Generational divide an unexpected legacy of Woodstock

When Chris Zhune hears about Woodstock, he thinks first of wild partying.

"There were a lot of crazy drugs going on," said Zhune, 21, of Deer Park, a student at Suffolk County Community College.

Those old enough to remember Woodstock often talk about it as a social movement and musical milestone. But some younger people aren't as convinced.

"Historical significance?" he said. "I don't really know if it was all that significant."

Marie Mayes of Lindenhurst, also 21, figures that's what older people do - reminisce about the events of their youth.

"I think maybe some people over 40 glorify it," said Mayes, a singer who is entering her senior year as a music education major at New York University. "But that's part of the allure of Woodstock. There's so much legend and myth around it."

Mayes identifies Woodstock with "peace and love - but I don't know much about it."

Woodstock left its share of legacies, but one unexpected one might be a generational divide. At Five Towns College, professor Peter Rogine often senses that in his music history class. He can predict the students' reactions to the word Woodstock:

They will talk about love and peace. They'll mention Jimi Hendrix. And they'll bring up drugs.

To Rogine, 62, this generation of students does not have a sense of Woodstock's musical and cultural importance.

"Woodstock," he says, "really was the end of an era - the '60s - which brought about the sexual revolution, civil rights, Native American rights, birth control, divorce, women's rights, the idea of living off the land and rejecting consumerism."

Rogine's theory about the different perspectives on Woodstock held up during recent interviews of recent high school and college graduates, along with those old enough to be their parents. Some of the older Long Islanders described Woodstock as a landmark event - even if they disliked the music and the politics. Younger ones often said they were dubious of all the attention to a music festival that took place on a farm 40 years ago.

Old and young did agree on one point: Since the 1960s, music has become too commercial.

"Woodstock wasn't a product, it was very much the creation of musicians," said Ryan Pratt, 23, of Oceanside, who is studying law at St. John's University. He plays guitar and used to play the saxophone and piano. Like George Harrison, he notes, he owns a sitar.

"There might be a grain of truth in all the boasting about Woodstock," he said. "What we have now is the commodification of music."

Adelphi University history professor Dominick Cavallo teaches a course on the 1960s, and says any mention of Woodstock sparks conversations among students.

"Almost universally they are enchanted by the music . . . how entwined it became with rebellion and activism," said Cavallo, who also is the author of a book about the era, "A Fiction of the Past: The Sixties in American History."

Students debate whether something like Woodstock could take place today. "Some of them are rueful that nothing like the '60s youth rebellion is happening," he said.

Of course, not everyone looks back fondly at the Woodstock era. Cavallo notes that other students dismiss the three-day festival as "unbridled hedonism."