The Final Descent into Chaos

From Luminary Media? And the ringer. This is break stuff. The story of Woodstock ninety nine. Before we begin, I need to warn you. We're about to talk about some difficult subject matter. Specifically sexual assault and rape. It might be disturbing for some listeners. And we wanted to let you know in advance. Here's the episode. When it comes to a mass event like Woodstock ninety nine. which was attended by around two hundred thousand people. We have to account for around two hundred thousand different points of view. So far in this series, we've outlined many of the festival's problems. In our previous episode, we told the story of David De Rosia. twenty four year old man from Connecticut who died of heat related causes. But during my reporting for this podcast, I also encountered people who had a great time at Woodstock Ninety nine. John Cher, one of the festival's promoters. claims that people still come up to him and talk about how amazing the festival was. Remember when he said that in episode one? This will help refresh your memory. If you speak to people who were there and You know, it's been twenty years now. I get stopped all the time. by people, you know, who were there who had the time of their life. It's impossible to account for all the dozens factors that can shape an individual's experience at an event like Woodstock ninety nine. However There is one variable. That had an outsized effect on whether you felt safe at the festival. Gender I definitely remember one of my other friends this regular white guy. who went off on his own. I'm not sure if it's true, but he claimed he met Wavy Gravy. I think he was just high. That's Stephanie Frizzell. Brooklyn who was twenty years old when she attended Woodstock ninety nine. She camped that weekend with a group of friends that included men and women. As the festival unfolded The men in her group felt free to explore the grounds in search of an archetypal Woodstock experience. For them, the myth about gathering together with strangers and feeling a spirit of oneness was very much within reach. Frazo and her female friends, however. We weren't so liberated. We were all kind of like, You're crazy. for going off on your own. Like it just seemed like a huge stretch to the rest of us. that anybody would be comfortable to do that. But he certainly was. When the festival was announced, Frazel thought it would be the ultimate party. She had grown up listening to her parents' Woodstock movie soundtrack and even watch the documentary. For Frazelle, the festival was a chance to finally have her own Woodstock experience. I mean I kind of had expectations that it would be a little bit like the original in the way that I obviously was hoping that the vibe was going to be Peaceful. and then possibly occasionally political. but I also was really just kind of looking to have a good time. But when Frizel and her friends arrived at Griffith Air Force Base, They quickly that Woodstock ninety nine was anything but peace and love. Especially for the women in their crew. Before we even got to where we were gonna be camping, there were other campsites set up with guys shouting like, you know, show us your tits and all kinds I mean, we immediately were on edge. Immediately we were like, Oh, this is not what we expected. It was definitely like a Frat type of vibe. Frazelle prided herself on having street smarts. Born and raised New Yorker. Plus her father was a police officer. He taught her how to look out for herself. But no man can really know what it's like to be a woman in this situation. In an environment where you know that anything can happen to you at any moment. And nobody's going to stop it. At Woodstack ninety nine, the sexually aggressive men immediately put Frazel into a defensive posture. We basically Assess the area right away. Kind of just looking around to see who else was around to make sure we felt safe. Like from The entry. Right from the very beginning. Totally set the tone at that point where we were like, Oh This isn't going to be quite as fun loving. As we anticipated. For much of the weekend, Frazelle and her female friends didn't dare venture outside of their tents. I definitely being from Brooklyn, just in general, was like not going anywhere near that kind of riffrath. I would say I was definitely pretty street smart and my spidey sense was tingling. I'm gonna stick with my my crew. I'm gonna stick with safety and numbers and um Anything outside of that was definitely Something I was trying to avoid at all costs. Stephanie Frizel ultimately emerged from Woodstock ninety nine, relatively unscathed. But many other women. Weren't so fortunate. In the festival's aftermath, stories of sexual assault and harassment that took place at Woodstock ninety nine abounded in the media. Outlets such as Spin, Rolling Stone, and MTV depicted Woodstack ninety nine as a deeply misogynistic environment. Were men felt emboldened to cat, call, grope, And even rape women. We've already spent a lot of time on the ground during the first two days of Woodstock ninety nine. Friday and Saturday. Before we get to Sunday. Festival's final day. When the riots happen. We need to examine the toxic atmosphere at Woodstock ninety nine. The promise of the Woodstock myth is that each person matters. That everyone is free to do what they want. When they want. But it what's Slack ninety nine? Women seem to have less freedom. And also matter less. Meanwhile, a lot of men felt way too much freedom to hassle and even hurt women. In that way, Woodstock wasn't all that different from the outside