supply at the door and the lack of free water fountains around the site made it impossible not to cause a riot. When people are making comparisons to war-torn refugee camps with a music festival you know it’s bad.
The media blamed the angry bands that were appearing at the festival such as KoRn, Limp Bizkit, and Metallica but the truth of it is the poor organisation and the greed of the organisers made this a moment for fans to remember for all the wrong reasons. Every female attendee was so petrified by the fraternity-based male attitudes that they had to stay in groups for their own safety. With the poor organisation of the Woodstock festivals, it seems that their luck ran out. The whole weekend left a dark period for music in the 1990s.
The Beat Marches On is a music blog written by Jimmy Whitehead. Jimmy has been blogging for six years specialising in Sports (especially American Football). If you want to follow Jimmy on Twitter: @Jimmy_W1987
The Beat Marches On has a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/The-Beat-Goes-On-Blog-107727714415791 and a Twitter page: @TheBeatGoesOnB1
Websites used for research were:
Messed Up Things That Happened At Woodstock ’99 (grunge.com)
Woodstock ’99: Worst Things About Infamous Music Fest – Rolling Stone
There is a documentary on Netflix about the festival called Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99
If you want to request a story for The Beat Marches On blog, then you can contact jwhiteheadjournalism@gmail.com. We cannot guarantee that the story will be published but will be considered