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I'm not sure that three people dying is unusual for a supposed attendance of 400,000 people over the course of three days.
The annual death rate for 25-29 year olds in the United States in 2023 was 1.24 per 1000. Source.
((1.24 expected deaths / 1000 people) / 365 days) * 400000 people * 3 days = 4.07671232877 expected deaths.
The actual attendance might have been smaller than 400,000, the average age different, etc. And the math might be simplistic. But this gives an idea of the math, at least.
As for the vaunted stature in the American imagination...
I'm a big fan of the music of that time period and I find that other people who are interested in that time period usually don't put much emphasis on Woodstock. It was just one of many famous music events from back then. Woodstock is more commonly made central by narratives that try to capture the 1960s in a really quick synopsis. It has become an easy stand-in for the 1960s, so if you want to refer to that time period you can just show a couple seconds of Woodstock footage, same as how if you want to really quickly refer to the early 1940s you can just show a couple of seconds of footage of Hitler giving a speech.
I think many of us have seen such history synopses on television. It goes something like this: couple of seconds of Elvis dancing, then JFK assassination footage, then the Beatles landing in the US clip, then a couple of seconds of Woodstock, then some footage of Nixon, then the Sex Pistols doing "Anarchy in the U.K.".
Some of the music performed at Woodstock is really good but I think that most of the musicians who performed at Woodstock played better on other occasions. I think that Hendrix's Woodstock performance is overall not very good. From that show, I like Woodstock Improvisation more than Star Spangled Banner, although it is sloppy.
I think Hendrix was best in the studio. I like his studio Star Spangled Banner much more than the Woodstock one. 1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be) is fantastic.
I would imagine those 1.24/1000 deaths are dominated by traffic accidents and, secondarily, fatal overdoses. It’s not like 1.24/1000 25-29 year olds are just dropping dead at random.
I think traffic accidents and fatal overdoses are pretty common causes of death at music festivals.
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This reminds me of something I forgot to mention: one attendee did die during Woodstock '99. Interestingly this is not even mentioned once throughout the 3-part series.
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But that only invites further questions. 400k people attended Woodstock, with three deaths (and between 4-8 miscarriages) in three days: it's universally remembered as a festival built on free love, hope and optimism. 300k people attended the Altamont Free Concert, with four deaths in one day (including one killing self-defense): it's universally remembered as a uniquely horrific event, the decisive end to the hope and optimism of the 60s hippie movement. When people talk about how awful Altamont was, are they really claiming that it was (going by your maths) four times more lethal than expected, and one-third more lethal than Woodstock? From the way people talk about these two events, that's not remotely the impression I get.
Another metric: Woodstock '69 had a fatality rate of 0.75/100k, while Altamont's was 1.33/100k. I just have a hard time reconciling the disparate reputations these two events hold in the popular imagination.
I think it’s obvious. Of the three recorded deaths at Woodstock, one was a simple accident (you shouldn’t fall asleep on a hayfield where tractors move around) and two were drug overdoses. Compared to this, there were 742 recorded nonlethal overdoses according to Wikipedia. I imagine any jurisdiction in the US affected by the opioid epidemic (more or less all of them?) would be rather happy to produce such a ratio in their police reports. There was not one recorded murder or rape. Compared to this, hired security stabbed a man to death in Altamont, which is a significant difference. (The other three recorded cases of death were due to mundane accidents.)
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I can’t imagine that they score the same on overall level of violence.
More importantly for public perception, though, none of the Woodstock deaths happened in the front row. On camera.
Also, not one recorded case of either murder or rape in Woodstock.
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Altamont didn't have a tremendously large number of deaths for such a large event, but it was violent in a way that Woodstock, from what I've read at least (I like the music of the time period but am not an expert on these festivals), was not.
It was alleged, though disputed, that some bands and/or managers arranged for the Hells Angels to provide security for the performers. It true, it was a very bad idea. The Hells Angels were unpredictable and violent, which should have been known at the time. Hunter Thompson's book about them, which described them as being close to dangerous wild animals despite the author's heavy counterculture sympathies, had already been out for 2 years at that point.
There were multiple reports of Hells Angels getting into violent melees with the crowd even before the murder of Meredith Hunter. A Hells Angel even punched a musician, Marty Balin.
In another incident, Mick Jagger, singer for the Rolling Stones, was punched by an unknown assailant when he arrived at the venue.
To add to the narrative, Rolling Stone magazine, which back then was actually influential among the youth, wrote a story soon after the festival that described it as a disaster.
It's also possible that the fact that the race of Meredith Hunter played a role, given the racial tensions of the time period and the fact that the youth counterculture was generally looked to with hope that it would help to resolve these tensions.
I think that the actual violence of the event combined with the journalistic coverage and the desire for simplistic, broad-brush-stroke narratives ("end of an era!", "counterculture dream turns dark!") to give the event its narrative resonance.
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