world. Women have to watch their backs pretty much wherever they go. But still, at this festival The danger was even more overt. This is break stuff. I'm your host, Steven Haydn. Episode six, Savages Okay, check it out. I would like to thank MTV for giving us the opportunity to be in a room with all these musicians that are here tonight, especially for giving us the microphone, because uh there's something I really want to talk about tonight while I have the time. About a month after Woodslack ninety nine. Adam Horovitz, also known as AdRot. band, The Beastie Boys, had just won the award for Best Hip Hop Video. for the song Intergalactic. The VMAs have long been a proudly ephemeral celebration of youth culture. But Horovitz had a serious message he wanted to share. I read in the news and heard from my friends. All about the sexual assaults. And a rap. That went down at Woodstock ninety nine? It made me feel really sad and angry. Okay? Are you all there? Okay. You can tell when you watch the video on YouTube that the audience is initially stunned that someone is actually trying to say something important at the VMAs. All the musicians here. I think we can talk to the promoters and make sure that they're doing something about the safety of all the girls and the women that come to our shows. We can talk and work with the security people to make sure they know and understand about sexual harassment and rape and they know how to handle these situations. Horovitz was reacting to what had become a deluge of negative headlines about sexual assaults at Woodstock ninety nine. For John Cher, however. This was another instance of the media. And MTV specifically. Exaggerating the problems at the festival and ignoring all the people who had a good time. It's just once again it got painted. My first MTV. As if, you know. Every fifteen feet. just wasn't ha it just didn't happen. I'm not denying that it did happen. I'm just saying The nature Of journalism. is to find a story that most people will wanna read about. Or see about. not diminishing in any way, shape, or form the women. that you know got it exploited. The backlash against Woodstock ninety nine blew back on shared directly. The National Organiz for Women staged a protest outside of his New York City office a few weeks after the festival. But looking back. Cher doesn't think the festival should be blamed for what happened. I am critical. And expecting not to be touched. They shouldn't have been touched. But nevertheless, you're talking about Yeah, let's say it was Sixty, forty men. Seventy four thirty men? Average age of early twenties? Hell do they think what's gonna happen if they're gonna walk around naked? Yeah. And that's Somewhat so chauvinist and not Politically correct. And I and and I condemn it. Action reaction for every action. in this world is an opposite and equal reaction. And and that's just the laws of science. Um So Terrible. Everybody got caught? Got put in jail? Um But Just wasn't what Press made it out to be. Bad. But not ridiculous like Some of it had to be. Cher insists that MTV was mainly responsible for painting Woodstock ninety nine as a field day for abusers. But other media reports arguably had a more lasting impact. That fall, Spin Magazine published one of the most comprehensive and harrowing stories about the festival. Detailing numerous assaults that occurred while bands were on stage. including multiple rapes. Marine Callahan was one of the writers of that article. We had I believe, and this is such a low number. you know, a handful of reported sexual assaults. A lot of people who worked Woodstock believe it was much higher, as do I. Some of the most disturbing scenes from Spin's article occurred during Corn Set on Friday. The magazine interview a medical worker who saw a female concert goer get pulled into a mosh pit by several men. One of whom she said raped her. Medical workers said he saw five other women assaulted in similar fashion. It's hard to see it as anything other than just a complete devaluation of women and A likely hatred. again coming on the tail end of a decade, a punctuation mark for Generation X. It just sort of felt like, who are these people? Who are they? Are they uh they're they're they're us, they're our this this is our cohort, this is this is a significant part of the male cohort at the end of the 90s. It um It was it's it felt kind of unbelievable. I asked corn singer Jonathan Davis if he knew what the spin article reported about sexual assaults during the band set. He said he wasn't aware. But he also wasn't surprised. I think that happens in every concert, bro. I see women get sexually so when they're flying in pits and dumbass. Dudes are grabbing tits and ass, and it's just fucking disgusting. That's a Can help. people are here. You don't see that shit really in Europe. But I see that shit happen all the time and it furiates me. I've actually stopped so much because I saw that shit going down. I would love to jump out there and kick a motherfucker's head in. It's just It's not acceptable. Davis hints at some important context. Sexual assault and harassment aren't just Woodstock ninety nine problems. still very much a part of music festivals today. some people sort of enter a festival world and feel like the rules don't apply and they can just go crazy and people are literally on drugs for four days straight. Kim Warnick. She's worked to prevent sexual violence for more than a decade. Her nonprofit charity, Calling All Crows. Works with music festivals like Bonnaru. to train staff on how to intervene and prevent harassment and