“Let’s see if we can’t get this motherfucking place stirred up a little bit,” Fred Durst announced to the crowd early in Limp Bizkit’s set at Woodstock 1999. Apparently the mosh pit for the 200,000-plus attendees wasn’t wild enough for the band’s standards. Durst had promised MTV in a pre-concert interview that the band “would make history” at Woodstock ’99, and the reaction to the band’s songs from the recent Billboard chart #1 album “Significant Other” weren’t cutting it for him. As the band played a few more songs, he got what he wanted. The mosh pit grew increasingly violent and fans started tearing down ply-wood makeshift walls to ride on as they crowd surfed through the massive sea of people.
After “Nineteen Ninety Nine”, concert security demanded Durst calm the crowd down. “Hey, y’all, hey. Hey, they wanna ask us to ask you to mellow out a little bit. They say too many people are getting hurt. Don’t let nobody get hurt, but I don’t think you should mellow out. Mellowing out? That’s what Alanis Morrissette just had you motherfuckers do. Birkenstock Rock, y’all. This is 1999, motherfucker! Take your Birkenstocks and stick them up your fucking ass.” And then things really got out of hand as the band launched into a cover of Ministry‘s “Thieves”.
The first Woodstock in 1969 was about peace, love and 3 days of music, the defining moment of the hippie generation. The festival was a who’s who of musical greats from that era: Jimi Hendrix gave a legendary performance, Country Joe McDonald gave the defining Vietnam protesting moment when he played a rousing version of “Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die” and Crosby, Stills and Nash solidified their status as one of the premiere folk-rock acts in history with their legendary performance. But some have called the romanticizing of the event a fraud created by creative editing of the Woodstock documentary film. Originally the event was expected to get 25,000 attendees maximum, which is what promoters prepared for. But they ended up getting 350,000. The goodness of concert goers hearts to share their food and water with others saved the event from possibly turning into a disaster, since neither was provided in large enough amounts for 350,000 people. Also the event tickets originally sold for $25 and were not originally free as Woodstock myth states, but promoters knew it was impossible for them to make the large mass of people pay so decided to just cut their losses.
Country Joe & The Fish guitarist Barry Melton has long chastised the “Woodstock mythology”, saying in an interview “I can always tell who was really there when they tell me it was great. I know they saw the movie and they weren’t at the gig. It really wasn’t all that great to be there and it wasn’t really all that great to perform there. Except that everyone had an overriding sense that they were taking part in something historic. There never had been that many people together to do anything before. Our equipment got rained on. And we only got paid half our money.”
So with the tiny amount of people who actually paid to get into Woodstock, the promoters never made any money off of the show. It took licensing a documentary on the festival to Warner Brothers a year later to make any money. But through out the years there was always talk of reviving the festival for anniversaries. A 20th anniversary festival fell through in 1989. But Woodstock co-promoter Michael Lang often said he wanted to be able to give every generation its own Woodstock every 5-10 years. They decided instead to run a 25th anniversary event in 1994.
So on August 12th-14th, 1994, on the 25th anniversary of the original event, they revived the festival. It was controversial from the get-go, as people became outraged that the event had corporate sponsors this time out, the breaking point being lead-sponsor Pepsi being incorporated into the Woodstock logo of the dove on the guitar neck. The promoters called the corporate sponsors a necessity, saying the cost of running the event and paying big name acts top dollar to perform at the event was too great to just get by on ticket prices ($150) alone. The claimed price was over $20 million and if every concert goer (estimated at 350,000) paid the $150, that would have grossed $52.5 million, but of course a lot of free tickets were passed out in addition to quite a few people sneaking into the show, so it‘s impossible to get a truthful gross claim.
