A Woodstock Moment – 40 Years Later
On a whim, a young couple went to the legendary rock festival only to be captured in a memorable image by photographer Burk Uzzle
- By Timothy Dumas
- Smithsonian magazine, August 2009, Subscribe
On August 15, 1969, Nick Ercoline was tending Dino's bar in Middletown, New York, while his girlfriend of ten weeks, Bobbi Kelly, sat on a stool, sipping nickel draft beer and listening to the news on the radio. In the past 30 days, Senator Ted Kennedy had driven off a bridge at Chappaquiddick Island, the Apollo 11 astronauts had planted a flag on the moon and the Charles Manson family had murdered eight Californians, including actress Sharon Tate, in Los Angeles. In the soft green hills of Catskills dairy country, such events seemed worlds away.
That Friday night, however, waves of American youths were surging toward Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel, New York, 40 miles up the road, for three days of something called the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. A hush fell over Dino's as newscasters told of epic traffic jams and crowd estimates rising to 500,000. When they heard a rumor (false, it turned out) that a glut of cars had shut down the New York State Thruway, the 20-year-old sweethearts could no longer resist. "We just got to thinking, we were never going to see anything like this the rest of our lives, ever," Nick says.
Earlier that same day, photographer Burk Uzzle, a Life magazine alumnus and a member of the elite Magnum photo agency, had driven upstate from Manhattan with his wife and two young sons to camp on the trout-filled Neversink River. Uzzle had declined an invitation from Newsweek to cover Woodstock, thinking he would just duck in and shoot it his way instead, then retreat to his campsite. "I really don't like to work on assignment, to tell you the truth," he says. "Because then I'm obligated to do what editors want me to do, and that's usually the wrong thing."
As Uzzle walked amid Woodstock's many potential disasters—rain, drugs, food and water shortages—he felt something of an Aquarian spirit in the air. "I'd say to my colleagues down by the stage, ‘Hey, you guys, it's incredible out there. The girls are taking their clothes off. The guys, too. It's really beautiful,' " he recalls. "And they'd tell me, ‘No, no, no, the editor wants me to stay here and get Ravi Shankar.' "
On Saturday morning Nick and Bobbi, with friends Mike Duco, Cathy Wells and Jim "Corky" Corcoran, a Vietnam veteran fresh from the Marines, set off in Corcoran's mother's 1965 Impala station wagon down country lanes and across cow pastures. In standstill traffic a few miles from Bethel, they parked the Impala, flagged down a van full of naked hippies, then walked the final stretch to Yasgur's farm. A spaced-out Californian named Herbie tagged along, carrying a wooden staff with a plastic butterfly dancing from the tip. The group claimed a patch of mud on the rim of a slope. "It was a sea of humanity," Bobbi says. "Someone with a guitar here, someone making love there, someone smoking a joint, someone puking his brains out, the din of the music you could hear over all of this—a bombardment of the senses."
Early Sunday morning, Uzzle, happily stuck at Woodstock, left his makeshift tent with two Leicas strapped round his neck. "Gracie Slick of Jefferson Airplane was singing, bringing up the dawn," he remembers. "And just magically this couple stood up and hugged." They kissed, smiled at each other, and the woman leaned her head on the man's shoulder. "I just had time to get off a few frames of black and white and a few of color, then the light was over and the mood was over," Uzzle says of what would become his best-known photograph. His subjects never noticed.
One night in 1970, Corcoran brought the just-released Woodstock soundtrack album to Bobbi's apartment. The cover showed a vast hillside strewn with sleepy bodies and a couple locked in a tired, happy embrace. "That's Herbie's butterfly," Nick said, his eye going to the bright spot of color. Corcoran told him to look again. "Oh, hey! That's Bobbi and me!" (Over the years, several people have seen themselves as the couple on the album cover. Corcoran, cropped out of that image, appears in the full frame, lying in an Army blanket. "There is no doubt in my mind that it's me and Bobbi and Nick Ercoline," he says.)
After that first shock of recognition, the couple gave little thought to the photograph for nearly two decades, until Life tracked down Bobbi for a 20th-anniversary article in 1989. "After hearing our story," she says today, "I think some people are disappointed that we were not..."
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Comments (12)
I had three tickets for the event - I lived in Slate Hill and was a regular at Dino's (was good friends with Danny). Two friends came down from Vermont and I gave them two tickets, but my parents were reluctant to let me go. So, consequently, I still have my ticket - along with the HOG FARM food tickets. The weekend was spent at Dinos (does anyone remember the name of the band Bruce[lead singer] and Jerry played in?) dancing away. Went to Bethel Woods a couple of years back to see Sting. Fond memories of a wonderful time in my life.
