I feel like the movie should have been subtitled: Learn to quit while you’re ahead.

The original Woodstock Story made history because it attracted 400,000 people — well above the estimates, featured a long list of breakout bands, sent a message to “The Establishment” to watch us spend 3 days focusing on free love and peace without being uptight about anything (thanks in part to a plentiful supply of marijuana) and got a little crazy after some rain (those crazy kids slid around in the mud and some took their clothes off. Oh my!

Woodstock ’99 made the headlines because it was one of the biggest clusterfuck events in Rock ‘N Roll History. Let me count the ways:

In 1969 Michael Lang was in his early 20’s but managed to get himself a job as one of the promoters having co-organized the Miami Pop Festival where an estimated 25,000 people attended the 2 day event. Lang re-appears in Woodstock ’99, again as a promoter, much older and clearly aloof when it comes to taking any personal responsibility for the failures of the festival. The film documents clearly how event organizers tried to whitewash the multiple disasters as the product of “a few bad apples.” Hardly.

From the looks of it, the event organizers put their energy into figuring out ticket pricing, distribution and how to prevent the free-for-all entry that happened at the original Woodstock festival in 1969. It’s clear they were determined to make a profit this time. Nothing wrong with that but they failed at every other aspect of the event planning and execution.

There was no plan whatsoever to have the kind of infrastructure necessary for a crowd this size, and this time they had a good idea of how many were coming so there’s no excuse. It looks like they hired a vendor to drop off a bunch of port-a-potties, hundreds fewer than what was needed, with no plans to service any of them during the 3 day festival. The predictable happened. Shit piled high everywhere stinking to high heaven.

In their quest to make a profit they enacted a rule that festival goers could not bring in their own water. Bottled water was available from vendors for $4/bottle (price gouging in 1999) and there wasn’t nearly enough of it. The vendors were only too happy to raise the price as the supplies got low, enraging the crowds.

Perhaps the biggest miscalculation was the odd mix of bands they invited to perform. Sheryl Crow along with Limp Bizkit, Korn and Megadeath? Sheryl Crow is one of the greatest singer/songwriters of the last few decades. The other “bands” stood up there and played power chords at high volume while encouraging the crowd to participate in a no holds barred rave at high energy. The band’s purpose was to whip people into a frenzy and if that’s what the organizers wanted, then mission accomplished. The problem is it wasn’t safe for anyone out there. People were legitimately getting hurt. Which brings me to the next notable failure

The organizers saved a ton of money by not hiring any security. In their place they hired “Peace Organizers” who were outnumbered and helpless against a raging crowd.

The biggest miscalculation of all was to arm each festival goer with a candle. The must have envisioned some kind of Kumbaya moment to end the festival. Really? To the Red Hot Chili Peppers? What the got instead was burnt towers, semi trucks and fencing. A pissed off crowd added anything burnable to the conflagration.

Of course part of a Peace and Love festival is going to be about mind altering drug use. It was in 1969 and you could count on no drug sniffing dogs being deployed at Woodstock ’99. The difference is the type of drugs used. Woodstock was about marijuana and maybe some LSD. Woodstock ’99 was about ecstasy and heroin. People were legit having very serious medical problems with virtually no way for an ambulance to gain access.

What struck me the most about the movie was the interviews with Michael Lang. He took absolutely no responsibility for the failures. My impression was he got lucky in 1969 and got elevated to the post of festival guru when in fact he was way over his head from the beginning and shouldn’t have been there in the first place because he didn’t know what he was doing.

The movie had great footage that captured pretty much everything. The interviews were revealing, except for Michael Lang who seemed to oscillate between trying to polish this turd to the best of his ability and pretending to care at all.

References: Woodstock 1969 vs. 1999