![]() But then you realized there was at least a half a million of us. “Before Woodstock, if you were living in a little town, you thought there might be a dozen people out there you might be able to get along with. I basically didn’t have a lot of friends, but I knew I was looking for peace and justice and wanted to be with creative people who were looking to make the world a better place,” Sadiq, now 72, told the AP before having his oral history recorded. “Before Woodstock, I didn’t have real direction. When the bus broke down, he hitched a ride that delivered him to the festival site by noon Thursday, allowing him to claim a spot so near the stage that he is visible in photos taken during the performances.īy the time he left Bethel a few days later, in a hearse that a fellow festival-goer had converted into a van, Sadiq had changed. It’s a quest that has taken museum curators on a cross-country pilgrimage to record and preserve the recollections of those who were there.Īlthough the festival wasn’t supposed to begin until a Friday, Sadiq departed on a Bethel-bound bus on a Wednesday. That ticking clock is why the Museum at Bethel Woods, located on the site of the festival, is immersed in a five-year project to sift facts from the legends and collect firsthand Woodstock memories before they fade away. Most were teenagers or young adults - people now approaching the twilight of their lives in an era where only a small portion of the population has living memories of the 1960s. ![]() It’s a fitting misnomer for an event that has become as much legend as reality - and has less to do with location than the memories it evokes about a society’s state of mind at the close of a jumbled decade.Īn estimated 450,000 people converged on a swath of land owned by dairy farmer Max Yasgur to attend an “Aquarian Exposition” promising “three days of peace, love and music” from Aug. The fabled music festival, seen as one of the seminal cultural events of the 1960s, took place 60 miles (96.5 kilometers) away in Bethel, New York, an even smaller village than Woodstock. (AP) - Woodstock didn’t even happen in Woodstock.
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