Woodstock '99
Woodstock 1999 (also called Woodstock '99) was a music festival held from July 22 to July 25, 1999, in Rome, New York, United States.[2][3] After Woodstock '94, it was the second large-scale music festival that attempted to emulate the original 1969 Woodstock festival. Like the previous festivals, it was held in upstate New York; the festival site was the former Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, roughly 100 miles (160 km) northwest of the 1969 Woodstock site in Bethel. Approximately 220,000 people attended the festival over the four days.[4]
Woodstock 1999
MTV covered the festival extensively, and live coverage was available on pay-per-view. Westwood One held its radio rights.[5] Excerpts were released on CD and DVD. In Canada, the event was covered by Much; their coverage included interviews with artists and attendees but not the musical performances.
The festival was marred by difficult environmental conditions, overpriced food and water, poor sanitation, sexual harassment and rapes, rioting, looting, vandalism, arson, violence, and several deaths, leading to media attention and controversy that vastly overshadowed coverage of the musical performances.[3] It has been described as "notorious", "a flashpoint in cultural nadir",[6] "like a concentration camp",[7] and like being "in another country during military conflict".[8]
Organization[edit]
Michael Lang, one of the organizers of the original Woodstock festival and Woodstock '94, agreed to partner with New Jersey concert promoter John Scher for a thirtieth anniversary festival. A third Woodstock festival was considered a risky proposition after a rain squall at Woodstock '94 (later sardonically dubbed "Mudstock") led gatecrashers to breach fences and attendees to throw mud at each other and the performers, leading to a large financial loss and negative press coverage.[9][10] Lang and Scher began organizing plans for the festival in the fall of 1998. Scher quickly began scouting for multiple high-profile acts of the time to draw media and popular attention.[11] Rome mayor Joseph Griffo received Lang's proposal for the festival and approved it in an effort to revitalize the area and attract funding, holding a press conference with Hillary Clinton to announce the festival once the venue was secured.[12]
Organizers had planned to hold a European leg of the festival in Wiener Neustadt, Austria, on the weekend prior to the festival in Rome.[13] This version of the festival was ultimately cancelled; Lang stated that more time than available was required in order to be able to hold a safe event.[14]
Problems[edit]
Environment[edit]
Temperatures in Rome on the weekend of the festival were in excess of 100 °F (38 °C). The former Griffiss AFB included large areas of concrete and asphalt with little or no shade, placing the entire facility within its own heat island; this not only caused temperatures to rise during the day, but also kept them elevated at night. The East and West stages were 2.3 miles (3.7 km) apart, forcing festivalgoers to walk a long distance across hot concrete surfaces. Camping space across the grassy areas quickly became scarce by the middle of the first day, forcing numerous attendees to camp on the heated asphalt surfaces. In an effort to find shade, multiple concertgoers took refuge from the heat under tractor-trailers or tables.[35] In a 2021 interview, Noodles of the Offspring sardonically criticized the facility for its unsuitability for the festival:
Timeline of incidents[edit]
Friday, July 23[edit]
Unruly behavior from those in attendance at the festival was present as early as the second day. Prior to announcing DMX's performance on the East stage, numerous male concertgoers began chanting "show your tits" at actress Rosie Perez as she walked up to introduce him with Stephen Baldwin. Annoyed by their chanting, she retorted, "I ain't showing y'all shit!" DMX later performed the song "My Niggas" and had the crowd chant along with him; media outlets later reacted to this in confusion and outrage, as the overwhelmingly white audience chanted the word "nigga" along with him.[86][87]
The "show your tits" chant returned during Sheryl Crow's set, with Crow responding, "You'd have to pay a whole lot more than you paid to get in to see my tits." Crow reported that one audience member had thrown feces at her during her performance of "My Favorite Mistake".[88] She would later criticize the performance and the festival due to the behavior of the crowd, and stated that she had considered ending her set early out of disgust.[89][90] She recalled the performance as the "single worst gig I have ever had" in 2019.[91]
A fan pelted the Offspring singer Dexter Holland with a beer bottle during the band's performance of "Have You Ever", but he continued performing unfazed. Toward the end, before their performance of "Self Esteem", Holland condemned sexual misconduct in the crowd after witnessing numerous women being groped: "Just because a girl wants to go crowd surfing, it doesn't give the guys the right to molest 'em, you know what I'm saying?".[92] Holland later told victims of sexual assault in the crowd to confront the perpetrators and "grab [their] fucking balls!"[93]
Halfway in their set, the Offspring lined up five dummies with the faces of each member of the Backstreet Boys in front of their drum riser during a break in between songs. Holland then began hitting the dummies with a plastic baseball bat, and the crowd joined in by throwing water bottles at them.[94] Some commentators have highlighted this incident as part of a pattern of sometimes violent rockist sentiment and machismo expressed by the festival's male performers and attendees, while others felt that it was hypocritical for MTV to promote the festival's heavier rock acts while featuring boy bands such as the Backstreet Boys on its television and radio programming.[10][94][79]
