Metro Times - Music: Goose Lake memories

7/2/2008

[28]

Rock/Pop

Goose Lake memories
Why Michigan's most important rock fest remains an obscure footnote in rock history

Photo: Charlie Auringer/ backstagegallery.com

Iggy: Ready to fire Dave at Goose Lake.

Photo: Robert Matheu

Ron Wood at Goose Lake

SEE ALSO

More Rock/Pop Stories

Sonic! (2/3/2010)
Duende! spins traditional Americana with classic noise rock. So how the hell does it work?

Jesus, it's cold (2/3/2010)
The Wonder Twins do the WAB

Boyz will be boyz (1/27/2010)
Meet the dudes who make up the fine musical bromance of the Lord Scrummage collective

More from Mark Deming

Got pop? (4/8/2009)
Chris Richards and the Subtractions put the hooks back in the Motor City

History lesson, part two (9/3/2008)
The Plastic People of the Universe are still kicking it into the 21st century

By Mark Deming

After a few decades of dormancy, the phenomenon of the multi-day rock festival has returned to life in recent years, with Bonnaroo and Coachella becoming annual media events. Michigan is getting into the act with the jam-band friendly Rothbury Festival, which kicks off this Thursday, July 3, at the Double JJ Ranch, not far from Muskegon.

Rothbury promoters are expecting as many as 40,000 people to show up, an impressive figure…at least until you consider the last grand-scale rock festival that took place in Michigan. In the summer of 1970, the Goose Lake International Music Festival was held in Jackson, Michigan, and attracted over 200,000 fans. Unlike Woodstock, it didn't rain and most of those folks actually paid to get in. Despite this, Goose Lake remains an obscure footnote in Midwestern rock history, the big show that hardly anyone outside Michigan has heard about.

The Goose Lake festival was the brainchild of Richard Songer, a Southfield native who'd made a fortune in construction, building many of Michigan's highways, ramps and bridges. He purchased 350 acres near Goose Lake, just outside Jackson, and in 1970, Songer, then 35 years old, decided to transform the property into a park. He told the press: "It's a dream of mine to put together some place for the young people to go." With that in mind, Songer planned to build a performance venue on his property and stage a series of concerts, starting with a three-day rock festival to take place August 7 through 9.

A novice in concert promotion, Songer sought the help of two men with practical experience, Russ Gibb and Tom Wright. "Uncle Russ" was a DJ on WKNR-FM and owned and booked the Grande Ballroom, Detroit's premiere rock venue in the late '60s and early '70s, while Wright was a photographer and sometime roadie who managed the Grande. In May 1969, three months before Woodstock, Gibb and Wright staged the Detroit Rock and Roll Revival, a huge outdoor concert at the Michigan State Fairgrounds, and with Songer footing the bills, they set out to go the Revival one better at Goose Lake.

"We began by taking the rough outline that they had," remembers Wright, "which was a rectangle on a blackboard where the stage was going to go, and then fine tuning it to handle a high-energy music scenario." Wright's design for Goose Lake was meant to be permanent, and Songer spared no expense to see the job was done right, with his construction crew at Gibb and Wright's beck and call. "He brought in his crew of highway guys and they built roads; they paved the parking; they built the restroom setup; the kitchen facilities — it was like a state park for millionaires. It was beautiful."

Gibb assembled a bill of top-shelf artists for the three-day festival, including Joe Cocker, Rod Stewart & the Faces, the James Gang, Jethro Tull, Mountain, Chicago, Ten Years After and the Flying Burrito Brothers. Most of the major acts on the Michigan scene were on hand as well, among them the MC5, the Stooges, Mitch Ryder & Detroit, Savage Grace, the Up, the Third Power, SRC and Brownsville Station. The event was heavily promoted throughout the Midwest and Ron Asheton of the Stooges recalls it being billed as "Michigan's Woodstock. It was a big deal and people were excited," the guitarist recalls. "It was that great 'Us Getting Together' thing because it was very much 'Us Against the Establishment.' It was a real dividing line between the freak and the straight."

That dividing line threatened to shut down Goose Lake before it even began. Many Leoni Township residents living near the lake were already wary of Songer's plans to build a park — and when he announced the upcoming music festival, some formed the Goose Lake Area Property Owners Association. They filed suit to keep the festival from happening, claiming the event violated local zoning regulations. However, Songer's legal team kept them at bay, and on Thursday, August 6, thousands of fans began drifting onto the festival grounds, while work crews put the final touches on the facilities.

