August 31, 1969
Texas International Pop Festival
Motor Speedway
Lewisville, TX
Audience Recording:
101. The Train Kept A Rollin
102. I Can't Quit You Babe
103. Dazed and Confused
104. You Shook Me
105. How Many More Times
106. Communication Breakdown
Taper: Reggie the Bullet
Soundboard Recording:
201. Introduction
202. The Train Kept A Rollin'
203. I Can't Quit You
204. Dazed And Confused
205. You Shook Me
206. How Many More Times
207. Communication Breakdown
An excellent show, perfectly consolidating all of the great playing that this tour had produced, from the powerful opener to the extended end of show medley, complete with Plant doing his best adlibs yet. An easy choice for one of the very best shows of the year. As if the performance wasn't enough, a superb soundboard, as well as a near-excellent audience sources circulate for this show. Plant mentioned about the cancelled August 4th concert: "It's very nice to be back in Texas. Last time we were here it was a near disaster when we said we weren't doing the festival and everything. This is the last date before we go back to England, so we'd really like to have a nice time ... And you can help us." Plant also apologised for cutting the set short: "We've got to say goodnight according to the programme. Unfortunately, the programme has got a little delayed but there's nothing we can do about it!" Pages amps act up during a few spots in the show, producing brief crackling sounds, as if his guitar cable or a connection somewhere was coming loose. Although not at all a distraction for the listener, this makes for a funny moment during Dazed And Confused and How Many More Times, when Page's amps can be heard briefly picking up the sound of the festival security staff speaking on their radios.
Texas International Pop Festival was full of surprises for artists, fans, onlookers August 30, 2009 By MICHAEL E. YOUNG and ROY APPLETON / The Dallas Morning News
After Woodstock, where most attendees walked in for free, organizers of the Lewisville festival knew they needed better security.
So they hired men like James Polser, then 28 and selling Chevys at Huffines before taking over his family's Lewisville Feed Mill in 1978. Handy on horseback, Polser and others patrolled the perimeter of the property, and saw some sights that still shock them 40 years later:
"I was out there on my horse, riding the fence line, and there was a man and a woman and a little baby, and they asked if they could put the baby on my horse and take a picture of him," Polser recalled.
"I said that was fine. The only thing was that the woman – and she was a good-looking woman – she had her pants on and that was all.
"And nobody paid any attention, except for me and my heart attack. Gosh almighty, we saw things that would blow your mind."
Led Zeppelin
gets the news
Even among the stellar lineup at the Lewisville pop festival, none was hotter in the summer of '69 than Led Zeppelin. So when the band came to perform at the Fair Park Coliseum on Aug. 4, three weeks before the festival, Angus Wynne III and his partners saw a chance for some publicity.
"We found their road manager, and we said we wanted to make sure the band recognized the festival from the stage," Wynne said. "And he said, 'Well, the fellows think they're going to be on vacation then. They don't know about it.'
"The band gets on stage, and after a couple of songs, Robert Plant says, 'Anyone heard of the Texas International Pop Festival? We got into town today and saw the posters with our name on them. We've never heard of it. It's a classic ripoff, and if you have tickets, you need to get your money back.' "
Furious, the producers found the road manager locked inside a limousine.
They pounded on the windows and almost tipped the car over before the manager emerged.
"He ran out there and he pulls Plant over to the side and whispers in his ear," Wynne said. "Then Plant grabs him by the lapels and starts shaking him.
"At the end of the song, Plant goes to the microphone and says, 'Yeah, we're going to play [at the festival]. Our weasel road manager just told us.' "
How Wavy Gravy got his name
He arrived in Lewisville as Hugh Romney, the gentle, gravel-voiced jokester who'd promised the crowd at Woodstock "breakfast in bed for 400,000."
But after a brush with blues royalty at the Texas International Pop Festival, Romney would forever be Wavy Gravy.
Exhausted from hours spent around Lewisville Lake urging nude festivalgoers to cover up, Romney collapsed on the free stage at a lakeside campground.