But the event was a total success. In addition to drawing 350,000 attendees, the event also broke the pay-per-view cable record by doubling the previous record held by New Kids On The Block in addition to getting the full weekend covered on MTV (although they were only allowed to show snippets from the concert performances and mainly just interviewed bands.) Legends from the original Woodstock-age like Crosby, Stills & Nash, Joe Cocker, The Band, Santana and even Bob Dylan who was unable to play the original event due to a motorcycle accident that left him injured played alongside mid-90s favorites like Nine Inch Nails, Green Day, Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Cypress Hill. The concert, outside of the complaints about being overpriced and too commercialized, received rave reviews all around and promoters announced intentions to do it again in five years.
As 1998 dawned rumors swirled of a 1999 show. In November 1998 the deal with sealed to have a 30th anniversary edition of the festival in July 1999. Early talk had the 3 headliners being Marilyn Manson, Metallica and the reemergence of Guns n Roses from exile, although only Metallica actually played the event. Marilyn Manson, suffering the controversy surrounding his alleged influence on the Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (although it turned out they weren’t fans of the band) caused Manson to turn down the event. And GnR was in turmoil with the recent departures of Slash and Duff McKagen. Instead, the event was split between acts leftover from the last event’s era like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sheryl Crow, Bush, Counting Crows and Live; with the new generation of hard rock and nu-metal acts like Korn, Limp Bizkit, Sevendust, Godsmack, Rage Against The Machine, Insane Clown Posse and Kid Rock.
The line-up months before the event took place got criticism. Some said the festival was lined up with far too many bands with just one-hit to their name, so a generation defining moment was impossible (and you never did hear from Oleander, Lit, 2 Skinee J’s, Everclear, or Vertical Horizon much again.) Another group of complainers prophetically stated that the abundance of rowdy nu-metal acts playing back-to-back-to-back on Saturday’s bill was disaster waiting to happen. They questioned how any security force outside of a large United States Marines brigade was going to possibly control over 200,000 moshers hyped up on nu-metal. Promoters assured people the crowd would not get out of hand Saturday; chalking it up to the old generation gap, the older generation not having faith in the youth of today, what Woodstock originally went through being looked down upon for their long hair and pot smoking.
Another prophetic warning came from nay sayers on the location of the event itself. Woodstock ’69 was held on the famous Yasgur farm and Woodstock ‘94 was held in rural Saugerties, NY. The 1999 edition was to be held on a closed Air Force base which once housed toxic waste, with lots of asphalted areas to increase the bright late-July sun and practically no areas of shade. The critics worried about attendees suffering heat strokes or dehydrating. The promoters defended the decision to hold the event at the Griffiss Air Force base, claiming it was symbolic of the festival of peace being held in a closed down military base, they also assured worriers that free water stations would be scattered through out the sprawling area. July 1999 was the hottest in New York state history, being responsible for scores of heat related deaths that month. Not only was the event being held on a former Air Force base, on one side of the grounds was a New York state prison, and on the other side was a mental institution, pointed out MTV News reporter Kurt Loder, who claimed he “felt bad vibes” about the venue when MTV arrived on Thursday to set up for filming.
There had been early talk that the event was going to be woefully under equipped security wise. Event organizers were fined $100,000 by Oneida county officials because they hadn’t turned in their security plans to them in time for approval. Fortunately they had many friends throughout the county and town where the event was being held where they were willing to turn a blind eye to nearly anything, as they had banked on receiving upwards of $500,000 in sales taxes from the event. In the end, only 1,500 people out of the 15,000 strong event staff actually worked security. And there were countless reports of Woodstock security ignoring their duties for various misdeeds, including spending time urging women to show their breasts to them, taking alcoholic beverages from attendees, or simply ignoring their duties to watch the concerts. Early criticism was met by Woodstock promoters by pointing out how low the arrest statistics were for the 1994 event, saying they felt the peaceful vibe Woodstock was known for meant things would be reasonably safe. "We don't want the kids coming here to feel that there is this oppressive security presence looking over their shoulder every minute,” said co-promoter Daniel Flynn. “We want them to come here and just enjoy the event.”