Dick Rosemont, who today runs one of East Lansing's best record stores, Flat Black and Circular, was part of the team working the festival, doing a little bit of everything. "The first day, we helped people put up tents — people who had borrowed them and had no idea of what to do with them!" Rosemont says. "The clearest thing I remember is being up on the lighting tower on Sunday." According to press reports, a teenager named Tom Neumaier climbed up onto one of the towers, and while they were sturdy enough to hold his weight ("Those towers were made of bridge steel," Wright recalls), he either jumped or fell off. Rosemont then sat atop the tower to discourage others from following Neumaier's lead. Remarkably, Neumaier was unhurt outside of some cracked ribs; as Mike Lutz of Brownsville Station jokes today: "Someone fell off a light tower and walked away, scot free! More power to marijuana!"

By Friday night, Goose Lake was in full swing, and it soon became obvious that initial attendance estimates of 100,000 fans were wildly inadequate. Dave Bernath, Rosemont's business partner at FBC, attended the festival as a fan, setting up a tent at the back of the performance amphitheater. "You woke up in the morning and there was hundreds of thousands of people there," Bernath says. "At one point you knew where everything was. Then everything changed. You saw 40 or 50,000 cars parked all up and down the road. It was chaos — you could never leave and get back. You were trapped, but it was a good kind of trapped. It wasn't like hell; it was like paradise."

Another fan attending the show was Robert Matheu, who would later become a top rock photographer and publisher of the current online incarnation of CREEM magazine. Matheu, who was 15 years old at the time, hitchhiked to Goose Lake with a friend. "We had read about Woodstock in Rolling Stone and Life magazine, and to a 14- or 15-year-old kid, that looked like the ultimate event," Matheu says. "Look at all these bands and all the freedom while you're out there in the woods! We found some other people who were camping there and we just crashed their campsite and made friends with them."

Matheu's new friends were kind enough to share some of their drugs with him as well. Drugs, after all, were not hard to find. Open drug sales were the order of the day, and Rosemont recalls a mobile head shop set up in a trailer truck, selling every conceivable sort of smoking paraphernalia. Mitch Ryder — who began his interview by confessing, "I remember very little [about Goose Lake]; I was tripping [on acid] for the entire time" — recalls, "Nobody was straight. It wasn't cool to be straight. There were straight people there, obviously, or it couldn't have been pulled off. But not many."

With an audience that swelled to between 200,000 and 300,000 (depending on who was counting), it was up to Wright and his stage crew to keep the audience occupied, and he was determined to keep the show on schedule. Sets were limited to a lean-and-mean 45 minutes, and Wright designed an unusual revolving stage set up on a massive turntable. While a band was playing on one side of the stage, the next act would set up on the other side. Once one set ended, stagehands would spin the massive turntable, and moments later the next band would be ready to go. "The phenomenal spinning stage, which I've never seen anywhere before or since!" enthuses Bernath. "The band would literally hit their last note, say 'thank you' and 'goodbye,' they spun around and the next band started within a minute — in seconds! The first band was still fading out when the other band came on! That's the way it should be!"

Many of the Michigan acts playing Goose Lake found themselves facing an audience that numbered in the six figures for the first time, and some took to it more easily than others.

"Once we saw the stage at Goose Lake, we were giddy," Brownsville Station's Lutz says. "The liberation of having a big stage and being able to move around, that was rock 'n' roll incarnate for us. Instead of intimidation, it was liberation." However, it was a different story for Dave Alexander, bassist with the Stooges. According to Ron Asheton, the band was on a macrobiotic diet at the time and Alexander had sworn off drugs and alcohol.

"He showed up with his girlfriend and he was so overwhelmed by all of it, he ended up drinking whiskey and smoking hash after abstaining for months. He was just so stoned and freaked out that when the stage turned around and there were those hundreds of thousands of people, he kinda froze like a deer in headlights. Right off the bat, he forgot the songs. He was so out of it he couldn't even play."

Iggy Pop fired him immediately after the show, and a bittersweet evening then got even worse: While Asheton and his bandmates were smoking pot in the trailer they used as a dressing room, the police suddenly opened the door and threatened to arrest the band for inciting a riot. The police interpreted the lyric "No walls! No walls!" from "Down In The Street" as a command to tear down the barrier in front of the stage.