"They had these conga drummers on the stage, and I said, 'Don't dance on the wavy gravy,' " he said. "Then someone announced that B.B. King was there, and he was going to play for free.
"I started to get up, and I felt this hand on my shoulder and it was B.B. King. And he said, 'Are you Wavy Gravy?' and I just said, 'Yes, sir,' and he said, 'Wavy Gravy, I can work around you.'
"And he stood me up next to his amplifier, and Johnny Winter comes from the other side, and they played all night long.
"I was Hugh Romney at Woodstock, but I've been Wavy Gravy for 40 years."
'Lewd and loose in Lewisville'
A Dallas Morning News editorial helped whip up the fear and loathing for all those hippies coming to hear all that music.
An Aug. 30, 1969, editorial headlined "Nausea at Lewisville" told readers:
"Young people assembling to hear music is one thing. Young people assembling in unspeakable costumes, half-naked, barefooted, defying propriety and scorning morality is another.
"... We hope readers of this newspaper will realize this weekend that the great majority of youngsters in this area are at home where they ought to be – mowing yards, working at part-time jobs and preparing for useful lives.
"In the meantime, the lewd and loose at Lewisville will swing and sway. They are to be pitied."
Lu Mitchell remembers the heat, the refreshing water hose, leaflets dropped from an airplane, the friendly crowd and enjoying the music, particularly Janis Joplin, until 5 a.m.
A singer-songwriter herself, now living in Farmers Branch, Mitchell didn't care much for the editorial stance. "I got so upset over that that I wrote this song," she said. It's a song she still performs at age 85.
We were lewd and loose in Lewisville, we had us a time
Lewd and loose in Lewisville covered with dirt and grime
We were unsanitary and full of fleas
Some had beards clear down to their knees
Lewd and loose in Lewisville
The Dallas News told you so.
Freak meets west Pop fest Texas style
Texas Magazine, Sunday, Sept. 21, 1969
By Jeff Millar
That's it. That's all. I've seen everything. The entire staff of Mt. Palomar could say Uranus
has traded orbits with Mercury and I'd yawn.A headline in The Chronicle could say
WALKING CATFISH LEARN SHUFFLE-OFF-TOBUFFALO and I’d say so what.
I saw a small-Texas-town cop walk out or, a stage, shoot the peace sign to about 35,000
hippies and plastic hippies -- a good 10 percent of them zonked on some kind of drug or
another -- and say: "Any time you want to come back, you're welcome."
How're ya gonna top that Armageddon? This happened -- I swear it did -- Labor Day
weekend at the Texas International Pop Festival at Lewisville (pop. 10,000). Little
Bethel. Son of Woodstock. Freak Meets West 18 miles north of Dallas at a motor speedway
and five miles away at the Garza-Little Elm Reservoir campground.
I: Pop Protocol
Pop festivals have been around only a couple of years and it wasn't until Woodstock, up in
New York, that the pop festival protocols really solidified. Previously, pop festivals had been
like jazz festivals; one undergoes a certain amount of privation -- crowding, uncomfortable seating,expensive tickets, scarcity of housing -- to be able to hear a lot of artists back to back. At Woodstock, however, where 400,000 turned up when the promoters expected maybe 150,000 tops, the whole festival environment became the thing. The music was secondary. You probably couldn't hear it because you couldn't sit close enough, or you never got there to begin with. But you were part of the Experience, part of the Presence. The more freaks the better. You were there at the Gathering. Great God Almighty, for one time there was more of You than there was of Them. The national press thought this was an epochal event. Big spreads in Life. Huntley-Brinkley. The Festival Style was set. So the people coming to Lewisville knew what to do. The main thing was no hassles that would upset the fuzz. I.E., no breaking up things, beating up on each other or the local yokels. The idea is to keep the cops out of the festival area so that no one will get busted for pot or hard stuff. The cops know that people are using drugs. The people know the cops know. And the people know that the cops are willing to trade drugs for no hassles. If there are 40,000 people there, the cops can't handle the hassles. So no hassles.