assaults. I asked Warnik how well modern music festivals generally do at implementing policies that keep attendees safe. great uh in a short word. I think there's a lot of conversation that these behaviors are. Unacceptable, but when you sort of get into a show or a festival, people are still getting responses of, Well, what did you expect? You're at a show when they tell someone that they were groped or when they tell someone that they were cat called. Warnix says that some music festivals are leery about addressing sexual violence because they don't want to be held responsible for how some concertgoers behave. I think the instinct for a lot of festivals is to say, well, that it's it's a criminal problem, right? So it's not really our fault. And certainly we want people to have a good time, but we're not responsible for the behaviors of individuals who are here. And so when you have that liability framework on w how you're thinking about safety. It's almost an incentive not to do anything. Because if you start doing things, is it in some way saying, yes, we're responsible for it, if we're trying to prevent it. The original Woodstock helped to popularize the idea that a music festival is a judgment free zone. Outside of normal society. And a crucial, if often unspoken. Part of that paradigm is that men should be free to pursue their desires. Even if it's at the expense of women. It's largely about white male dominance. And whether that takes the form of being bands that are just made of a bunch of white dudes, or if it's just that they're singing about things that interest white males. That's just what the rock world is like and that's what festivals are like. That's Gina Arnold. A lecturer at Stanford University and the author of Half a Million Strong. Crowds and power from Woodstack to Coachella. And then festivals have other things going on to do with, you know, the the male gaze at female bodies and naked female bodies actually. And and some of those things are just a reflection of what's happening in rock music. Um, and some of them are just exacerbated by being outdoor, festival, fun, in the sun, summertime, too many people, too much booze, et cetera. Some say Woodstock ninety nine was still beyond the pale. Even when you take into account the problematic history of music festivals. As well as the failure of many modern festivals to deal with sexual violence. That includes Dave Koenig, an EMT who was at WizDack ninety nine. He's worked at hundreds of public events for nearly twenty five years. Koenig, the preponderance of sexual assaults and harassment at Woodstack ninety nine seemed greater than any other event he's ever worked. The one instance that stands out to me is One of the ambulances pulled up and I was dispatching and driver got out, went around. and they were unloading one patient on the stretcher, two patients from the back. There was another person up front. And uh it was a girl she's probably I don't know, eighteen, nineteen. And she was just sitting there. And a as the medic was wheeling the stretcher with the He turned to me and he said Watch the truck. Don't let anyone near her. Five minutes later. A woman was escorted away by a nurse. The nurse went and spoke to the girl. blanket over the girl brought her inside. I said So what was that all about? He's like It's just flat out they're savages. They're just savages. And he just he just walked away. Marine Callahan is also haunted by the horror stories she heard while reporting for her spin article. There was one that was related to me that I found There were Actually all of them were horrible, but there was An account of one young woman in a tent passed out. Wany guys just. having their way with her. And then there was another young woman who said she was sucked down into a mosh pit. She felt she couldn't get out. Another one who said she was violated by at least four or five hands belonging to unseen men. one of whom yelled Rip her apart. These stories are awful. Each of them on their own. But for Marine, there's another layer to them. been she had written about feminist riot girl bands and thoughtful male rock stars like Kurt Cobain. that sought to dismantle traditional forms of macho rock. What Woodstock ninety nine seemed to suggest is that those efforts had failed. You have this generation. Of young men who really for the first time had been raised. if not just by moms who were feminists or who came of age during the the real first wave of feminism. um had been raised by single moms, largely. And so you sort of felt that there was this. Unprecedented parity in this generation between the boys and the girls. And When you look back on what down at Woodstock ninety nine. The sexual assaults particularly. and the violence, it felt a bit like the mask had been ripped off. And It's sort of raise the question, you know. How level was the playing field really? From Working Title, producers of Bridget Jones and Love Actually. 