Barriers were on a lot of people's minds that weekend. Unlike Woodstock, Songer and Gibb were determined that their festival would have a paying audience, and along with using specially stamped poker chips as entrance tokens instead of easily forged paper tickets (priced at $15 for the full three days), the festival grounds were ringed with miles of 12-foot-high chain link fence to keep gate crashers out. While some media at the time reported that the fences were topped with barbed wire and electrified, Wright says such stories were false. "There was no barbed wire — it was chain link fence, and it was put up as nice as you could make a chain link fence," he says. "We had to do this, assuring the farmers who bordered the property that our people wouldn't spill over and mess up their property." Matheu recalls: "I know other people have told me they felt caged in, but to me, at 15, this was like the whole world opened up for me. If the fences were there, it felt more like they were keeping other elements out."

Along with tales of the barbed wire fences, David A. Carson's book on the Michigan rock scene, Grit, Noise & Revolution, also included tales of widespread use of heroin, speed and other hard drugs at Goose Lake, and a dark mood hovering over the event. However, most of the people interviewed for this story didn't share such memories, although no one argues that marijuana and psychedelics were all but unavoidable.

"You kinda started wondering, it's so permissive and open, and if people are being careful enough about what they're doing," recalls Frank Bach, lead singer of the Up. "It seems like it was encouraging so much use that you hoped people weren't having bad trips or whatever. People talked about how there was a whole row of tents — here you could buy your speed; here you could buy this; here you could by that. Here you could buy your marijuana, and you could compare prices with the next tent. And in a situation like that, you wondered: Which one are the cops? Where are they photographing us?"

Though not everything was happy, most fans and musicians recall a sunny attitude surrounding the weekend. Wright recalls that Rod Stewart & the Faces enjoyed their Friday night appearance so much that they cancelled a show the next night in New York to stay at Goose Lake and hang out. But Faces keyboardist Ian McLagan cheerfully declares, "That's probably a lie … We didn't have anywhere to go the next day, as far as I understand it," but adds, "It was such fun that first night. Tom Wright was involved, and Alvin Lee was going to play the next night, so we hung around to see him. Unfortunately, the Hell's Angels took over (the backstage area) the second day." Ron Asheton also recalls a group of bikers stripping and raping a woman within his view from the stage while the Stooges were performing. But for most fans, beyond dealing with the summer heat and sun (and the odd person falling from a lighting tower), the weekend was safe and peaceful. "I didn't witness any violence," says Rosemont, who worked in the first aid tent one evening. "Inevitably, there's going to be cuts, bruises, that sort of thing. But there was nothing major that I recall."

Convincing the locals who lived near Goose Lake that all was benign was no easy task. Many Leoni county residents interviewed by reporters prior to the festival spoke as if a marauding army was on its way, and Jackson's daily newspaper, the Citizen-Patriot, printed a "Rumor and Fact" column during the festival in which reporters tried to establish the veracity of gossip phoned into their newsroom by worried citizens. The tales ranged from hippies looting a supermarket to drug-addled rock fans stealing a cow, then killing and eating it on the spot. All the negative stories were determined to be false.

In the aftermath of the festival, most residents of the community who spoke to the press said that the young people who attended the festival were polite and well mannered, but that didn't ease their suspicions. Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Bowers told a Citizen-Patriot reporter, "They were nice to us and we were nice to them," but Mr. Bowers also insisted, "I don't think it could be any worse. Dope, sex and nudity are offensive. It was a nerve-wracking deal." His wife chimed in: "We had guns for protection if they were needed. We're going to fight [future festivals] to the last ditch."

As it happened, the Bowers and their neighbors soon had plenty of help preventing Goose Lake II from taking place. Police officers — convinced arresting drug dealers in the park would cause a riot — waited outside the gates on Sunday afternoon, and hundreds of fans leaving the festival were arrested for possession. Many patrons, taking the advice of master of ceremonies Teagarden & Van Winkle, either burned or threw away their stashes rather than risk seizure on the way home. Governor William Milliken, who was running for re-election at the time, seized the opportunity to show he was tough on drugs. Returning to Michigan after spending the eventful weekend at a governor's conference in Missouri, Milliken declared he was "outraged" at the sale of drugs at Goose Lake and proposed legislation that would prevent similar events, adding "I do not oppose rock festivals, but I do oppose and will fight drug abuse such as took place at Goose Lake."

