Fading of a Fantasy

Some 500 hostile young people, many stoned and some flashing knives, rip up fences and storm a stage at the Newport Jazz Festival, silencing the music for nearly 40,000 listeners and causing officials to cancel a scheduled folk festival and a rock opera. The heroin death of one young man and the open drug dealing of others at a Detroit rock concert lead Michigan Governor William Milliken to demand the end of all such festivals in that state.

Rock shows are canceled in Hampton Beach, N.H., when youths try to break into a sold-out ballroom. Worried officials are vastly relieved when 55,000 enthusiasts of the Grand Funk Railroad fill New York's Shea Stadium--and only three injuries and six arrests result. After an estimated 1,280 concerts for 3,750,000 music enthusiasts over a period of nearly six years, Promoter Bill Graham closes his Fillmore West in San Francisco, just one week after shutting down Fillmore East in New York City.

Rock music, like jazz, has become a permanent part of American popular culture, and millions of young people will continue to enjoy it, not quietly but inoffensively. In the meantime, however, the more spectacular rock institutions are continuing to crumble. Among the chief reasons, apart from the infestation of drugs, is the fact that musicians and promoters have grown greedy. What with high admission prices and thousands jammed into tight, inadequately equipped spaces, the kids no longer feel that the music is theirs. Too much was expected of the Woodstock dream, of its unique communion in sound.

Promoter Graham laments the passing of a time when "all those wonderful kids came together to share a fantasy and exchange happiness." Fillmore West will soon be turned into a branch of Howard Johnson's.

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