Woodstock '99: The day the music died

Woodstock '99. The sun was hot, the beer was cold and the music loud. The kids had been partying night and day, not sleeping. Camping conditions had degenerated into filth.

You know - like Woodstock '69.

But where the crowd at the original festival incurred only a few bad LSD trips and injuries mostly sustained from excessive love-making, Woodstock '99 was one of the biggest debacles in concert history, with 60 concertgoers hospitalized due to violence within their ranks, widespread fires, vandalism and looting costing millions of dollars. MTV News' headline for the story - on air and online - uses the '60s dove-of-peace logo, but reads: "Apocalypse Woodstock."

What caused this powder-keg to blow, unlike its sister festival 30 years ago? What struck the match?

Obviously, these are different eras with different Zeitgeists. And no one entity is at fault. Promoters perhaps waited too long to call law enforcement. Vendors probably were greedy, charging $4 for bottled water and $4 for pretzels. And in any crowd of 250,000 there will be some "bad apples," as promoters termed the rioters.

But if there's blame to be placed for inciting the riots, it's on the bands themselves.

If right-wingers want to throw a punch at musicians for inspiring bad behavior among America's youth, they can lay off poor Marilyn Manson, whose worst influence is his fashion directive. But they'd be dead-on if they pointed to the likes of Kid Rock, Insane Clown Posse, Red Hot Chili Peppers and, especially, Limp Bizkit.

Insane Clown Posse started the ball rolling by throwing $100 bills into the audience and watching gleefully while a melee ensued. Kid Rock demanded that the kids pelt the stage with plastic water bottles. Soon, it looked like a plague of locusts, with Rock himself having to seek shelter from the hail of plastic projectiles.

(Videotape of Rock afterward showed his lack of concern. Grinning, he told MTV News that he felt "a little bad" about his incitements, but was psyched at how riled up everyone was.)

Red Hot Chili Peppers could argue that the situation already was out of control when they played the final set of the three-day weekend Sunday near Rome in upstate New York. In fact, vandals already had set fires throughout the air base that was the site for Woodstock '99. But what did these idiots do? Played a cover of Jimi Hendrix's classic, "Fire," which further enflamed the crowd.

The worst perpetrator was Limp Bizkit, the huge metal-rap band. I witnessed the megalomania of singer Fred Durst in June, when he nearly caused a riot at Shoreline Amphitheater during the LIVE-105 show by encouraging the audience to rush the guards and get close to the stage. Stagehands, recognizing they were outnumbered by whacked-on-music kids, wisely stepped to the side and let nature take its course.

And it almost did, in a nasty sense. Kids in the front began to get crushed, and some on the Shoreline stairs were tumbling, not able to see where they were stepping. Durst, realizing what he'd done, entreated everyone to be nice, but he was lucky nothing terrible happened. This time, his irresponsibility was more costly.

At Woodstock '99, as fans started moshing crazily to the ear-shattering screaming that passes for singing on his part, Durst told the crowd he'd been asked by promoters to calm the volatile situation. "But I don't think you should mellow out," he was videotaped saying. "This is 1999, mother- - ers - stick those Birkenstocks up your a- !"

He took it a step further when the band played its song,

"Break Stuff." "Ever have one of those days when everything's f- -ed up and you just want to break stuff?" he taunted the crowd. Shortly after, the crowd began destroying a tower and pelting the MTV crew atop it with garbage, and tearing planks from the stage. Durst, too, was videotaped coming off the stage with a huge grin on his face, elated at the response.

I hope they send him the bill.

Rage Against the Machine had the daunting task of following the disaster and quelling the crowd. The band apparently did so by not only turning down the volume, but by giving kids music fused with a message to hang onto. Not one of "peace and love" - this group is as angry as the next band - but at least one with a consciousness. As longtime agents for social change, Rage was the one band to channel anything from 1969.

As a high school senior, I saw close-up the cost of ill-conceived band behavior. It was Dec. 6, 1969, the winter after the summer of Woodstock, and the place was Altamont.

When the Rolling Stones - wanting to re-create Woodstock on the West Coast - threw that now-notorious free party for themselves and 200,000 others, they made the biggest all-time mistake of hiring Hells Angels (who had a rough reputation then) as festival guards and paying them . . . in beer.

Throughout the day, evidence of the boneheadedness of the move was everywhere. Hells Angels took pool cues and beat people they thought were misbehaving, or whose looks were not appealing. (One famous shot was of them ganging up on a naked fat man.) When Marty Balin of the (then) Jefferson Airplane objected from the stage, they climbed up and punched him out.

I was 17, probably the age of thousands of the Woodstock '99 participants, and working my way up to the stage with my girlfriends, to be close to our idol, Mick Jagger. Then the screaming started. I couldn't see, but everyone in front of me was panicking, pushing backward. We heard Mick telling people to "cool out," but he was too late. A man had been stabbed by the guards and was dying 12 feet from us.

We fled, and I vowed never to go to another rock concert.

It didn't take me long to change my mind, but my heart went out to the kids who were left crying at the end of the New York debacle this weekend. Like the Stones, some of the Woodstock bands were on such an enormous ego trip that they forgot it's not all about them. That they are responsible for thousands of people and that there are consequences for their actions. The detachment, the disconnect, is staggering.

As Altamont signaled the end of that innocent decade, let us hope Woodstock '99 might do the same for this self-serving one.<