Over half a century after a little music festival exceeded its ambitions, Roaring Fork Valley residents who attended are contemplating its legacy. The organizers of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair hoped for perhaps 60,000 total attendees over the course of the weekend. Momentum and energy resulted in something entirely different: nearly half a million participants in an experience that went beyond a simple concert and shifted the perception of music and gatherings in North America.
Terry Glasenapp grew up in Rochester, Minnesota. As a teenager, he was an avid fan of Joe Cocker, Jefferson Airplane and other popular 1960s bands. His passion for music included flipping through magazines promoting concerts and profiling artists. This was how, early in the summer of ’69, he and best friend, Dennis Horton, came across an advertisement in Ramparts Magazine for a music and art fair slated for the weekend of Aug. 15-18 in upstate New York.
Glasenapp’s journey to the concert may sound familiar to today’s music festival attendees. After buying weekend tickets through the mail for $18 apiece, he and Horton began their roadtrip eastward. After traveling for three days, he recounts, “we drove through New York City and stayed with a friend in New Jersey who had convinced her begrudging parents to put us up for a night. They ended up refusing to let her go to a concert many hours north with two adolescent boys and countless hippies.”
The two young music fans continued north into the unknown. The farther upstate they drove, the more traffic increased. Around Bethel, New York, traffic slowed to a crawl. People parked along the road shoulder and walked miles to the dairy farm. Glasenapp laughed recalling how they decided to park when pedestrians were easily passing the vehicles in the queue. “I’d never seen anything like it, so many thousands of people. It gave me a growing feeling of something epic, momentous, almost spiritual.” He and his companion parked their vehicle and joined the flow of bodies, “a merging of walking people, which felt like a pilgrimage.”
Much of what Glasenapp shares echoes the images and notions now permanently attached to the name Woodstock. “We saw Arlo Guthrie and other legends of the day, and got to watch Richie Havens play ‘Freedom’ while he was improvising his 45-minute set into a 2.5-hour one to cover for bands who had gotten stuck in the traffic.” He remembers the super high-charge energy around Santana’s performance, and the thousands of candles in the night during Melanie Safka’s performance.
Yet what Glasenapp and other attendees remember more vividly is the feeling among the crowds that weekend. When the festival organizers realized they might get more than 60,000 attendees, Glasenapp explained, they looked for an opener to share a poignant message. They selected Sri Swami Satchidananda to set the tone. “He put out a vibration through his voice; I believe it put an energy through the festival.” He still remembers the emphasis on unity, mindfulness practices like yoga and meditation and ways to calm ourselves. “Woodstock may have been a little push or a big one in the direction of Western culture embracing yoga and meditation,” Glasenapp asserts. Satchidananda’s message, the music and the energy of the gathered masses had “almost a cellular effect of connection and trust and hope.”
Glasenapp didn’t see any violence over the weekend. Ann Halpin, who now lives in Grand Junction, was at the concert separately. She remembers one conflict, but she remembers that she and others in the vicinity talked the men arguing down. “I saw two guys in an argument, in fight positions, ready to punch each other. Many of us around them booed them down and said, ‘Peace! We’re not having that here!’ The fight was averted.”
Roaring Fork Valley local Chuck Ristine remembers how the resident farmers changed their tune about the flood of young people in the area. “The locals did a big turnaround, from being afraid of us, to sending food in, giving us water.” Many of the young attendees hadn’t brought tents to the concert, or even food. Yet the upstate New Yorkers and more prepared concertgoers took care of those around them. Said Glasenapp, “The people who did manage to get food, total strangers, just started passing it down the line and sharing, sandwiches, wine.”
Glasenapp sees the legacy of Woodstock in locally-organized music and art festivals today. “The core thing is connecting,” he said, articulating that he thinks the inclusivity and openness and joy among strangers can palpably change people. “I think Carbondale Mountain Fair is an example of that. It has the same spirit but it’s better organized because it can be.” Other examples he gave include Rocky Mountain Folks Festival in Lyons, Paonia Harvest Festival and the Glenwood Summer of Music series.
That is what Glasenapp thinks about when he reflects upon Woodstock five and a half decades later. To him and to many of the remaining nearly half a million attendees, it is an example of the best of humanity and of what is possible when intention is channeled toward good vibrations.