To provide the hundreds of thousands of people attending the event food, beverages and the obligatory souvenirs the promoters had makeshift mini-malls constructed to meet needs. The problem was the vendors running in the makeshift mini-malls claimed the costs of operating at the event forced them to jack up their prices to astronomical levels by anyone’s standards. Bottles of water and cans of soda were priced at $4, a 4” pizza was sold for $12, a footlong hot dog also sold for $10, a single beer went for $6.50, and you don’t even want to know what commemorative t-shirts were sold for. But to make sure everybody had enough money, the event organizers were kind enough to make sure enough ATM machines were scattered through the makeshift mini-mall to withdraw more money. For a $2 surcharge plus whatever your bank charges you to use an ATM machine.
Thursday July 22nd at night and Friday July 23rd in the morning was when the concert goers started streaming into Rome, NY. They gave the rural New York small town traffic jams like they had never imagined. “Everyone was really polite then, very excited to go to the concert,” recalls gas station owner Victor Green. “They were noisy coming in, honking and hooting and hollering; but it was in good fun. They were just excited.”
Early talk started trickling out of the event that security was more concerned with making sure the crowd wasn’t sneaking in too much food and beverages, ignoring searching them for weapons as they checked bags of those entering the gates. “I saw them toss out more food and water than anything they really should have been after like knives or drugs,” said festival attender Holly Blackwell. “I guess it showed that they were more concerned about increasing their profits by forcing you to buy their expensive stuff than keeping you safe.”
The festivities officially kicked off with a performance from Godfather of Soul James Brown, who hardly got a “Live At The Apollo” response from the young crowd, but he put on a fairly well received set. The early part of the day was pretty uneventful, only G Love & Special Sauce, who were only there to replace Sugar Ray who cancelled at the last moment, made their song “Cold Beverages” the anthem of the hot July day. That evening, after spending the entire day trying to convince female concert goers to flash their breasts, some of the men attending the Sheryl Crow concert started chanting for her to flash them. She informed them they would have to pay more than the price of a Woodstock ticket to see her breasts. Actress Rosie Perez, there to introduce DMX also received a “SHOW YOUR TITS!” chant from the rowdy crowd; she quipped "3.99, Blockbuster, go rent Do the Right Thing."
The crowd chaos began Friday evening. An early sign was Offspring singer Dexter Holland becoming outraged upon seeing women having their breasts and crotches groped while attempting to crowd surf. He took a time out from performing to chew out the testosterone heavy crowd on their disgusting behavior towards women in the crowd. Over the event countless women came forward saying they had been stripped of their clothing, had their breasts fondled and had fingers inserted to their vaginas and anuses while crowd surfing, some even saying they were grabbed and forced up to crowd surf against their will so men could molest them.
Rappers the Insane Clown Posse stirred up fans during their set by saying they thought they were paid too much money to perform for their fans here, so they wanted to give some back. The rappers then announced they had balls with upwards of hundreds of dollars taped to them and began throwing them out. Of course this brought a mini-riot as fans began to wrestle over the money-balls. Fortunately this occurred early Friday evening before the harsh reality of how expensive the festival was going to be beyond the $150 tickets, as fans probably would have gone insane trying to grab the money to pay for necessities.
Headlining Friday night were nu-metalers Korn, who played a frantic hour long set. The mosh pit was gigantic and the crowd rabid as they even bravely debuted two new unfinished songs to the massive crowd. Unfortunately, the first report of a rape occurred during the set, with a woman claiming she was pulled into a mosh pit and gang raped by two men as others stood around and cheered them on. Reports came out later that a man suffered a fatal heart attack during the day on Friday as the night came to a close.