II: Freaks Meet Cowboys
If the pop festival wasn't enough, the Lewisville Rodeo was in town that weekend. By Sunday, the road from IH 35E to the campgrounds, where a good 2500 festival goers had crashed, was half-and-half with psychedelic VW buses and bashed-up Chevy pickups with gun racks and U.S. flag decals. The cowboys were coming to eyeball the freaks.
Out on the water, a good 100 freaks were skinnydipping. There had been nude swimming at Woodstock, so there had to be nude swimming at Lewisville. The cops weren't doing anything. A Department of Public Safety helicopter was circling, looking mildly disapproving, but there were no hassles. More of Us than there are of Them.
Up on the bank, two cowboys from the rodeo were watching. They were drinking Pearl and watching. There weren't as man}' girls swimming nekkid as you'd like, but it was better than TV back at the motel. "Get the cowboys"' cried one of the skinnydippers, and about 15 naked, giggling freaks emerged from the water and began to take off the cowboys' clothes. The cowboys kept their bottles of Pearl and walked into the water. They were grub white from the waist down. The ground hurt their feet. Later, it was reported, the cowboys arm-wrestled on the campground free bandstand. They had the strobe lights on them, and the rock band was playing "God Bless America." The sky was black with Cessnas buzzing within 15 feet of the freaks. The water offshore was black with outboards. It seemed every square inch of campground not occupied by a freak was occupied by a '68 Fairlane. The motor was running, the windows were up, the air-conditioner was running, the doors were
locked, and the people inside had the same look of passivity and awe that they would have if they were parked on a bluff watching the Trinity River rage two feet from flood crest.
Down by the bank, a whole family had turned up in a Chevy quarter-ton. They had lawn chairs for the truck bed, a Styrofoam cooler full of beer and Cokes-and binoculars. A girl sunbathing naked had her back to them. When another freak told her she was being watched, she turned around to face them.
III: Get Stoned Just Sitting There
At the festival grounds, they liked Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter and Led Zeppelin, but they were crazy over B. B. King. There weren't any badges inside the festival grounds. There were freaks with little orange badges that said SECURITY. Near the infirmary, there were two girls with Red-Cross armbands. They had on bikinis. Sometimes they wore the armbands on their legs. If you cut your foot or got too much sun, they took you to the first aid tent. If you'd taken drugs and were getting zapped bad by it, they called over somebody from the Hog Farm and took you to the trip tent. The Hog Farm is the New Mexico commune which got good display space in Life when they ran the trip tent and free kitchen at Woodstock.
Nobody was ducking behind anything at either the festival grounds or the campgrounds to take drugs. A festival spokesman was giving the press a statement that he knew of no drug use while somebody was leaning against the fence behind him rolling a joint of marijuana. Sweet smoke. More of Us than there are of Them.
Near the body-painting tent, a guy in cut-offs, a Jimi Hendrix hat, and shower slippers, looking hot and hassled, asks:
"Hey man, do you know where I can buy a straight cigaret?"
J. Millar | HOUSTON CHRONICLE 8/13/1989
I wasn't at the "Woodstock" Woodstock. But I was at the "Texas "Woodstock.
Less than two weeks after the tribes left Max Yasgur's farm, they regathered in the heart o' Texas. And I was there. The Chronicle sent me to Lewisville, a prototype of a little North Texas town near Dallas. On Saturday, Aug. 30, 1969, I was standing on the banks of a reservoir at a Corps of Engineers campground watching rednecks watching the early arrival hippies skinny-dipping. An editorial in the Dallas Morning News that morning greeted the tribes:
"Young people assembling to hear music is one thing. Young people assembling in unspeakable costumes, half-naked, barefooted, defying propriety and scorning morality is another.
"Who and where are their parents? Where do these young people get the money to loaf around the country in their smelly regalia?"
There were three days of music, through Monday, Labor Day. The crowd estimates averaged about 100,000. I don't remember who was positioned as the headliner. At this distance, the only performer I remember is Janis Joplin. I watched from a plywood sound booth at the side of the stage. She did everything in exact concordance with the legend: screeched, spoke unintelligibly between songs, swigged from a bottle of liquor.
