I recently watched the documentary “Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99” which covered the 1999 Woodstock music festival in Rome, New York. The documentary was entertaining and filled with drama. More importantly, it offers many lessons that I believe we should take to heart.
Many remember the original 1969 Woodstock festival for its qualities of Peace, Love, Folk Music and Psychedelic Rock and Roll. Woodstock ’99, on the other hand, is remembered by most as an abomination. After failing to successfully revive Woodstock in 1994 (due to administrative mistakes that enabled thousands of individuals to attend the concert for free), entrepreneurs and event promoters came together to try again in 1999, this time with the aim of putting on a festival that would net a substantial profit.
The three-part docu-series on Netflix documents how the entrepreneurs and leadership team of the festival cut corners, made questionable decisions, and prioritized profits over the well-being of people as they organized and carried out the festival. These choices are analogous to those made by many corporate leaders in every sector of our economy. For this reason, analyzing the consequences of these choices could inform how we view the choices corporate leaders make today.
Issues with Water, Waste, and Space
The first mistake the leaders of Woodstock ’99 made, according to the film, was having the concert at an abandoned military base in the middle of the summer. Summer in New York is hot to begin with, but when you are in the middle of an almost entirely asphalt and cement military base in a crowd of 250,000 people the heat becomes sweltering. This setting represented the complete opposite end of the spectrum from the prairies and open fields of Woodstock ’69.
Attempting to increase profits by enticing people to purchase water and other refreshments at the festival, the leaders of Woodstock prohibited drinks of any kind inside the venue, including water bottles. The vendors recognized the intense demand for drinks and proceeded to inflate the cost of water by upwards of 400% of the average cost of water in 1999.
The result was disastrous. There were extremely long lines for water fountains, people overheated and became dehydrated, and because the leaders of the festival did not hire a trash and sanitation company that had the capacity to handle such a large event, the hundreds of thousands of plastic water bottles and beer cans purchased ended up being spread all over the venue. There was debris everywhere. As one may infer by the inability to carry out this basic cleaning, the porta-potties in use were also in horrendous condition.
Afterwards, experts concluded there were various diseases flouting around in the streams of excess water run-off from the toilets that spread across the area around the bathrooms. Attendees quickly realized that the organizers of this festival did not care for their well-being. By the end of night one, they had started to grow frustrated. When they woke up on day two, after a night of sleeping on asphalt surrounded by trash and sewage, they were very angry.
Festival Fury
In another effort to drive ticket sales, the organizers booked the hottest bands of the day, which in 1999 was mostly hard rock and metal bands. In hindsight, this was a tragic mistake. The metal bands, who represent nothing if not resistance and challenge to authority, sensed the anger in the crowd and whipped them into a frenzy. To make matters worse, security at Woodstock ’99 was nothing short of a joke. Instead of hiring a security company, the leaders paid individuals with no experience in security to serve as a “peace patrol”. This was completely ineffective and led to extremely dangerous situations including fires and even a radio tower being toppled. Today, Woodstock ’99 is remembered for its riots, not its music.
Underlying the sheer insanity of the events displayed in the documentary was a take on capitalism. The capitalist event promoters and organizers, just like capitalists in other industries, prioritized their desire for profits over their responsibility to care for attendees’ well-being. They cut corners and put people in danger, and even today they take no responsibility for the harm they caused. The response of the people was a response of a crowd who had realized the exploitation taking place. To me, the main takeaway from this film is that if the public can recognize the similar exploitation taking place in everyday society, it is reasonable to predict intense anger will be their response, just like it was at Woodstock ‘99.