Había que enfrentar a toda la comunidad y apoyar a
los jóvenes que solo querían escuchar a sus ídolos. Max Yasgur se decidió, por convicción o dinero, a alquilar su
granja a los jóvenes neoyorquinos para que hicieran su festival de rock. ¿La respuesta?
Más de 300.000 jóvenes llegaron a la granja, en Bethel, a presenciar uno de los festivales musicales más
importantes de todos los tiempos. Algunos lugareños vendían el agua a los
turistas, otros amenazaron a Yasgur con
quemarlo. Max Yasgur moriría cuatro
años después. En el video Max se
dirige a los jóvenes de Woodstock. En
el vocabulario mammoth job
Max B. Yasgur (1919 –1973) was an American farmer, best known as
the owner of the dairy farm in Bethel,
New York, at which the Woodstock
Music and Art Fair was
held between August 15 and August 18, 1969.
After Saugerties and Wallkill
declined to provide a venue for the festival, Yasgur leased one of his farm's fields for a fee that festival
sponsors said was $10,000. Soon afterward he began to receive both threatening
and supporting phone calls (which could not be placed without the assistance of
an operator because the community of White
Lake, New York, where the telephone exchange was located, still utilized
manual switching). Some of the calls threatened to burn him out. However, the
helpful calls outnumbered the threatening ones. Opposition to the festival
began soon after the festival's relocation to Bethel was announced. Signs were erected around town, saying,
"Stop Max's Hippie Music
Festival. No 150,000 hippies here. Buy no milk."
Yasgur quickly established a rapport with the concert-goers, providing food at
cost or for free. When he heard that some local residents were reportedly
selling water to people coming to the concert, he put up a big sign at his barn
on New York State Route 17B reading "Free Water." The New York Times reported that Yasgur "slammed a work-hardened
fist on the table and demanded of some friends, 'How can anyone ask money for
water?'" His son Sam recalled his father telling his children to
"take every empty milk bottle from the plant, fill them with water and
give them to the kids, and give away all the milk and milk products we had at
the dairy."
“I hear you are considering
changing the zoning law to prevent the festival. I hear you don't like the look
of the kids who are working at the site. I hear you don't like their lifestyle.
I hear you don't like they are against the war and that they say so very
loudly. . . I don't particularly like the looks of some of those kids either. I
don't particularly like their lifestyle, especially the drugs and free love. And
I don't like what some of them are saying about our government. However, if I
know my American history, tens of thousands of Americans in uniform gave their
lives in war after war just so those kids would have the freedom to do exactly
what they are doing. That's what this country is all about and I am not going
to let you throw them out of our town just because you don't like their dress
or their hair or the way they live or what they believe. This is America and
they are going to have their festival.” (Addressing a Bethel town board prior
to the festival.)
Many of his
neighbors turned against him after the festival, and he was no longer welcome
at the town general store, but he never regretted his decision to allow the
concert on his farm. In 1970, he was sued by his neighbors for property damage
caused by the concert attendees. However, the damage to his own property was
far more extensive and, over a year later, he received a $50,000 settlement to
pay for the near-destruction of his dairy farm.He refused to rent out his farm
for a 1970 revival of the festival, saying, "As far as I know, I'm going back
to running a dairy farm."
 |
| Max Yasgur |
In 1971, Yasgur sold the 600-acre (2.4 km2) farm, and moved to Marathon,
Florida, where, a year and a half later, he died of a heart attack at the age
of 53. He was given a full-page obituary in Rolling Stone magazine, one of the
few non-musicians to have received such an honor.
Max Yasgur speaks at Woodstock
Addressing the
crowd at Woodstock on August 17, 1969
—We have a
gentleman with us. A gentleman upon whose farm we are, Mr. Max Yargus.
—I'm a farmer. I
don't know how to speak to twenty people at one time, let alone a crowd like
this. But I think you people have proven something to the world--not only to
the Town of Bethel, or Sullivan County, or New York State; you've proven
something to the world. This is the largest group of people ever assembled in
one place. We have had no idea that there would be this size group, and because
of that, you've had quite a few inconveniences as far as water, food, and so forth.
Your producers have done a mammoth job to see
that you're taken care of... they deserve a vote of thanks. But above that, the
important thing that you've proven to the world is that a half a million
kids--and I call you kids because I have children that are older than you--a
half million young people can get together and have three days of fun and music
and have nothing but fun and music, and I God bless you for it!
Comentarios
Debajo del video hay varios comentarios:
Le faltan dos dedos de la mano derecha
Fue veterano de la primera guerra mundial
No, fue veterano de la segunda guerra mundial
No, se hizo volar los dedos en un accidente con un
tractor en la granja
Y muchos de estos chicos tienen ahora 70 años
Vocabulario
Mammoth: you can use mammoth to emphasize that a task is very
large and needs a lot of effort to achieve.
Artículos relacionados
Fuentes
Max Yasgur, Wikipedia
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