The Road to Woodstock (15 page)

Wartoke publicist Sunny Schneer and Billy Soza, one of the Native American artists invited to Woodstock by John Morris
© HENRY DILTZ

My assistant, Ticia Bernuth
© HENRY DILTZ

Finally they arrived and it’s, “Okay, Elliot, let’s go see what you’ve got!”

“Follow me! It’s a natural bowl and perfect for the festival!” Elliot promised with a big grin.

On the way around the back of the motel, we passed all kinds of handmade signs on different run-down buildings named for various celebrities like Jerry Lewis and Elvis Presley. Scattered bungalows were caving in, and there was an empty swimming pool filled with debris. As we walked toward a sloping meadow, the ground felt soggy and springy under my boots. This did not bode well.

We started descending a gradual incline—straight down into a large swamp filled with nubby growth and amputated saplings. As we trudged through, I asked, dreading the answer, “So how much farther to the site?”

“You’re
in
it!” Elliot answered, with a grand sweep of the arm. “Of course, we can bulldoze and drain all of this.”

“This is the place we’ve been waiting to see?” Mel exploded at Elliot. “What an idiot! What do you think you’re doing? You really think we could use this?”

I agreed, as diplomatically as I could. “This isn’t going to work at all.” When we got back to the motel office, I asked Elliot, “Maybe there’s someone who could show us around?”

“I’ll call a friend of mine,” Elliot offered, perking up after having looked pretty crestfallen. “He’s in real estate.” Stan departed, but Mel decided to go with Ticia and me. About a half hour later, a sleazy-looking guy named Morris Abraham arrived in a big Buick. He was happy to take us to check out some properties.

A few miles from Elliot’s, we drove along 17B through magnificent farmlands—it’s absolutely beautiful farm country with open fields
everywhere. We took a right turn off 17B onto Hurd Road. About a quarter mile up, we broached the top of a hill and there it was.

“STOP THE CAR!” I shouted, barely able to believe my eyes. It was the field of my dreams—what I had hoped for from the first. It was not lost on me that we had left
Wallkill
to arrive in
Bethel
—“the House of God.” I left the car and walked into this perfect green bowl. There at its base was a rise just waiting for our stage. The others joined me. Mel, Ticia, and I exchanged looks of wonder. “Who does all this land belong to?” I asked Abraham.

“Max Yasgur,” he replied. “He’s the biggest dairy farmer in the county. He owns ten farms and two thousand acres. I can call him and see if he’s interested in renting to you.”

“Yes, let’s do that,” I said. I had to work hard at staying calm. I didn’t want to appear too excited to this guy. We passed a sign that said
HAPPY AVENUE
, and drove until we got to a pay phone and Abraham reached Max. We drove on to his home—a simple white farm-house—and met Miriam and Max Yasgur, a handsome couple in their late forties.

“These people are interested in renting some of your land, Max, to put on a music festival,” Abraham explained.

Max had a sharply intelligent face and looked me in the eye. “You’re the people who lost your site in Wallkill, aren’t you?” I was preparing for the worst when he added, “I think that you young folks were done a grave injustice over there. Yes, I’ll show you my land—we might be able to strike a deal for your music fair.”

Max got in the car with us and Morris told him we’d seen the field off Hurd Road and would like to start there. As we drove, Max pointed out some of the land he owned. My heart was beating so fast I hoped no one could hear it. We arrived back at the field and I told Ticia and Mel to wait in the car and keep Morris occupied while Max and I took a walk into what had become
home
in my mind.

“Max, can we talk about this field?” I asked. “This is the perfect
place for us. It’s the right size and shape and has great sight lines and great vibes.” Something about the way Max carried himself told me to be completely candid with him: “It feels like we’re meant to be here.” I wanted to seal the deal right there in the field. We walked over the rise above the bowl.

“How much land would you say you’d need?” he asked.

“Well, in addition to this field and whatever you have surrounding it, we need another six hundred acres, including land for camping and parking,” I told him.

“I still have a crop of alfalfa growing here and crops in several other fields as well,” Max said. “How soon do you think you’d need them?”

“Would
now
be too soon?” I asked, with a smile.

Max laughed and pulled a pencil from the protector in his shirt pocket. He wet the tip of the pencil with his tongue and started to scribble numbers on a pad. A sharp guy, he figured how much he was going to lose on his crop and how much it would cost him to reseed the field. When he came up with a number for the bowl, it seemed a fair price and I said yes immediately. We agreed that he would calculate the other fields in much the same manner, taking into consideration whether or not he could harvest crops before we needed to prepare the ground. It was going to be a hefty sum, but I knew that this land was our Woodstock—and Max was our savior. As we shook hands, I realized for the first time that he had only three fingers on his right hand. But his grip was like iron. I was thinking, He’s cleared this land himself.

Without Max Yasgur, there would have been no Woodstock. He was known in Sullivan County as a strong-willed man of his word. He had grown up on a farm with a boardinghouse where summer guests stayed. His father died when he was a teenager, so he became the head
of the household. He’d studied real estate law at my alma mater, NYU, but his dream was to expand his family’s property and create Yasgur’s Dairy, the biggest milk producer in Sullivan County. He continued to buy up farms and land, building his dairy herd, until he reached his goal. He developed delivery routes and built a massive refrigeration complex and a pasteurization plant. All that hard work took its toll, though, and by the time we met him, Max had already suffered several heart attacks. An oxygen tank was kept handy for his use at all times, and he had an oxygen tent in his bedroom.