As they had at Woodstock, members of the Hog Farm, a New Mexico commune, set up a trip tent at Lewisville and escorted those who were having a bad trip or needed medical attention.
Whatever went on up in New York has now become known as "Woodstock." The Texas International Pop Festival was known as "Lewisville" for the length of time it was remembered, which, stretching it, may have been as long as Sept. 21, 1969, when my story appeared in Texas magazine.
We called the story, "Freak Meets West." Excerpts are printed here:
Popfest Texas style: That's it. That's all. I've seen everything. A small-Texas-town cop walked out on a stage, shot the peace sign to about 35,000 hippies - a good 10 percent of them zonked on some kind of drug or another - and said: "Any time you want to come back, you're welcome."
This happened - I swear it did - Labor Day weekend at the Texas International Pop Festival at Lewisville (population 10,000). Little Bethel. Son of Woodstock. Freak Meets West 18 miles north of Dallas at a motor speedway and five miles away at the Garza-Little Elm Reservoir campground.
Pop festivals have been around only a couple of years, and it wasn't until Woodstock that the pop festival protocol was really solidified. Previously, pop festivals had been like jazz festivals; one undergoes a certain amount of privation - crowding, uncomfortable seating, expensive tickets, scarcity of housing - to be able to hear a lot of artists back to back. At Woodstock, however, where 400,000 turned up when the promoters expected maybe 150,000 tops, the whole festival environment became the thing. The music was secondary. You probably couldn't hear it because you couldn't sit close enough, or you never got there to begin with. But you were part of the Experience, part of the Presence. The more freaks the better. You were there at the Gathering. Great God Almighty, for one time there was more of You than there was of Them.
The national press thought this was an epochal event. Big spreads in Life. On Huntley-Brinkley. The Festival Style was set. So the people coming to Lewisville knew what to do.
The main thing was no hassles that would upset the fuzz: No breaking up things, beating up on each other or the local yokels. The idea was to keep the cops out of the festival area so that no one would get busted for pot or hard stuff. The cops were willing to trade drugs for no hassles. With that crowd, the cops couldn't handle the hassles. So no hassles.
Freaks Meet Cowboys: If the pop festival wasn't enough, the Lewisville Rodeo was in town that weekend. By Sunday, the road from IH 350 to the campgrounds, where a good 2,500 festival goers had crashed, was half-and-half with psychedelic VW buses and bashed-up Chevy pickups with gun racks and U.S. flag decals. The cowboys were coming to eyeball the freaks.
Out on the water, a good 100 freaks were skinny-dipping. There had been nude swimming at Woodstock, so there had to be nude swimming at Lewisville.
Up on the bank, two cowboys from the rodeo were watching. They were drinking Pearl and watching. There weren't as many girls swimming nekkid as you'd like, but it was better than TV back at the motel.
"Get the cowboys!" cried one of the skinny-dippers, and about 15 naked, giggling freaks emerged from the water and began to take off the cowboys' clothes. The cowboys kept their bottles of Pearl and walked into the water. They were grub white from the waist down. The ground hurt their feet.
The sky was black with Cessnas buzzing within 15 feet of the freaks. The water offshore was black with outboards. It seemed every square inch of campground not occupied by a freak was occupied by a '68 Ford Fairlane. The motor was running, the windows were up, the air-conditioner was running, the doors were locked, and the people inside had the same look of passivity and awe that they would have if they were parked on a bluff watching the Trinity River in a raging flood.
Down by the bank, a whole family had turned up in a Chevy quarter-ton. They had lawn chairs for the truck bed, a cooler full of beer and Cokes - and binoculars. A girl sunbathing naked had her back to them. When another freak told her she was being watched, she turned around to face them.
Get stoned just sitting there: At the festival grounds, they liked Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter and Led Zeppelin, but they were crazy over B.B. King.
Near the body-painting tent, a guy in cut-offs, a Jimi Hendrix hat and shower slippers, looking hot and hassled, asked:
"Hey man, do you know where I can buy a straight cigarette?"