Kurt Loder claimed in an interview he believed Korn’s set Friday night set the wheels in motion for the chaos that happened the next two days. “Korn’s explosive opening of their set on Friday night, the endless sprawl of fans stretched out before the main stage swelled and surged in an eerie and tidal sway. It was at this point I believe, that a certain sinister chemistry began to be apparent between the furious assault of some of the music and the relentlessly shitty surroundings,” said Loder. But concert goer John Prince disagreed with that assessment. “No, the fans were so happy to be there still on Friday,” said Prince. “We were sunburned, sore and tired on Friday night, but we were still happy.”
Saturday’s chaos kickstarted with Kid Rock’s early afternoon performance, which his hard rock-meets-hip hop got the crowd so worked up they moshed like madmen and climaxed with throwing seemingly thousands of empty bottles and other assorted trash up in the air as they went wild during the set. Things calmed down mid-afternoon through early evening, as a dose of Dave Matthews Band, Counting Crows and Alanis Morrissette calmed the crowd down a little. But not enough for Morrissette to have a few bottles thrown at her as angry male metalheads demanded she end her set for something heavier. An EMT told a Salon.com reporter, "People are really giving us a hard time. I'm stationed down there by the light tower. They throw shit at us, steal our stuff. We had to take a woman out yesterday. I'm pretty sure her neck was broken. You can tell because her hands were starting to curl up. Her heart rate was almost non-existent and she was hardly breathing. Her boyfriend didn't want to let her go. I can't wait for Metallica tonight."
And at 8pm Saturday it was what they got as Limp Bizkit took the stage, introduced by Verne “Mini-Me” Troyer. Fans in the back started climbing up on security walls to get a better view of the performance, until Woodstock security (those who didn’t abandon post to just watch the show instead of doing their jobs) pulled them down. Then they got a better idea as Limp Bizkit played: just tear down the wall. I guess Durst barking “GIMME SOMETHING TO BREAK!” acted as their Ronald Reagan demanding the Berlin Wall be torn down. His “Time to reach down deep inside, and take all that negative energy and let that shit out of your fucking system” as the “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Suddenly, pieces of the wood wall were being passed around the crowd as people got on it to surf on it. Durst had an epiphany; “That’s some of the phattest shit I’ve ever seen!” he exclaimed as he then formulated a plan to get the crowd to surf him on the big wood board to create his iconic Woodstock moment. Fortunately, his handlers thought better of it, as they quickly got him away from crowd surfing reminding him how unsafe it was.
After the band played “Break Stuff”, which became the unofficial Woodstock ’99 anthem, the event organizers had their speakers shut off in an attempt to get the wild crowd to calm down. Fans had started climbing up on the speaker towers and even tried to climb up to where the cameramen were up filming the event for pay-per-view and MTV. Durst spent a few minutes wondering why nobody could hear his microphone as he tried to inform the crowd they were about to play their big hit single “Nookie”. After they did they played a brief cover of George Michael’s “Faith” and the set seemingly came to an abrupt end.
Event organizers then rushed onto the stage to demand that the crowd calm down because a lot of people in the mosh pits were seriously hurt during the Bizkit set, and EMTs were having problems making it through the chaotic crowd. "Please, there are people hurt out there," an emcee announces to the crowd. "They are your brothers and sisters. They are under the towers. Please, help the medical team get them out of there. We can't continue the show until we get these dear people out of there. We have a really serious situation out there." Organizers made a ridiculous threat to pull Metallica from their headlining slot if the crowd didn’t calm down, which obviously nobody bought into since it would have caused more chaos than anything Limp Bizkit’s mosh pit anarchy did. The festival was stopped for a half hour between Bizkit and Rage Against The Machine.
