Why Woodstock Can Never Happen Again

In the final moments of PBS’s ,a new documentary packed with remarkable images of the epochal 1969 music festival, comes perhaps the most remarkable shot of all: the view from a helicopter above the fest, taking in what 400,000 hippies looks like. The frame is filled entirely with people-as-dots, a gobsmackingly huge number of them, crammed against tents and equipment rigs. It could be a picture of a humanitarian crisis, but the previous hour and a half has made the case that Woodstock was basically paradise on Earth. “It was a mark in cosmic time; I have no doubt about that,” one of the attendees reflects in the voice-over. “I’m not saying it never happened before, or it never happened again, or that it couldn’t happen in the future. But that—that stopped the clock for three days.”