It has recently passed the 33-year mark since the notorious Woodstock festival of 1999 held in Rome, New York. Netflix released their harrowing documentary shortly after in August 2022, exposing viewers to a number of sour ingredients that created a cocktail of issues, leading attendees to compare the goings-on at the festival to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.
It turns out the original Woodstock Music & Arts Festival of 1969, famously referred to as just “Woodstock”, doesn’t share much with its younger brother, except for the name. The combination of decisions fueled by financial greed, the intensity of the weather, and the angst-ridden cultural landscape of the time produced a “perfect storm” that likely caused people to behave in ways they may never do otherwise.
The Choice of Festival Site
The iconic documentation of the original festival of ’69 depicts festival goers lounging on plush rolling grass hills with flowers in their hair; however, the site chosen for Woodstock ’99 was revealed to be the closed-down Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, New York.
This was received as a strange and disappointing choice of location – the aesthetic, the tarmac, and the political association of the site could not be any more misaligned with the spirit of the original festival that people were so desperately hoping to experience. The wide expanse of gray asphalt flooring was not only a downer in vibe but attracted the scorching heat like a magnet, and the base offered nowhere for shade, which was thought to be a large contribution to the demise of the weekend.
The Wild Prices
People who purchase a $180 festival ticket expect that they’ll be able to have access to certain provisions over the weekend in order to make their trip, at the very least, tolerable. These services were shown to be almost inaccessible to festival goers. They couldn’t afford the food, and the price of water increased as time went on. It was reported as being a ludicrous $12 per bottle on one of the later days, which is a lot even today.
Due to the decision of the festival organizers and promoters to sell the vending rights at the event, there was no price cap on what vendors could charge for their products. Meanwhile, the VIP area for musicians was lavish, andTrainwreck gives a suggested insight into how the budget was spent in favor of those at the top over the welfare of the attendees.
The “Mud”
In an attempt to claw back at least some freewheeling spirit of ’69, rowdy festival goers damaged the free drinking water supplies in order to create more mud to roll around in, as seen in iconic Woodstock photographs.
The damage to the pipes meant that the “mud” was contaminated with overflow sewage from the nearby portable toilets, and people were rolling around and showering in it, completely unaware, which caused many attendees to develop Trench Mouth – probably the least likely thing they were expecting to come home with from this historic festival.
The Limp Bizkit Set
On the stuffy Saturday evening, the music on the main stage was delivered by the tumultuous rap-rock band Limp Bizkit.
It was during the song “Break Stuff” that all hell broke loose – frontman Fred Durst crowd-surfed standing on a piece of broken plywood that was part of the festival wall, and as the already fired up crowd went wild, with some climbing up and into the sound tower, leading one staff member to describe the experience as similar to “being in a zombie invasion movie.”
The Van In The Rave Hangar
Following the anarchic Limp Bizkit performance, festival-goers migrated to the infamous Rave Hangar to enjoy headliner Fatboy Slim late Saturday evening. The members of the crowd, in full chaos mode by this point, were throwing themselves head first into hedonistic behavior from the get-go.
This was taken one step further when, shortly into Slim’s set, a van was stolen and began driving through the jam-packed crowd, and that’s not all. There were 20-30 people dancing on top of the moving vehicle, which then led to the set being cut short and the hangar being evacuated. A member of staff describes how the driver of the van was “almost asleep” and had no idea what he was doing.
The Nakedness
The 60s is synonymous with the idea of a connection to nature, hence the term “flower power.” The movement aimed to renew societies thinning connection with the natural world, and it was clear that this ideal was being carried through by the amount of nudity at Woodstock ’99.
The camera constantly shoots people walking around naked or topless, paying $10 for an airbrush tattoo “anywhere you like”, not to mention the fully naked performance of musician Flea from Red Hot Chilli Peppers on the final evening. Aspects of the festival were streamed on television by a videographer who claims that they were not given any guidelines as to what they could film, meaning that those watching at home also got to take part from a distance.
The Trash
In sharp contrast with the idea of connecting to naturel, one of the other things most captured in Trainwreck was the amount of trash – deflated tents, plastic bags, food wrappers, bin bags, drink cups, and much, much more made up what seemed to be about 85% of the floor. Like the other basic hygiene elements at the festival, waste disposal facilities were also neglected, adding to the apocalyptic feel of the event.
Ticket holders are filmed queuing in their cars to leave the site, stating, “It stinks in there!” when questioned by the media. Things got so bad that it was left to those such as Lisa Law, one of the festival’s photographers, to circulate the site with bin bags, encouraging festival-goers to clean up.
The Fires
Several times during Trainwreck, interviewees state that “that’s when things really went crazy” about multiple incidents during the course of the weekend, but they hadn’t seen anything until Sunday evening, the last night of the festival, during the Red Hot Chili Peppers set.
The organizers had promised some kind of surprise at the end of the show to keep festival goers around. They handed out 100,000 candles to the audience with the idea that they would be lit and held in the air as a peaceful protest against the recent rise of gun-violence in America. It didn’t go to plan – the lairy, overheated, intoxicated crowd instead started setting fires near the main stage and all around the site and eventually succumbed to anarchy. They tore down the lighting towers, trashed the vendor stalls, flipped over cars, and set fire to anything in sight. It was suggested that this was the result of overflowing tension due to the squalid conditions at the festival.
The Accountability (Or Lack Of)
One of the weirdest aspects of the documentary is the constant contrast between the experience and attitudes of the attenders, the bands, the staff, and festival organizers Michael Lang and John Scher.
Attendees, staff, and performing artists shared their experiences as being varied in positivity, but the main focus of their accounts centered around the depravity that was experienced due to the decisions made by organizers. Scher and Lang, however, continued to downplay the seriousness of the issues and even now resorted to shirking all responsibility for the outcome. They blamed the artists performing for not influencing the crowd positively during their performances, the younger generation at the time, and insisted that “the majority” were having a great time. Micheal Lang, an organizer of the original Woodstock ’69, even goes as far as to say that he felt the chaos on Sunday evening was “a disappointing end to what would otherwise have been a decent weekend”.
The Overall Experience
Despite the hellish conditions that were experienced throughout the weekend, the last episode of Trainwreck is wrapped up with its interviewees who attended 32 years ago, stating that they, in fact, had an amazing time.
Earlier in the documentary, MTV presenter Ananda Lewis described how she felt that people could be breaking their limbs and still cheering “Woodstock ’99!” and it seems she was right. The accounts of festival-goers being interviewed in the series aligned with the horror of the footage shown, but at the end of it all, stated that it was “the best time of my life” and that they would do it all again for sure.