When Rage took the stage, they also agreed to have their volume turned down significantly, in the hope that maybe a quieter Rage Against The Machine would have a gentler crowd. Zach De La Rocha also didn’t address the crowd with his normal political rhetoric in an attempt to keep the crowd calmer, only giving a small speech about Native American political prisoner Leonard Peltier before launching into “Freedom”, a song about him. Well, they didn’t really get their wish. While nothing as insane as crowd attempt to climb camera towers or surfing on torn down walls took place, the crowd was still violent in the mosh pits with injuries piling up galore. But not having any highlight reel material of the Bizkit set lead critics to say this proved Fred Durst and Kid Rock goading fans to go crazier instead of just playing the heavier songs without banter was the real reason behind the chaos. “I’d say from what I recall about Saturday the crowd actually went crazier for Rage than Limp,” recalls Woodstock ‘99 festival goer John Prince. “I actually had to leave the mosh pit during Rage’s performance, but I was able to stay in for Limp’s entire performance. The pits were insane. I was just covered in welts and cuts and bruises and had enough of it. I was so sore by that point, it took it out of me for the rest of the festival. I made sure to stay to the side during Metallica.”
According to event volunteer David Schneider, another gang rape occurred at the mosh pit during Rage’s set. “I saw someone push this girl into the mosh pit, a very skinny girl, maybe 90 to 100 pounds,” said Schneider. “Then a couple of the guys started taking her clothes off-not so much her top but her bottom. They pulled her pants down and they were violating her, and they were passing her back and forth. There were five guys that were raping this girl." But promoter Michael Lang called all claims of mosh pit rape outrageous during a post-Woodstock press conference. “A gang rape happening in a mosh pit is inconceivable. You can barely move in a mosh pit, it’s worse than rush hour on a Subway, you have no room.”
Rage Against The Machine bassist Tim Commerford said he felt the key reason for the audiences’ anger was due to event organizers taking away the food and beverages they brought into the event before it even began. Commerford said “When you have a show and it’s 100 degrees outside, and you’re telling your staff to take their water away so you can charge them $8 to buy some from you, you’re going to have problems. By the time we got on stage that night, we could see the kids screaming for water. It was the water, it came down to that. You take water away from people in 100 degree weather, they‘re going to riot.” Event promoters did have free water stations, but festival goers said they only worked sporadically, and they were so far away from the concert stages (reportedly about half a mile) that people didn’t want to miss the concerts, or even have the energy to walk that far and walk back to the concerts. One attendee recalled a security guard snatching a canteen of water out of his hand and told him to “go to the pizza tent if you’re thirsty.”
Metallica played an extra long set to a much calmer crowd to end Saturday. It’s debatable whether the crowd was calmer due to tiring itself out by 11pm or if Metallica defused things by throwing in songs from their much-maligned material from Load and Reload to kill off their energy.
When the sun came up on Sunday morning to reveal the field, it looked like a tornado had ripped through the air field. “I’m sure providing trash clean ups for hundreds of thousands of people is impossible, but they didn’t seem to make much of an attempt to do it,“ Woodstock ‘99 attendee Marsha Smith remembered. “Trash didn’t look like it was ever picked up. The bins were filled up instantly on Friday, and by Saturday people knew this so just littered.” Smith also cited the poor sanitary service of restrooms “The bathrooms were a disaster, worse than anything I’d ever seen, and I’ve seen some pretty nasty restrooms. It was just so disgusting. They didn’t have nearly enough to go around, so of course they were backed up with shit and toilet paper pretty fast. We were so angry. We paid good money to go there and they couldn’t even pump shit out of a portable toilet for us?” Woodstock promoters claimed they had 2,000 toilets for 200,000 people. Many concert attenders recall having to basically build a dam to prevent urine streams running out of clogged portable toilets from running out to their camp ground to soak into their tents.
A lot of the angry concert goers, angry at the insanely high prices of food and beverages had also run out of money by Sunday. “It would have been nice if they had warned us how expensive stuff was going to be,” said John Prince. Bad hangovers from Saturday night combined with lots of grumbling between festival goers about how expensive everything was, how filthy everything was, how long the lines were for the free water and how limited the showers were to add to the disgruntled mood.