In quick succession, Jackson County legislators proposed laws that would outlaw gatherings as large as the Goose Lake festival; Michigan Representative Charles E. Chamberlain sought to launch a federal congressional inquiry into the event; Songer was indicted on charges related to illegal activity on his property; and state attorney general Frank Kelley threw his support behind proposals that would hold promoters legally liable for illegal activity at events they staged. While Songer had planned to hold another music festival at Goose Lake on Labor Day Weekend 1970, the controversy put an end to any future concerts at the park. He renamed the facility Wonderland Park and promoted it as a family-friendly destination, but even an attempt to stage a snowmobile race there was stopped by local officials. While Songer was eventually exonerated, Goose Lake was destined to be a one-off.

Goose Lake was in the headlines in Michigan through much of July 1970, but it received little coverage elsewhere. "The biggest mistake made at Goose Lake was my fault," Wright confesses. "And that was when the press showed up backstage, we were not hospitable. We weren't rude or anything, but we explained that the backstage area was for the roadies, the guys with the bands, the bands and the band's friends. We couldn't clog up the gears with 15 people who claimed to be from Rolling Stone. So we gave them free passes to the whole event, and they could get everywhere except backstage, which was the only place they wanted to be. Consequently, we did not get any coverage in the music press."

Despite it all, Goose Lake remains the biggest festival of its kind ever held in the Midwest, and gave Michigan's counterculture a chance to come together and raise their voices on a grand scale, while having some fun at the same time. As Mitch Ryder says, with no small pride: "It was a clash of cultures, for sure. But that's how change comes about. And I was involved in it.

The author would like to thank Robert Matheu, Tom Wright and Russ Gibb for their help with this story, as well as everyone who was interviewed. Mark Deming would like to hear from anyone who has photos or memories of Goose Lake; contact him at markrdeming@gmail.com.

The Rothbury Festival, Thursday through Sunday, July 3-6, at the Double JJ Ranch, outside of Muskegon. Go to rothburyfestival.com for more info.

Mark Deming is a freelance writer. Send comments to letters@metrotimes.com.

Comments

On 6/26/2009 5:00:05 PM, gordonpalmer said:

I remember the Neumaier incident as if it happened yesterday. Neumaier had climbed the tower and was enjoying the music, swaying whilst holding on to the railing. Some time after, another guy climbed up the ladder. On reaching the top he pushed up on the hatch. As it opened it fell with a crash on the tower floor. On hearing this Neumaier freaked out and vaulted over the rail. I have laughed to myself about this many times over the years so it is with great joy i hear that he was unharmed.

On 6/29/2009 9:16:12 PM, joe laroche said:

What a fine time Goose Lake was! I too remember it like yesterday- the Slide, the Open City tent. The guy who was passing around a glass pipe that 3' long ("be careful of that stuff!"). We built a wall of empty cans, for no particular reason. And the music! The James Gang were unforgettable. And when the power went out during the Stooges set, and Asheton kept playing his kit... too much! Is there any decent film footage around?

On 7/4/2009 1:09:10 AM, Fish said:

I hitchhiked with a friend to the Goose lake concert from Lansing when I was only 12 years old. I had already been smoking pot and doing acid for about a year and I don't recall much of the event, except that I was there! And I always wondered why so little has been mentioned about it in the music press and music history all these years! Thanks for the story! Eric ("Fish") Robson "The Drastics" (a Lansing band)currenly residing in Laguna Beach, CA.

On 7/26/2009 2:28:03 AM, idele said:

I was hired as Songer's secretary. When he discovered that this MSU student couldn't type well, I was relocated to the stage as a security guard (!) and at the gate as a ticket attendant. I have photos and the Detroit News special supplement after all these years. Nevertheles, it's all foggy except for the guy jumping off the tower, the drugs, open toilets, naked people and the amazing music and sense that we could do anything. I remember fainting at some point and waking up in the medical tent. Oh, we made a lot of money too beyond my salary but that's a story for a book or article.

