A complete rundown of the most feral moments from the Woodstock 99 festival Netflix doc

Netflix has just dropped a three-part documentary series on Woodstock 99 – a music festival which aimed to revive the peace and love style event in the 60s. The entire documentary start to finish is wild and it shows just how disastrous the festival was.

From downplaying what was actually going on to uncontrolled fires, here’s a rundown of every single moment which had everyone’s jaw firmly on the floor.

1. The press conferences being downplayed so much

Footage of the daily press conferences show Michael Lang and John Scher calling the festival a success and downplaying all the incidents which took place. Scher is filmed tell the press: “We had some amazing music. Then you’ve got knuckleheads, maybe 50 of them, causing trouble so let’s try to focus on the overwhelming positiveness.”

A reporter says there were people being mistreated and the festival organisers glossed over all of that. Amid all the feral moments, there were also four reported rapes and several reported cases of sexual assault over the weekend. The organisers downplayed and denied this too. One member of staff at the festival said: “When I got back into the office, I started getting phone calls. It was a hysterical mother, talking about how her daughter had been raped.”

One of the organisers, John Scher, says now 23 years on: “Woodstock was like a small city, you know? All things considered, I’d say that there were probably as many or more raps in any sized city of that. But it wasn’t anything that gained enough momentum so that it caused any on-site issues, other than, of course, the women it happened to.”

2. The Peace Patrol selling their uniform for $400 each

This was wild. One guy in the documentary says his t-shirt allowed him backstage on sets so he fully sold two of them for $800 and then just wore his other spare one. When asked what Woodstock means to him, one security guy said it means “money, sex and bitches”.

3. Outbreaks of trench mouth

Water was costing festival goers $4 a bottle which is wild, and by the end of the week it was $12. Bearing in mind Woodstock took place during a heatwave and there were 25 minute queues for public water fountains on site. But after the festival cut those corners on sanitation contractors, a health and safety inspector found human faeces leaking into the drinking and shower water, making “shit mud” which people were splashing around in.

One person at the festival says they woke up on the last day with a “very sore throat, cold sores all over my lips, ulcers all over my tongue, my gums and in my mouth” she says she couldn’t “eat, drink or talk” and later found out she had something called “trench mouth”. Soldiers experienced trench mouth back in World War One by the way.

4. The van driving around in Fatboy Slim’s set

The festival took another horrifying turn during Fatboy Slim’s set when a group of people tole a van and drove it into the middle of the crowd. A machete was even found in the van as well as a teenage girl. Fatboy Slim’s set was stopped and he was taken out of the premises.

5. The clip showing Monday morning was bleak

Netflix really knows how to throw together a montage of wild clips. The aftermath of Woodstock was awful, with three deaths, eight sexual assaults and 44 arrests.

6. Michael happily giving out 10,000 candles

Michael Lang really thought it was a good idea giving out 10,000 candles to people at the festival. People then used the flames to set fire to everything on site, ripping through the grounds. Pilar Law says: “It looked like a war zone. Trash and smoking fires everywhere.”

7. People STILL consider it the greatest weekend of their life

Heather, who was 14 at the time of attending, literally said she had “the experience of a lifetime”. Two other men agreed saying it was the best time they’ve ever had, even 22 years later after it.

Trainwreck: Woodstock 99 is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook. 

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