Taking Woodstock
Taking Woodstock is the funny, touching, and true story of Elliot Tiber, the man who was instrumental in arranging the site for the original Woodstock Concert. Elliot, whose parents owned an upstate New York motel, was working in Greenwich Village in the summer of 1969. He socialized with the likes of Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, and yet somehow managed to keep his gay life a secret from his family. Then on Friday, June 28, Elliot walked into the...
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Before there was a Woodstock Concert, there was Elliot Tiber working to make a go of his parents' upstate New York hotel, the El Monaco. It wasn't easy. The Jewish clientele who had returned to the Catskills year after year had discovered Florida, and the upstate hotel business was dying. To save his family's livelihood, Elliot put on plays, musicals, and local festivals. In the process, Elliot became the area's official issuer of event permits--not that anybody else wanted that position. Elliot even worked weekends as an interior design artist in New York City, all in the hopes of helping his family. In the summer of 1969, Elliot Tiber's life changed in a way he never could have foreseen. Greenwich Village had become the mecca for gays in America. There, Elliot had socialized with the likes of Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Andy Warhol, and a talented young photographer named Robert Maplethorpe, and yet had managed to keep his gay life a secret from his family. Then on Friday, June 27, Elliot walked into the Stonewall Inn--and witnessed the riot that would galvanize the gay movement in the United States. And on July 17, when Elliot read that the Woodstock Concert promoters had lost their license to stage the show in Wallkill, he called to offer his help in finding a new venue. In the days that followed, Elliot found himself swept up in a vortex that would change his life forever. The events that unfolded during that hot New York summer have come to be recognized as major turning points in our cultural history. Few, however, have enjoyed Elliot Tiber's unique view of those events. Taking Woodstock is the funny, touching, and true story of the man who enabled Woodstock to take place. It is also the personal story of one man who took stock of his life, his lifestyle, and his future. In short, Taking Woodstock is like no history of Woodstock you have ever read. Publishers Weekly Tiber, who helped organize the iconic music festival, recounts the events that led up to Woodstock in this entertaining true story. He recreates the events in dramatic detail, offering readers a new take on a legendary event as well as sharing his own coming-of-age story, his grapples with his homosexuality and run-ins with some of the most celebrated musicians and visual artists of the day. Jim Frangione is the perfect choice for the material: his dramatic flair brings a subtle theatricality to the story. He is able to transcend time and space and transport both himself and his audience back to the 1960s. A Square One hardcover. (Aug.)
Acknowledgments viiLost in White Lake 1The Teichberg Curse 11My "Other" Life 27Digging a Deeper Grave While Laughing Hysterically 45Stonewall and the Seeds of Liberation 63The Golden Goose Lands at the El Monaco 83The World Is Made Anew 99The First Wave 113White Lake Rebels 125Everyone Wants a Piece of the Pie 147The Day Is Saved 171Taking Woodstock 197Epilogue 209
\ Publishers WeeklyA humble motel owner and his parents become the heroes in carrying off the momentous 1969 Woodstock rock concert in Tiber's occasionally improbable yet thoroughly entertaining tale. Tiber, né Teichberg of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, put on hold his personal ambition in the mid-1950s as an artist to help his aging Old World Jewish parents run their ramshackle resort motel in White Lake, deep in the Catskill Mountains. Hounded by the guilt that he can't live up to his parents' standards and riven by his own covert homosexuality, Tiber pokes fun at what he calls the Teichberg Curse, a scourge that won't allow the family to escape financial ruin. As head of the Chamber of Commerce in his small town, and possessed of the yearly permit to hold summer music concerts, Tiber gets wind of rock concert promoter Michael Lang's need for a venue to hold the Woodstock festival. A month of frenzied preparations ensues as Max Yasgur's farm is secured, the anticipated numbers swell, and tensions grow in the town. Yet the planning of the concert makes up only one part of Tiber's very human story, which includes affecting side chapters on brushes with artists (Mark Rothko, Robert Mapplethorpe) and standing defiant when the cops raided the West Village gay bar Stonewall. (Aug.)\ Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information\ \ \ \ \ Kirkus ReviewsThink Woodstock was all peace and love? Sure, but it also involved lawyers, mobsters and a few assorted pieces of B&D gear. Tiber, ne Eliyahu Teichberg, lived two lives in the '60s: Although he was a well-regarded mural artist whose "paintings were also displayed in galleries and sold," by day, he helped his parents run a fleabag motel in the Catskills, and by night he haunted the gay bars of Greenwich Village, falling into the arms of the likes of Robert Mapplethorpe and other rough men. "People with whom I had sex always pretended that they didn't know me when they saw me in the light of day," Tiber sighs in a characteristically self-doubtful moment. To trust his account, he was on the scene when, faced with yet another police raid, a barroom full of gay men and women decided to fight back. Regrettably, Tiber's account of the famed Stonewall Riot is less than glancing. Just so, his reminiscences concerning the detour the Woodstock Festival of 1969 made from Woodstock proper to Max Yasgur's farm outside Bethel-the site of that fleabag hotel, coincidentally-are disjointed and sometimes incoherent. The storyline, though, is of great interest to collectors of rock trivia and history, and it speaks less to the power of flowers than to that of greenbacks: Yasgur's escalating demands for cash; festival organizer Mike Lang's beatific grooviness amid trips to the bank with satchels full of cash; and the arrival on the scene of shady characters with drugs to sell, among other parasites. Clearly, though, Tiber had a good time amid the logistical headaches of hosting a million-plus visitors, even if his momma caught him kissing boys ("I am ashamed of you and Woodstock," she says toward the end ofher life, to which he rejoins, "Some things never change.") and his neighbors threatened to kill him for ruining their bucolic and apparently inbred retreat. Indifferently written, but a tale worth hearing. First printing of 25,000\ \ \ Midwest Book Review"(Taking Woodstock) is absolutely amazing! This reviewer couldn't put it down - in fact, read it twice before writing this review. If you've ever dreamed of being at Woodstock or even if you were there, the author Elliot Tiber will take you back."\ \