Motor Speedway
Lewisville, TX
Audience Recording:
101. The Train Kept A Rollin
102. I Can't Quit You Babe
103. Dazed and Confused
104. You Shook Me
105. How Many More Times
106. Communication Breakdown
Taper: Reggie the Bullet
Soundboard Recording:
201. Introduction
202. The Train Kept A Rollin'
203. I Can't Quit You
204. Dazed And Confused
205. You Shook Me
206. How Many More Times
207. Communication Breakdown
An excellent show, perfectly consolidating all of the great playing that this tour had produced, from the powerful opener to the extended end of show medley, complete with Plant doing his best adlibs yet. An easy choice for one of the very best shows of the year. As if the performance wasn't enough, a superb soundboard, as well as a near-excellent audience sources circulate for this show. Plant mentioned about the cancelled August 4th concert: "It's very nice to be back in Texas. Last time we were here it was a near disaster when we said we weren't doing the festival and everything. This is the last date before we go back to England, so we'd really like to have a nice time ... And you can help us." Plant also apologised for cutting the set short: "We've got to say goodnight according to the programme. Unfortunately, the programme has got a little delayed but there's nothing we can do about it!" Pages amps act up during a few spots in the show, producing brief crackling sounds, as if his guitar cable or a connection somewhere was coming loose. Although not at all a distraction for the listener, this makes for a funny moment during Dazed And Confused and How Many More Times, when Page's amps can be heard briefly picking up the sound of the festival security staff speaking on their radios.
Texas International Pop Festival was full of surprises for artists, fans, onlookers August 30, 2009 By MICHAEL E. YOUNG and ROY APPLETON / The Dallas Morning News
After Woodstock, where most attendees walked in for free, organizers of the Lewisville festival knew they needed better security.
So they hired men like James Polser, then 28 and selling Chevys at Huffines before taking over his family's Lewisville Feed Mill in 1978. Handy on horseback, Polser and others patrolled the perimeter of the property, and saw some sights that still shock them 40 years later:
"I was out there on my horse, riding the fence line, and there was a man and a woman and a little baby, and they asked if they could put the baby on my horse and take a picture of him," Polser recalled.
"I said that was fine. The only thing was that the woman – and she was a good-looking woman – she had her pants on and that was all.
"And nobody paid any attention, except for me and my heart attack. Gosh almighty, we saw things that would blow your mind."
Led Zeppelin
gets the news
Even among the stellar lineup at the Lewisville pop festival, none was hotter in the summer of '69 than Led Zeppelin. So when the band came to perform at the Fair Park Coliseum on Aug. 4, three weeks before the festival, Angus Wynne III and his partners saw a chance for some publicity.
"We found their road manager, and we said we wanted to make sure the band recognized the festival from the stage," Wynne said. "And he said, 'Well, the fellows think they're going to be on vacation then. They don't know about it.'
"The band gets on stage, and after a couple of songs, Robert Plant says, 'Anyone heard of the Texas International Pop Festival? We got into town today and saw the posters with our name on them. We've never heard of it. It's a classic ripoff, and if you have tickets, you need to get your money back.' "
Furious, the producers found the road manager locked inside a limousine.
They pounded on the windows and almost tipped the car over before the manager emerged.
"He ran out there and he pulls Plant over to the side and whispers in his ear," Wynne said. "Then Plant grabs him by the lapels and starts shaking him.
"At the end of the song, Plant goes to the microphone and says, 'Yeah, we're going to play [at the festival]. Our weasel road manager just told us.' "
How Wavy Gravy got his name
He arrived in Lewisville as Hugh Romney, the gentle, gravel-voiced jokester who'd promised the crowd at Woodstock "breakfast in bed for 400,000."
But after a brush with blues royalty at the Texas International Pop Festival, Romney would forever be Wavy Gravy.
Exhausted from hours spent around Lewisville Lake urging nude festivalgoers to cover up, Romney collapsed on the free stage at a lakeside campground.
