A new documentary film shows what went wrong at a disastrous Central New York music festival — and who’s to blame.
“Woodstock ’99: Peace, Love and Rage” premiered on HBO this weekend, chronicling the Woodstock ’99 festival held July 22-25, 1999, at Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, N.Y. Directed by Garret Price (“Love, Antosha”) and executive produced by Bill Simmons (“Andre the Giant”), it’s the first release in Simmons’ new “Music Box” series for the platform.
In the opening, Price says he could have made a comedy showcasing some of the now long-gone trends of the late ‘90s, but the footage “played out much more like a horror film.”
Interviews include Woodstock ‘99 promoters Michael Lang and John Scher; 1999 performers like Moby, Jewel, The Offspring, Creed singer Scott Stapp, The Roots rapper Black Thought, KoRn’s Jonathan Davis, and Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine; music journalists and MTV personalities; and some of the attendees who participated in the chaos. One even admits participating in the riots that closed the event with looting, vandalism, and fires.
“When in Rome, you know?” the festivalgoer said.
Woodstock ’99 aimed to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the original Woodstock festival in Upstate New York, but shifted away from peace and love with a modern lineup of artists like Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, KoRn, Rage Against the Machine, Insane Clown Posse and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Some performers tried to revisit the spirit of 1969, such as Bush reprising Country Joe and the Fish’s “F---” chant or Creed bringing out The Doors guitarist Robby Krieger, but few in the audience recognized it or cared.
Lang, who put on the original Woodstock festival, cautioned attendees that “this is not your parent’s Woodstock,” but he and other Woodstock ‘99 organizers shoulder much of the blame in the documentary.
Roughly 350,000 people attended on a site that reportedly shouldn’t have held more than 50,000 people — who had to walk about a mile to get from the East stage to the West stage to see various acts. Griffiss Air Force Base, which had closed in 1995, was largely chosen due to its existing infrastructure and fencing to prevent people from sneaking in for free like previous Woodstocks, but it was far from ideal for a music festival.
“There’s a festival grounds in Germany that was literally built by Hitler,” The Offspring guitarist Noodles says in the documentary. “It’s a great venue, a lot of fun. The air base was less hospitable than the venue built by Nazis.”
Many issues at Woodstock ’99 were blamed on the heat: Temperatures neared 100 degrees (and felt as hot as 118 on the tarmac) and bottles of water were sold for $4, leaving little relief for fans who paid $150 (or more) for tickets to a very commercialized event covered by MTV with live, uncensored pay-per-view. Fans expressed their frustration with the conditions and the overall corporate greed by throwing plastic bottles at Carson Daly, then the music network’s biggest star and host of “TRL.”
Some blamed the lineup: A lot of the artists were aggressive, nu metal acts with many fans that were angry, white young men (who had no problem singing the N-word during DMX’s call-and-response performance of “My N----”). Just three women were booked — Jewel, Sheryl Crow and Alanis Morissette — and DJs like Fatboy Slim and The Chemical Brothers felt out of place at a site where Limp Bizkit singer Fred Durst raised a middle finger and encouraged people to “Break Stuff.”
“Fred Durst was a moron,” Scher said. “He was completely defiant in between songs. We went up to him and said ‘Hey, calm things down’... He caused a lot of trouble.”
Durst wasn’t shown encouraging anyone to calm down. Some fans broke plywood panels off of a sound tower and used it for crowd surfing, and he climbed on one of the wood pieces during his performance.
But it’s not entirely Limp Bizkit’s fault.
“To blame the artists, I think it’s too easy. We never ask the deeper, existential question: Why are so many young men in America, why are they so angry?” Spin journalist Maureen Callahan said.
“Woodstock ‘99″ points fingers at the culture of the late ‘90s, interspersed with video clips from the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, news coverage of the Columbine school shooting, and topless women on “Girls Gone Wild.” Toxic masculinity is mentioned frequently, and the crowd shamelessly chanted “show your t-ts” to actress Rosie Perez when she was on stage to introduce an artist with actor Stephen Baldwin.
In fact, MTV’s cameras appeared to focus a lot on women walking around naked or flashing their boobs. Dave Matthews joked about seeing “an abundance” of breasts, and The Offspring’s Dexter Holland paused his set to tell the audience to stop groping women who were crowd surfing. It’s estimated hundreds were sexually assaulted, but at least eight filed charges, including against a New York state prison guard accused of raping a 15-year-old girl.
Scher blamed the victims.
“There’s no question that a few incidents took place,” Scher said. “But if you go back in the records of the police and state police and stuff, we’re not talking about 100. Or even 50. We’re talking about 10. I am critical of the hundreds of women that were walking around with no clothes on, and expecting not to be touched. They shouldn’t have been touched, and I condemn it. But you know, I think that women that were running around naked, you know, are at least partially to blame for that.”
On top of it all, security staffers were largely portrayed as amateurs who got the job after taking a multiple-choice test and put little effort towards stopping drugs from coming in or quelling violence. Much of the site was trashed by the end of the first day, and port-a-potties were so badly backed up that people who played in the mud were likely also covered in other brown stuff that wasn’t mud.
A lot of the issues felt preventable, including an ominous moment halfway through the film where a non-profit group is shown handing out free candles. The crowd was asked to hold candles for victims of gun violence on Sunday night, a display reminiscent of Melanie’s Woodstock performance in 1969, but many instead burned whatever they could find and huge fires broke out.
New York State Senator Joe Griffo, who was mayor of Rome from 1992 to 2003, is shown in the documentary asking Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis to calm the crowd and tell them to make room for fire trucks. The band went back on stage for an encore performance of Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire,” adding gasoline to the blaze.
“The question quickly became not, ‘How could this have happened?’ but ‘How could it not?’” Callahan said.
By the end of the event, three people died, including one Metallica fan whose tragic experience is heavily featured; at least 700 people were treated for heat exhaustion and dehydration; multiple women reported sexual assault and rape; 44 people were arrested; hundreds of fake passes were confiscated; and multiple cars, tents, booths and ATMs were destroyed.
Scher blamed MTV for “setting the tone,” insisting that most people had a fun weekend at Woodstock ‘99. But the truth is, a lot of people didn’t, and there’s plenty of blame to be shared between organizers, security, some of the artists and attendees, commercialism, and the culture at large.
“Woodstock ’99: Peace, Love and Rage,” produced by Syracuse University alumnus Sean Keegan, is now streaming on HBO Max.
Another Woodstock ’99 docuseries is also reportedly in the works at Netflix from Raw TV, whose credits include the Netflix documentary “Don’t F--k with Cats,” and BBH Entertainment, which released the recent Depeche Mode concert film “Spirits in the Forest.”