When people heard ‘Woodstock’ think of the summer of love, but the true story behind Clusterf**k: Woodstock 99 Netflix documentary was anything but.
30 years on from the original festival the 1999 fest promised an event not dissimilar to that in 1969, however instead festival-goers were delivered days of rage, riots and real harm and now it’s being explored in a new docuseries hitting Netflix on August 3.
What was Woodstock 99?
Held July 22 to 25 of 1999, Woodstock 99 was the second large-scale music festival (after Woodstock 94) that attempted to emulate the original Woodstock festival of 1969.
And for Gen Xer’s the line-up would rival Glastonbury 2022 it had the likes of George Clinton, Jamiroquai, James Brown, Limp Bizkit, Insane Clown Posse, Sevendust, DMX, Sheryl Crow, The Tragically Hip, and Rage Against the Machine performing.
Instead of in rolling fields, like the farm the original festival was held on, Woodstock 99 was held at the Griffiss Air Force Base (around 100 miles away from the OG location) and over the four days, it was attended by around 400,000 people.
But what was meant to be the 30th-anniversary celebration of one of the century’s biggest events soon turned into anarchy and became the Fyre Festival of its decade.
What is Clusterf**k: Woodstock 99?
The new docuseries, which was announced back in 2020, looks at how one festival which was meant to embody the origins of the 1969 festival all went horribly wrong and literally descended into chaos, riots and flames.
Raw TV, whose credits include the Netflix documentary Don’t F**k with Cats, produced the series with BBH Entertainment, which released the Depeche Mode concert film Spirits in the Forest in 2019.
The Netflix synopsis reads: ‘Woodstock ‘99 was supposed to be a millennium-defining celebration of peace, love and great music. Instead, the festival degenerated into an epic trainwreck of fires, riots and destruction.
‘Utilizing rare insider footage and eyewitness interviews with an impressive list of festival staffers, performers and attendees, this docuseries goes behind the scenes to reveal the egos, greed and music that fueled three days of utter chaos.’
The series features unseen archive footage and intimate testimony from people behind the scenes, on the stages and in the crowds.
The True Story Behind Clusterf**k: Woodstock 99
In short, Woodstock 99 turned into a total disaster. According to a review from the time, on-site food and drink was expensive, the East and West stages were over two miles apart, the location was predominantly concreted over, there was a heatwave and ultimately three people died.
The Baltimore Sun reported due to the heat, which caused all the tarmac to heat tragically, ‘more than 700 had been treated for heat exhaustion and dehydration’.
As this was a time before microchips in wristbands or tickets, according to the Syracuse Post-Standard, ‘security guards said they were confiscating fake passes at the rate of 50 an hour at just one gate’ and the festival experience overcrowding.
Riots broke out over the weekend, during the Red Hot Chili Peppers set some people set fire to grounds while they performed a cover of the Jimi Hendrix song ‘fire’ and instead of candles being used in an anti-gun vigil people lit massive dangerous bonfires, Insider reports.
It was also reported people climbed speaker towers and threw them into the fire. Then there were reports sanitation collapsed on the site and faecal matter mixed with the mud, according to The Sun.
The whole festival became carnage and The Sun reported over the whole four days 10,000 festival-goers would require medical treatment — including 7,000 being treated for heat exhaustion and dehydration — and there were 44 arrests.