"They had these conga drummers on the stage, and I said, 'Don't dance on the wavy gravy,' " he said. "Then someone announced that B.B. King was there, and he was going to play for free.
"I started to get up, and I felt this hand on my shoulder and it was B.B. King. And he said, 'Are you Wavy Gravy?' and I just said, 'Yes, sir,' and he said, 'Wavy Gravy, I can work around you.'
"And he stood me up next to his amplifier, and Johnny Winter comes from the other side, and they played all night long.
"I was Hugh Romney at Woodstock, but I've been Wavy Gravy for 40 years."
'Lewd and loose in Lewisville'
A Dallas Morning News editorial helped whip up the fear and loathing for all those hippies coming to hear all that music.
An Aug. 30, 1969, editorial headlined "Nausea at Lewisville" told readers:
"Young people assembling to hear music is one thing. Young people assembling in unspeakable costumes, half-naked, barefooted, defying propriety and scorning morality is another.
"... We hope readers of this newspaper will realize this weekend that the great majority of youngsters in this area are at home where they ought to be – mowing yards, working at part-time jobs and preparing for useful lives.
"In the meantime, the lewd and loose at Lewisville will swing and sway. They are to be pitied."
Lu Mitchell remembers the heat, the refreshing water hose, leaflets dropped from an airplane, the friendly crowd and enjoying the music, particularly Janis Joplin, until 5 a.m.
A singer-songwriter herself, now living in Farmers Branch, Mitchell didn't care much for the editorial stance. "I got so upset over that that I wrote this song," she said. It's a song she still performs at age 85.
We were lewd and loose in Lewisville, we had us a time
Lewd and loose in Lewisville covered with dirt and grime
We were unsanitary and full of fleas
Some had beards clear down to their knees
Lewd and loose in Lewisville
The Dallas News told you so.
Freak meets west Pop fest Texas style
Texas Magazine, Sunday, Sept. 21, 1969
By Jeff Millar
That's it. That's all. I've seen everything. The entire staff of Mt. Palomar could say Uranus
has traded orbits with Mercury and I'd yawn.A headline in The Chronicle could say
WALKING CATFISH LEARN SHUFFLE-OFF-TOBUFFALO and I’d say so what.
I saw a small-Texas-town cop walk out or, a stage, shoot the peace sign to about 35,000
hippies and plastic hippies -- a good 10 percent of them zonked on some kind of drug or
another -- and say: "Any time you want to come back, you're welcome."
How're ya gonna top that Armageddon? This happened -- I swear it did -- Labor Day
weekend at the Texas International Pop Festival at Lewisville (pop. 10,000). Little
Bethel. Son of Woodstock. Freak Meets West 18 miles north of Dallas at a motor speedway
and five miles away at the Garza-Little Elm Reservoir campground.
I: Pop Protocol
Pop festivals have been around only a couple of years and it wasn't until Woodstock, up in
New York, that the pop festival protocols really solidified. Previously, pop festivals had been
like jazz festivals; one undergoes a certain amount of privation -- crowding, uncomfortable seating,expensive tickets, scarcity of housing -- to be able to hear a lot of artists back to back. At Woodstock, however, where 400,000 turned up when the promoters expected maybe 150,000 tops, the whole festival environment became the thing. The music was secondary. You probably couldn't hear it because you couldn't sit close enough, or you never got there to begin with. But you were part of the Experience, part of the Presence. The more freaks the better. You were there at the Gathering. Great God Almighty, for one time there was more of You than there was of Them. The national press thought this was an epochal event. Big spreads in Life. Huntley-Brinkley. The Festival Style was set. So the people coming to Lewisville knew what to do. The main thing was no hassles that would upset the fuzz. I.E., no breaking up things, beating up on each other or the local yokels. The idea is to keep the cops out of the festival area so that no one will get busted for pot or hard stuff. The cops know that people are using drugs. The people know the cops know. And the people know that the cops are willing to trade drugs for no hassles. If there are 40,000 people there, the cops can't handle the hassles. So no hassles.
