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At last: a queer memoir that puts the "wood" into Woodstock. Tiber was the dutiful son of eccentric Jewish motel-owner parents when the iconic music festival descended - not on Woodstock itself, but on his neighbor Max Yasgur's land, outside White Lake in upstate New York. Weekdays during the summer of 1969, Tiber lived in Greenwich Village, socializing with the
likes of Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, and - in one of this reminiscence's most memorable anecdotes - with Robert Mapplethorpe, who picked him up at the Mine Shaft and brought him to his SoHo loft for S/M sex under a Nazi flag. But upstate, where Tiber spent weekends trying to save the family business, he was completely closeted - until nubile lads, not just professing but truly practicing free love, poured into the motel, which had become festival headquarters.
This sentimental, wide-eyed, behind-the-scenes history of Woodstock - with a side trip to the Stonewall riots; Tiber was there, too - is a sweet account of how one rebellious summer opened a world of tie-dyed T-shirts and unashamed sexuality to the author..
Review by
Book Marks – Richard Labonte