Lots of people also left on Sunday, taking the crowd attendance figure to an estimated 150,000. Although that might have had more to do with the lack of big names playing on Sunday than anger about living conditions and/or sanitation. Sunday’s biggest act were the Red Hot Chili Peppers closing that night, and there had been rumors floating around about a mystery band, ranging from anyone from Guns n Roses to Prince to Paul McCartney to an All-Star jam band made up of Woodstock ‘69 veterans. Of course none of the rumors came true. It would be totally ridiculous for an event selling tickets to have an act who could possibly sell even more tickets if announced to the public to keep them hidden. The far superior line up of the 1994 Woodstock did outdo them in attendance by over 100,000 estimated people, after all.
The Sunday performances really didn’t gain any notice, as the press was still talking about Limp Bizkit and their fans going nuts. Elvis Costello tried to capture the Woodstock spirit with “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding”, Jewel played her brand of light folk rock, Creed brought out former Doors guitarist Robbie Krieger to play some Doors covers, and the crowd ripped off a tarp and used it to throw willing participants up in the air during Godsmack’s set until security forced them to stop. So then they just went back to beating the hell out of each other in the mosh pit like usual.
And later that night, the event came to an end with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The band had been on a tour with a non-violence charity that was spreading a message against school shootings; they held contests through schools where the best student essays on how to stop school shootings would get free Chili Peppers tickets. The group gave out candles to the estimated 10,000 who stopped by their booth on Sunday before RHCP took the stage to hold up in memorial to the Columbine shooting victims at a point in the Chili Peppers set during “Under The Bridge”, which the band had been dedicating to Columbine victims on their tour.
The set started out without incident, only Flea performing totally nude stood out. Then the crowd started setting small bonfires with the “peace candles”. The band thought nothing of it, until they continued to grow. Their set was prematurely stopped, as promoters rushed the stage to warn the crowd about the growing fires. They told the crowd the show would be temporarily stopped because fire fighters were on their way out there to put out the fires, and afterwards the Red Hot Chili Peppers would come back out to finish the second half of their show. The fire trucks never drove through, but the Chili Peppers did return to the stage to play a quick cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire” as the actual fires continued to grow. The Chili Peppers defended their choice of the ironic choice of a song. Drummer Chad Smith said in an interview “We didn’t play ‘Fire’ as some kind of joke about the fires. We had it in our set list going in, and all we saw from the stage were a bunch of small fires, nothing serious. We didn’t think anything of it.”
Shortly afterwards a video package from Hendrix’s 1969 Woodstock performance played on the big screens, ending with a lazer-Hendrix appearing on stage and then floating up in the sky back to rock n roll heaven. This being the big climax promoters had promised: a half-Chili Peppers set followed by viewing the Hendrix concert (which had been playing constantly at various television screens throughout the festival grounds) was quite a letdown, and the promoters leading them on into thinking something big was going to end things didn’t help matters any.
As the fires grew the fans then started rioting. Wood was torn from security barriers (well, the ones left standing) were torn off and tossed onto the fires to make them even larger. Then metal barriers were ripped apart and tossed into the fire. Next came speaker towers being knocked down, as well as light rigs; which in a way was impressive since they were built sturdy enough to stand in hurricane force winds, but according to eye witnesses less than 20 rioters knocked them down in under a half an hour. Several rioters picked up the large speakers from the towers they knocked over and tossed them onto the fire as well.
Next the rioters turned their attention to grabbing what they could out of merchandise trailers and then setting them on fire as well. ATM machines were also broken into and the money looted. Festival goer John Prince witnessed some of the rioting before wisely evacuating and recalled thinking “Where are the Woodstock security [guards]? Were are the police? Where are the fire fighters? Surely someone called 911 by now, right? It was so pathetic of the organization that they let it get out of hand that much,” said Prince. “They never should have continued the performances until those first fires were put out. Maybe the people still would have set new fires and rioted anyway, but at least you would have had more control.”
