When the Woodstock film was released in March 1970, many concert promoters rushed to find a field that could hold the next big festival. The film had forgotten the previously doomed events at the ill-fated Altamont festival only three months prior. Now the music festival scene was big business and promoters wanted to make money, but what happens when the townspeople in the locations fight back? They don’t want hippies descending on their town. They only cause trouble and run around naked, stoned out of their minds. It turns out if you stop the music that won’t be enough. This week the Beat Marches On to 31st July 1970, the start of the cancelled Powder Ridge music festival, but nobody told the fans this.
The idea of the Powder Ridge festival came from promoter Raymond Filiberti, a Del Boy-esque character with Mafia ties who was always looking to make a quick buck. He saw the queues for the Woodstock film at a cinema and thought money could be made by a music festival.
After striking out at a couple of different venues at first, he then came into contact with Lou Zemel, an owner of a ski resort in Middlefield, Connecticut. The two struck a deal and the Powder Ridge festival was born. Filiberti then started to get the ball rolling, booking acts to play at the event, printing tickets, and getting a documentary crew on board. They originally agreed on an 18,000 max capacity by the partners, but the promoter decided to duplicate tickets, having up to a rumoured 100,000 printed (duplicates were printed but no definitive number of how many times) He had only one rule on selling them. Cash only with no receipts as he did with all transactions.
The bands the promoter booked were a who’s who of bands at the time. The likes of Fleetwood Mac, Sly and the Family Stone, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Janis Joplin, the final act of the festival. Jefferson Airplane were going to attend, even though they weren’t on the bill.
The townspeople of Middlefield didn’t like the idea of a music festival in their quaint little town. It wasn’t the only local community to stop a festival in America. In 1970 alone 30 out of 48 events had been stopped by a way of protest. They were against the festival and would go by any means to stop it.
The reason why the festival tried to be cancelled is unclear. The townspeople didn’t like Zemel. He has communist ties, who five years previously went to the US supreme court to try to travel to Cuba. At a time when the missile crisis was only a couple of years before. The hatred of him from the ultra-conservative town is just one of the reasons why they tried to stop it.
Another reason why is to do with the hippie culture. Although it is thought of now that most people of that era were all about peace and love, they were still in the minority throughout most of the country. With Middlefield being stuck in its ways they didn’t want the hippy movement to corrupt the youth in the town.
The final reason was that the townspeople were led to believe it was all a rouse. In the local newspaper a member of the town’s council, who was up for local election at the time, claimed that the festival wasn’t planned to ever happen and was a con by Filiberti (and who can blame them with his mob ties)
Just a few days before the festival took place, the townspeople thought they had won and managed to get a judge to sympathize with them to place an injunction stopping anyone from playing music at the festival. Anyone playing music there would be arrested.
Nobody told the patrons this, as they still decided to show up at the festival site. The ones who heard about it thought it would be lifted last minute anyway and still decided to go. Sly and the Family Stone were already in a hotel in the area.
Local police had to start blocking roads to stop fans from going to the venue. However, there weren’t many police in the area, only 199 in total for the whole state of Connecticut. By the end of the weekend, every policeman would be in Middlefield to help police the event.
By the time the roadblocks were put up the total amount of people who managed to get to Powder Ridge was around 30,000. Many of them were ticket holders, some managed to sneak in. With the injunction in place still, there was to be no music, but they still wanted to have fun.
From reports at the time if the town didn’t stop the festival from happening then the attendance of the festival could have been on a Woodstock-style level, hundreds of thousands of people. The drug dealers thought this too and brought enough drugs to supply those hundreds of thousands of people. There were approximately 70 drug dealers on site and as they wanted to get rid of their product, it created a price war between them, which helped the customer because they could get them for next to nothing. One dealer claimed to have a deal that said, ‘Buy one tab of acid and get a shot of Heroin for free’.
The whole weekend for the attendees was a drugged-out haze. The medic Dr. William Abruzzi, who was understaffed due to the festival not going forward, was treating 50 freakouts an hour at its peak. As there wasn’t any music all people could do is get stoned. Miraculously, with all the drugs going around there weren’t any deaths at the festival.
One of the musicians on the line-up did manage to get to perform to the crowd, defying the ‘Man’. Melanie, a folk singer, snuck into the festival grounds through a news truck covering the phenomenon and toured the site playing to different sections of the site. The local authorities had cut off the power to the venue so there wasn’t any amplification. That was until the singer spotted a Mr Softee ice cream van. The vendor loaned the singer a generator so she could at least plug in a microphone and played to the people.
Along with Melanie, the weekend’s entertainment consisted of drum circles, a speech by the Black Panthers during which a thunderstorm formed and the stoned audience thought the Panthers managed to create the bad weather. There was also a wedding where the main stage should have been, and a birth. Bringing the attendance up to 30,001.
By Sunday night/Monday morning, the attendees were wrapping up and leaving the venue. After a weekend of sex, drugs, and no rock and roll Middlefield went back to a quiet town. The townspeople weren’t happy that despite the injunction being in place, the festival still went ahead albeit without the music. Zemel broke the law by ignoring the sanction and was charged with contempt and ultimately fined $204,000. Filiberti didn’t get away scot-free either. As technically the music festival was cancelled, he had to refund the patrons ($20 for the weekend) but allegedly never did. The promoter was charged with perjury and was sentenced to four years in prison.
The defiance of the attendees of Powder Ridge was typical of the counterculture of the time. The Vietnam War made tensions high between the youth and the establishment and anytime they could defy the man, then it would be a win for them. No matter the consequences.
The Beat Marches On is a music blog written by Jimmy Whitehead. Jimmy has been blogging for five years specialising in Sports (especially American Football). If you want to follow Jimmy on Twitter: @Jimmy_W1987
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The websites used for research were:
Powder Ridge Festival, Middlefield, Connecticut. August 1st & 2nd 1970 (djtees.com)
CT tried to have its own Woodstock. It was more like Fyre Fest. (middletownpress.com)
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