Woodstock: Disneyland for Hippies?

Travel Blog  •  Eva Holland  •  04.10.09 | 2:23 PM ET

Well, the 40th anniversary of the mother of all music festivals may still be a few months away, but the “reflecting on Woodstock” pieces are already cropping up. This week, Rock’s Backpages digs up a vicious Rolling Stone piece—circa 1999—from David Dalton, eviscerating the festival as the death of the ’60s dream.

Here’s a sample: “Woodstock, if anything, amounts to the Disneyfication of the entire hippie enterprise—a just-so story about generational togetherness, a sort of temporary ’60s theme park that (alas!) has become an annual institution.”

And there’s more: “Woodstock was an exercise in consummate narcissism committed by the most affluent generation of young people in the history of the world, a mass delusion of epidemic proportions wherein hundreds of thousands suffered total loss of the amygdala, an archaic brain function that allows higher primates to distinguish between fantasy and reality. How else are you going to explain—thirty years later!—people still mouthing soppy Crosby-Stills-and-Nashishisms about it? Aging participants endlessly regurgitating their retouched, mediated memories?”

Speaking of aging participants and mediated memories, here’s a fearless prediction for you: this summer’s travel pages will see several pilgrimages to Max Yasgur’s farm (and, of course, the Woodstock Museum), and at least one of them will see a boomer father bring his 20-something son along for the nostalgic ride. Don’t tell David Dalton, but I’m kind of looking forward to it.

Tags: Festivals, Music, Shameless Self-Promotion, North America, United States, New York, News and Briefs

Eva Holland is co-editor of World Hum. She is a former associate editor at Up Here and Up Here Business magazines, and a contributor to Vela. She's based in Canada's Yukon territory.


1 Comment for Woodstock: Disneyland for Hippies?

Carl 04.12.09 | 10:21 AM ET

Woodstock, that is something I heard about all through my life, it seemed to have phased out and I start hearing about “burning man” a leave no trace event. Maybe I will be lucky enough one day to let myself go and see what these places are all about.

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