DAYTON, Ohio — Woodstock performer Dennis Greene arrived by helicopter at the mythic, muddy rock music festival held 40 years ago, Aug. 15-18, 1969, in Bethel, N.Y.
Greene, a founding member of Sha Na Na, recalled seeing groupies backstage drinking champagne from the bottle. In contrast, the 500,000 people who converged on Max Yasgur's farm to see the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and the Who spent three days with little food or water.
Greene walked the mucky field and watched concert-goers share what they had to eat and drink.
"It was reminiscent of the Gospel of St. John, talking about the loaves and fishes, in the sense of people being that giving and that sharing in the worst kind of adversity imaginable," said Greene, who is now a law professor at the University of Dayton.
Traffic snarls forced people to abandon their cars miles from the site and walk to the concert. Fences were torn down, turning the festival into a free concert. Heavy rains deluged a crowd 10 times larger than the expected 50,000 people.
"All of the conditions that should have made it horrible ... just made everyone be that much nicer because we were all in the same boat," said Gordon Harris of Clayton, Ohio, who still has his tattered, water-stained Woodstock ticket.
Harris recalled hiking to fill a water jug and sharing most of it with strangers on his way back.
"It was a unique experience for that number of people who were ill-prepared and made the best of their situation, and it's probably never been duplicated since," said Charlie Castilano of Centerville, Ohio, who also attended.
Woodstock attendees such as Solomon Fulero of Kettering, Ohio, knew the world was watching and responded in a positive manner.
"There was great pride," Fulero said. "I think there was a consciousness of community."
Greene's law students at the University of Dayton discovered his rock star past via YouTube.
The students used their laptop computers in class to watch online clips of Greene performing at Woodstock and on a 1970s television variety series as a member of the '50s rock revival group Sha Na Na.
"The revolutionary nature of that piece of digital technology has made Sha Na Na a phenomenon that I have to respond to in a way that I haven't had to think about for 25 years," Greene said.
The New York City native was a founding member of Sha Na Na, singing lead and doing the group's choreography from 1969 to 1984. After leaving the group, he earned a master's degree from Harvard University, a law degree from Yale University and was vice president of production and features at Columbia Pictures.
Greene, 60, joined the UD faculty in 2001 and has taught constitutional, entertainment, race and American law since 2004.
Sha Na Na had only been together a few months when they were tapped to play Woodstock.
At the time, the group was playing a New York club frequented by Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. "The buzz was very high on us and we got the offer to play Woodstock from Mike Lang, who was one of the promoters," he said.
Sha Na Na performed before Hendrix, the festival's final act. The group had been scheduled to play at 9:30 p.m. Sunday, but went on at 5:30 a.m. Monday because of rain delays and unscheduled performers.
"It went extremely well," he said. "We did encores and the whole thing."
Greene spent some of his 18 hours there walking the muddy field among 500,000 concert-goers.
"You really had this incredible feeling that this could never happen again because of the fact that it was so physically challenging and yet the people's attitude was so wonderful and giving," he said. "It just slapped you in the face that this was a really unique, amazing moment."
Staging a three-day concert of Woodstock's caliber would be difficult in today's economy, Greene said. "In today's world the prices that group's charge, the price of tickets, all of that is so completely off the charts that it would be difficult to capitalize that," he said.
It's also unlikely that today's stars would stand around for 18 hours in the mud waiting to perform.
Greene plans to spend the festival's 40th anniversary working on a book that he is writing about Woodstock. "Not just Woodstock, but how it sort of metaphors life today in terms of what lessons we have learned from it," he said. "My working title has been, '10 Lessons From Woodstock for the Age of Obama.'"
Dave Larsen writes for the Dayton Daily News. E-mail: dlarsen(at)DaytonDailyNews.com.