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The guards didn't have hot water and were expected to sleep on air mattresses. Also, there were complaints about some guards stealing from other guards. Woodstock organizers ultimately fired an additional two hundred security personnel. for threatening or bullying their co workers. Organizers were desperate to make up for the shortfall in manpower. They were reaching out to prison guards, uh, you know, and correctional officers and and saying, Will you come? and you know, moonlight and we'll pay you maybe $15 an hour. And I think they got a few bites, but not nearly enough. As for the guards who weren't fired or provoked to quit. Many of them simply went AWOL at the festival. A lot of people were supposedly going to work security once they got like their we had like a t-shirt and we had credentials. Once they got those, a lot of people just took off into the concert, just used it as a way to get a into the concert. So they lost Good number of quote security guards. That's Jake Hafner. In nineteen ninety nine, he was a twenty three year old from Syracuse, hired to work security at the festival. Even though his only security experience was breaking up the occasional bar fight at his parents' restaurant. Jake was part of a security force known as the Peace Patrol. By Saturday, so many guard had dropped out that Hafner was promoted. Against his will. Supervisor. He said, Well it's more money an hour. I think it was like fifteen dollars an hour. And I still said no because I it was just I already knew that this was just Not a Great. Well run situation. And I didn't feel I necessarily needed. me in charge of any like I I don't want to be the one that responsibility falls on because weren't a lot of responsible people here to begin with. Shake thought he made it clear that he did not want to be put in charge of what seemed like an impossible situation. And then he said, All right, you're a field leader, going to get a walkie talkie. and I became a field leader. At Woodstock ninety nine, there was no apparent tactical plan for security. So Heifner and his crew of guards freelanced, roaming the grounds and helping out where they could. He said they acted like first responders, helping out with emergencies as they occurred. But otherwise they didn't intervene with the chaos of the festival. There were times where You know, we would find a guy passed out and You know, they were piling like beer cups on top of him. You know, to like see how high they could get this beer cup mountain. on top of this guy that was passed out and we would you know, go over and like tell these guys to knock it off and we You know, get the guy up and get him some medical attention. Jake managed as best he could to help people. But he soon realized that the police on the scene would not be providing any assistance. The cops were were not there to help us. We had heard about a guy who had stolen a bunch of security t shirts and credentials. who was like handing them out to people. And doing various things with him and we f saw this guy in one of the beer tents. And we started to chase him. And he was running toward the entrance, and I was running after him, and The trooper that was standing there, he was watching this, and I waved to him and I pointed at the guy, like as if, you know, like grabbed that guy, and he just looked at me and he just shook his head no. And he never moved. from the spot he was at. And at that point I just stopped chasing the guy because I realized like, oh, like no one cares. Like okay. As for the action around the main stages. Jake says he and his fellow security guards stayed away. That was just such a Clusterfuck, for lack of a better term. We never ventured down into that end, because there was really no point to it. I asked Jake if that was generally true for security teams at Woodstock ninety nine. As far as I know, yeah. I mean I never Remember talking to anybody that really said they were down there or did anything down there. I mean, I don't even I just from the the amount of people that were in there. I don't even know what you do if you even got in there. You know what I mean? It was It was pretty chaotic. At that end. According to Heifner, Woodstock ninety nine was a place where the cops would literally fold their arms rather than help to stop a criminal. It was for all intents and purposes. A lawless environment. And that emboldened people to step outside the bounds of normal society. And do whatever they pleased. Even if it hurt others. I think it was just sort of a progression of probably began as Just a sort of opportunity to engage in sort of complete rock and roll debauchery. That's Marine Callahan again. And You have young men and women in this setting that seems fairly unsupervised. And it's hot. And it's about taking your top off and getting high or getting drunk and partying. One of the People we spoke to said that at the outset, it was just he was sort of shocked by seeing what he called public fornication, but that eventually you just got used to it. It didn't take very long to get used to it, which is just sort of, I think, a phenomenon. We're very adaptable. But I think as the weekend progressed, as it got hotter, as people got more and more uninhibited, as it seemed clearly that there was nobody policing what was going on. you just had a sort of inevitable Lord of the Flies situation develop. This charged and highly sexualized environment wasn't just tolerated by the festival. In some ways. It was actually encouraged. Along with making money off the people who paid to get into Woodstock ninety nine. Organizers also sold the festival to viewers at home via pay per view. Part of the attraction of Woodstock ninety nine's programming was the allure of mostly naked women. pay per view coverage, the camera guys would sometimes follow young women around who were topless 'cause that was a thing that happened. And they would sort of make sure to get them on camera. That's journalist Brian Hyatt, who covered Woodstock ninety nine. It was like a selling point for the pay-per-view, clearly, that they were going to show Topless Girls. Yeah, sometimes literally girls disturbingly. And that just was like A little creepy, you