II: Freaks Meet Cowboys
If the pop festival wasn't enough, the Lewisville Rodeo was in town that weekend. By Sunday, the road from IH 35E to the campgrounds, where a good 2500 festival goers had crashed, was half-and-half with psychedelic VW buses and bashed-up Chevy pickups with gun racks and U.S. flag decals. The cowboys were coming to eyeball the freaks.
Out on the water, a good 100 freaks were skinnydipping. There had been nude swimming at Woodstock, so there had to be nude swimming at Lewisville. The cops weren't doing anything. A Department of Public Safety helicopter was circling, looking mildly disapproving, but there were no hassles. More of Us than there are of Them.
Up on the bank, two cowboys from the rodeo were watching. They were drinking Pearl and watching. There weren't as man}' girls swimming nekkid as you'd like, but it was better than TV back at the motel. "Get the cowboys"' cried one of the skinnydippers, and about 15 naked, giggling freaks emerged from the water and began to take off the cowboys' clothes. The cowboys kept their bottles of Pearl and walked into the water. They were grub white from the waist down. The ground hurt their feet. Later, it was reported, the cowboys arm-wrestled on the campground free bandstand. They had the strobe lights on them, and the rock band was playing "God Bless America." The sky was black with Cessnas buzzing within 15 feet of the freaks. The water offshore was black with outboards. It seemed every square inch of campground not occupied by a freak was occupied by a '68 Fairlane. The motor was running, the windows were up, the air-conditioner was running, the doors were
locked, and the people inside had the same look of passivity and awe that they would have if they were parked on a bluff watching the Trinity River rage two feet from flood crest.
Down by the bank, a whole family had turned up in a Chevy quarter-ton. They had lawn chairs for the truck bed, a Styrofoam cooler full of beer and Cokes-and binoculars. A girl sunbathing naked had her back to them. When another freak told her she was being watched, she turned around to face them.
III: Get Stoned Just Sitting There
At the festival grounds, they liked Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter and Led Zeppelin, but they were crazy over B. B. King. There weren't any badges inside the festival grounds. There were freaks with little orange badges that said SECURITY. Near the infirmary, there were two girls with Red-Cross armbands. They had on bikinis. Sometimes they wore the armbands on their legs. If you cut your foot or got too much sun, they took you to the first aid tent. If you'd taken drugs and were getting zapped bad by it, they called over somebody from the Hog Farm and took you to the trip tent. The Hog Farm is the New Mexico commune which got good display space in Life when they ran the trip tent and free kitchen at Woodstock.
Nobody was ducking behind anything at either the festival grounds or the campgrounds to take drugs. A festival spokesman was giving the press a statement that he knew of no drug use while somebody was leaning against the fence behind him rolling a joint of marijuana. Sweet smoke. More of Us than there are of Them.
Near the body-painting tent, a guy in cut-offs, a Jimi Hendrix hat, and shower slippers, looking hot and hassled, asks:
"Hey man, do you know where I can buy a straight cigaret?"
J. Millar | HOUSTON CHRONICLE 8/13/1989
I wasn't at the "Woodstock" Woodstock. But I was at the "Texas "Woodstock.
Less than two weeks after the tribes left Max Yasgur's farm, they regathered in the heart o' Texas. And I was there. The Chronicle sent me to Lewisville, a prototype of a little North Texas town near Dallas. On Saturday, Aug. 30, 1969, I was standing on the banks of a reservoir at a Corps of Engineers campground watching rednecks watching the early arrival hippies skinny-dipping. An editorial in the Dallas Morning News that morning greeted the tribes:
"Young people assembling to hear music is one thing. Young people assembling in unspeakable costumes, half-naked, barefooted, defying propriety and scorning morality is another.
"Who and where are their parents? Where do these young people get the money to loaf around the country in their smelly regalia?"
There were three days of music, through Monday, Labor Day. The crowd estimates averaged about 100,000. I don't remember who was positioned as the headliner. At this distance, the only performer I remember is Janis Joplin. I watched from a plywood sound booth at the side of the stage. She did everything in exact concordance with the legend: screeched, spoke unintelligibly between songs, swigged from a bottle of liquor.
