‘Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and Rage’ Puts the Destructive Festival Under a Microscope

The HBO Max documentary “Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and Rage” makes a convincing argument for seeing the infamous music festival that ended in flames and rioting as a microcosm of white American furies, late-stage capitalism and generational tensions. It’s quite the incendiary debut for Music Box, the streamer’s new documentary series project, overseen by producer Bill Simmons. Informative and thriving with keen cultural criticism, “Woodstock 99” first works as a visceral experience. Watching the festival unfold from its initial stages to catastrophe is akin to witnessing some natural disaster take shape. 

It was supposed to be a celebration of the spirit of the original Woodstock festival of 1969 combined with late ‘90s youth culture. Director Garret Price opens with those famous, idyllic shots of that summer when countercultural youth gathered in Bethel, New York in a dairy farm to trip out, practice free love and listen to icons like Jimi Hendrix perform the sounds of the Vietnam generation. Fast forward to 1994 and an updated Woodstock festival turned out to be a surprise success, even if concert goers and performing artists ended up slathered in mud after constant rainfall. New plans were made for an August 1999 edition, with Michael Lang, co-creator of the ‘69 fest, as part of the organizing team. But some things would be different this time around. It would take place in Rome, New York at Griffiss Air Force Base. Part of the allure for organizers was that the decommissioned base’s vast open space was enclosed by more secure barriers. Unlike the last two festivals, few people would be able to break-in for free. As thousands streamed in it didn’t take long for a combination of factors to soon swirl together towards disaster. Plumbing was terrible, water cost $4 a bottle, security was beyond lax, drugs and alcohol poured everywhere underneath scorching weather. Onstage, the mood was set by the arrival of artists representing the angst-ridden, violently nihilistic nu-metal and rap-rock sounds of the millennium.

Over the last 22 years Woodstock 99 has taken on an air of lasting infamy. It’s up there with the Rolling Stones at Altamont as one of the cautionary tales of rock concerts turning into orgies of chaos and violence. Up to now the general consensus has been that the heat, high prices, bad logistics and infrastructure led to a breakdown that ended with the audience setting massive fires, breaking down speakers and rioting. More notoriously still, there were reports of rapes. There has also been a lingering question of how much the music contributed to the meltdown, with Limp Bizkit being the usual culprit for egging everyone on with songs like “Break Stuff.” It didn’t help that when the Red Hot Chili Peppers took to the stage, with the glow of massive bonfires in the distance, they decided to play a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire.” The curious have been able for years to watch the old official VHS/DVDs of the event or listen to the slickly-recorded double-live album. Price makes the engaging choice of looking at Woodstock 99 in a broader cultural context, attempting to find its place in the debate about nostalgia, the transitional moment for Gen-X, and the evolution of music through the ‘90s.

A few of the artists who were there appear on camera, including Moby, Jewel, Korn’s Jonathan Davis and Creed’s Scott Stapp, which gives you an idea of the weird lineup of the festival. But the more insightful commentary belongs to the cultural critics Price brings in, like Wesley Morris of the New York Times, music journalist Steven Hyden and Maureen Callahan of Spin Magazine, among others. They trace the road to the festival through what the ‘90s meant in America. The economy was great, Bill Clinton was president and on the surface the youth had little to rage against in a pre-9/11, pre-Great Recession reality. The progressive rebellion of early grunge, personified by bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, had been quickly absorbed by the mainstream. Now more aggressive, confrontational forms of music were competing with breezy pop. In a sense Korn and Insane Clown Posse were a response to the rise of teen boy bands. Misogyny was still openly a dominant force and female sexuality was constantly deformed and defined by brands like Girls Gone Wild. Woodstock 99 was famous at the time for the images of nude concert-goers flashing the camera as well as for the more disturbing images of men grabbing women’s chests as they crowd-surfed. Unbridled capitalism was taking over everything, which helped fuel the debate over free music once Napster made illegal file-sharing popular. The audience was then primed to react when water at the festival or food was so expensive. 

What made the festival more combustible, per the commentators, is how Gen-X’s moment in time clashed with the boomers’ insistence on keeping alive the flame of their romanticized memories. Hyden points out that Woodstock 69 actually had quite a few near-disasters, including the group Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers burning down overpriced food stands, and there were deaths. But that has all been lost in the public image created by Michael Wadleigh’s classic 1970 documentary on the event. Even then, by the time Woodstock 99 rolled around, the average college kid could care less about the ‘60s. They couldn’t relate much to it. There’s a telling moment where a concert goer being interviewed at the festival can’t name who played the Star-Spangled Banner at the ‘69 festival, and when Wyclef Jean tries to emulate Hendrix’s famous guitar-burning ritual on stage, he’s met with flying bottles. One attendee interviewed by Price recalls not caring at all when Creed, who were already divisive at the time for their poseur spiritual antics, brought Robby Krieger of The Doors onstage to perform. Moby admits arriving at the venue and instantly feeling the negative ambiance. It turns out all those shots of attendees jumping into muddy water and posing for the cameras hid the fact that they were jumping into sewage spewing out of busted porta potties. Quite a contrast to the flower power generation. We also hear throughout the journal of attendee David DeRosia, whose sole dream was to see Metallica, but would not make it out alive from the festival due to a heart ailment.

The artists that did seem to tap into the mood of the times were the aggressive ones like Korn, Kid Rock and Rage Against the Machine, who at least had political substance. Even then, there were moments that are now alarming to contemplate. It’s disturbing to watch the late DMX rile up a crowd of mostly white males to chant the N-word back to him. Kid Rock is used as an example of how white artists had appropriated Black America’s hip-hop sounds and combined them with hard rock, topped off with lyrics that ranged from the absurd to violently sexist. Left without any idealism or causes, Gen-X was simply raging for its own sake. Carson Daly, back then the host of MTV’s Total Request Live, encounters a wall of flying trash from an irate audience at the festival. By the fourth night of the festival tired, drugged and drunk attendees finally set it all ablaze with candles meant for a tribute to the victims of Columbine. The infamous school shooting had taken place only months prior. 

Who is to answer for what happened? Michael Lang has no mea culpas on camera and seems to shrug, admitting it was just a different cultural mindset. John Scher, the promoter of Woodstocks 94 and 99, would rather just deflect blame on the music, making it seem like every time a band like Limp Bizkit or the Red Hot Chili Peppers were asked to calm the audience down, they would just play more ferociously. As for the reports of 10 rapes? Scher insists it was at maximum, four. Artists like Jonathan Davis naturally take issue with blaming the bands. On a grander scale “Woodstock 99” frames the concert as a microcosm of modern America. Once riots broke out the police came in and nicely escorted everyone out. As Woods rightfully comments, imagine if it had been a concert of primarily Black music. Commerce and art did not go well at this festival. The water was too expensive, the toilets didn’t work, drugs and booze flared tempers and impulses. All the attendees had was the music and the desire to destroy. Maybe the lesson is that unless we change society for the better, the whole world will look like Woodstock 99.

Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and Rage” begins streaming July 23 on HBO Max.