Woodstock Promoters Shoot the Moon and Win : But 1969’s Other Great Show, Man’s First Lunar Landing, Is Lagging a Bit on the Nostalgia Circuit

Is it just coincidence that more attention has been devoted this summer to the 20th anniversary of Woodstock--that back-yard-barbecue and rock ‘n’ roll party for 400,000--than to the 20th anniversary of man’s first landing on the moon?

Not at all, and any number of explanations loom.

One is that there were so many eyewitnesses on Max Yasgur’s farm back in August of 1969 that there’s no dismissing Woodstock as a hoax, foisted on the world out of a Hollywood movie set. (The only proof brought back by those guys who said they went to the moon was a couple of buckets of rocks.)

Another possibility is that Woodstock struck a deeper emotional chord with an entire generation (especially if you count everyone who saw the movie) than the sight of a couple of guys on TV hopping around the lunar surface. Jeez, we’d seen that years before on “Lost in Space.”

You might even consider that Woodstock is getting so much better play on TV, in newspapers and magazines because there’s a wider variety of vintage photos available than for the landing on the moon. What with a half-dozen moon shots in all, one mission looks pretty much like the next, right?

The real reason, I’d submit, is far more tangible. Woodstock has been doing stronger box-office on the nostalgia circuit because nobody gave enough thought to making a buck off Apollo 11.

Think about it. Have you seen Neil Armstrong posters and T-shirts flooding finer department stores everywhere? Record companies issuing the flight tapes on triple compact-disc sets (with new liner notes by Carl Sagan)? Movie companies re-releasing the historic film footage to theaters and pay-per-view cable networks nationwide (in Lucasfilm THX stereo)? Bumper stickers with a photo of the moon, the NASA logo and the slogan “We did it OUR way”?

If they had any real smarts, the feds could be selling off most of those stones Neil and the boys brought back from Tranquility Base as 20-year-old commemoratives. They could net enough to finance a manned shot to Mars.

Let’s face it--NASA blew it. They had a hot property--one of the monumental scientific explorations in history, certainly the biggest to be preserved so exhaustively on film, magnetic tape and computer memory--and what did they do with the bulk of it? Handed it over to public television.

Not the folks connected with Woodstock. To them, the sky’s the limit. Heck, the hordes of individuals and corporations holding any ties whatsoever to those “three days of peace, love and music” not only made headlines for all the ways they dreamed up to cash in 20 years later, but generated even more news with fights over all the alleged copyright infringements.

Warner Bros., which had copyrighted the name of “Woodstock,” sued a bunch of ‘60s rockers--including some of those who turned the festival into a marketable commodity in the first place--to stop them from using the name in connection with a commemorative concert they wanted to stage.

Of course, lacking rights to the Woodstock name hasn’t prevented capitalizing--with a capital CAPITAL--on the Woodstock memory. This weekend, the “20 Years After Music & Art Festival” at Cal State Dominguez Hills is bringing together such Woodstock hall-of-famers as Canned Heat (minus Bob (Bear) Hite and Alan (Blind Owl) Wilson--deceased), Electric Flag (minus Mike Bloomfield--deceased), Big Brother & the Holding Company (minus Janis Joplin--deceased) and the Band of Gypsies (minus Jimi Hendrix--deceased).

Curious that the 20 Years After fest didn’t or couldn’t book 10 Years After. Is it because leader Alvin Lee is still alive, or because by now they’d be 30 Years After and it’d just be too darn confusing?

Fittingly, the whole enterprise is being sponsored by KLSX-FM, the Los Angeles radio station that owes its existence to dredging up hourly the Ghosts of Rock ‘n’ Roll Past. Besides the retro music, there will be an “art and crafts bazaar featuring tie-dye shirts, hand-tooled leather and beaded goods, candles, pottery, musical instruments, body painting and much more activity reminiscent of the ‘60s.” All the quaint accouterments.

There’s even a “psychedelic car and hippie van competition.” Beginning to feel like Charlie Brown at Christmas, when he comes upon Snoopy decorating his dog house to “win, win win--money, money, money”?

If the real Woodstock had been born of this attitude, it wouldn’t have featured Hendrix, Joplin, the Who and others at the forefront of popular music. It would have been an ode to the great music, cars and clothes of 1949.

It’s too bad Jackie Gleason isn’t still around to put this all in the proper perspective. Wouldn’t you just love to see Ralph Kramden getting more and more fed up with all the genuflecting over the anniversary of Woodstock, turning from his dinner plate and growling:

One a these days, Alice--to da moon!