Rural residents look forward to Woodstock festivities

BETHEL - Sam Yasgur, whose father's dairy farm was the site of the 1969 Woodstock music festival, does not recall the event fondly.

Yasgur, 67, now the Sullivan County attorney, remembers it as "one of the worst weekends of my life. You've got irate neighbors . . . trapped in your home by people who had parked on your lawn . . . making it impossible to work or take care of your cattle or crops."

Plenty of rural residents here four decades ago shared Yasgur's opinion that the "three days of peace and music" was far from peaceful. But on the eve of the 40th anniversary celebration this weekend, it's difficult to find anyone with a bad word about the impending return of thousands of concert veterans joined by others who missed it.

"I have breakfast every morning at the town diner, and they're all raving about it," said Duke Devlin, 66, a self-described former hippie who came from Texas to attend the festival, remained to become a farmer and now works as a site interpreter for the Woodstock museum.

The field that served as an amphitheater for Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin is little changed except for the addition of a perimeter fence and a monument. The fence was erected when the concert site and surrounding acreage was acquired by local cable TV magnate Alan Gerry to create the 6,000-acre, $100-million Bethel Woods Center for the Arts three years ago. The center, which includes an amphitheater on the top of the hill and a Woodstock museum that opened last summer, is widely seen as an economic boon for the Catskills still hurting from its demise as a resort destination.

The weekend activities include a sold-out performance Friday by Richie Havens, the festival's opening act, in a 400-seat hall and a sold-out 15,000-seat concert Saturday with original festival artists including Mountain, whose leader, former Long Islander Leslie West, is to get married onstage.

Thursday, early arriving tie-dye-clad Woodstock survivors gathered by the monument for photos and set up tents in what seemed like a time warp outside Hector's Inn, a bar in the hamlet doing brisk business selling tie-dyed 40th-anniversary shirts.

"It's definitely an economic boost for the area," said Daniel Sturm, Bethel town supervisor. The town boasts of hosting the festival on its entrance signs.

"We need more tourism," Yasgur said. "This is a county that once had more than 500 hotels. Now there is only one major hotel."

Roberta Lockwood, head of the Sullivan County Visitors Association, said, "To the tourism industry here, it's a huge deal. The 40th anniversary has a domestic and international appeal." More than 150 media outlets from as far away as Brazil and Norway are coming. All hotels are fully booked. To deal with the traffic, Sturm said town officials, the county sheriff and state police will implement a one-way system for local roads used for large events at Bethel Woods.

While the welcome mat may be out for the anniversary, county Legis. Leni Binder, 67, said that largely wasn't the case in '69. Binder thought Woodstock was positive at the time because "I knew it was almost a world-changing event." But it became clear how few people agreed with her when a month after the festival she joined the county historical society and suggested it begin accumulating information on Woodstock. "You could've heard a pin drop," she said.

But Devlin, who has the Woodstock logo tattooed on his left arm, saw opinions change even during the festival. "People had a lot of fear," he said. "Once they came out of their houses and met the concertgoers and were bombarded with 'Thank you' and 'May I please' and all the politeness and great kids, they fell in love with it."