In August 1969, arguably the world's most famous music festival took place. But on the afternoon of Sunday, 17th August, there was an incident that could have become one of the biggest public tragedies of all time.

Billed as 'An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music,' Woodstock at Bethel, New York, was massively oversubscribed. Official estimates put the crowd estimates at around 400,000 but other guesses go much higher, and a state of emergency was declared because the dairy farm site could not cope with the onslaught of people who would need food, water, shelter and first aid.

By the time Sunday afternoon rolled around, after three days of rainy intervals tramped into mud by a million feet, it became clear that the cable supplying electricity to the stage had suffered worrying damage. For organizers Joel Rosenman and John Roberts - who were now living on a constant knife-edge as money ran out, supplies couldn’t be delivered and the audience slid ever-closer to animalistic rioting - it was "the bleakest moment of the festival."

"We were sprouting walkie-talkies from every ear at that point and dealing with a dozen problems every minute or two," Rosenman said on the festival's 40th anniversary in 2009. "And on top of it all, the phone rang – the chief electrician was calling from backstage. … He sounded pretty shaky at the time, even for a man who was going through what he was going through. … I couldn’t believe he was searching for the words that he came up with. But he came up with 'mass electrocution.'"

Rosenman and Roberts were worried that, if the music stopped, the final thread holding some form of human behavior together would snap. When the electrician said it might be possible to reroute the power supply, he was ordered to make it happen as quickly as possible.

What does this mean to our lives – that we could make such a callous decision?



In the 1979 book 'Barefoot in Babylon' by Bob Spitz, another account was documented: "With all those kids being drenched and packed together the way they are – if the insulation goes, we’re going to have a mass electrocution," Rosenman and Roberts were told. Presented with the possibility of shutting down, Roberts said, "That’s impossible. … It’ll be mayhem, for sure. A half million freaked-out rabid kids running around with nothing to do would just about finish us off." The response: "Somebody’s got to make a decision before those kids do it for us."

Production Coordinator John Morris was "overcome with grief" at the latest disaster. He said, "Fuck it – we’re gonna turn the power off. If we don’t, we’re gonna have French-fried musicians on that stage. … You gotta see it to believe it. All of the wires are exposed. It’s drizzling again. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people are at stake."

After the instruction was issued to keep the music going no matter what, Spitz recounted the exchange between Roberts and Rosenman, who’d endured his inheritance being "snuffed out" as the pair wrote "bad check on top of bad check to keep the festival afloat" and now faced "the possible mass electrocution of anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000."

"What’s going on here?" Roberts asked Rosenman. "What does this mean to our lives – that we could make such a callous decision? … God, Joel, I don’t understand this thing at all."