As they had at Woodstock, members of the Hog Farm, a New Mexico commune, set up a trip tent at Lewisville and escorted those who were having a bad trip or needed medical attention.
Whatever went on up in New York has now become known as "Woodstock." The Texas International Pop Festival was known as "Lewisville" for the length of time it was remembered, which, stretching it, may have been as long as Sept. 21, 1969, when my story appeared in Texas magazine.
We called the story, "Freak Meets West." Excerpts are printed here:
Popfest Texas style: That's it. That's all. I've seen everything. A small-Texas-town cop walked out on a stage, shot the peace sign to about 35,000 hippies - a good 10 percent of them zonked on some kind of drug or another - and said: "Any time you want to come back, you're welcome."
This happened - I swear it did - Labor Day weekend at the Texas International Pop Festival at Lewisville (population 10,000). Little Bethel. Son of Woodstock. Freak Meets West 18 miles north of Dallas at a motor speedway and five miles away at the Garza-Little Elm Reservoir campground.
Pop festivals have been around only a couple of years, and it wasn't until Woodstock that the pop festival protocol was really solidified. Previously, pop festivals had been like jazz festivals; one undergoes a certain amount of privation - crowding, uncomfortable seating, expensive tickets, scarcity of housing - to be able to hear a lot of artists back to back. At Woodstock, however, where 400,000 turned up when the promoters expected maybe 150,000 tops, the whole festival environment became the thing. The music was secondary. You probably couldn't hear it because you couldn't sit close enough, or you never got there to begin with. But you were part of the Experience, part of the Presence. The more freaks the better. You were there at the Gathering. Great God Almighty, for one time there was more of You than there was of Them.
The national press thought this was an epochal event. Big spreads in Life. On Huntley-Brinkley. The Festival Style was set. So the people coming to Lewisville knew what to do.
The main thing was no hassles that would upset the fuzz: No breaking up things, beating up on each other or the local yokels. The idea was to keep the cops out of the festival area so that no one would get busted for pot or hard stuff. The cops were willing to trade drugs for no hassles. With that crowd, the cops couldn't handle the hassles. So no hassles.
Freaks Meet Cowboys: If the pop festival wasn't enough, the Lewisville Rodeo was in town that weekend. By Sunday, the road from IH 350 to the campgrounds, where a good 2,500 festival goers had crashed, was half-and-half with psychedelic VW buses and bashed-up Chevy pickups with gun racks and U.S. flag decals. The cowboys were coming to eyeball the freaks.
Out on the water, a good 100 freaks were skinny-dipping. There had been nude swimming at Woodstock, so there had to be nude swimming at Lewisville.
Up on the bank, two cowboys from the rodeo were watching. They were drinking Pearl and watching. There weren't as many girls swimming nekkid as you'd like, but it was better than TV back at the motel.
"Get the cowboys!" cried one of the skinny-dippers, and about 15 naked, giggling freaks emerged from the water and began to take off the cowboys' clothes. The cowboys kept their bottles of Pearl and walked into the water. They were grub white from the waist down. The ground hurt their feet.
The sky was black with Cessnas buzzing within 15 feet of the freaks. The water offshore was black with outboards. It seemed every square inch of campground not occupied by a freak was occupied by a '68 Ford Fairlane. The motor was running, the windows were up, the air-conditioner was running, the doors were locked, and the people inside had the same look of passivity and awe that they would have if they were parked on a bluff watching the Trinity River in a raging flood.
Down by the bank, a whole family had turned up in a Chevy quarter-ton. They had lawn chairs for the truck bed, a cooler full of beer and Cokes - and binoculars. A girl sunbathing naked had her back to them. When another freak told her she was being watched, she turned around to face them.
Get stoned just sitting there: At the festival grounds, they liked Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter and Led Zeppelin, but they were crazy over B.B. King.
Near the body-painting tent, a guy in cut-offs, a Jimi Hendrix hat and shower slippers, looking hot and hassled, asked:
"Hey man, do you know where I can buy a straight cigarette?"