On 7/26/2009 6:59:59 AM, BButts said:

I remember Goose Llkae well. I was 15 and along with a buddy the same age we were taken by my older brother and his buddy. We missed Woodstock and thought Goose Lake would fill the bill. Wow were we wrong. I remember the 'slide' well and the Open Tent. It will be a time in my life that won't be forgotten. Watermelon on the slide. Harley on the slide(it needed sewn to continue its use)Never did see the guy on the Harley come out from there. He might still be in there! We tried our hand at public nudity. Walked out of the shower house with our clothes covering our genitalia. Put our clothes on back at the tent,Hah! Woke up the first morning in our make shift tent only to see a couple fornicating 15 ft from us. What an awakening for a 15yr old.I remember being 'herded'(by the thousands) out of the music area by some kind 'sheperds'.....mooo-ooo, baaah! I guess I owe Songer an appreciative Thanks.

On 7/26/2009 6:56:25 PM, patr said:

In 1970, my father was certain that Hippies were taking over the world and that the end was at hand. In what I suspect was a lesson to teach me about the evils of these people, he took me out to Goose Lake the morning after the festival had ended. I was days shy of my 6th birthday, but remember vividly standing on the hill overlooking the venue. There were mounds and mounds of trash as far as the eye could see. It was an overcast and humid day, and the smell could politely be described as funky.

On 8/11/2009 12:53:11 AM, phactreerat said:

I went to school with a son of Richard Songer in Southfield. All he ever mentioned about the park was go-cart racing. I knew there had been a festival, so I brought it up once, and he said that his dad didn't like to talk about it. I was sure that I later read that he lost a lot of money.

On 8/14/2009 11:49:36 AM, HDeKiere said:

I was not at the festival as i was too young. I will ad some little tidbits to what happened to the park after the festival. In 1973 my family found a nice year-round trailer park in Leoni twp. It was the former site of the Goose Lake International Music Festival. The park was called Greenwood Acres and was owned and operated by the same man who organized the festival, Dick Songer. In 1973 the stage was already enclosed and turned into a recreational center for the kids in the park. It had pool tables, pinball machines, ping pong tables and so forth for the kids to enjoy. I remember walking in the first time and seeing how the floor of the rec center in the middle was round and you would take two steps up to it. Then i realized that the floor was a big circle and it wasn't fixed to one position. You could tell it would revolve. This being the old stagefloor. This building was big. When you walked out the back door (which would have been facing the field where the audience was sitting) There was 2 huge I-beam towers that rose about 60-80 feet high. These were the towers for the lights and speakers. Dick Songer had put another beam connecting the two together and hung huge round swings to these. These swings would fit 6 people in them and were billed on the park pamphlet as being the worlds largest swings. The park also had a motorcycle track on the west side of the park directly across from the field. The restroom buildings all around the site were still there in 1973 as was the large slide located in the northwest corner of the park. I hung around with Mr. Songers son for a few years as well as the son of the people who owned the farm where the site was. The family name of the farm was Wolfingers. Mr. Songers property was just to the west of the site on Greenwood road. Mr. Songer use to have horses you could rent and ride that was how i get to know his kids an Wolfingers family. I remember in the summer Mr. Songer would show his recording of the festival in the rec center on the anniversary of the festival. He did this for about 3 years from 1973-1976 then people at the park starting commenting on all the sex and drugs in the film so he didn't show it again after that. I use to have a shirt from the festival as Mr Songer still had many of these and you could get one from him, I wish i still had it but that was many moons ago. The Large slide was removed in 1977 after a lady from the park hurt her back on, she hurt her back because she had been drinking and at the foot of the slide was a 3 foot deep pit you would fall into. The pit was filled with foam but somehow she hurt herself so Mr. Songer ended up filling in the pit and closing the slide. The park was a great place to grow up at and i only wish i could have been a few years older because i know i would have gone to the festival. In later Mr. Songer had a zoo where the old motorcycle track was but that only lasted about 5 years then that was closed off. I last went to the park in 1992 and the rec center is still there as well as the towers. I know i didnt add anything about the concert but i just wanted to let all the readers know that a part of their past still exists there. I wonder why they haven't reckognized it more in the annels of music history. Also i wanted to ask if anyone has any pictures of the festival they are willing to share. I am also trying to find video of the show but havent had any luck. Maybe someone can help me on this. Thank you and groove on everyone. PEACE Harold DeKiere

On 8/14/2009 1:04:39 PM, michigan mike said:

I graduated from college in june 70. Worked at a day camp in Ill for the summer waiting for my induction into the USMC. Loaded my camp minibus with 3 female counselors (ages 19-21 ) and headed to Goose Lake. My memories include parking quite a ways away and a LONG walk into the grounds, drugs being " dispensed " out of the back of a yellow Ryder van and enjoying the naked swimming hole. Still have a flyer from the concert. Given my imminent departure for Vietnam I figured this might be my last concert. Luckily I have enjoyed many more since but none with the "cool" of Goose Lake.