Police finally showed up and began pepper spraying rioters to regain control and fire crews put out the numerous fires. Finally the rioters were either arrested or ran away to finally end the chaos early Monday morning. In the end they did over $2 million in damages (counting both structure damage and the cost of stolen or destroyed merchandise) and a total of 44 rioters were arrested.
So why did it take authorities so long to arrive at Woodstock? According to a police spokesperson at a post-event press conference, they simply didn’t know how bad it was until later. They were under the impression from the only reports they got was that it was a small breakout being handled by event security, and not the violent riot which Woodstock security fled away from in reality. The Rome, NY fire fighters were said by Lang to be too afraid of trying to drive fire trucks through a crowd of over 150,000 people so they waited a long time to actually show up.
Some people in the media who attended both the 1994 and 1999 events talked of far superior sanitation and security for the 1994 event, which kept things in check. Reporters like Otto Luck and Kurt Loder recalled seeing security actively patrolling the crowd non-stop during the 1994 event but scarcely seeing them in 1999. Reporters and fans both recalled a much better set up regarding toilets and trash clean up, with one concert goer telling a reporter during an interview she estimated 1 trash area per acre at Woodstock ’99.
And then of course came the blame game.
Despite all evidence pointing to the contrary, promoter Michael Lang refused to believe the riot happened out of anger at the Woodstock event. “I don’t think these kids were making an anti-Woodstock statement, I think it was just an anti-establishment and anti-everything statement.”
The Woodstock promoter mantra during the fall out was to constantly point out that they had many performances over 3 days and all but a half-dozen were peaceful. They claimed the media was giving a totally unfair portrayal of the weekend, Scher said, “I think the press has unfairly ignored that majority group and the great music that happened and focused on a minority of people who had complaints, some legitimate, and the problems that occurred Sunday night/early Monday morning, which really began, problems that is, well after the festival music-wise was over with. About 90 minutes after it was over with,” he said. “Then you have the press, journalists, who weren't at the festival, who had no first-hand knowledge whatsoever of the festival, but took news clips, second hand information, trying to weave a story, that is largely inaccurate. I think that that's the unfairness of a large part of the coverage to date.”
Even the National Organization for Women got involved in the debate, as a total of 5 women said they were raped on the festival grounds and another was followed into a near by gas station bathroom by another festival goer and raped there. They claimed one security worker for the festival came forward to them saying they knew about every one of the rapes but the promoters didn’t want police on the festival grounds because they knew a lot of drugs were going around and didn’t want festival attenders being busted on drug charges. Although nothing came of these charges
MTV surprisingly attacked one of their sacred cows in Limp Bizkit at the time. Despite the band being the most heavily played rock band on the station, constantly on flagship show Total Request Live, MTV News’ Kurt Loder bashed the band in every media interview he did, since he was the go-to guy for seemingly every press outlet who wanted MTV’s take on the situation. “I thought that the Limp Bizkit performance was one of the most reprehensible things I have ever seen.” But they did play a music video Fred Durst directed himself giving “their side” of the Woodstock controversy. That video (for “ReArrange”) was their first statement on the matter, since Durst and the rest of Limp Bizkit refused to comment on the matter for months. When Durst finally did start talking about it in interviews, he gave a generic “We’re innocent of inciting anything” response, pointing out the actual rioting happened 29 hours after Limp Bizkit’s performance. Limp Bizkit, a year later, were sued by a family of a fan that was killed in a mosh pit during an Australian festival performance. They were found not liable.
The Woodstock promoters were defiant in defending themselves, playing the events off as a once in a lifetime occurrence, saying they didn’t believe any of the rapes or riots tainted their brand, promising to be back with another event in 2004 or 2009. Lang did later admit in interviews he should have spaced out the heavy acts more “If I knew a riot was coming I might have done a little different booking. I would have tried not to have had as edgy a bill as we
had. I would have programmed the days better, tried to spread them out a bit more.” He also seemed to write off the entire event as not Woodstock. “That wasn’t Woodstock, that was more of an MTV thing.” Lang though initially claimed some sort of conspiracy was behind the rioting. “We saw [rioting] kids with their faces painted black, wearing the same-colored shirts and headbands deliberately setting fires…It certainly looks premeditated.” Lang backed off that claim in subsequent interviews on the matter.