know. Even corporations got into the act of profiting off the pervasive nudity. Added to the overall vibe of the festival. The feeling that female bodies were there to be ogled and even commodified. These were, you know, very much actors playing hippies was something that you got really used to. The first day and The first day in particular you'd see a lot of sort of Naked women who are passing out brochures. That's Rob Sheffield, who covered What's that ninety nine for a Rolling Stone? Not entirely naked. Um, some wearing thongs, some some wearing shorts, some wearing skirts. pretty much topless and with like tie dye and or peace signs over their breasts. And they'd be handing out flyers or brochures for some particular commercial enterprise. The permissive attitude toward provocative, even aggressive sexuality. coupled with the lack of consequences for those who step that a line. Created an environment where many men felt like they could say or do anything to women. And get away with it. There was groping in marsh pits. My colleague Nelson talked to a bunch of women who experienced that. It was men were taking advantage of the mass confusion to be disgusting. I probably saw women crab surfing and getting groped, you know, and I I think that Probably takes a little perspective to be like, Oh, Jesus, that was actually you know, that sexual assault. 'Cause in nineteen ninety nine people were were not as uh necessarily as aware as as they should have been of those things. Well groping appears to have been widespread. The constant harassment that made women like Stephanie Frizel feel like she couldn't even leave her tent. had the most chilling effect. Over and over, men accosted women. And nobody ever seemed to step in to stop it. So the abuse got worse. And worse. really strange. to hear men yelling, show me your tits, which is something that I had just not ever heard before. And to hear it pretty much constantly for three days. was just it it really it it wore you down. It really you know, it was really just There were A lot of really horrifying scenes I saw. There was a trailer. It was over by the West Stage. There is this swarm of goons. Who would just sort of form a circle around women walking by. Usually women in pairs and just chant, show your tits, show your tits at them. And It was it was a horrifying sight. It was a horrif horrifying sight for me. I asked. Some of the women who were who are victimized by this if they were going to talk to the security people about this. And That was a really to them that was a really Baffling suggestion. Rob Sheffield has attended countless music festivals before and after Woodstock ninety nine. this particular festival continues to stand out for him. The fact that there was no sort of recourse for, you know, for violence of this sort was something that definitely like cast a chill. over the you know, the entire event. Saw a lot of ugly scenes that were really different from anything I'd seen at a music festival before. Didn't seem normal. It didn't seem Hard for the course for a rock festival. I'd never seen anything like this at any music festival or any music event. The myth of the original Woodstock is that a mass gathering can bring out the best in people. Perhaps that's true for some people. But too often, getting lost in the crowd has a way of dehumanizing everyone involved. The rules of society recede, and the law of the jungle becomes paramount. You look to dominate somebody else. or risk being dominated yourself. When that happens. human beings become disposable. The process of reporting for this podcast has made me a bit of a cynic when it comes to music festivals, and especially audiences at music festivals. There's a lot of blame to go around for the problems at Wistack 99. You can blame the promoters, local government officials, law enforcement, and others. But ultimately, I believe we are each responsible for our own actions. Many, many concertgoers at Woodstock 99 acted horribly. And that's on them. As for Stephanie Frazell, who grew up listening to the Woodstock soundtrack and only wanted to have her own weekend of peace, love, and music, Woodstock 99 permanently soured her on music festivals. She hasn't been to another one since. I asked her if she was glad that she went to Rome that weekend. Um, am I glad I went? I don't know, it makes for a good story and I'm talking to you about it now. And nothing bad happened to me. So yes, I'm glad I went. in the long and short of life experiences. By Sunday afternoon, Stefani Frizel was ready to leave with stock ninety nine. She could already sense that things were not going to end well. So Sunday afternoon we were walking and somebody walked by with a huge bong and I was like, Oh, where'd you get that? And they were like, I don't know, I just took it. And from there, we kind of got the vibe that everyone was just fed up. They were fed up with the water situation and the heat. And spending like Tons of money just to get Basic necessities like water or sandwich. It was just culminating. I think everybody was tired and dirty and Just reaching the breaking point. Stephanie and her friends quickly to finally escape Woodstock 99. They had already seen enough craziness for one weekend. But the festival was about to take an even scarier turn. For much of the weekend, Woodstock attendees had taken their anger and frustration out on each other. But as Woodstock 99 drew to a close, some people decided to band together and strike out against the festival itself. Break stuff, the story of Woodstock 99, is presented by Luminary Media and The Ringer.