On 8/15/2009 11:58:56 PM, DOUGIE46 said:

doug from ohio: I WAS JUST UP THERE TODAY LOOKING FOR IT BUT COULDN`T FINE IT. MAYBE IT CHANGED TO MUCH TO REMEMBER(AS IF I REMEMBER MUCH ANYWAY)BUT LIKR TO SEE SOME PICTURES IF ANYONE HAS ANY, THE GUY WITH US HAD TAKEN PICTURES , BUT I HAVEN`T SEE HIM SINCE THE DAY WE CAME HOME . I HERD HE DIED.

On 8/16/2009 12:59:26 AM, Ruthie said:

I was 18, a freshman at Ohio State University, and rode up to Goose Lake with some friends. Within minutes of arriving I lost all my friends and luckily was befriended by a guy who had a tent, food and money, none of which I had. I don't remember much of the weekend as I was very high the entire time. But the guy, Bill, was very kind and drove me back to Columbus. We were together for almost 8 years. I've always been surprised over the years that I've heard nothng about Goose Lake since that weekend, almost as if it had been a dream I had. Thanks for this article!

On 8/17/2009 1:38:05 PM, raydosity2k4 said:

As someone who attended Goose Lake, I didn't recognize the concert that was being described in the press afterwards. Fortunately it seems as though the press has re-thought some of their more "over-the-top" coverage over the years, but on the other hand it still doesn't get any recognition as a major event. Witness the 40 year celebrations of Woodstock. To hear it told, Woodstock was perfect except for a little rain and some traffic-jams. The promoters of Goose Lake rectified the mistakes that were made at Woodstock, but were ripped for it. I think a lot of it is your typical East Coast bias. I think the most disappointing description of Goose Lake was in David Carson's "Grit, Noise, and Revolution: the Birth of Detroit Rock 'n' Roll". I thoroughly enjoyed David's book and thought the book was well researched, but his section on Goose Lake was a real head scratcher. He describes how concertgoers were met with a scene reminiscent of Attica Prison because of the chain-link fence topped by barbed wire. He talks about lines of people lined up at lemon-ade type stands to buy and shoot up meth. Booths selling works and herion with used needles littering the ground. People going without food and medical care. He quotes the LA Free Press reporter as saying, "Instant slum, overcrowding, all the disadvantages of a ghetto-recreated folks, for your listening pleasure." He seems to have gotten a lot of his info from Dan Carlisle and Dennis Frawley (2 charter members of the WABX Air Aces), another shocker. Was there drug use at Goose Lake? Absolutely, those were times! Even heroin? Yes...this was a period when cheap and relatively pure heroin was making serious in-roads into the white suburban culture. My group of friends and myself brought several dozen penny caps (a $1 capsule of heroin that was enough to knock the recreational users like us on our ass) along with 2 ounces of Lebanese blond hash. That being said, I did not see any of the horrific scenes described by Carlisle and Frawley to Carson..nor do I know of anyone else who did. Does anyone seriously think that Woodstock drug use was any less prevalent?

On 8/17/2009 6:35:32 PM, jtom59 said:

I too was at Goose Lake, along with my boyfriend and my brother and some of his friends. We all drove up from a little town in Ohio called Yellow Springs, I was 18 at the time. I don't have many memories except of having a really great time! My boyfriend and I when we left and got back on the highway I remember us looking at each other and just saying "WOW" and started laughing. He had a yellow vw bug with peace signs on it. May we never forget! Long live the hippies of the sixties! Janet

On 8/17/2009 11:42:27 PM, bozvotros said:

Great article. i

On 8/17/2009 11:56:06 PM, bozvotros said:

