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Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and Rage

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Year: 2021
Director: Garret Price

I knew prior to this documentary that Woodstock 99 was a bit of a shitfest, but I had no idea just how big a shitfest it was. To paraphrase Marilyn Manson (who amazingly was not on the bill) I wasn’t born with enough capital letters to emphasise just how much of a SHITFEST Woodstock 99 turned out to be. We’ll go easy on the details, because much of the pleasure of the film lies in staring at your TV open-mouthed with incredulity for an hour and 50 mins. Let’s just say that in terms of WTF moments it really is the gift that keeps on giving. Think the Fyre documentary turned up to 11. Think Lord of the Flies with boobs and backwards baseball caps. Apocalypse Now where Willard is dispatched to kill Colonel Fred Durst.

But there’s a Hepworthian ‘here’s the thing’ here, because this is a festival that from your place on the sofa looks like an actual vision of hell on earth. Women are being mauled. People are dropping like flies. The place is clearly a cesspit, literally and metaphorically. And yet where is all the footage of traumatised and shell-shocked festival-goers? Anguished kids supporting each other in a bid to escape the inferno? Where’s all the testimony from people still suffering PTSD all these years later? It’s just not there. With the exception of one poor chap whose friend died, all of the attendees interviewed seem to have had a wonderful time, and much later in the film, when a commentator asks, ‘Why weren’t people leaving in their droves?’ the answer, clearly, is that the majority of them were having the weekend of their lives, albeit in a most unedifying fashion.

Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the performance of Limp Bizkit, which took place on the evening of the middle day. Most of the talking heads tut-tut at what is framed as an irresponsible stoking-up of an already febrile atmosphere. They may have a point. I thank my lucky stars that I was several thousand miles away at the time. But what is also true is that if you measure the value of a rock performance on power and spectacle and the utter OMFG of it, then on the evidence presented here (which is significantly different to the still-quite-gobsmacking official YouTube upload) the Bizkit’s showing of Break Stuff is actually one of the great rock moments of all time. ‘They had the crowd going insane,’ says Jonathan Davis of Korn, whose contributions generally are thoughtful and, as in this particular case, understated. ‘What do you expect if you book Limp Bizkit?’ asks someone else. True. To an extent. But I’m sure that there must have been plenty of rock festivals around that time with similar line-ups that didn’t end up with riot police on site.

Playing the blame game ends up being another fun strand to the film, and they all come up at one time or another. The heat! The price of water! Whiteness! Toxic masculinity! The venality of the organisers! Providing a rave tent! The nu-metal programming! Of them all ‘Fred Durst!’ has to be the most laughable. If you really think that Limp Bizkit were responsible for the shitfest that was Woodstock 99 then you haven’t been watching closely enough. And if you were there? On the aforementioned Break Stuff YouTube upload are plenty of comments from people who were. But maybe the most simple and telling goes, “The weekend soon became a matter of survival — but it was great!”

Might appeal to people who enjoyed:

Ripping someone’s head off!

3

Comments

  3. Presume this wasn’t actually in Woodstock like the original festival. I used to live near Woodstock in upstate NY. about 12 years ago Pretty uninspiring place, some remnants of hippie culture for tourists, plenty of people who may or may not be on hard drugs and just a general tackiness about the place. Lovely rural area otherwise. They did have gigs there though, which I didn’t go to. If I had my time again I would go to one of Levon Helm’s “Rambles”.

  4. Great review, I’m looking forward to watching this.

    I’ve always been a believer that violent lyrics, movies, games, etc, do not – in isolation – make people en masse more violent. Woodstock 99 was about as close as I can remember coming to fully overturning that view. The conditions and organisation of the event didn’t help, but it’s hard to look at the politics, and particularly the sexual politics, of nu metal and conclude that the music didn’t play at least a part in the horrible shit that went down.

    I was talking the other day on here about the importance of recognising the utility of different types of music. The central utility of nu metal was to throw all social convention to the wind and act like a pack of aggrod up gorillas. There’s probably something to be said for that experience; it’s not a billion miles away from the Dionysian frenzy Iggy Pop used to shoot for, just a good deal more meatheaded – but the problem with throwing social convention to the wind is that social convention is there to protect, as well as restrain people.

    I still contend that Break Stuff is, on its own terms, a properly great record. As often happens, my appreciation started off ironic but eventually became sincere. The guitars dropping back in on the “give me something to break” coda is a legitimately brilliant moment, and one that signals “let’s all go absolutely fucking mental for the next 60 seconds” about as well as any other music I can think of. Obviously, the lyrics are asinine, the singer is a douchebag and the band look ridiculous, but I’m not even sure it would work as well if you changed any of those elements, and I think we underestimate at our peril the appeal of going fucking mental with your mates for 60 seconds when you’re young and invincible and not really thinking about who might end up picking up the tab for all that mindless fun.

    Jonathan Davis often comes across well in interviews. His own band have at least one moment of their own to rival Break Stuff; the scatted breakdown about two and a half minutes into Freak on a Leash that suddenly erupts into a charnel house of riffery. The lyrics are also less risible, if that helps.

    What’s painful about all this is that if we do concede that Limp Bizkit et al were partly responsible for the horrors of Woodstock 99, it probably forces us to ask some very uncomfortable questions about other music we love. Personally, I still lean towards the idea that an individual can’t really blame art (or even nu metal records) for their own moral choices, but I sense that, culturally speaking, we’re moving in the opposite direction now.

    Either way, I share your relief at not having attended Woodstock 99.

