In the process, he accidentally slashed open his hand, smearing blood over himself. Later, he picked up a 12-gauge goose gun rifle and fired into the air in tribute to late Woodstock legends Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Keith Moon. “We were having fun in the spirit of rock’n’roll and we woke everybody the fuck up because our adrenaline was spiking.”ĭuring Jackyl’s nine-song set, Jesse James lit a gasoline-soaked stool on fire, then destroyed it with a chainsaw. “They were being a little heavy-handed about drugs and alcohol, but how can you have a Woodstock without people smoking a little dope?” he asks. Then someone tossed a joint onstage and he sparked up, unconcerned about the area’s strict drug laws. He started by pouring whisky over the crowd. Vocalist Jesse James Dupree took the stage in an Uncle Sam hat and a mirror shard jacket that weighed 40 pounds.
Jackyl were the first metal band to play on Friday. Originally, promoters planned a two-day weekend festival across August 13-14, but added Friday to the schedule when they realised there was a surplus of groups that wanted to play, and that they could entertain campers who arrived early.
“For months they said, ‘There’s gonna be riots and crime.’ That didn’t seem to stop anybody from buying tickets, but it made our lives pretty hellish.” “The mainstream press was negative from the start,” recalls John Scher, then president of Polygram Diversified Entertainment, which co-promoted the event with Woodstock Ventures. Others complained that the $135 ticket price and corporate sponsorship (including abundant Woodstock merch and a pay-per-view simulcast) killed the organic, grass roots vibe of the 1969 event.Ĭommunities around Saugerties worried that local highways and roads weren’t large enough to accommodate street traffic from 200,000 expected attendees. Purists argued that the new acts – especially the heavier ones – tainted the legacy of the original Woodstock. The line-up was announced on June 14, just two months before the concert. It was the location where Woodstock 1969 was scheduled to take place, before the owners got cold feet, forcing promoters to move it southwest to Max Yasgur’s Dairy Farm. In 1993, the Woodstock team rented out the 840-acre Winston Farm in Saugerties, New York. (Image credit: Getty Images/John Atashian)) Anyone expecting this to be a reprise of what went on 25 years ago should have their head examined.” Music has evolved and society has evolved. “Now, we have the best contemporary bands for 1994. “What was going on was the best contemporary bands for 1969,” Metallica’s Lars Ulrich told MTV before the group’s monster set. As a consolation, guitarist Jerry Cantrell took the stage at the end of Primus’s set to join a jam redolent of Led Zeppelin’s Dazed And Confused. In addition to Nine Inch Nails and Green Day, the event featured Metallica, Aerosmith, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jackyl, Porno For Pyros, the Rollins Band, Candlebox, Collective Soul, King’s X and Primus.Īlice In Chains were originally booked but had to pull out since vocalist Layne Staley was in drug rehab. The line-up for Woodstock ’94 included alumni from Woodstock ’69 ( Santana, Joe Cocker, Country Joe McDonald) and old-schoolers who didn’t play the original festival (Jimmy Cliff, Allman Brothers, Bob Dylan).īut most of the highlights were newer, heavier and more contemporary bands. Some of them were dancing, some were, uhh, doing other things.” You could vaguely hear music and there were giant mud puddles with naked people writhing around. “There was shit going on back there that had nothing to do with what was going on by the stage,” recalls Blind Melon guitarist Rogers Stevens. Motivated by recreational pharmaceuticals, primal lust or a combination of both, they spent as much time frolicking in the mud at the back of the festival grounds as they did in the audience. But rather than trash the venue – as some fans did at Woodstock ’99 – or get mad and leave, the majority of crowd members revelled in it. If there was a theme song for the festival, it’d be Primus’s My Name is Mud. The show did for Green Day what the mud costumes did for NIN footage of the show was repeatedly splashed across MTV and three months later Green Day’s second album, Dookie, hit No.4 on the charts. When the crowd started throwing clumps of dirt at them, they embraced the chaos, flinging it back and triggering a giddy, chaotic mud fight.īy the end, frontman Billie Joe Armstrong had dropped his pants and a security guard had accidentally clocked bassist Mike Dirnt in the mouth, knocking out some of his front teeth. And other bands, especially Green Day, turned a potential disaster into a free-for-all party.
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