European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - August 16, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse That generation Rose Hart an old hippie that never grew Phyllls less it was a Little scary. Just All the Larry Ouigley it was a fad people went Marlon Scott put the 60s to my biggest thing in the 60s was you did t need a whole lot of Money to have Lun. And you did l need a lot of possessions. You still Don t. Possessions Are Neal but All they do is they hold you Down at times like when it s time to the sound is the most fresh in my mind. The sound of music bouncing against an Ocean of people. Hair Teeth eyes arms legs Aslar As you can see. When the sound hits them and comes Back to you. It $ unbelievable. It s like in the grand Canyon the echoes. The sound is the most vivid in my mind to this Carlos Santana Phyllls less still has some mementos of Woodstock. Her copy of the life Magazine commemorative Issue is Lorn and the Corners Are dog eared but the original festival poster looks As Good As new. Leis has had it mounted and it hangs above the bed in her teen age son s room. He s heard about Woodstock and knows we were there and he just has been interested in it leis said. These things can help him understand what it was All leis was 24 when she and her then husband Ron hew to Woodstock irom Miami about six weeks before the festival. Ron was teaching Art at the University when festival organizers hired him and his students to build environmental Art Jungle gym Type structures made out of Wood and other natural materials that festival goers could play on. During the show Ron helped with stage Security afterwards he joined the clean up Crew to help bulldoze the trash while leis worked on soothing angry town officials tempers. Leis says she never would have gone to Woodstock if she and her husband had t been hired to work there. I was older and i would t have considered myself a part of the culture that was drawn to this and neither my husband nor i were into drugs and things like that. So it was kind of a real strange environment to be in. And when i was there Al the festival itself it was a Little scary. Just All the people. And there was so much open drug peddling going � fortunately. Leis says she almost never had to mingle e with the masses festival organizers did their Best to take care of the employees providing generous salaries room and Board for the weeks before the show tents for the Crews to sleep in during the three Days of the festival food and regular visits to the local doctor for shots to prevent i pneumonia. Less eventually divorced her husband. Ron still leads a 6 rather counterculture Type life she said he makes Hist living As a Potter in Oregon. Bui leis took a different route she went Back to school to get a teaching degree. She now teaches special education at the Butzbach elementary school in West Germany. I Don t see myself As having changed that much from or the 60s other than maybe my life has taken some turns because i Felt like i had to be responsible for my unlike scores of others who have glamorized Woodstock and what it stood for leis takes a More or realistic View of the festival. Woodstock was intended to be a Money maker it just 3 did t work out that Way she said. Would it have been different if the fences had been up if the Gates had been August 16,1989 there if people did have to pay to get in would we have remembered Woodstock differently we had our own helicopter and Hying Over thai held seeing All those people that scared the living daylights out of me. Ii was nighttime when we went on and we had a great spot because Jimi Hendrix s agent was our agent so we went on the first act to use the lights on saturday night. Right after the dead " Leslie West Larry Quigley quotes Bob Dylan when he reflects on Woodstock the times they Are a Changin said the 38-year-old sergeant first class stationed in bad Hersfeldt West Germany. The altitudes of the people today and the music they have nowadays i Don t think there Ever could be another Woodstock. For one thing they Don t have enough Good bands to last for three Days. And everybody now it seems like they re just out for it was the summer Between his Junior and senior year of High school when Ouigley and a Bunch of his friends piled into the car to make the Svi to 6-hour drive from Rhode Island to upstate new York. Quigley had been going to Catholic schools All his life and recalls never having seen anything quite like what he saw at Woodstock. I was just your Normal kid rebellious and the whole nine Yards party on the weekends but Jusi to see the degree the extremes everybody took. Compared to what we considered partying at the Lime it was kind of amazing the amount of the drugs the openness of sex love and All this stuff. It was pretty Quigley went to Woodstock strictly for the music. But when it was Over he realized that something More had happened than just a Good Lime something had stuck. Even though he now Calls it just a phase he was going through Quigley found that his attitudes began to change after the festival he became drawn toward the hippie lifestyle and altitudes. Though he was never a Radical he went on peace marches and to moratoriums. After All his older brother was in Vietnam at the time. Quigley says it was peer pressure thai made him do it it s like everybody was doing it All your friends started doing it and you kind of went but then Quigley started changing again. He moved away from his friends in Rhode Island and started developing a new Way of in 1974 he joined the army for the first time. It was the Best option he had. He said. Since then he s become a career Soldier. I think for most people it was a fad they went through. Then maybe after one two or three years they said Well that was a lot of fun now i gotta get on with my life " Quigley s experience at Woodstock and his venture into 60s attitudes did have one lasting effect on him. I d say i m More open minded i be been subjected to a lot he said. I be been More or less on the other Side of the Coin compared to what i m doing now. I can see the Good from both sides and the Don f think about Woodstock much these Days it seems like another Era almost. The peace generation i thought was a very Good thing. Unfortunately when the movie came out it turned the whole thing into a fashion. Fashions come and go and unfortunately in went. So to me it was like the Woodstock generation came together Al Woodstock and then they All Well Home again and that was the end of Alvilee Marion Scott can t understand All the fuss about Woodstock. As far As he s concerned that Era is Over and people should just put it to to me Woodstock was just a concert Scott said but it s amazing that alter the concert it got All this cult notoriety. Only after the concert people snarled making a big thing about it you know something that Wilt never happen Scott was 19, holding Down a summer Job alter his senior year of High Schohn new York City when he and some buddies bought tickets to Woodstock and boarded a special festival bus that left from the mid town terminal. At the end of the season he would be leaving now York for College in Arizona. Scott was t socially or politically involved at the Lime he said he was t an anti War protester he had no real consciousness about Vietnam he knew nothing about the peace movement nor about the Black movement he was just a kid who liked music our main Guy was Jimi Hendnix a lot of people now think that to wore identifying with something Scott said. I m pretty sure i was t the Only one out there who was t Scott knew one thing though to wanted to be a Soldier. Now a sergeant first class in the army stationed in Stuttgart West Germany Scott had tried to join the military two years before Woodstock he had already signed the papers to said but his High school coach had gotten him out of it. Scott has t talked about Woodstock or about the 60s in Iho 20 years since not with friends his age not with co workers not even with his 20-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. Everybody likes to reminisce about the 60s and 60s music. My generation of people that still likes 60s music sometimes Are criticized because it seems like they re holding on to that time period and they re trying to ram it Down people s throats now and trying to convince them Well look How Good this time was. It was a great Lime we were for peace we stood up " Scott can Only shake his head in disbelief it was a violent decade the 60s, a violent decade. What made Woodstock so Good to me personally he continued is that it s something real positive that happened out of a real violent Era. Ii was the closing of a violent yet As Scott recently leafed through the pages of the life commemorative Issue he became suddenly Wistful sad even his voice lowering to barely a whisper. Won t be anything like it again he said. I never went to another outdoor festival arid probably one of the reasons is i always want to remember Woodstock the Way it was. I Don t want to cheapen it by going to another outdoor Rock report Margit Schichlt irom logo Magama m Frog Zuburg vat Germany. Prev Toetz tha quota from Altti pm dodstock20 years later the stars and stripes Page 15