  5. Interesting article on it – https://slate.com/culture/2021/07/woodstock-99-documentary-hbo-max-deaths.html

    and Justin Currie from Del Amitri mentioned their appearance as one of the lowlights of his career on Radio Scotland – the band before them stormed a long version of “Riot In Cell Block #9” , crowd shouting along with it – this left the dels, on a rotating stage, being spun out in front of a crowd from Lord Of The Flies, baying for blood – and being treated instead to whimsical Scottish pop, playing the first song in 3 different keys because the band were all over the place with it.

  7. I think what I found most troubling and disturbing about this film was that despite seeing fit to destroying much of the site on the last day, the fans nevertheless left the stage intact for the Red Hot Chilli Peppers to perform, which was bad enough but there was also the horrifying sight of Flea slapping his instrument unclothed with his tadger flapping around in the searing heat of this crucible of depravity and savagery.

  8. There’s a three-part TV version of this on Netflix right now.: Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99. Well worth seeing. There’s tons of stuff that isn’t in the film, especially involving Fatboy Slim’s set and the final riot.

    • I think I enjoyed the TV series even more than the movie.

      Notable, once again, that even some of the interviewees who expressed most contempt for the festival, its organisers and the entire vibe of the event nonetheless happily conceded it was one of the best times they ever had.

      I do wonder how much of that is just a facet of looking back at yourself at 20 though. It’s pretty great being 20, on any number of levels, let’s face it.

    • I saw that come up, and I didn’t think I was interested. But reading this thread and the review I’m quite interested actually. I think I will watch it. Double bill with the 1969 Woodstock movie anyone??

  9. Okay, watched it now. Very enjoyable (not sure if enjoyable is the right word).

    I hadn’t realised the organiser of the ’99 Woodstock was the same guy as the ’69 one. That put a new spin on it.

    I wasn’t really aware of this at the time. Was it just me, or was it just not that big a story in the UK? I don’t remember it being on the news or anything.

    And, putting my cynical hat on on for a minute, gobsmacking as much of it was, does anyone else think it was maybe exaggerated a bit for the documentary? There seemed to be an awful, awful lot more of interviews with people 20 years after the event telling you all the wild stuff that was happening, as opposed to actual footage of these wild things happening. Fair enough, there was plenty of shots of mosh pits, fires, vandalism and ugly “bro” behaviour, but in the background of many of the shots I noticed a lot of people just, well, kind of standing around.

    And, to take a specific example, there was a big anecdote about James Brown refusing to get on stage until he had been paid. And this was supported by actual footage of James Brown just before he went on stage… and he was just kind of standing around with his entourage, nary an argument or cross word in sight. Just about every verbal confrontation or showdown that is described vividly in the interviews seems to have actually happened out of sight of the many cameras there seem to have been on the scene.

    Sorry to pour doubt on the illusion! It was a great and compelling documentary, just came across as being beefed up in the edit to something it wasn’t.

    • What wild stuff did you think it was missing?

      They’ve got footage of an ambulance being driven directly into the crowd during Fatboy Slim, giant masts being knocked over by a mob, large sections of the fence wall being kicked down, ATMs being knocked over and broken into, merch tents being looted, what can only really be described as a riot, the organisers using wood and nails to barricade themselves into their command centre, mass public nudity, fixtures and fittings being ripped down and lobbed into fires as people dance around them, thousands of plastic bottles being lobbed at the stage, Gavin Rossdale with what looked suspiciously like spray on hair still looking traumatised at the memory of having to go onstage after Korn, tractors being set on fire, art installations being knocked over, seas of human effluent, people crowd surfing on torn down scenery, women being sexually harassed, harsh language, stern looks, unbridled scenes of unabashed machismo, and Fred Durst being allowed to go about his business unhindered.

      I’d say they had the wild stuff pretty well covered. They didn’t have footage of a lot of the backstage arguing, but then that’s to be expected given the time period.

      Also; the doc contains footage of the coverage on the BBC main evening news at the time. It was a big deal, albeit a big deal on the other side of the Atlantic in a period when the Atlantic was a little larger than it is now.

      • Fair point! But yeah I do still think there was stuff missing, and sometimes maybe glossed over and made out to be worse than it was.

        The woman who handed out bin bags: in her interview she made out as if she was subjected to abuse by people shouting at her that they hadn’t paid £150 for a ticket just to help to pick up rubbish. But the footage just showed her handing out bin bags to bemused, tired-looking kids.

        There was lots of talk of all the water being contaminated and nothing coming through the taps, and talking as if the only water was the muddy stuff that had mixed with the waste from the toilets. But then in a scene a few minutes later, there was an official guy saying they went round and took samples from all the taps to see if it was still fresh. What water was he testing if all the taps were off? And after three days of blazing sunshine and no shelter, with nobody having access to any water, wouldn’t people have been actually dying of thirst rather than just a few hundred getting treated for dehydration?

        The Red Hot Chili Peppers. The way it was presented, it was as if they spontaneously decided to play the song Fire to add to the chaos. But clearly it was a pre-planned encore in tribute to Hendrix, and just a daft mis-step rather than anything else.

        Okay, I’m maybe overstating my case, but I’m just well aware that a documentarian making a film about the Most Disastrous Festival In The World, and a load of talking heads knowing fine well the most animated, emotional ones will be the ones to make the final cut, will both have a tendency to bend the truth a little bit to make it a bit more exciting and colourful.

        I’m sounding like a moon landing denier or something here, so I will pull back a bit. To sum up, I don’t deny the whole thing was a dangerous disaster, with lots of riots and violence. I just think there are a significant number of little white lies and exaggerations in the small details of the documentary to make me think the whole thing is maybe overhyped a bit.

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