Posted by Brenda Hoops on July 15,2012 | 03:50 PM
My dad George Dino and his family owned Dino's in Middletown NY I was 4 in 69 it is a small world I just came across this article and surprised me
Posted by Matt on May 4,2012 | 03:36 AM
Got up there Friday night and was wasted for at least the next 6 days cause I woke up in the woods on the Wednesday afternoon following the concert covered in mud; everyone had left except me!
Posted by Mary Morgan on August 14,2010 | 10:05 AM
Visited Bethelwoods Center for the Arts for a concert in June 09. The Museum and Center are impressive and worth the trip. A very peaceful setting overlooking the original concert and stage area.
Posted by Gino on August 15,2009 | 09:20 PM
Great story! One of my few life disappointments was not making it to Woodstock. I was a 15 year-old free spirit dating a 17 year-old who cooked up a plan for a bunch of us to take off in his 58 Chevy and head up there from Louisville, KY. I had my "alibi" all worked out--told my mom I was going camping with a friend and her family--but was found out and "busted" before the adventure began. I've always wondered if that was a blessing for a naive young girl too foolish to understand the risks she was taking, or a unique missed opportunity to be able to say, "I was there for one of most memorable events of my time."
Posted by Menisa Marshall on August 14,2009 | 03:20 PM
I made a valiant attempt to get there. Got close enough to hear the roar and music overlaying it. Spent a night in a tent with a bunch of like minded people and made my way back down south the next morning. Grace was singing as I was preparing to leave.
I was 17 at the time. Told my folks I was going camping with some friends! A truly one a of kind experience! I, also, had the poster (taken from a wall somewhere along the way) for years. I gave it to my nephew...he asked me for it.
Posted by Spike1951 on August 9,2009 | 08:01 PM
It took 4 hours to get off NY Thruway and find a place to park; Friday Aug. 15, 1969 at 1am. We camped out in a cemetary and had running water until Sunday - special. Concert was free - also special.. It rained but no one cared and police were conducting traffic with Peace Signs.. really special. We ate cole slaw at Hog Farm tent and it was the best! Next year we were off to Vietnam..
Posted by Jim (Harry) Hodgson on August 8,2009 | 01:26 PM
Visited the Bethel Woods Museum yesterday, saw the monument and finally stood by the stage area.
In 1969,with three other friends, we attempted to make it on early Saturday morning, stopped at Wurtsboro, heard all the disaster news on the radio and turned around.
I've had the familiar guitar/dove poster for years, and once it was hanging in my office. I had a client one day who asked my if it was real. I replied, "Yes," and he proceeded to ask me if I had been there. I told him my Wurtsboro story and found out that he indeed had made it there.
I asked him for his most outstanding memory of the whole event and expected to hear about Sly, Jimi, or Janice.
Instead he told me that in the rain and mud he definitely recalled, after three days, getting the worst case of "jock itch" that he's ever known, lasted for weeks.
Funny what some people remember.
Go to the Museum, I was very impressed, I'm, at least, glad I made it there, or as Keith Richards once said, " At my age, I'm glad to be anywhere."
Peace
Posted by Ziegfeldman on July 31,2009 | 07:43 PM
Wow! My wife, Jet, our former exchange student from Holland, I went to Middletown High School with many of the folks in the article! I travelled from Washington, DC in a beat up van, camped near Middletown, and also drove the back roads toward Bethel. I was there for just the first day. Years later, Jet and I, also married 38 years, moved across the Delaware River to Wayne County, Pa. I started a radio station in Jeffersonville, NY with its tower within shouting distance of that famous hill on Max's farm!I passed the Woodstock site with its monument to the festival every time I went to the transmitter building. Small world, indeed!
Posted by Bob Mermell on July 28,2009 | 10:19 AM
The magic for Nick (my cousin)started at that moment and never stopped. What a wonderful family they are. I love them.
Posted by Carol Ann Liebman on July 28,2009 | 08:31 AM
Even though the entire world calls them such, Orange and Sullivan Counties are NOT in the Catskills. The real Catskills--including the Village and Town of Woodstock--are 50 miles further north, in Ulster and Greene Counties. The "dairy country hills" where the festival took place, and where all the Jewish resorts used to be located, are in the Schawangunk (pronounced Shwangum) Mountains.
Posted by Reuben on July 24,2009 | 04:42 PM
hat's MY cousin Corky (Brian to us)! He may have been cut out of the printed picture but his foot and his charisma remained!
Love You!
Posted by Jo Anne Tahaney on July 23,2009 | 07:35 PM