Buy it if: You want to a front row seat to the behind-the-scenes characters that made the first Woodstock a reality
Don't Buy it if: "Okie from Muskogee" is you personal anthem
I’m not morally opposed to reading books that have become films. The Stand and A Prayer for Owen Meaney remain my two favorite works of all time. (These and Welcome to the Monkey House… Now THERE’s a film I’d like to see!) But I think we’re all familiar with that familiar refrain: ‘…but the book is SO much better.’ And you know, that's usually true. Simon Birch is the cringe-inducing epitome of this phenomenon. But after seeing Taking Woodstock on the silver screen my curiosity was piqued. The movie was so over-the-top, with an incredible mélange of characters, that I had to know how much of the tale was artistic license. So many docu-dramas usually have more 'drama' than 'docu.' (As an aside, I wish publishers wouldn’t turn movie visuals into new book covers, it makes me feel like such a poser…)
There are probably few artistic/cultural watersheds of the Woodstock caliber, such was the impact of this concert held in upstate NY’s Catskills mountains. Free music, 500,000 or so fans, and a line up of artists that reads like the ultimate classic rock playlist. And it nearly didn’t happen.
As the story goes, the organizers of the "Woodstock Arts and Music Festival" had lost permission to hold the event in the originally slated location and with only weeks to go were scrambling for a solution. Enter Elliot Tiber, the gay son of Jewish-Russian immigrants tasked with keeping a money pit summer resort open and operating like the Bad News Bears of the Catskills. But he did happen to have a permit… For those familiar, it’s a hippie and acid version of Steven Sorrentino’s Luncheonette.
Despite my misgivings, the movie hugged the storyline faithfully and it becomes quickly apparent that the screenwriters aren’t responsible for the fantastic and outlandish characters contained therein...the 60’s are to blame. Sure enough, Tiber weaves a tale of coming out and coming of age in a time when the norm was to be anything but. His story is peppered with characters like Vilma (the strapping Marine-turned-transvestite-
In the end, it’s tempting to paint the book as a romanticized, rose-colored version of what really went on at the end of the summer of ’69. Until you realize that, for once, real life actually was a romanticized, rose-colored version of itself for a single rainy weekend in 1969. A half-million people got together, loved each other and changed the world’s cultural landscape. It happened. Elliot Tiber helped make it happen. His story, for all it inherent idealism, is wonderfully real. That such a spirit couldn’t continue is unfortunate, but that it even existed at all is comforting in its own right. Worth a read.
