Woodstock, My Teacher, and Me
This week marks the 55th anniversary of Woodstock — the legendary, three-day concert, happening, and community mud bath that served as both the apex and the decline of the Flower Power movement among young people across the country. For most of my life, I personally have felt only a casual interest in the event and its music (I was only 8 years old when it took place). Most films and photos depict a scene of scraggily-haired, unwashed, barefoot, drugged-out hippies — and those were just the musicians on the stage.
Just kidding. I was a hippie wanna-be when I was a kid, sporting love beads on occasion, enjoying glow-in-the-dark psychedelic posters and lava lamps in my bedroom, etc., but I was never a big fan of most of the musicians and bands in the Woodstock line-up. I do, however, appreciate the historic significance of the event.
My wispy connection to it all is that I once knew one of the Woodstock organizers. His name was Elliot Tiber, and, for a time in the mid-1980s, I was a student of his in his comedy writing classes at the New School in New York City.
Tiber’s parents were owners of a struggling, run-down El Monaco Motel in Bethel, New York, when he caught wind of plans for a rock concert to take place in the area. The promoters, Woodstock Ventures, Inc., were attempting to find a suitable venue, but had been denied a permit in Wallkill. Tiber secured his own permit for a music festival on the land adjacent to the El Monaco, and offered it to Woodstock Ventures, but they declined the offer, citing that the land was too swampy. Tiber than asked his milk supplier, Max Yasgur, if he would be interested in offering his dairy farm as the site. Yasgur had already allowed Tiber the use of his barn for the local Earthlight Theatre group, so the concept of hosting a larger event of some kind must have appealed to Yasgur (I am not a Woodstock historian, and I’m sure the story has a number of slightly differing versions). To say that “the rest is history” is both an understatement and an annoying cliché that I must stop using. But it will do for now.
Tiber, who was gay, also became active in the gay rights movement following the landmark 1969 Stonewall Inn riots in New York. Up to that point, he had been in the closet, even afraid to come out to his parents. The Stonewall Inn incident sparked the activist streak in him, while his creative talents became far-reaching as a writer, actor, director, and designer in the U.S. and Europe.
Jumping ahead to 1986…
I was 25 at the time, commuting on the bus each weekday into New York from the New Jersey suburbs to write for Advertising Trade Publications. At the same time, I was busy trying to improve my comedy writing skills. I wrote sketches, short stories, even (bad) screenplays in my spare time, mostly for my own amusement, but holding out a slight hope that someone might actually pay me for my creative efforts someday.
One day during my time with Advertising Trade Publications, I found myself looking through the course catalog for The New School on 12th Street in Greenwich Village, and discovered a weekly night class on comedy writing, taught by Elliot Tiber. Just what I needed! I had taken script writing classes in college and had even written my first full-length screenplay for a class — but this time, comedy was to be the main focus of the course. So, my routine was soon to include a reverse-commute drive into the city one evening a week after dinner at home— kind of gutsy in a way, looking back on it, but I was excited to learn all I could, while attempting to impress my instructor with each bit of material I handed in.
The bearded, pudgy Tiber was nearly always dressed in black, half-heartedly explaining that it was “slimming,” and encouraged the class to write outlandish, even surreal comedy pieces, if we were so inclined.
One of the ideas I came up with was a series of TV sketches about comedians throughout history; a court jester nervously auditioning for King Henry the 8th, a group of traveling minstrels accompanying Marco Polo to China, a comedy team in the Dark Ages inventing the pie-in-the-face gag, etc.
Much to my relief, Tiber loved my writing. His notes were glowing reviews, always accompanied with words of encouragement for me to just keep going, and suggesting that I submit my work to agents and producers. I’ve kept the papers with his very generous comments to this day, and I did indeed assemble the individual sketches into a comedy anthology script titled Heroic Fools, which I had professionally typed and printed — and which I recall submitting to a handful of literary agents, before my chronic insecurities put an end to that (I’ve since converted and hopefully improved upon some of those into short stories, self-publishing them as part of a larger collection of my humorous pieces).
When it came to reading material out loud to the class, I was way too self-conscious and unsure of my work to do so. Tiber volunteered to read my sketches out loud for me. He did a better job than I could have, but it didn’t produce a roomful of guffaws from my classmates as I had hoped. Again, he made sure to tell me not to use that as a yardstick to measure my talents.
I enjoyed the class and Tiber’s easygoing, New York/Jewish tinged humor and sarcasm, so much so that took a second class he taught the following semester, officially titled “Absurd, Twisted Comedy Writing.” I had even come to look forward to the weekly, early evening drive into Manhattan to attend the class.
Directly across the street from the parking garage I used on 12th Street, just a few blocks from the The New School, was a beautiful, elegant restaurant called The Gotham.
It’s still there, and still beautiful. I stood across the street looking at it many times, sometimes briefly stepping up to the windows to peer through, and promising myself that if I ever sold a script, I’d treat my family to dinner there.
I have yet to set foot inside The Gotham.
After class each week, I’d drive about 45 blocks up the Avenue of Americas (a.k.a. 6th Ave.), dwarfed by the towering corporate skyscrapers and surrounded on all sides by lights, noise, people, and city life, as I’d continue past Radio City Music Hall and the New York Hilton, listening to my jazz tapes in the car. I’d never felt so sophisticated and cosmopolitan!
Elliot Tiber eventually wrote a book about his life experiences titled Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life, on which a 2009 film was based.
I hadn’t been aware of either the book or film until five or six years ago, although I had seen him as a guest on TV talks shows through the years marking various Woodstock anniversaries. He wrote and published a few subsequent memoirs as well.
Tiber passed away in 2016, and, while he no doubt forgot all about me as soon as that last semester of mine in his class ended, I’ll always be indebted to him for encouraging me, and telling me how clever, funny, and rich my writing was (and maybe even still is). Perhaps to my own detriment, writing became the only thing I ever really wanted to do. I’ve written and published fiction and non-fiction books, magazine articles, entered scripts in national writing contests, etc.
But I’m still hoping for that meal in The Gotham.
Until next time…
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My other articles related to pop/rock music include:
“1964: Pop Culture’s Greatest Year?” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“Retro Review: Kate Bush and ‘The Dreaming’”| by Garry Berman | Medium
Retro Review: In Praise of the Bangles https://garryberman.medium.com/retro-review-in-praise-of-the-bangles-7110c0c79b49
Retro Review: The Cardigans https://garryberman.medium.com/retro-review-the-cardigans-ca1e8e5f05f1
Retro Review: Donald Fagan’s “The Nightfly” https://garryberman.medium.com/retro-review-donald-fagans-the-nightfly-6af34cafc87d
Two Classic Albums: “Layla” and “All Things Must Pass” at 50 https://garryberman.medium.com/two-classic-albums-layla-and-all-things-must-pass-at-50-1d4b8ef9e4c6
Retro Review: Renaissance (the band) https://garryberman.medium.com/retro-review-renaissance-the-band-b497319a84fc
Please visit www.GarryBerman.com to read synopses and reviews of my books, and order them via the links to Amazon.com.