I called John and Joel to tell them the news: We were back in business—we had the perfect spot for the festival. John was guardedly optimistic on the phone but immediately agreed to come upstate the next day to work out the final arrangements with Max. I hoped he and Joel would recognize this for the miracle it was when they saw the land for themselves. I then called Artie and Joyce Mitchell and told them to let everyone know we had a home. I phoned Stan and told him to gather every set of plans we had and get back to Bethel ASAP. Mel returned to Wallkill to organize the move so the trucks could begin hauling everything on Monday.

The next day John and I met with Max, his son, Sam, who was a lawyer, and their banker. We had agreed on a $50,000 fee, plus another $75,000 to be held in escrow to cover any damages that might occur, and John had brought cashier’s checks in that amount. After negotiating the other terms of the lease, including what we could and could not do to the land, we signed the papers at 10
P.M.
that night.

By Friday, July 17, it started hitting the papers that we were moving to White Lake. At first Max was a bit coy about it, telling the press that he was still deciding whether or not to rent us the land, but I knew Max’s handshake was his bond. He was a man of integrity and an idealist. I don’t believe the money alone was what motivated him. Max was willing to rent to us to give us a fair chance to accomplish our dream—much as he had done with the dairy. We showed him all our maps and detailed designs for Wallkill, and he was impressed by our diligence—this wasn’t something just thrown together. He wanted to be paid for his land, but in return we also got his loyalty.

We still had to meet with the White Lake officials and get any necessary permits. After what we’d just been through, we were nervous about that. Max promised to help us as much as he could, and we had a preliminary meeting with Bethel town supervisor Daniel Amatucci over the weekend. He didn’t think there would be a problem but set up a special meeting for us with the town board for Monday, July 21. We were moving as fast as we could.

As Wallkill officials were preparing a cease-and-desist order to be served on Woodstock Ventures to kick us off the Mills site, we were already out of there. Talk about closing the barn door after the horse has gone! We’d started by emptying the barn of everything and moving the furniture, files, and supplies to White Lake. I made a deal with Elliot to rent his entire motel through the festival and into September, in the process pulling the El Monaco out of foreclosure. The motel also became a ticket outlet. We set up offices in three shabby rooms, and moved ourselves and some of the staff and crew into the rest. We also established festival headquarters in the old New York Telephone Building in neighboring Kauneonga Lake. Near Max’s property, Penny found a shuttered hotel called the Diamond Horseshoe that could house 150 or so workers. It needed some renovation to be habitable, but the owners rented it for a song. Chris Langhart and his team started making enough repairs so that it had running water and electricity—but not much else.

By Monday, we were already contacting the electric company, the phone company, and other suppliers to bring power and communications to the property. Jim Mitchell ordered some trailers to use for production offices on-site near the spot where the stage was to be built. At the Mills site, we’d planned to truck in water, but Max’s fields were conveniently located adjacent to a small, crystal-clear lake named Fillipini’s Pond.

On July 19, the
Kingston Freeman
reported:

While I owed Elliot a lot for making the call that had brought us here, the last thing we needed now was a loose cannon. I canceled the press conference and told him if he opened his mouth again before checking with me, we would be gone from his motel in a heartbeat. I did not want anyone to jump the gun by announcing anything before getting through the session with the town board.

Another problem came to us compliments of our real estate agent, Morris Abraham. He told me that we had to come up with ten thousand dollars for some unnamed officials if we wanted to be sure any approvals or permits necessary would be granted. We had planned to give him a finder’s fee for connecting us to Max, but this reeked of extortion. I felt that if we paid them off, it would taint the entire effort and somehow come back and whack us in the head. Karma works in every direction. Stan and I talked it over and we decided to let Max know what was happening. On the way over to Max’s, we agreed that instead of paying off Morris and his partner on the board, it would be wise to donate the money to the local hospital fund as a sign of our good intentions.

When I told Max about the payoff demand, he blew his top. “No way are you to pay a bribe to Morris Abraham! I’ll find out who’s at the bottom of this and make sure there are no obstacles to your music fair—and if there are, I’ll make public this bribery attempt!” Max had become our staunchest ally. He liked our idea of donating the money to the hospital too, and we promised to follow through. John agreed and the donation was made to Bethel Medical Center.

On Sunday, July 20, we took a break from our preparations for the town hall meeting to watch the lunar landing and see Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. The irony! America was putting a man on the moon, and we were just trying to land on
earth
.

Monday night, Don Ganoung, Mel, Stan, and I arrived to meet with town supervisor Dan Amatucci, the Bethel Town Board, and the Bethel Zoning Board. The room was tiny, and we all sat together around a table. Bethel residents showed up, but there was just enough space for a few to stand. Some peered through an open window.

Mel presented a hastily drawn plot plan for Max’s land, which was filed with the zoning board. We identified the plot of land where we wished to hold the festival: three miles west of White Lake in a block bordered by Route 17B, Perry Road, Hurd Road, and West Shore Road.

We had hired a Sullivan County lawyer, Richard Gross, who told the board members that he had been advised by the Bethel town attorney Frederick Schadt that there were no zoning issues: Max’s land was zoned commercial and agricultural. We promised to submit building plans as soon as possible for the board’s approval.