To protest the exorbitant price of onsite concessions, Insane Clown Posse taped $100 bills to several beach balls and kicked them into the crowd during their performance. Members of the audience then fought over the money.[95]
Korn's performance on Friday night considerably riled up the crowd. Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale had reportedly expressed anxiety about performing immediately after Korn due to fears that the crowd's energy could turn violent.[96][97] This sentiment was shared by Korn's Jonathan Davis, who later admitted that his band's scheduling was mismatched with Bush's and felt he had inadvertently placed Rossdale in a dangerous position. Bush's performance ultimately proceeded without incident and marginally calmed the crowd.[10]
Saturday, July 24[edit]
During the Tragically Hip's performance opening the festival's second day, numerous fans anticipating Kid Rock's performance pelted the band with bottles. Attempting to divert attention from the bottles, frontman Gord Downie began humorously singing "O Canada" in appreciation for the large amount of Canadian fans present waving Canadian flags. Many other fans in the crowd then began booing the band and singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in response.[98][4]
Ryan Miller of Guster recalled performing in front of a hostile crowd displeased with the band's set. Drummer Brian Rosenworcel felt they were unfit for the lineup, as most in attendance were impatiently waiting for nu metal or hip-hop acts such as Limp Bizkit or Ice Cube: "There was this aggressive culture to both the artists that they chose and the audience that they drew, and that is not Guster's bread and butter....We were a melodic band and [the others were] Limp Bizkit and Korn and even like DMX [and] I was like, What did we get ourselves into?"[99]
Alanis Morissette noted the apathy of the crowd during her set, as a large majority of fans in attendance were waiting for Limp Bizkit's performance; some began booing and chanting "Limp Bizkit" near the end of her set as they grew impatient.[100]
Appalled by the prices of concessions, Kid Rock and Wyclef Jean asked the audience to throw their empty water bottles onstage in between songs.[10][101]
Fatalities[edit]
Three deaths occurred during the festival.
On Friday, a 44-year-old man, identified as Scott L. Stanley of Hyannis, Massachusetts, succumbed to heat exhaustion in the campground. An attendee of Woodstock 1969, Stanley was in attendance with his 16-year old foster son and other friends.[131] The cause of death was later determined to be a heart attack.[134]
On Saturday, 24-year-old David DeRosia collapsed in the crowd during Metallica's performance.[135][136] Concert medical staff initially tried to treat his seizure and what they suspected to be a drug overdose. DeRosia was transported to the Air Force base medical center and then airlifted to University Hospital in Syracuse. A little more than an hour after he had collapsed, DeRosia's body temperature was 107 °F (42 °C). The following afternoon, he fell into a coma; he died at 12:09 pm on Monday, July 26, having never awoken. The autopsy report ruled the death accidental, and listed the cause of death as hyperthermia aggravated by cardiomegaly and obesity. In 2001, DeRosia's mother filed a lawsuit in the New York Supreme Court against the promoters of Woodstock 1999 and six doctors who worked at the event, maintaining that DeRosia died because of the concert promoters' negligence in not providing enough fresh water and adequate medical care for the attendees.[135]
Tara K. Weaver, a 28-year-old woman from Troy, New York, was struck and killed by a speeding car while walking along an access road to leave the concert.[72][137]
Legacy[edit]
Less than a week after the conclusion of Woodstock '99, Los Angeles concert promotors Goldenvoice (later AEG) announced the inaugural Coachella festival in Indio, California with an emphasis to distance themselves from the unrest and damage that unfolded in Rome, including offering free water bottles and parking to those in attendance.[147][148]
The Simpsons poked fun at the festival's incidents in the episode "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge", in which Otto attends the festival; his clothes catch fire and he refuses to pay $8 for a water bottle, only to be saved by a girl who uses her water bottle to extinguish him.[149]
Jon Stewart lampooned Woodstock '99 on The Daily Show, claiming that the destruction and vandalism were all sponsored by the festival's corporate sponsors. Stewart and his co-host Beth Littleford also poked fun at the demographics of the attendees and perceived racial bias in news reporting: "it wasn't a riot; because the audience was 99% white, the upstate New York authorities classified it as 'youthful exuberance'".[150]
Recordings[edit]
Music from Woodstock 1999 was released on a two-disc compact disc set, Woodstock 1999. The album features 32 performing artists and was released on Epic Records on October 19, 1999.[170]
A DVD of concert highlights entitled Woodstock 99 was released in March 2000. It features the more positive aspects of the concerts with one song each from 29 of the participating acts, along with interviews from the musicians and concert-goers.[171]
Most of the Bush performance is available on the DVD The Best of '94–'99.[172]
Documentaries[edit]
The Ringer produced an eight-part documentary podcast series about the festival entitled Break Stuff: The Story of Woodstock '99.[173]
The documentary Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage, directed by Garret Price, premiered on July 23, 2021, on HBO and HBO Max.[174][175]
On August 3, 2022, Netflix premiered a three-part documentary miniseries entitled Trainwreck: Woodstock '99, featuring interviews with concertgoers, journalists present at the festival, artists who performed at the festival, and co-promoters John Scher and Michael Lang.[175][176]