But even some of the bands who performed at the show weren’t buying their blamelessness, and some even agreed with the media belief that the large amount of heavy rock acts were partially to blame. Moby said in an interview a few days after the event “You don’t have a rock festival based on peace and love and invite Kid Rock and the Insane Clown Posse. It’s just foolishness,” said Moby. “Look at the people who go to their shows regularly, macho idiots. So of course those same macho idiots are going to show up at your rock festival and cause trouble.” Rolling Stone writer Neil Strauss claimed that the television cameras for MTV and pay-per-view were a chief instigator of the actions, claiming that the kids were putting on a show for the media and if the event wasn’t filmed they would not have rioted.
Some concert goers aren’t as quick to blame the music, though. “You’ve got to remember that the rioting happened at THE END of the event,” said Prince. “The fires and looting would have happened immediately after Limp Bizkit or Rage Against The Machine performed or during the shows if the music was to blame. People were pissed after it was all over and mostly took it out on Woodstock property and those vendors charging so damn much for necessities. I think that spells out who was to blame pretty clearly.”
If one good thing came from the Woodstock ‘99 incident, it is that a increased importance on crowd safety was placed in public consciousness. Woodstock ‘99’s promoters were seemingly asleep at the wheel on a lot of issues, believing that good faith in people was enough to keep everybody safe. But subsequent American festivals like Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Ozzfest, Summer Jam and countless others have not had anywhere near the out of control incidents as Woodstock ’99 had. A non-profit organization called Fans Everywhere was set up as a place where concert goers could post information on sexual assaults they saw on their website (that has since been removed) to help collect evidence, with rewards being given out to tips that lead to sexual assaulters’ arrests.
MTV’s Kurt Loder raised the ire of the Woodstock promoters by speaking out against them to seemingly anybody who would listen. Loder gave interviews to TV shows, hosted several MTV specials about the aftermath of the event, wrote an essay for Rolling Stone Magazine about it, and became the media’s go-to guy in their coverage. When asked about Loder leading the media attacks on Scher, Lang and security chief Daniel Flynn, Scher said, “We have tried repeatedly to engage Mr. Loder in a responsible and meaningful dialogue regarding all of the aspects of Woodstock. He, however, for reasons that he has not shared with us, has a very dark and negative view of the entire event. The attendees, and unfortunately, the overall event and its surroundings. We would welcome a fair discussion with Mr. Loder, but I think that can only come about, if those of you that had a good time at Woodstock made your feelings known to him.”
Michael Lang started exploring making Woodstock ’09 happen, citing a need to make money since he claimed to have lost nearly $10 million on the event, even though many people have questioned Lang‘s truthfulness on the subject of Woodstock‘s grossed money, some claiming by Lang‘s math tickets would have sold for $2 instead of $150, not even counting advertising revenue or pay-per-view revenue, for his figures to be accurate. But as July has come and gone and August is upon us with no announcement it looks as if 2014 would be the next shot to make the 45th anniversary festival, or 2019 for the 50th.
When Lang was asked about what light he believed Woodstock ‘99 would be seen in history, he responded “What happened on Sunday will be a part of the experience. I think as time goes on it will find it's proper perspective as the last two hours of what was a great weekend.” It still hasn’t. John Scher on the other hand asked the fans who wanted Woodstock to come back to appeal to the media, to let them know it deserved better coverage. “If there is to be a Woodstock in the future, it can only be because the people want it. It's such a monumental task to put it on, so the vast majority of people who had a great time have to say something to MTV, publications like Rolling Stone and Spin, so that the majority can be heard. So that what happened that weekend will not be forever scarred by the dastardly deeds of a few.”