I hitchhiked up from Fort Wayne, broke and hungry and got in by working the garbage truck. It was just past breakfast and I remember joints circulating continuously so that I didn't mind being up to my waste in oatmeal. Washed off in the lake like everyone else which didn't probably add much to the swimming experience... Or maybe I showered, seems like I remember public showers. Certainly lots of nudity and sex going on and just lots of very happy very stoned people. The open sale of drugs was just surreal. I swear I remember the light tower diver differently. I remember him dancing and people cheering and then he climbed up and stood on the top rail with his arms up like he was going to do a swan dive....and then did. I do remember another climber going up too but I thought he jumped before he arrived. Looked like he landed on someone. And here's a strange memory. I seem to remember a helicopter coming in there to get him and the crowds parting to let it land. But I was tripping and stoned and drinking Boone's Farm so it's possible I have that all wrong. Or maybe it was just an ambulance. I really can't remember but I remember thinking they got help to him really fast. Anyone else remember it?

On 8/18/2009 4:48:13 PM, Bumpadrum said:

I was 6 months out of the Army and had the short hair, but also the acid. Tried public nudity but found I needed the pockets of my cut-offs to carry drugs. Traded for a big bag of weed and hung it from my belt. I let hippie chicks just walk up and roll one for a kiss. I don't remember how I got there or got home.

On 8/18/2009 5:45:55 PM, bandanaman said:

I drove up from Davenport Iowa with some friends we got up there very early friday morning. I remember driving into Jackson to get gas and we could smell the pot in the air at like 6am. We pitched a couple of tents and I crashed just to wake up to the sound of motorcycles running up and down the road in front of out tents. I don't remember and barbed wire or lots of needles on the ground but I do remember the drugs... and how big Ian Anderson was up on stage but I was tripping pretty hard with JT was playing. The group I was with had a great time up there if I could I'd go back there in a heartbeat.

On 8/18/2009 7:02:46 PM, jim bell said:

MY FRIND & I ATTENED THE FEST & WE HAD A BLAST. WE WERE FROM THE CHICAGO AREA WE DROVE UP FRI MORN. & WE BROUGHT A HALF OUNCE OF HASH & A OUNCE OF POT & A COOLER FULL OF STRAWBERRY HILL WINE. I ACTUALLY LOST MY BUDDY FOR A DAY HE WANDERED OFF & GOT LOST WE REUNITED SUNDAY MORN. THE STOOGES WE THE BAND I REMEMBER MOST THEY WERE GREAT.I ACTUALLY HAVE A FLYER WITH ALL THE BANDS NAMES ON IT. I CARRIED IT IN MY WALLET FOR 20 YRS. I REMEMBER THAT BOY FALLING OFF THE SCAFFOLD. HAD A BLAST THANKS. JIM BELL

On 8/23/2009 12:09:15 PM, Chuck7997 said:

I was 18 years old when my friend and I hitchhiked to Goose lake. I remember the guy walking through the crowd of seated people yelling out what kind of drugs he had for sale and his girlfriend walking behind him with an open tray of the stuff.I also remember everyone was bathing and swiming naked,but most of all I also remember the great , great music.It was the best weekend of my young life.

On 8/30/2009 3:28:51 PM, Don3 said:

I have posted my photos of the Goose Lake Music Festival on the link below: it loads slowly - there are nearly 100 photos: http://web.me.com/hanoverdon3/hanoverdon3/Goose_Lake_International_Music_Festival.html

On 9/6/2009 5:01:26 PM, jimcook546 said:

I was a 18 year old in the crowd there too! What a time - there IS video footage. I have a cassete video tape of the concert - the qulaity is very poor. I am of the firm opinion that Rod Stewart did NOT play at this festival despite false reports. When Jethro Tull closed the show on Sunday night - what a rush!

On 11/6/2009 6:19:04 PM, terry_3421 said:

Hitched hiked up from Fort Wayne, In. Got there on Thursday before the concert. The first guy I ran into sold me 3 grams of kick-ass hash for the last $7.00 that I had on me. Ran into a friend of mine that had some money, so we went around buying every different type of acid we could find. God it must have been at least 10 kinds. We took them all over the next 3 days. Was right under the tower when the swan dive took place. Man, that guy bounced about two feet straignt up when he landed. Survived on food that the Hari Krishna's provided. Thank god(goddess?) for them. Thought I couldn't get much higher until someone passed a baggy with a bunch of coke in it. Damn, too much and O.D.ed. Thank you who ever you guys were in the medical tent. Gave me a orange AS soper and saved my ass. The music was incredible, the dope outstanding and the people out of sight. To jimcook546, yes Rod Stewart and Faces did play. He came out in top hat and tails. Leslie West was killer. Iggy Pop outrageous as ever. It's fantastic finding other people that were there, partied, survived, and still remember. Long Live Rock and Roll.

