Taking Woodstock

   The book Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert and a Life, written by Elliot Tiber, tells about Tiber's involvement, as a young gay man, with the riots at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, and his key role in bringing the Woodstock festival to Bethel, New York. It begins with the description of Tiber's life before Woodstock, which involves his family background, his years in college, his double-life (pretending to straight during his weekends helping his parents in Bethel, while living an openly gay life in New York City), and his actions in the riots of the Stonewall Inn that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world. Later on, Tiber, who became the head of the chamber of commerce of his sponsored rock festival, finds out that the town of Walkill, where the festival was originally going to be held at, rejected the its production. He then immediately phones his partner Michael Lang after finding a fifteen acre field that could hold the festival. The land was owned by the Yasgur family, which most hospitably offered Tiber and his crew a place to sleep by a motel they owned as well. After countless conferences held in the motel, Woodstock began rockin'! Most ironically, Tiber only went to the actual festival once, during which he had an LCD trip, and described how the entire experience of Woodstock changed his life.

   Did the riot in favor of gay rights at the Stonewall Inn somehow made Tiber more devoted in the completion of Woodstock to demonstrate the world that love neglects sexual orientation, both gender role and gender identity, ethnicity, and many others?

Tiber, Elliot, Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert and a Life, SquareOne Publishers, 2007