WOODSTOCK: HENDRIX, DRUGS AND NAKEDNESS

Locals Talk About Meeting Jimi Hendrix, Drugs and Skinny
Dipping

"Welcome to Hip City, USA," read the one-page SURVIVAL handout
Silverthorne resident Cheri Breeman saved from the festival. "We're
now one of the largest cities in America ... Where we go from here
depends on all of us. The people who promoted this festival have been
overwhelmed by their own creation. We can no longer remain passive /
we have to begin to fend for ourselves."

The guidelines asked people to think twice before taking a dip in the
lake, which, by default, became the main source of water. It said the
Hog Farm would tend to "drug freakouts." It asked people not to be
"piggish" about food. And, it warned: "Don't run naked in the hot sun
for any period of time (do it in the shade). Water blisters are a bummer."

"After Friday, a lot of things changed," Breckenridge resident Patty
Theobald said. "We were on the main hill, and they didn't have medical
help until (later) Saturday, and they announced that somebody just had
a baby."

Organizers also made ongoing announcements about not dropping acid,
Blue River resident Mitch Weiss said. But no one policed the area.

"It was a really interesting feeling to party and not have to look
over your shoulder," he said. "There was no fear."

Breckenridge resident Steve Henderson was a 20-year-old studying
chemical engineering and touting: "Anything brown and leafy is fine,
but don't do the chemicals."

Still, plenty of people were "nonstop tripping," Silverthorne resident
John Timmons said. People passed around psychedelics left and right.

"There were so many people walking around like butlers at a cocktail
party offering up, in the palm of their hands, hashish, PCP, rainbow
acid, grass and whatever, like an a la carte buffet," said
Breckenridge resident Bobbie Hamilton.

One of Hamilton's psychologist friends ended up volunteer counseling
those who wound up in the bad-trip tent, and every so often, he was
able to sit on stage with the bands. Hamilton spent most of Friday
night baby-sitting a friend of hers, who accepted some "unsavory
elephant appetizer from the 'butlers' on the way in."

Even attendees who didn't actively take drugs soaked up the spirit of
Woodstock.

"You just walked around, and you'd get high," Frisco resident Eric
Fisher said.

Among the visual images Fisher still recalls is Roger Daltrey of The
Who gyrating on stage wearing a blue fringed jacket.

"It seemed very trippy and ethereal," Fisher said. "No matter how
straight you were, you were walking in a cloud."

Meanwhile, the heat, road dust and lack of showers on Saturday enticed
many to peel off their clothes and reinvent the sport of mud sliding,
once it rained. In fact, the wet clay made footing so treacherous, it
was often easier to slide down the hill, Hamilton said. Hundreds of
naked people swam about 50 feet from Timmons' campsite, while
thousands more walked around the concert area.

"It wasn't any sexual or exciting thing," Timmons said. "It was just
people being free."

But whether or not it titillated depends on perspective. Frisco
resident Sylvia Conway thought it was "a great place to get laid."
Breeman said she was too innocent to know about anything like that.
Weiss, a 17-year-old at the time, simply enjoyed the scenery.

"I was hoping to have a lot of sex, but I just didn't have any luck,"
he said, laughing. "I was trying to be cool with all these naked women
running around."

Various campsites built reputations for having good wine or giving
good massages, Henderson said. People marched around with surreal
props, like a wooden coffin with a skeleton dressed as Jesus attached
to it, Theobald said. And the sky poured and poured - until, as Fisher
described it, a group began an anti-rain dance by clapping beer cans
and bottles together. Around that time, an Army helicopter flew over,
dropping cases of sunflower seeds, which opened up and fluttered down.
Then, the sun came out, and the musicians resumed playing.

"I know it wasn't me tripping, because I met two other people who
remember the same scene," Fisher said. "It was totally amazing."

Meeting Hendrix Fisher went to Woodstock with the sole purpose of
seeing his idol, Jimi Hendrix, play. Unfortunately, he ended up
helping a friend fix his Mustang, then crashing out in the front seat
after about 48 hours of sleeplessness. It was Timmons who met Hendrix.

Timmons was headed to his campsite for his first nap in three days. He
decided to walk along the road behind the stage and slipped in the
mud. That's when the car driving Hendrix away after his famed
"Star-Spangled Banner" performance ran over Timmons' leg.

"The mud was so deep and soft, it just hurt a little bit," Timmons
said. "Nothing was broken, but they felt bad enough to give me a ride
back to my campsite."

As Timmons sat behind Hendrix and chatted, he surreptitiously reached
into his backpack and hit "record" on the 3-inch reel-to-reel tape
recorder he had brought, along with 40 tapes. When he returned to
camp, he replayed it, only to realize he hadn't captured Hendrix's
voice, and, indeed, had erased about an hour of music. The program
Hendrix had signed was stolen years later, so now, Timmons is left
with only memories.

"(Hendrix) seemed like just a down-to-earth, really good guy," Timmons
said. "He was so electric on stage, and there, a half-hour later in
the car, he was just mellow."