Anyone who believes that the bogus Fyre Festival is the worst music festival in history has clearly never heard of Woodstock ’99.
The event, which began as a reminder of the original spirit of peace, love and harmony at Woodstock held in 1969, ended in violence, riots and multiple rapes, leaving the venue and those in attendance looking as if they had been at war.
After a long weekend of rock fans razing the site’s facilities to the ground, one Brit watched the coverage on TV and couldn’t fathom how the whole idea got to this terrifyingly apocalyptic level.
The Brit is Fatboy Slim, who is headlining the rave party on the second night of the festival. At first, he believes that this will be the most important performance of his life. However, it turns out that the circumstances are developing much darker than what he or anyone could have imagined.
In the new Netflix documentary series Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 from director Jamie Crawford, the organizers and performers of the festival remembered as one of music’s biggest disasters share what they think went wrong in mixing the angry generation of MTV culture with the limitless alcohol, drugs and aggressive music.
For Fatboy Slim, whose real name is Norman Cook, this sight is still the scariest thing he has ever seen in his life. This is the night when the adrenaline reaches such a high level that it has made him fear for his safety.
The tornado of disasters began after the Limp Bizkit concert, when a crowd of 400,000 people, having already destroyed the main stage podium and walls, brought their wild energy into the rave hangar. Young people fire, push and turn the festival into a real melee.
In the Netflix documentary, one of the employees working on the ground says that the unrestrained behavior reached even more barbaric limits than breaking the equipment.
“I remember shining my flashlight on the floor when I saw people on all fours having sex. I also saw naked women lined up on a wall behind the stage in a straight line with their hands up, and behind them stood a row of men with their pants down . What was the Bible word for that?” asks the worker sarcastically.
Meanwhile, while in the middle of his performance, Fatboy Slim notices a huge object moving towards the hangar and people dancing on top.
“At first I thought it was some type of moving dance platform. Something like a podium that 20 or 30 people get up on and dance. It looked like a cool part of the show, kind of like Burning Man, but it turned out it was coming towards us van,” recalls Fatboy Slim.
The van was stolen by a gang of youths who drove the vehicle straight into the crowd at the rave hangar.
At the request of stage manager AJ Srybnik, Fatboy announced that he was suspending the concert until the vehicle was moved, but the crowd did not like the news and started throwing cups, bottles and all kinds of rubbish at the performer trying to get to his dressing room.
When Srybnik eventually makes it to the bathtub, he sees something that remains etched in his mind to this day,
“I opened the door and saw a rusty old machete and an unconscious teenage girl with her clothes off. Next to her, a boy was pulling up his pants. I was not myself. This incident marked my whole life,” says the manager, who witnessed the rape.
The girl was immediately taken to the hospital, but the atmosphere did not calm down with the neutralization of the bath. The destruction escalates to the point where Fatboy Slim’s crew decide it’s not safe for him and his crew to stay a second longer. His manager quickly orders a car and tells the contractor to get in it and not look behind him.
“I did exactly what I was told – I ran away. We drove directly to the airport and slept in the terminal while waiting for our flight,” says the musician.
If he had stayed that night, he would have seen the full scale of destruction of Woodstock ’99 with his own eyes. People running amok around the place and setting fire to everything they can get their hands on. After this party, numerous sexual assault reports were filed.
Watching the reports of the pogrom that replaced his failed concert, Fatboy Slim could not understand how the idea of peace and love was transformed to these ugly consequences.
“It’s disgusting to think that all this was happening under our noses,” says the Briton.
Following coverage of the fallout, several major US associations are seeking retribution from the music festival’s organizers. The National Organization for the Protection of Women from Sexual Violence has launched a series of protests, and hundreds of complaints about “stress and dehydration” have been filed in court.
However, this does not throw the idea of a fourth Woodstock out of the head of the man who organized the first three – Michael Lang.
Even after the disaster in the summer of 1999, he plans to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the original hippie festival in 2019. Miley Cyrus, Jay-Z and Santana are slated for headliners, but in the early days of the concert series, difficulties arise.
In the end, the festival was canceled, with Lang blaming it on the investors, the Japanese company Dentsu Aegis. The promoter had planned to do a smaller-scale event in 2020, but his idea was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Michael Lang never saw another Woodstock festival, as he died in January 2022.
In his wake was the book “The Road to Woodstock”, which became a New York Times bestseller, and the stories of those who survived the last day of the festival near New York, which journalism labeled “the day the 90s died.”
Tags: Woodstock Girl raped van Fatboy Slim hid dressing room
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