On 11/28/2009 12:00:21 AM, Paddy T said:

I was there ,19 yrs old, Rod Stewart, and James Gang from my area, Akron, and Mountain , stole the show, hitch hiked there from Akron, jeez Joe Walsh is playin, I am on the poster with the flag pants and frindge vest !!!!... holding my arms out in a victory stance, who has a copy , yes it's me

On 11/28/2009 10:21:16 AM, mtngal69 said:

I was recalling (as best I could) my experience of Goose Lake to a friend who wasn't there, who then emailed me this link. I had just finished my freshman year at M.S.U. & it was my first experience with psychedelics. We made the mistake of taking mescaline on Friday night & spent the entire night tripping our brains out in a small tent that was set up with only a couple of feet on either side in a sea of tents. (My apologies to the guy who politely commanded us to PLEASE KEEP QUIET--they were trying to sleep!--who we then designated as THE VOICE OF GOD & thought we would die laughing!) The next morning, after very little if any sleep, I was no doubt still tripping, just enjoying looking at all the people, when a guy (who no doubt thought he was performing a community service) came up behind me & clamped a gas mask over my face that was attached to a canister of pot! Startled, I sucked in the biggest toke of my life & felt my lungs catch fire as my eyes roll back in my head. I would've decked the guy if I hadn't been so incapacitated. In truth, my one regret of that weekend is that I remember virtually nothing of the music since I was so stoned the entire time. But I do recall the guy who dove or fell off the scaffold, whom I believe they took away in an ambulance. Yikes. Also, I recall that acid & God knows what else they were selling was going for 5-10 cents a hit (due to the fact that people were being searched upon leaving the concert) whereas a bottle of Boone's Farm or Ripple went for a minimum of 10 bucks--an interesting twist on the law of supply & demand I had just learned in Econ 101! Thanks for the "trip" down Hippie Memory Lane!

On 11/29/2009 1:49:58 AM, Paul.Dinsdale said:

Dick Songer was an extraordinary, visionary entrepreneur. Next to my dad, he is the man who influenced my life more than anyone I can think of. When he opened Greenwood Acres campground, on the site of the Festival, my family was one of the first to lease a lot there. He hired me part-time at age 15 to do general labor, but what impressed me is he usually worked right alongside us, and frankly worked harder than anyone else. Most of the locals never forgave him for staging the Festival, fighting him every time he needed a permit for anything years and years later. He showed his movie of the Goose Lake International Music Festival several summers in a row, in the "Rec" center that was once the revolving stage. He never wanted to release it because it would only "upset the neighbors" again. What a priceless slice of memorabilia! I would love to see it published sometime. -Red

On 1/23/2010 5:07:13 PM, MaryLove said:

I shared my experiences of Goose Lake with my children who are now in their thirties. I told them I had pictures, but had to destroy them when I got married at nineteen. They upset my husband. They where just a bunch of pictures of hippie kids in tie-dies T-shirts! Big Deal! I was eighteen that summer and had long dark brown hair past my waist. I walked around with Rocky Raccoon my pet raccoon on my shoulder the entire event. He was my baby. I do wish I had pictures. I remember driving from PA to Goose Lake and seeing hippie vans with Goose Lake decals in their windows. It was a piece sign that looked like a flying goose. If you volunteered, as soon as you got there, you got into the event free and got a free T-shirt. I was going to do this, but the guys my girlfriend and I where with got us in free some how. They knew about the event and drove all the way from Florida. My girlfriend and I met them and went along for the ride! Every night we fell asleep in our sleeping bags while listening to music and then woke up in the morning in front of the stage with thousands of people around us. It was amazing! We ate canned goods that someone had given us without labels. We opened up one can and it was octopus tentacles! We heated them up on the Coleman stove and tried to eat them. We went hungry that day. Yes! those where the good old days! Jethro Tull was amazing!